The 8 Immutable Laws of Email

 

2.1 The 8 Immutable Laws of Email

 

Lesson Objective:

In this lesson, you will:

• Learn about each of the laws of email marketing 
• Understand examples of how to apply each law
  
  

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Before we start talking about the specific pipelines (marketing funnels) you’ll be creating in this course, I think a quick introduction to email marketing and copywriting is in order. We don’t have the time to squeeze in a complete guide to effective copywriting into this course… it might start to feel like those 2,000-word personal stories that precede most recipes online.

I’ve condensed some of the key lessons of copywriting and email marketing into what I like to call The 8 Immutable Laws of Email Marketing.

Let’s run through these now and get you set up for email success, starting with the lesson that helped me really break into email marketing.

 

Immutable Law 1 - The Blank Page is Your Mortal Enemy. 

Few things are more difficult than knowing you need to whip up a quick email campaign to drive a bit of extra revenue and sitting down in front of an empty word doc. Two hours later, your office is clean, your inbox is sorted, and your cursor is still blinking slowly at you from an empty page, taunting you. Luckily there’s an easy fix: email templates! 

Hands down the best way to take the stress out of creating email marketing are to have templates that you can modify to suit your specific business or promotion. Throughout the Knowledge Commerce Business Growth System I’ll be sharing email templates with you along with advice on when and how to use them.

Templates give you a starting point to make structuring your promotion sequence easy and eliminate the initial uncertainty and slowness. They also help you see how your emails work together in a sequence to build interest and desire.

 

Immutable Law 2 -  When You Use Storytelling & Open Loops, This Happens...

Storytelling is essential in email copywriting because it humanizes your email and your business. Over thousands of years, we’ve evolved as a species to share lessons and history through stories. When you start to hear a story, the neural activity in your brain increases fivefold!

That’s why we want to use these in our marketing too because stories help us engage and connect. When used properly, they help readers understand how you are trying to help them, who you are, and why they should care. 

Open loops are a particularly powerful storytelling device, which you probably know best from Buzzfeed articles. Here’s an example of a deeply popular one: Non-Americans Are Sharing The Bizarre Things That Americans Think Are Normal And It's Surprising

In storytelling, the open-loop is essentially the introduction of an idea without providing the conclusion. You can open a loop in a subject line and close it in an email, or have them open and close across different emails in your pipeline. In our welcome template, we tease that we’ll share some powerful resources in an upcoming email - a great way to ensure your prospect keeps an eye on their inbox the next day.

Just make sure you don’t leave any loops open for too long or your readers will be left unsatisfied… kinda like the audience of the tv show LOST.

Our next law is all about making sure each part of our email has a specific job. 

 

Immutable Law 3 - The Subject Line Sells the Open And the Email Body Sells the Click

Netflix kicked off the streaming revolution that has shaped how we watch tv and film in part because they’ve mastered the art of the menu.  

They’ve conducted hundreds of thousands of tests on what image tiles are most likely to get viewers to actually make a choice and start watching.

The secret here, and how this is relevant, is that they realized the job of the menu image is not to explain what the show is about. Instead, these images pull engaging snapshots from the media itself that make viewers curious enough to want to know more. 

I mention this because the menu tile plays the same role that your subject lines should. The subject line doesn’t need to explain your product and mention the price and answer the biggest questions. It just needs to stand out in the inbox enough to sell your prospects with a click. Once the email is opened, the body copy can do more work, but it also doesn’t have to explain every little detail. It just needs to ensure potential buyers or readers are intrigued enough to venture one step deeper and click on your sales page or content.

 

Immutable Law 4 - Swift-ly Hook Your Audience by Focusing on Your Voice

In a past life, I was actually a DJ and as a Texan, you’re legally required to be ready to 2-step at any moment. So I know a good bit about country music. And I have a tale of two musicians to explain why voice is so important.

Garth Brooks won quite a few awards in his day and is one of the more famous modern country artists. And in 1999, he decided to conquer another genre, rock & roll. To do this, he invented a brand-new personality: Chris Gaines. 

It was an interesting idea, but not a particularly well-received one. Instead of connecting his fans with where he wanted to go and building a path forward, he changed his look and message abruptly, alienating his biggest fans. Instead of being the next big thing, Chris Gaines was quietly buried.

On the other hand, one of the most popular musicians of the 21st century, Taylor Swift, successfully went from yeehaw's to topping the pop charts. 

She did this by slowly, openly growing, and changing in front of her audiences. While her songs might have changed, the message, songwriting, and personality stayed the same and shone through. 

In email marketing, your voice is a blend of your tone, your message, your character, and your general attitude. It’s imperative to have your voice relate back to the why behind your business and your story. 

We’re halfway through. This next law is all about how to make your emails stand out in the inbox, one of the biggest challenges with how many marketing messages people receive each day. 

 

Immutable Law 5 -  There Are Only 6 Types of Subject Lines. Use them All!

Email marketing works best when you appeal to people in different ways. Ambulances don’t just stick with one kind of siren the whole drive - they’ve got a variety of GET YOUR ATTENTION sounds. And while driving additional sales in your business is admittedly less dire than a trip to the hospital, at the end of the day we also want attention!

The trick is that it’s easy to catch people’s eyes in the inbox by leveraging different kinds of subject lines. I don’t just mean different words, but different ways of appealing to prospects. After studying tens of thousands of subject lines, I’ve found there are 6 different types that recur again and again - mix and match these to win with subject lines.

• Self-interest - Direct and speak to a specific benefit your audience will gain by opening the email
• Your invitation-only event has begun
• Official notice: your refund is waiting (from Turbotax)
• Curiosity - Pique the interest of subscribers without giving away too much information, leading to higher opens
• “Calling all lazy (smart) business owners
• RE: Details on your future order
• Offer - Tell people when you are giving something away or selling something your subscribers would be interested in
• Who wants the last T&C ticket?
• 62 lessons, 12 handouts, 7 modules, 1 killer certification
• Urgency - These tell readers that they must act now or they’ll miss out. use sparingly and only when there is truly a deadline, limited quantity, or limited availability.
• Your free book is on hold (order ASAP - expires soon)
• Your 75% off is almost gone...
• Humanity - Remind your list about the person or people behind your products.
• It’s my birthday (and I have a gift for you)
• We screwed up...
• Proof - Appeal to people’s innate desire to see what others are doing (and keep up). Mention individual success stories, familiar names, or highlight how many people are already using a product or service.
• Their ugly funnel generated $300k in revenue
• [INTERVIEW] He's doing 60k/day on Fb now with this strat...

 

Immutable Law 6 - When in Doubt, Follow the Perfect 4-Link Formula

There is an ideal way to structure the links in your email to maximize the likelihood that someone clicks. Now, don’t go so far as to sacrifice readability or storytelling to make this work, but when you are looking to create an email optimized around the next step, this is an invaluable strategy. Let’s walk through why these are designed this way. 

Link 1 - Early in the email, we include a link for people who are already interested in the topic and ready to take action whether that’s to go buy our product or to really dive in and learn more about it. An early link ensures that your engaged audience doesn’t have to dig around to get what they want.

Link 2 - For our next hyperlink, it’s good to follow with a visual. This helps break up the email body and catches the eye before fully in view, encouraging your prospect to scroll further down. You can use a photograph, a gif, a custom image, or a web screenshot here, whatever suits your email best.

Link 3 - Then we want to make a logical appeal. If someone has made it this far in the email they’re interested in what you have to say even if they haven’t taken action yet. Lean on the benefits of buying the product, reading the content, or taking whatever action you want them to and how it will improve their life or has improved others.

Link 4 - Finally, a little dash of scarcity at the end can tip people over the edge when their inertia has kept them from going forward. Again, there’s clearly interest when your prospect has gotten to the bottom of the email. Help them break through with well-placed ‘don’t wait,’ or ‘do this now.’

 

Immutable Law 7 - The World is Mobile First - Make Sure Your Emails Are, Too. 

I was going to find a cute story about why mobile is so important, but I got a text, then started watching a YouTube video. Next thing you know, I’m scrolling mindlessly through Instagram. 

I don’t have to tell you that phones rule the world - they are the most used kind of computing device in the world. And phones don’t just win on social media platforms and text messages. Adobe found that about 85% of people check email on their phones. You absolutely need to make sure your email copy and images are optimized for and readable on a smartphone. Speaking of images, we’re at our final immutable law of email marketing.

Immutable Law 8 - Showing Beats Telling so Multi(ply) Your Media

It’s a pretty trite saying that a picture is worth 1,000 words. But it’s no joke! An MIT study found that the human brain can process an image in 13 milliseconds. I’m a pretty fast reader but a page of a book takes a bit longer than that. 

While words are a great way to tell stories and include more of your personality in emails, don’t discount the power of including a picture or gif in your emails to help explain ideas and intrigue your audience. You don’t want your emails to look like a department store sale announcement with images alone, but mixing up the way you communicate is a great way to connect with more people.