Are your emails being flushed down the toilet?
In this post, you’ll learn the 5 methods of reducing your emails being flushed down the toilet (a.k.a. people delete/don’t open your emails).
Writing emails is one of the most rewarding activities you can invest in your business.
You write emails once.
You load them into your email automation tool.
Emails are sent out like clockwork no matter where you are, what you are doing, or who you are with.
Your (thousands upon thousands of) subscribers get your emails consistently, every day, without fail… even when you are sleeping.
I like to think my emails as my “sales slaves”. They are consistently engaging, educating, and entertaining my audience… thus bringing in sales for my business as a result.
But the best emails in the world are of no use if your emails are flushed down the toilet.
You first need to get people to OPEN and READ your emails.
(I cover how to get more email opens in my Email Mahhhneeyy PRACcourse).
People decide if they want to open your emails by the “From” name.
After that, they look at the subject line.
There’s another important (not so obvious) factor though: your email writing style and presentation.
Sure… the content itself is important. Since there are already tons of resources on content creation on the net, I won’t cover that today.
Today I’m going to show you:
The 5 ways to polish your email writing style and presentation so that:
- Your emails get opened and read
- You get maximum impact and engagement from your subscribers.
1/ Talk About THEM THEM THEM
I’ve stressed this many times that humans are selfish. We only care about ourselves.
We want to have fun.
We want to enjoy life.
We want to eat.
We want to look great.
We want to have lots of money.
We want to look good in the eyes of others.
Dave Ramsey said: “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like”.
Now it’s time to switch your narcissistic mindset, and put the focus on THEM THEM THEM inside all your emails.
How can this email benefit them? Why should they read your article?
What’s the benefit (WIIFM) if they view your videos or buy your course?
2/ Use Short Sentences & Paragraphs
Many of my emails deliberately start with a short sentence.
No more than 10 words.
People don’t read. They scan.
This applies to emails, blog posts, lead capture pages, articles, books, and everything they read.
If, upon opening your email, they were greeted by this:
What do you think their reaction will be?
If it were me…
You want to make it easy for your subscribers to scan and digest your email.
Short sentences and paragraphs do the trick.
This is especially true for the opening sentence of an email.
I put extra effort in making sure the first sentence is ultra short.
When they see a short sentence, their brain inadvertently thinks: “Ha! This looks easy. I can glance through the first sentence in 2 seconds…”
Then their eyes continue down the next sentence, which is also short…
and down to the next, and to the next…
and before they know it, they’ve scanned the entire email.
It’s like a “snowball effect”… you want to make the first step for the reader so easy that they can’t help but continue to the next step, and the next step, and the next.
For the most part, I suggest making a sentence into a separate paragraph by itself.
To introduce variety, you can occasionally fit 2 sentences into a paragraph. Like what I’m doing here now with this paragraph.
Be sure to also use a bigger font size (h2 or h3) for your paragraph sub-headline. This helps scanners get an idea of what the main sections of your content are, and if they’re more interested in a specific point than another, they can easily explore further.
Last but not least… sprinkle bullet points in your emails for even better readability. Everyone loves these!
3/ Make Your Emails Personal
Next, you want to write your email as if you’re talking verbally to a friend, face-to-face and one-on-one.
That means you want to write in a personal and casual tone, like you would when talking to a friend.
You wouldn’t be formal with your friend, so don’t be formal with your subscribers (unless you’re in one of those industries that require you to wear a suit and tie).
You want to impersonate this “personal” feeling when writing emails.
We want to open emails from friends, but not necessarily from businesses.
This is also the reason why BirdSend provides a simple WYSIWYG email editor without fancy “drag and drop” email templates you find in most email automation platforms.
This has an added benefit in that the html code for all our emails are cleaner and leaner, which helps in inbox placement.
Since BirdSend focuses on serving infopreneurs and service-based businesses, most of the time these types of businesses place a heavy focus around content and not on fancy email templates.
Not to mention that using this kind of WYSIWYG editor allows you to crank out emails SUPER FAST, compared to traditional “drag and drop” emails.
4/ Make Your Emails Fun
Infuse humor into your emails.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.
Using humor is a very very effective way of engaging with your subscribers.
Since most businesses and email marketers don’t use humor in their marketing and presentation, they are boring.
And then you come along and start to injecting humor into your edutainment emails.
Who do you think is going to stand out and get the attention of your subscribers?
To use humor in your edutainment emails, here are a few ideas:
Use annotated images instead of just images
Annotated images, compared to non-annotated images, are more unique and appealing. This is especially true if you’re using stock images (that thousands of other people are also using).
You get to add your own comments and thoughts by using annotated images, too.
Here are a few examples I’ve used in my emails…
Be careful not to insert too many images inside an email can lower your email deliverability.
Use interesting/funny stories or happenings and tie them to your emails
Like how I connect this post with David Beckham eating at Salt Bae’s steakhouse. The more “mainstream” the story, the better. Everyone knows who David Beckham is… and because he is so famous, we want to know what interesting thing happened when he visited the restaurant.
Create your own funny/interesting slang
I created “email mahhhnneeyy” which plays on the word “email money”.
Quuu used “ThankQuuu” to replace “thank you”
Purposely write broken English
What!?!? Is this some kind of joke?
Though you should be using proper English to write… once in a while (sparingly) try using “imperfect” English to “break the pattern”, stand out, and recapture your audience attention.
Try starting a sentence without proper capitalization, or using incorrect sentence structure, etc.
Like what I’ve done:
“me no like”
“what say you”
Starting a sentence without a capital letter.
Starting a sentence with “because”, “and”, “so”, “but”.
5/ Ask Them Questions
People want to feel appreciated and taken care of. They want to know that the host (you) care about them.
A great way to let subscribers know that you care about them is to ask them questions.
In my Top 7 Email Mistakes report, I encourage email marketers to ask questions in their very first email.
The purpose is threefold:
1/ To show that you care about them.
2/ Depending on the questions asked, you get to know your subscribers better (e.g. Which specific area do you need help with email marketing? What is your #1 problem with trying to teach your child math? What are you hoping to achieve when you sign up to our newsletter?)
3/ To let inbox providers know that there is ongoing communication between you and the subscriber — this will increase the chance that your future emails land in their inbox.
6/ Use P.S.
In point #2, we’ve covered that people don’t read word for word.
People scan.
When they scan, the Postscript (P.S.) is almost always read.
They say that the Postscript is like a second headline.
That is why I almost always use a P.S in all my emails.
So what do you cover in this P.S section? Summarize the gist of the email and put another call-to-action (CTA) of what you want the reader to do. Always tie the P.S back to the goal of the email.
If you want them to check out your training video, remind them again the benefits of what they’ll learn/get when they checkout your video.
E.g. If you want to know how to correctly do these simple 5-minute exercises that can reduce your weight by 10lbs next month, click here to watch the workout video.
What Next?
Be sure to put what you’ve learned in this post into practice. I gave you 6 ways above. As usual, start with 1.
Don’t be too overly ambitious and implement all 6 ways simultaneously.
Implement just 1 first.