Down and Dirty Email Copy Cr itique and Tips By Shaun Buck, CEO of The Newsletter Pro
I have some winning campaigns I can share with you about how this kind of one-to-one event-based marketing can help you grow your business. Let’s find a time to chat, and I’ll go over them with you. Click on this link to schedule a call on my calendar for a short strategy session, and I’ll show you a simple, proven way for you to get more new customers to your business.
Some people simply don’t like to write copy. I get it — writing copy is not easy, and when you first start out, it can be downright difficult. Below is a sales email I got and my rewrite of it.
Here is the original email I received.
Talk to you soon,
Hi Friend,
Jenna
There are times in a person’s life when they react differently to things. Times like Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Christmas apply to people in general, and they’re good times to get higher response rates by making offers that relate. But there are special personal times in someone’s life, and they too are good times to market to an individual. At Moving Targets, we’ve been specializing in two of those times for over 25 years … when people move and when they’re having a birthday. Most businesses miss those marketing opportunities because it’s not easy to make it happen. You need the data, you need the message, and you need to deliver it at just the right time. In today’s sophisticated world, using personalized one-to-one marketing can bring you outstanding results. If you think your business can benefit by reaching the new people who move into your neighborhood or those having birthdays, you should look at what we can do for you.
P.S. During the strategy session, you’ll walk away with no less than three killer ideas to grow your business, so don’t miss out on another set of new movers or birthdays — schedule a call today. Hopefully you can see my email is much more likely to get a better response simply based on the copy changes. Let me point out a few of the major changes I made.
1. Your copy should be talking to one person, not a group of people.
2. You need to provide good information that is useful and interesting to the reader.
3. Make sure each sentence adds value to the message and goal of the piece you’re writing. Some of the sentences in her email served no purpose.
4. Move the prospect through a journey so that the logical conclusion is to take your CTA (call to action).
Simply click here to check us out. If you like what you see, let me know, and I’ll help you get started.
5. Get the prospect thinking about the future and what could be.
Thanks,
6. When you create a problem, as she did with her statement about the difficulty of targeting new movers and birthday mailers, make sure you give the reader a clear solution to the problem. That solution may be your CTA, or it may be more copy, but either way, typically, you want to solve the problem for them. Sometimes in advanced copy, you won’t solve the problem until later, but that was not the case here.
Jenna
This email is all wrong. Here are my edits below, and after that, I will point out a few tips you can use to make your emails better.
Hi Shaun,
Have you ever noticed there are times in a person’s life when they react differently than they normally would? For example, Valentine’s Day, Easter, or Christmas. If you tailor your marketing message during these times, it’s a good way to get a higher response rate, despite what others may have told you about marketing over holidays. Many of us share the above special holidays, but individually, we all have special occasions. What if you could target a message to a prospective customer’s specific special time? But that level of targeting can be easier said than done. Most businesses miss these opportunities because they don’t have the data on when these events are happening or proven campaigns that get results, and frankly, it is costing them a small fortune. Good news, though — having a targeted campaign surrounding special events doesn’t have to be hard. Here at Moving Targets, we have been providing proven, done-for-you new mover and birthday campaigns for businesses just like yours for 25 years. Two of the best special times to send a targeted message to someone are shortly after they’ve moved or for their birthday.
7. Make an offer. This is likely the largest mistake. The offer was to go to the website, and that is just as good as having no offer.
8. Assume the sale in the close. “Talk to you soon,” is at least a small assumption of a close.
9. Have a P.S. Most people read the P.S.
I’m sure there are other points my copy writing friends could share with us to improve both her copy and mine, but I am 100 percent confident my copy would get some appointments, and I’m 99 percent sure her copy won’t get any appointments. Copy doesn’t have to be hard. Think of how you’d talk to a prospect if they were in-person, sitting in front of you, and simply write just like that.
Hopefully this critique and the above tips are helpful. –Shaun Buck
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