Do businesses email their customers too often? According to a recent article on Business Insider, the answer is yes. But not for the reason you may think.

It’s not because customers loathe getting emails from companies. Or because frequent emails are considered spam. It’s actually because most brands nowadays email like this:

They use discounts as their main strategy to persuade customers to buy. But what happens when your customer’s whole inbox looks like the picture above? The inevitable: they stop paying attention to your emails.

Because here’s the thing.

Why would they open your emails if they can already predict the content inside? Why would they buy now when they can clearly see you’ve got discounts all the time? And, most importantly, why would they pick your brand over your competitors?

If you want to stand out in someone’s crowded inbox, you need to do the one thing that everybody else avoids doing: building strong relationships with your email subscribers. Here’s how:

How Storytelling Helps Your Brand Shine Bright in a Crowded Inbox

Storytelling is the most effective way to communicate. That’s not me saying it. It’s the countless studies (such as this one, this one, and this one) that prove it, time and time again. Why?

Because storytelling helps you form positive emotional associations with you and your brand. The emotions you evoke with your stories go a long way in defining how people perceive you, creating a stronger connection in your audience’s mind between you and the problem you solve for them. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. 

The truth is, writing story-based emails makes you more than just a brand that sells a solution to their pain: it makes you an entertainer, too. And as a marketer, being able to entertain while selling is like having a superpower. People hate being sold to. But they love being entertained (ever binge-watched a Netflix show? I know I have). 

Plus, with story-based emails, you can easily add more variability to your email calendar. As a result, customers will no longer be able to predict what your next email will be about: a fun story? A new product? Maybe even a discount? Curiosity translates to increased engagement. And increased engagement translates to stronger relationships with your customers. 

So by choosing the right stories to tell in your emails (which we’ll discuss in a bit) and by writing them in an engaging way, you’re guaranteed to keep your audience hooked and excited to read your next email. As opposed to adding yet another sales email to their already crowded inbox.

Here’s How to Supercharge Your Email Strategy with Stories That Sell:

1. Pick the Right Story 

The storytelling approach will give you little to no results if the stories you’re telling are flat to begin with. No matter how engaging your writing is. 

So the first thing you need to do is to make sure you select story ideas with potential. Okay, but where do you find these ideas? And what does a good story idea look like?

If you’re anything like me, your life isn’t that exciting or eventful. And yet, you may still have a funny conversation with your next-door neighbor. Or your team may geek out about wild adaptogen mushrooms at a team-building event. Or your spouse may accidentally spill coffee on your laptop (true story!). 

Any of these can be turned into fun story-based emails that tell your audience a little bit more about who you (or your team) are as a person. Most business owners assume their customers don’t want to know what goes on in their personal and business life. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

In fact, customers want to know there are real people behind brand names. According to this report from Sprout Social, 70% of consumers report feeling more connected to a brand when its CEO is active on social media. 

And depending on how much you’re willing to share about your life, you can then select the types of personal stories to write about. When in doubt, think about what you’d want to tell your friends/family at the dinner table. More often than not, that’d make a great story for your email list too.

Related Articles

• How Standardizing Your Sales Process Boosts Overall Conversion

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

2. Write a Strong Hook

Let’s face it. 

Nowadays, attention spans are short. And no matter how good your story is, if how you write it isn’t engaging enough, your email subscribers aren’t going to read it. 

So the very first thing you want to do is to make sure the first three sentences of your story hook the reader into the action. Once someone reads that much into a story, it’s incredibly difficult for them to stop. 

So how do you do it? Any of these hooks have proven to work again and again whenever I write stories for myself or my clients:

• Start in the middle of the action (and explain the context later). For example:

“RUN!”, the police officer yelled at me.

“Okay, thank you!”, I yelled back, running out of Paddington Station and trying to find a cab.

Except, it was 4 in the morning. And I had no idea where to look for one.”

• Start with ‘x time ago’. Recalling a past event hooks people instantly into your story. For example:

“A few months ago, Joanna Wiebe (the original conversion copywriter) slid into my DMs on Slack completely out of nowhere…”

3. Segue to Your Sales Pitch Seamlessly

By the time you get to this part, your readers are entertained and primed to purchase your solution to their problems. Your brand is no longer just another brand in their busy inbox. It’s someone they now know, trust, and like. And so, buying from you feels just right.

But you can’t just end your story abruptly so you can sell your products/services. That’d feel intrusive. In the same way that, when you’re engaged in a YouTube video, an annoying ad interrupts your stream.

So you must find a way to tie your story to your product or service so seamlessly that your readers won’t even notice they’re now reading a sales pitch. Sounds difficult. But you’ll see how easy it actually is. In fact, what most people get wrong about this part is that they try to find the moral of the story and tie that to their sales pitch. 

For example, let’s say your story is about how your team went to a team-building event and someone accidentally broke a bunch of glasses. And if you’re selling a service, you might be able to spin that incident into saying something like: when you hire our software developers, your app stops breaking.

But that’s a predictable way to transition from your story to your sales pitch. Plus, not all stories will end with a moral. Most stories will be fragments of conversations you have with someone or something ridiculous that happened throughout the day (like forgetting your keys at the office). There’s no moral in that and there’s no need for one.

What you can do instead is to look back at your entire story and find one or a few phrases/words that could help you build that segway. Here’s an example of a full story-based email. Pay special attention to the part where the story ends and the sale begins.

Example of a Full Story-Based Email

“SUBJ: Hacker threatens to destroy my reputation in 72 hours straight

This morning, I was at my laptop reading my emails when suddenly, I came across an unread email from… 

Me.

What in the world…?

Out of confusion, I open it without reading the subject line. 

And once I go past the first sentence, it becomes pretty clear:

I’m being hacked.

“You may have noticed we are using your company’s servers to send you this email: we have hacked into your website, kaleidocopy[dot]com.”

Oh.

Okay… They did send this email from my email address. 

Still, I can’t help but wonder… could this be a hoax?

“This is not a hoax.”

Ah! Well, that settles it then.

“We are willing to forget about destroying the reputation of your site and company for a small fee. The current fee is at $2500 in bitcoin.”

I mean… at least they are nice about it, you know? Their willingness to forgive and forget says a lot about a person’s character.

In the following lines, they take me through exactly what they’re going to do to ruin my company and reputation, step by step.

Then they teach me how to buy Bitcoin (I already know how, but I appreciate their thoughtfulness!).

And finally, they assure me that my Bitcoin payment will be anonymous and that no one will know that I complied with their master plan.

Mmmmkay. 

GET CERTIFIED. Discover the proven plan for effortless, automated email marketing. Click Here

Now that is a bit suspicious, Mr. Hackerman (or Ms. Hackerwoman — it’s 2022, what the heck.)

I’m willing to bet the $2500 on the fact that I’m not the only person they sent this to.

So if the payment is anonymous, how will they know it was ME who sent it? It just doesn’t make sense, y’know? 

Jokes aside, I’ve got to admit: seeing that the email came from my address made me panic a bit. 

But then I checked my Sent folder and the email wasn’t there.

I also checked to see if there were any alerts or logins from different devices on my Google account. There were none.

I also checked with my hosting provider, who reassured me no one has broken into anything. 

Soooo… hoax? Hopefully, lol. 

But if it isn’t, it means you’ve got 72 hours left to get Email Story Alchemy, my mini-course on turning boring day-to-day events from your life into story-based emails that build your fandom and help you stand out. 

After that, my business will supposedly disappear from the face of the Earth. And you’ll no longer be able to buy it. Everrr.”

Conclusion

Story is a structure, not a tale. Which means that you can apply it to anything, including email. And when you do it right, amazing things happen. 

Like building strong relationships with your customers. And turning a casual customer into a die-hard fan who wants to buy from you because they just can’t get enough of your brand.

Sure, discounts work too. But they work when used strategically and in moderation. So if you’re ever unsure about what to email your customers next, consider story-based emails. They’ll make your brand shine bright in anyone’s crowded inbox.

The post Storytelling: The Secret Sauce to Making More Sales With Email Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

“Email marketing is DEAD!”
“AI is taking over the inbox!”
“Why hire a copywriter when I can just use email templates?!”
“Who needs an email list when I have a large social following?”

Um….. stop right there and listen up, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret…

THREE little secrets to be exact. 

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of misconceptions floating around the cyberspace when it comes to email marketing. So in this blog, we’re going to talk about the three biggest Email Marketing Myths & Misconceptions… 

AND I’m going to fill you in on the SECRET WEAPON that’ll give you a massive advantage and leg-up over any competition. 

Alright, now let’s get started with myth-busting. 

Myth #1 – Email Marketing Is DEAD

This is a myth that I’ve been hearing ever since I got my start in the online marketing industry… over a decade ago! And guess what?

The rumours were wrong back then and they’re STILL wrong today. 

No matter what you heard at the latest online summit you attended… Email Marketing is STILL alive and well—and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon!

In fact, Email Marketing is the single best way to market your brand or business, increase your revenue, and cash in on more conversions.

That’s right. It’s better than ads, better than social media, and better than organic traffic…

I said it.

In fact, I did my FIRST launch back in 2020 and made almost 6-figures by sending just 8 emails to my list of 2300 subscribers. Yup.

But don’t just take my word for it, here are some stats to prove it. It is estimated that there are 4 BILLION active email users right now (and that number is projected to go up, btw).

Email marketing consistently delivers the highest ROI of all marketing channels – earning on average $42 for every dollar spent… and in case you don’t want to do the math on that…

That’s an ROI of 4200%!! I don’t know of a single brand or business that wouldn’t love to see numbers like that. 

And just in case gaining a massive ROI isn’t enough to convince you… this probably will:

According to MarketingSherpa, email is STILL the most preferred marketing channel that most consumers want businesses to communicate with them through. YES, even Millennials and gen-Z-ers prefer email to social media.

And not only is email your consumer’s favorite way of communicating… it should be your favourite too! And that’s because your list is YOURS. It belongs to YOU. Not Facebook, not Instagram. YOU. 

And when you use Email as your preferred method of communication, ALL you have to do to get your message heard is make sure your emails aren’t landing in the spam folder. You’re not held captive by the algorithm Gods, “platform rules,” or having to keep up with the latest trends to get your content seen.  

When you take just a moment to step back and look at the facts, it’s crystal clear.

While I still love and use other marketing channels…

My girl Email Marketing reigns supreme.

Myth #2 – Templates Work Better

This is another myth I’ve been hearing over and over again lately.

Why hire a copywriter when I can just use email templates?! 

Now for the sake of clarity, in this context, I’m referring to fancy and impersonal emails that are all show and no substance. You know those fancy-looking HTML emails you commonly see from e-commerce sites or big corporate businesses…

Listen – they work for brands like Sephora or Apple, well, because they are Seophora and Apple…

But as a personality-based brand (or as the real PERSON behind the brand), you don’t want to get too fancy in your emails. 

Why? Well, because facts: Extensive A/B testing has shown that the overwhelming majority of consumers prefer simple, text-based emails (you know, just like those emails you send to your friends and family).

Not only do consumers prefer plain jane text-only emails, but templates come with a whole list of other cons to consider.

Downsides of Email Templates

• They take a long time to load, depending on your consumer’s internet connection.
• Customization can be difficult and unreliable. You can spend hours finicking with a template, where your time would be better spent just writing and personal, empathetic email.
• HTML templates often get all funky on mobile if not coded correctly.
• They are WAY more likely to end up in the Spam or Promotions folder because of heavy images and design features
• These kinds of emails focus on imagery, not on brand voice or actually connecting with the audience.

On the other hand…. While copywriters might not be able to design a “pretty-looking email”…

They are specially trained to WRITE WORDS THAT WORK. They understand how to craft powerful subject lines that hook your reader and get them to open your email. They know how to open a loop with engaging content to get your consumers to keep reading…

And they know the psychological triggers that get people to CLICK and BUY your offer…

And when you’re a business that RELIES on having a strong, powerful, and intimate relationship with your consumers… 

These factors are absolutely essential to your Email Marketing success. 

Alright, now onto the last—and most controversial—myth on this list… 

Myth #3 – AI Is Taking Over

Look, we’ve all heard it… AI is replacing copywriters at the speed of light—and especially in the Email Marketing world. 

Because I mean, who needs to shell out a bunch of money for an experienced copywriter when they could just spend a quarter of the money on some fancy automation software that “does just as good”?

Right? NO!!! 

Listen, I know AI software and done-for-you templates are becoming more and more prevalent in the email marketing space – there’s no doubt about that. 

But with that said, there’s a whole lot more to the story than what the internet would have you believe…

I’ve said it before, and I say it again and again until the day I die…

A.I. is a tool, not a takeover. 

And as a TOOL—there are certain things A.I. CAN help us to optimize, streamline and improve…

Things like: research, ideation, email automation, personalization, and segmentation. You know, the left-brain, back-end, logistical stuff. The truth is that A.I. can actually make an Email Marketers job A LOT easier. 

But when it comes to replacing the CREATIVITY & EMPATHY that a human copywriter brings to the table…?

It’s just not going to happen anytime soon.

And while it’s true that there ARE going to be some brands and businesses that will choose to get by with A.I… Their emails will be mediocre, at best.

I mean it’s just like anything else that’s being “replaced” by technology…

If you want mediocre results, then sure – go with a plug-and-play tool. If you want exceptional results, hire an expert. 

Mediocre accountants are being replaced by do-it-yourself software like Freshbooks, Honeybook & Quickbooks… but that doesn’t mean we don’t pay a LEGIT PROFESSIONAL when it comes time to file taxes. 

Mediocre graphic designers are being replaced by tools like Canva… but that doesn’t mean we don’t pay a GREAT DESIGNER to design our websites.

And if you want to optimize your email list, increase your revenue, and cash in on more conversions… then you HIRE A COPYWRITER. 

It’s as simple as that. And it’s never going to change. 

So here’s my advice to the copywriters who are worried about A.I. takeover and the other Myths on this list… 

Don’t be mediocre. Position yourself as an expert. 

Do that, and you’ll be INVALUABLE to any brand or business that wants to optimize their Email Marketing strategies. 

THAT’S your secret weapon. 

THAT’S how you make yourself A.I. proof. 

THAT’S how you position yourself as an expert in the industry and get clients banging down the door for your talents and services. 

But now the question is… HOW?! HOW do you become a damned good copywriter and email marketer? One who understands the audience, knows the power of connection, and has mastered the art of conversion?

Well… you develop the skills, techniques, practical EXPERIENCE, and knowledge needed to make yourself an expert! 

And after months and months of listening to this community ask me question after question about email marketing… I decided it was time to do something about it. 

Now up until recently, I never really thought this was needed. Mostly because I already teach an entire module all about Email Marketing inside my 8-week Copywriting Coaching Program.

But the truth is, not everyone has the time, money, energy, or desire to invest in a two-month coaching course…

And that’s why I created a FREE email guide—to help you cut through the B.S. 

My Ultimate Email Marketing Cheatsheet will help you future-proof your biz from the throes of unpredictable algorithms and the never-ending threat of A.I. takeover by teaching how to master the art of impactful inbox messaging. 

• You’ll discover the 7 must-have emails to build and monetize your list (with real-life examples straight from the Posse’s private vault)…
• Discover the right way to build and monetize your email list, without relying on templates or standardized messaging. 
• Get the secret to sending engaging emails that won’t drive away subscribers or lose you any brand loyalty.

Until next time, I’m Alex. Ciao for now!

The post Is Email Marketing Dead? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Need to write a sales page for an upcoming launch? Looking to improve the existing copy in your funnel or website?

If so, I’m going to teach you the 10 things your sales page MUST include if you want to make sure your copy creates trust, builds authority and converts like craaaaaaazy.

Hey Posse! What’s up? It’s Alex. 

Coming to you this week with a super quick sneak peek into the full sales page training that I teach my students inside my flagship program – the Copy Posse Launch Files. And inside my 5-day Write & Ignite Challenge.

In this video, I’m sharing 10 conversion triggers that I always look for when writing – or reviewing – a sales page. 

But first, if you’re new to the crew – welcome!

Here on my blog, you’ll find tons of tutorials on copywriting, digital marketing, and freelancing – to help you out on your entrepreneurial journey.  Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter, so you’ll get my next tutorial right to your inbox. 

Now – today I’m going to teach you exactly how to optimize your sales page – from the bottom to the very top. 

This tutorial is perfect for any coach or entrepreneur with a service-based or education business. Think of things like 1:1 coaching or consulting, in-depth online programs, or other services. 

Now – ya ready to dive right in?

All great Sales Pages need to start with… 

#1. Headline 

The headline may be the shortest section of a sales page, but it definitely takes the longest to write. In fact, I usually write my headlines LAST.

But, because it’s the first thing a prospect sees on the page, it’s the first conversion trigger we’ll talk about here.  

You want to be sure that your headline is strategically written to:

• Hook your prospects’ attention
• Introduce a core pain point, benefit, or USP of the offer 
• Open a loop that entices the reader to keep scrolling below the fold

YEP. That’s a big job for such a small section of text. 

Another thing you need to consider when writing your headline is…

Speaking directly to your target audience – and more importantly – to their specific level of customer awareness.

Now if you have no freakin’ clue what I mean when I say “Customer Awareness”, here is another tutorial that explains all of that for you. 

Moving on to the next conversion trigger you must include… 

#2. Indoctrination

Essentially this is what comes immediately after the headline. It’s the lead-in portion of your sales page – the build-up before you actually start selling anything.

This copy is insanely important because this is when your reader self-selects and decides whether or not you’re actually talking to THEM! And yes, like the headline, it can be very difficult and take the longest to write…

But it’s worth taking the time to do it right because when done well it can make a MASSIVE impact on your conversion rate.

Your indoctrination needs to “indoctrinate” your readers on who you are, why they should listen to you and why they should care at all. This is where you empathize, educate, and validate your reader – you can do this through storytelling, sharing stats and facts or painting a picture of what’s to come…

And of course, the most important thing is that you speak to your prospects’ immediate needs and fears, which takes us to the next conversion trigger…

#3. Problem & Solution

Of course, the whole point of your sales page is to sell something that solves a problem for your audience. So you need to get really clear on what that is.

As human beings, we’re (unfortunately) wired to avoid pain above gaining pleasure. This means that in our most natural state, we respond to problems more urgently than we do solutions. 

Because of this, the sales page needs to address your prospect’s problem – what I like to call the aggravating status quo – early on…

Your copy should evoke an emotional response – but be careful not to put salt in the wound.

You don’t want them to feel alienated, misunderstood or attacked you want your copy to make them feel safe, understood and heard.

That’s why you should effectively and accurately communicate ONE core problem in your copy before introducing your promising solution, or the “big promise” your reader is looking for. 

In this case, specificity goes a long, long way. No one is going to believe you have a solution that does EVERYTHING under the sun. Think of how your solution is the BIG easy button for what your client is looking for.

Now, a very important distinction to make is that the solution is not the product… at least not yet.

Rather, at this point in your sales page, the solution should just be the specialized method, approach, discovery or tool that can solve your prospects’ problem.

Remember – they FIRST have to believe in the solution, before they buy your product – whether it be coaching, mentorship, guidance, expert services…

Now, once a believable solution is presented, you want to pivot into…

GET CERTIFIED. Discover the proven plan for effortless, automated email marketing. Click Here

#4. The Offer

This is where you introduce your specific version of that solution – aka product – as the easiest, simplest, fastest, or best way to attain the big promise that you just talked about. Here is where you want to have a clear and concise USP – or Unique Selling Proposition. 

This is also where you want to include the value breakdown and all those left-brain details that make up your product: 

• What it is
• How it works
• Where to get it
• When to expect it
• How much it costs 

The most important thing to remember in this section is that the value of your offer should always be greater than the price. 

The greater the gap between value and price—the more irresistible your offer becomes.

This is why you often see campaigns that use bonuses, price juxtaposition, or discounts to increase the offer appeal and, therefore, conversion rate. 

Alright. Now you have all the left brain stuff out of the way. It’s time to address…

#5. Juicy Benefits

Or bennies, as I like to call them. This is where you stop talking about the what of your offer and start talking about the why. Or in other words… WHY your prospect would want to buy your product. I mean, what’s in for them – really?

This is where you can do deeper into all the amazing things your product or service does on top of the big promise you already shared.

It’s not enough to simply show them what they’re getting. It changes the game altogether when a prospect believes they have to have it. 

You answer this question in sales copy by presenting the specific and relatable benefits that the product can provide. 

And remember, features are NOT benefits. 

Features are something a product HAS or IS, whereas benefits illustrate desired results that solve REAL pain points. 

For example, a FEATURE would be “batteries included”. 

Whereas the corresponding BENEFIT would be “no disappointed child on christmas morning”. 

Now it can be pretty difficult to convert features into benefits – especially when you’re writing for your own product or service. It takes practice!!

If you need help squeezing some juicy bennies out of your features, I have a FREE feature-to-benefit converter that you can download at the end of this video! 

Alright, next up you want to make sure you’re including…

#6. Social Proof & Authority

A common objection in the minds of consumers is whether or not a brand is the RIGHT company or person for them. 

Trust is a huge factor that determines a customer’s decision to buy from you. 

So it’s important that a sales page communicates social proof and authority through testimonials, social media stats, press coverage, credentials, experience and any other credibility factors.

However, authority is not just something you slap into a single section on the salespage — I like to see it communicated throughout the copy as much as possible.

Alright now on to lucky #7…

#7. Scarcity

In marketing, scarcity refers to the idea of making products or services limited in some way, making people more likely to act because the offer is scarce or exclusive. 

The 4 most common types of scarcity are:

• Price: limited-time discount
• Quantity: limited amount left
• Premium: limited-time bonuses
• Offer: limited-offer/cart closing

The most effective sales copy communicates scarcity that compels the prospect to act while the offer is still available. 

And – this is insanely important – your copy also needs to clearly and effectively communicate a big reason WHY the offer is limited, without it being hypey, pushy, or misleading. 

Is it because of a special event like an anniversary? A passionate mission to touch 1000 lives by the end of the year? A global cause such as World Mental Health day? 

Having a reason why massively increases trust and believability. And, this goes without saying… but always use REAL scarcity. Never lie and say and offer is limited when it’s not.

Before we move on to the next conversion trigger, I want to make sure I clarify that NOT ALL sales pages need scarcity all the time. 

If you want your sales page to be 100% evergreen for anyone to purchase anytime, scarcity can be left off the table. Instead, use urgency and provide benefits as to why someone would want to act right away. 

Ok moving right along to #8… 

Related Articles

• How Standardizing Your Sales Process Boosts Overall Conversion

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

#8. Risk Reversal

In other words, how does the copy make the purchase process seem easy, safe and risk-free?

People like to be told exactly what to do and what is going to happen next, so the copy needs to assure them that they will be taken care of every step of the way… 

From the moment they add the product to cart, to when it will be delivered, to how it can be returned if it doesn’t work out. 

This is where you’d want to include any:

• Security language
• Verifications
• Return or exchange policies
• Next steps & delivery details

In other words, this is where you want to debunk the fear of,“Am I going to be screwed over by this company/person?”

Now onto #9…

#9. Call-to-Action

Whether it’s a single button or a multi-tiered order section — the call-to-action, or CTA, needs to pack a serious punch. 

It must only take a second for the prospect to understand exactly where to click and how to buy the product. 

Your CTA should be clear and straight to the point. For instance:

• “Order Now”
• “Get Instant Access”
• “Enroll Now”

The most important rule of copywriting is to have one clear and concise call to action. 

It can appear multiple times though.

For example, if you have a longer sales page, then you’d probably want to include your call-to-action button 2 to 3 times throughout the copy. And always always always make a CTA the very last thing someone would see if they scroll to the very bottom of your page. 

And finally, number 10… 

#10. Overall Feel & Flow

This is less about the copy itself and more about the readability of your sales page which is an insanely important factor to consider.

Once you have the first 9 conversion and optimization triggers covered, it’s time to sit back, look at the entire picture, and ask yourself:

• Is the sales page messaging consistent and coherent throughout?
• Is the page easy to skim with clear section titles that guide me down the page?
• Was everything easy to read or did I stop to read any sentences twice? 
• Were there any glaring gaps or illogical links?

Make sure that the copy is simple and effective. 

I’ve said this a few times before and I’ll say it again — studies have shown that the average reader reads at a 7th-grade level. So there’s no need for wordiness, fancy explanations, or long lists of adjectives in a single sentence.  

I personally find that reading the entire sales page out loud helps me answer these questions. 

Now here’s one more bonus tip for ya…

Make sure you read the page on your cell phone!!!  

With far more than half of online readers consuming sales pages on mobile devices, you want to make damn sure that your copy is easy to read and navigate on small screens… 

And there you have it — an exclusive insider look at the 10 triggers I include on all my sales pages.

Now if you need help connecting the dots and taking your sales page from theoretical to tangible…

Make sure to check out my 5-day program, the Write & Ignite Challenge. 

Where you won’t just learn the parts of writing a sales page…

But I will actually help you IMPLEMENT it all so that you can write your own high-converting sales page in just 5 days! 

In this challenge, you’ll get…

• My 5-question copywriter checklist to help create a bomb-ass sales brief. 
• My Wheel of Persuasion – which includes 6 proven writing prompts to help you build trust, create believability and inspire action.
• My simple 4-point Offer Matrix to help you craft an irresistible offer. 
• My 16-step formula for putting it all together.
• Plus my H.O.T. headline formula and 3 proven hook templates to help you capture and keep your prospects attention. 

If you want help crafting the perfect sales page – from start to finish – you can learn more about my 5-Day Write & Ignite Challenge.

I hope this video has been helpful. 

Now as promised, you can grab your free copy of my feature-to-benefit converter by following that link. 

Until next time, I’m Alex. Ciao for now!

The post The 10 Must-Have Elements for a High-Converting Sales Page appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The Ad Grid is the method DigitalMarketer uses to increase our ad success rate 20 times over.
It’s how we plan, test, and measure paid traffic campaigns. It’s the way we organize and systemize our traffic strategy.

The Ad Grid takes the guess work out of creating an ad campaign.
It looks like this:

But, the Ad Grid is much more than a spreadsheet… the real power is the process that goes along with the grid.
Systemizing a strategic process is tough. Systemizing the creation of an entire traffic campaign is nearly impossible. But, after 3 years, we’ve developed a 7-step system we’ll share with you today.
At DigitalMarketer, we follow this 7-Step Plan no matter the product or the traffic platform because it works.
The Ad Grid is applicable to ANY business OR traffic platform.
Today, you’ll get all our inside details on the Ad Grid including, but not limited to…

• How we stopped creating “one-hit wonder” campaigns across ad platforms…
• How to achieve scale and move prospects through the customer journey…
• How we create high converting campaigns…
• How to systemize your traffic strategy – whether that means outsourcing, or having an internal traffic team…
• How to create a congruent market to message match…

Even better — we’re showing you a real campaign we launched at DigitalMarketer using this exact 7-step strategy. You’ll get the Avatars, the Hooks, the copy — everything.
Let’s first talk about the trap you’re susceptible to falling into if you’re not utilizing the Ad Grid. It’s one we’ve fallen into plenty, and one we want you to avoid. It’s…

The Dreaded One-Hit Wonder Campaign

One-hit wonder campaigns come about when marketers just make ads.
But there’s a problem with just making ads. It leaves you open to creating “one-off” ad campaigns without a system or a plan.
The one-hit wonder, if you will.
One-hit wonder campaigns usually target one or 2 different audiences, may test a few different images or copy variations, and that’s pretty much it…
…the person on the other side of the computer expects to launch this type of traffic campaign and BAM… sales and leads will start pouring in.
But, most of the time they don’t. And, if they do… the campaign is only successful for a few days or weeks.

Do You Want to Become A Master Media Buyer?

Become One Of The Most In-Demand Media Buyers On The Market. Get Certified »

Then, said person complains… “FACEBOOK ADS DON’T WORK,” or “XYZ TRAFFIC PLATFORM DOESN’T SCALE.”
What they don’t realize is that they’re creating one-hit wonder campaigns. They’re only giving themselves 1 or 2 chances to sell their offer.
Well, what if those 1 or 2 copy variations still don’t resonate with the audience? What if those 1 or 2 targeting groups aren’t actually people who are interested in what you’re talking about?
The campaign will fail.
Most people quit after this happens. But, you shouldn’t.
You should use the Ad Grid, and give yourself a foundation for success… and 20+ different chances at success, not just one.
One-off campaigns are bad because:

• They don’t reflect the customer journey and repel prospects because the ad is being run down their throats.
• They only work for a short amount of time and have low quality scores.
• They aren’t scalable.
• They don’t put a specific message in front of a specific audience because the marketer didn’t think about segmentation or message match.

Let’s take a look at these mistakes, so you can be sure that you don’t make them:

One-off campaigns don’t reflect the customer journey.

You want to build a relationship with your customer like you would in person.
You’re looking to make friends.
Does it make sense to immediately ask someone you’re hoping to become friends with for money?
No.
But that’s exactly what some marketers are doing with their ads. They’re putting an ad in front of their target audience and saying, “Hi, nice to meet you! Buy this product! You’ll love it!”
But why should someone buy? They don’t know your brand from Adam.
Like all relationships in life, the brand needs to give value first. And that goes beyond the customer getting ABC product or DEF service.

One-off ads usually have low relevance/quality scores.

That means the audience isn’t resonating with the ads. The ad is repelling prospects, they’re not taking the action that you optimized your campaign for, or worse – they’re marking it as spam.
Why does this happen? Because you’re not speaking to the right audience, you don’t have market to message match in your ad copy, or you’re trying to sell to someone before they’re ready.
The next time the audience sees an ad from you, they’ll probably cringe and think, “Those guys.”

One-off ads aren’t scalable.

In the past, we found ourselves launching campaigns that broke the rules I outlined above. These campaigns weren’t scalable.
Not that there was anything wrong with these Facebook ads, they were successful in terms of ROI.
But, there were only a few ad variations within them. And they didn’t always work…
We found 80% of these ads failed, especially on Facebook. That’s the nature of traffic. Sometimes you swing and miss.
If you’re only setting one or 2 ads, and you’re only testing one or 2 audiences, you’re essentially putting all of our eggs in one basket.
And, we realized that’s what we were doing. We weren’t giving ourselves the ability to scale campaigns in the way we needed to grow our business. We were limiting ourselves.

One-off ad campaigns typically don’t have market to message match.

That means the ad is TOO BROAD.
Ads that don’t have market to message match are essentially talking to a large group of people and offering them a one-size-fits-all package/solution.
For the ad to be successful, it needs to have a specific offer that speaks to a specific group of people.
So how do you keep from making these mistakes? You deploy the Ad Grid.

The Ad Grid Process

The Ad Grid will help create a honed in marketing strategy, so you can stop wasting time and money.
It’s important to keep in mind that you’re going to create an Ad Grid for every offer you roll out.
When you create an Ad Grid, focus on the “offer” that’s the entry point for the funnel.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the funnel, ask yourself:

• Is the customer AWARE there’s a problem? Are they AWARE of you, and the solution you offer to the problem?
• Are they EVALUATING if they should fix their problem, or just leave it be? Is the customer EVALUATING you and your competitors? Are they EVALUATING what product or service to buy?
• Has the customer CONVERTED and bought from you? How do you get them to CONVERT again and more frequently?

Knowing where your customer enters the funnel will give you a better understanding of how to target them. Should you target them with a blog post? A Lead Magnet? A low-dollar offer?
The example that we’ll use for this particular post is a recent Lead Magnet we created here at DigitalMarketer called the 10-Minute Social Media Audit.

This audit allows you to assess the performance of your social media strategy or the strategy of your competitors. It gives you an actual “grade” and reveals opportunities for improvements where you could generate more followers, traffic, and/or make more money from your social efforts.

The Ad Grid Steps

Let’s get right into the steps so you can start putting this to work in your traffic campaigns!
Make sure to download the PDF version of this infographic for easy reference and even more resources.

The Ad Grid Step 1: Identify Your Avatars (Specific to the Offer)

You’ll start by creating an Avatar.
An Avatar is a profile of a person who would be interested in your message. The Avatar is a target audience.
Keep in mind when you’re filling out your Ad Grid, the Avatars aren’t necessarily the same Avatars you’ve set for your business as a whole. Your Business Avatars are going to be much broader than the Avatars that would be interested in this particular offer.
You need to create a SPECIFIC Avatar for each ad offer. You do this through research.
(To get more specific on who you’re targeting in your business, check out our worksheet for creating your Customer Avatar.)
Identify Avatars for the specific offer you’re running traffic to by doing intensive research on Amazon, Google, forums, etc. to figure out WHO these people are and what their pain points may be (the problem(s) they’re looking to solve).
Identify your Avatars, and place them across the top of the Ad Grid on the X Axis.

(Don’t force yourself to add 4 Avatars just because I have 4 in this example, just ensure that you have 2+ identified, or you lose the power of the Grid.)
Think about who would be interested in this particular offer? What different groups of people can you speak to? How are they different?
For example, with the 10-Minute Social Media Audit, we chose:

• Social Media Managers: this is the person actually DOING the work. They are probably an employee/work for a company.
• The Boss: This is the person that manages the social media manager. This person could be anyone from the CEO of a smaller company, a digital marketing manager, VP of Marketing, Editorial Director, etc.
• Agency Owner: This person owns/runs an agency that does social media work for clients.
• Solopreneur: This person is a one (wo)man team. They are probably doing all of the marketing on their own, including the social media strategy and implementation.

Step 2: Identify the Hooks

The Hook is the “marketing message.” The WHY that makes people want to take you up on your offer.
If your offer is missing a Hook, you’re going to have a hard time getting people to take you up on whatever you’re asking them to do.
You need to explain the benefits – the value – of your offer, in order to “sell” it.
So how do you come up with a Hook that conveys value?
Here are the 6 different ways we think about Hooks…

Have

If the customer takes this offer, what will they HAVE that they didn’t before? Think of it as Before and After.
(RELATED: How to Create and Market a Killer Offer)

Feel

How will the customer FEEL once they take your offer? Will they FEEL smarter or more confident, will they be pain free and FEEL better?

Average Day

How will your offer improve their AVERAGE DAY? What mundane task does your offer improve? How does your offer save them time or energy on a day-to-day basis?

Status

How does the customer’s STATUS change once they’ve consumed your offer? How are you helping elevating their status?

Proof/Results

This one is the most common.
Use reports or case studies to demonstrate PROOF or RESULTS that the customer could experience with your offer. This can create SOCIAL PROOF.
For example, part of your ad copy could include, “Join the thousands of people who have already benefited!” Or, explain actual results that have occurred because of your offer.

Speed & Automation

With SPEED, you speak to the QUICKNESS of the offer — how will this thing speed up a part of their life or AUTOMATE a task? For example, this razor will save 10 minutes of your day.
Get started, and see what Hook(s) work best to promote your offer. You can combine Hooks, as well.
If you don’t already have ideas in mind for why your offer is “sexy” it may be time to revisit the offer in general.
Place your Hooks on the Y Axis of the Grid.

For example, with the 10-Minute Social Media Audit, we chose:
The 10-Minute Hook
This is a broader Hook, and in the past this probably would have been the ONLY Hook we would’ve used to promote this offer.
This Hook speaks to speed and results:
Take 10 minutes to audit your Social Media Strategy and as a result get more followers, drive more traffic, and increase engagement.
The “Get A Grade” Hook
Most people like to self-analyze.
Most people like to take quizzes/tests to see where they stand. We were conditioned to respond to grades in school. The fact that the 10 Minute Social Media Audit gives you a “grade” is a Hook all in its own.
Create a Report Hook
This Lead Magnet isn’t just an audit.
It’s a document that you could use as a report to track social media progress over time. It can be used as an internal document.
Grade Your Competition Hook
Most people like to spy on their competition.
This Hook is all about grading your competition, too, and seeing where your social media strategy stacks up against theirs.
Know Your Goals Hook 
This Hook is about aligning your social media strategy with your overall business goals.
Are you using a social strategy that actually has an effect on your business? Is your social strategy in line with the goals you’ve set as a company?
As you can see, there’s a fair bit of “marketing” that goes into creating your Hooks.
You have to sit down and really think… what is ATTRACTIVE about your offer? What are different ways I can “sell” this offer?
Most of your Hooks are going to flop — and that’s fine! Testing multiple Hooks gives you room for error… you never know what people are actually going to respond to until you test it.

Step 3: Write Your Copy

This is where the magic starts to happen.
At this stage, you’ll create copy that has a congruent market to message match.
How?
Write specific ad copy for each block on the Grid. This will force you to write copy that corresponds to BOTH the Avatar and the Hook.
This will help you create powerful, segmented ads that will speak to a particular Avatar using a particular Hook instead of writing a broad ad that will miss.
Depending on the traffic platform, the length and type of copy will vary.
Think about why a particular Hook would appeal to a particular Avatar?
For example, with the “Get a Grade” Hook… the Social Media Manager would care about getting a grade because they want to self-assess, and maybe they want to take their “good” grade to their boss in order to get a raise.
But why would the boss care about the “Get a Grade” Hook? They want a way to assess their Social Media Manager… a way to show progress (or lack thereof), a way to measure their success.
Writing this amount of copy is time consuming, but it will give you the assets you need to run a full fledged campaign.
Below you’ll see Facebook ad copy that we wrote for this offer:

(You can expand this image in a new window for better viewing here.)

(You can expand this image in a new window for better viewing here.)

 Step 4: Avatar Research

If you put your campaign in front of the wrong audience, it will fail.
That’s why research is key.
Your Avatar research will become the targeting you use on the ad platform.
What’s important in Step 4 is doing research for each Avatar separately. You’re researching WHERE this particular Avatar would be hanging out on the traffic platform you’ve selected.

If your ad was about social media and you targeted anyone and everyone that’s interested in social media, your ad would be too broad. It wouldn’t be as effective as targeting each Avatar separately.
A marketer needs to look at their Avatars not as a group but as an individual Avatar. Look at them as very separate and different people, because they are.
When researching Avatars, answer these questions…

• What do they read?
• Who inspires them?
• What motivates them?
• What are their pain points?
• What interests them (books, magazines, blogs, movies, music, food, drinks, restaurants, hobbies, etc.)?
• What events do they attend?

…and so on.
This Avatar research will become the targeting that you use when you set up your campaigns. If you’re using Facebook, these would be the interests you target; on Twitter the handles you target, etc.
(RELATED: [DOWNLOAD] The Complete Guide to Facebook Ad Targeting)
So, take time to research each Avatar and create lists of possible targeting options. You can place these at the bottom of each column of your grid:

Step 5: Create or Outsource Ad Creatives

Your ad creatives are…

• videos
• pictures
• graphics, etc.

….for your campaign.
The creative you use for each ad will depend on the traffic platform your ad runs on: Video for YouTube, Pictures for Pinterest, etc.
What’s important about the creative is that it depicts your Hook – your marketing message.
You’re going to want to make a creative for EACH Hook.
It’s not about using bright, flashy images anymore… you want to use images that portray the message you’re sending to the audience.
This is a perfect example of a creative that does just that…

We have a process behind coming up with each image…
Each Hook will have keywords or phrases that relate to it.
In Google, do a search query for keywords within your Hook.
You’ll see the top images that are associated with that query, which will give you inspiration for your creative.
Here are the winning ad creatives for each Hook in the 10-Minute Social Audit Campaign:

The “Get A Grade” Hook (to Social Media Managers)

The “Create A Report” Hook (to the Boss)

The “Grade Your Competition” Hook (to the Agency Owner)

The “Know Your Goals” Hook (to the Solopreneur) 

Step 6: Compile Your Results
Once you’ve completed your research on your Avatars and Hooks, written your copy and produced your creatives, it’s time to launch your campaign.
After about 5-7 days of running your campaign, start analyzing your results.
Then use the Ad Grid to measure the success of the campaign.
Determine what your success metric for your campaign will be:

• ROI
• Cost Per Acquisition
• Cost Per Lead
• Cost Per Click

This will depend on your business.
(RELATED: Episode 40: 4 Facebook Metrics Critical to Your Success)
Once you know what metric you’ll use, apply it to the Ad Grid. It will give you a visual — you’ll see what’s working for the entire campaign in one glance. This will help you scale.
Here’s what we use at DigitalMarketer to track the performance of our grids:

Step 7: Scale

The best part… it’s time to scale!
You could just beef up a successful campaign’s budget on that particular platform and call it a day…
Or you could go beyond and further your success.
Use the Ad Grid to help you scale.
The Ad Grid shows you which Hooks and Avatars are winners. Scale out to the winners — the Avatars responding to your campaign, the Hooks converting, and the intersections between the 2.
You can see the insights and the data. You can see how to Scale.
Look at what Avatars your campaign worked best for — what Hook(s) they responded to. You can take that information, and apply it across the Web.
What are other platforms does that Avatar “hang out” on?
If you first ran an ad set on Facebook and saw the success you’re looking for, apply the ad to other traffic platforms – like Twitter or email – that are relevant to that Avatar.
Reach out to the Avatar on different platforms with the Hook they responded to.
You’ll also know which Hook(s) failed, so you won’t make the same mistake twice on other platforms – for example, you won’t use failed Hooks for your email list.
The Ad Grid will help you scale in 2 ways:

• Scaling past “doing more with what you have.” After seeing successful results on a platform, your first instinct may be to increase the budget of the ad, which is obvious for scale. But, the Ad Grid allows for true scale… taking your successful message and applying it to as many applicable platforms as possible… Taking high converting ads and creating new ad sets within Facebook to target more interests where this Avatar would be hanging out on the platform – this is Horizontal Scale.
• Scaling out to a traffic/media team. Following the steps of the Ad Grid gives you a process — a methodology to how you, or you and your team, can approach ad campaigns. The Ad Grid helps to break up the process of creating a campaign, and it will help define the steps and who is responsible for what. Imagine outsourcing steps 3-7 or breaking it out for certain members of your team.

Putting it All Together

The Ad Grid takes you from creating one ad that targets a broad audience to creating 20 SPECIFIC ads (if you use the 4 Avatars and 4 Hooks model).
You’re giving yourself more chances to hit a home run by creating a fully fleshed out targeting campaign that is more likely to increase your success rate 20 times over.
You also know where to scale beyond just throwing more money at a particular campaign on a particular platform — creating less trial and error and more results.

The post The Ad Grid: How to Build Traffic Campaigns that Convert Higher and Scale Faster appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

I’ve overseen the delivery of 153.6 million emails over the last 12 months…
… and that’s just from the Digital Marketer brand.  In total, I’ve managed over a billion email sends in multiple markets over the last year.
I don’t say any of that to brag…
I just want you to know that I actually do this stuff for a living.  This IS NOT another article about writing better email from a guy posing to be an email marketer.
We’ve sent some winning emails over the last year — but we’ve had our fair share of losers too. (Our 5 worst emails are listed at the end of this article)

In this article, you’ll get…

… the subject line, body copy (word for word) and my analysis of the strengths of Digital Marketer’s top 22 emails over the last 12 months.
We’ve broken these emails into two categories…

• Promotional emails – Emails that generate leads or sell products and services
• Content emails – Emails that sell content (blog posts in this case)

Before we show you our best email body copy, you need to know that…

Sometimes we ask an email to do too much

A lot of emails fail because the email marketer doesn’t understand the role of each part of an email.
Here’s what I mean by roles…

• the job of the subject line is to sell the open
• the job of the email body is to sell the click
• the job of the landing page to make the sale (whether that sale is an opt-in or a purchase)

Sometimes we make the mistake of asking the subject line to sell the click.  Or, we make the mistake of trying to sell a product in the email body.
Our Top 22 emails don’t ask the subject line or email body to do more than their job.
But that’s not all our top emails did right.
Let’s dive in and look at Digital Marketer’s best emails by click-through rate and see why these emails got it right.
We’ll start with out 11th best promotional email…

Related Articles

• How Standardizing Your Sales Process Boosts Overall Conversion

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

Best Promotional Email Body Copy

11. My new book! (and a big mistake) [16.14% CTR]

This email undoubtedly got a great open rate because it’s an admission of guilt or fault. When you’re an authority and you admit fault, you show a human side, people tend to relate to that and want to know what you have to say.
But what about the clicks?
First, it’s about Ryan’s first book. It’s something new, it’s an event.
The admission of failure is the second reason it got clicks. It’s not only an admission of failure, it’s a scratch-and-dent offer… a reason to have a sale.
The admission of guilt and the fact that it is an event really drove clicks.
Notice that the benefit was breezed over — there was almost detail on the content of the book or why you should read it.

10. Do NOT sell on Amazon without this $10 tool… [16.56% CTR]

We did a lot of qualifying in this subject line but there’s a TON of curiosity in this email.
‘The Ultimate Amazon Spy Tool” — Just the spy tool or buyer intelligence software is enough to draw them in. Also, it’s a $10 tool. People love anything that’s going to automate their business.
Anything that creates speed & automation, or tools, in Digital Marketer’s vertical are great sellers. We’ve qualified a very low price point, and then went in and played up the voyeuristic aspect of spying on customers.
It also talks about a 2 minute demo in this last link. That’s a very passive link. It’s a demo video, not a sales presentation, so they already know the price and they’re just clicking over to see the demo.
This is a very passive email that worked really well.

9. Steal these email templates… [16.78% CTR]

#9 is about templates. (You’ll be seeing A LOT of templates winning the click in these emails!)
Going back to what was successful in the last email: it’s all about speed & automation. People love it.
Templates, software, tools.
This comes out of the gate with a benefit — “Want a way to double your sales?”
Then it’s just copy and paste these three emails.
So this email is gunning for the benefit: the template.
The screenshot also helped. It’s in Word; it’s recognizable. People aren’t going to be afraid of the software in this instance.
Easy to use, highly desirable.

8. Check out new “man cave” [PICS] [18.09% CTR]

This subject line piques curiosity — the word “PICS” draws the reader in right away.
It’s also a story. A look into the personal life of the head of a company. It’s humanizing a big company.
Going into this it shows a very personal picture, ties it back into a story, and then talks about a lesson learned.

7. THIS is the hottest trend in digital marketing… [18.21% CTR]

This is a straight up curiosity based email subject line and body copy.
There is no mention of WHAT the trend is.
The curiosity based subject line will get a ton of opens.  And, in this case, we continue the curiosity or “blind” nature of the email in the body.
The formula here is a quick sentence and then a link. Then you qualify a little more, and give another link.
The clicks come because the reader wants to know more about the “hot trend.”

6. The Facebook Slap is coming… (swipe this) [18.25% CTR]

This email uses a lot of scarcity.
Not scarcity from a closing or traditional marketing-based scarcity… but a third party regulatory scarcity.
Here you have “The Facebook Slap Is Coming”… A slap is a well known term in this vertical. The “Google Slap” decimated marketers in every industry — and everyone was afraid of the imminent “Facebook Slap.”
This email played on those fears.
Anytime you can show proof elements visually in your emails, you’re going to explode your clickthrough rates.
That proof element right at the top of this email (the image) probably had a ton of clicks, and then the subtle scarcity of the impending slap drove people to click for more information.
This is pure scarcity based with a splash of fear mongering… but it does promise some critical information and it delivers once you’ve clicked through.

Related Articles

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2

• 2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 1

• Unlocking the Secrets to Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent in Your Agency

5. The 8-figure template… (swipe this) [18.91% CTR]

We’re back to templates.
If you’re paying attention to the trend, you’ll notice that speed & automation, and templates tend to get a ton of response.
This email is also fairly “blind” and curiosity based. It doesn’t say what kind of template it is exactly.
It’s a sales template but doesnt give much indication after that. There’s proof, the template factor, and the gift aspect.
The free gift almost always increases response.
It ends with a proof based P.S.
We do a great job of establishing the value of these templates with this body copy.

4. “Borrow” all my checklists… [20.33% CTR]

Exact same scenario — templates, checklists, tools.
These are things that we have of value that we’re giving away or selling.
So the beginning of this email follows the theme of curiosity based content.
We open with a quick statement — and then drop a link to grab everyone that knew from the subject line that they were interested.
People knew before they opened that email that they were going to click the link. You don’t want to talk too much — get your statement out and then a quick link. That’s a typical curiosity-based email.
Then, we give them another reason to click by giving them a benefit…
“… easy to follow step-by-step checklists.”
You either go proof or curiosity first, followed by proof or benefit second, followed by scarcity or proof third.
If you follow that linking structure, you’ll start to see really high click-through rates in your emails.

3. [SWIPE] My Facebook “templates” (13 of them) [21.02% CTR]

What a surprise… templates! (Are you on our list? You’re missing lots of free stuff if not!)
This is the theme of our best emails — people want the templates we use because they want the results that we get.
It follows the exact same format we’ve been referring to. In this case, it’s the proof. We have undeniable proof of Facebook as the hottest trend, we tested these templates.

2. Copy and paste these 72 headlines [Last Chance] [24.99% CTR]

Another day, another free template giveaway.
These are headline templates. Are you seeing the pattern? So far we’ve had sales templates, headline templates, email templates, and there’s a reason we keep doing them — they work.
In this email the download button really boosted the click-through rate. It’s a button in an email — you should be 100% utilizing CSS buttons within your own emails.
This particular button had ‘Download’ on it and it had an amazing CTR.

1. [DOWNLOAD] Ultimate Facebook Ad Template [25.01% CTR]

We’ve reach our #1… what do you know? It’s templates.
So out of our top 11, it’s safe to say 6 are template related and I could argue the efficacy of making the other emails swing back around to some sort of template.
What do you need to do? Figure out what the ‘templates’ are of your business. You need to figure out what people want so badly from your business that no matter how often you talk about them, they keep responding to your emails.
This email is a little curiosity-based, again talking about the entire library of ours — it’s free, it’s desirable.
It follows the 3-4 link format we use in most emails and it gives the market what they demand.
Now… let’s take a look at the content emails that got the most clicks.

Best Content Email Body Copy

Get the Digital Marketing Blueprint…

With a Customer Value Journey that strategically builds a relationship with new prospects and converts them into loyal, repeat customers. Click here

Before we analyze the copy of our top content emails you should know this…
No amount of persuasive copywriting will save a content email if the subject of the content being promoted is not interesting to the reader.
As with sending promotional email, it’s all about the offer.

11. Subject: How to get paid [Literally] [16.51% CTR]

The email uses FEAR to get clicks… as it should.
The content on the other side of this click is, indeed, about something that could be catastrophic for the reader’s business. It would be foolish not to point out the danger involved in ignoring this content.

10. A simple sales copy formula [16.85% CTR]

This content email piggybacks off of the authority of recognizable names like Bill Glazer, Dan Kennedy, John Carlton and Frank Kern.
Add the references to ease of use in the headline (A Simple Sales Copy Formula) and lines like “so simple a caveman can do it” and we have a winner.

9. It’s landing page magic… [17.04% CTR]

This email has a simple formula: Get [desired result] Without [undesired result]
Do you see it? Here it is in the opening…
“Do you want to increase response on your landing pages WITHOUT rewriting a single line of text?”

8. How to write a promotional email [17.46% CTR]

This piece of content was created by a professional copywriter and this email leverages that authority to get clicks.

7. The ideal length of everything online [17.84% CTR]

This email is all about the offer. It uses a very direct subject line and body copy to direct readers to an infographic (offer) that we already KNEW they would want to see.
How did we know they would want this information?
Simple… we used a tool called BuzzSumo to find the most socially shared infographic on the subject of content marketing. In other words, the piece of content we are promoting was a proven winner created by the folks at Buffer. We simply embedded the infographic on our blog and shared it with our audience.

6. 21 landing page mistakes [18.28% CTR]

This email uses this formula: Learn to Get [Desired Result] From [World Class Expert(s)]
Do you see it? Here it is…
“We asked four of the world’s top conversion rate optimization experts…”
The email copy then proceeds to list those experts and their credentials.

5. 2015 will be a land grab (Get Yours) [19.88% CTR]

This email opens with a curious headline… “The Great Pixel Land Rush”
The copy remains fairly “blind” and emphasizes the speed of consumption with phrases like…
“You’ll learn about it in less than a minute”
Those that just wanted to read Ryan’s prediction really quick clicked on one of the first two links in the email. For anyone else still reading the email there is a “stack” of additional benefits bulleted toward the close.
It worked.

4. [SWIPE] Our best email subject lines of 2014 [20.97% CTR]

This is another email that performed well in large part because of the strength of the content it is promoting — it’s templates, swipe files, tools, etc.
Who would have thunk it?  
The subject line and body copy are VERY direct.
The email opens with strong proof that we are an authority on email marketing. Then, the benefits are stacked on…

• Get our best 101 email subject lines
• Get our 10 worst email subject lines (Everyone loves a train wreck)
• Download our best subject lines as a PDF swipe file (<< this almost always gets more clicks)

Then, in the P.S. we use curiosity…
“I couldn’t believe the subject line that came in as our 3^rd best.”

3. [TEMPLATE] Cold email anyone and get a response [21.52% CTR]

There’s a lot going on in this email…
The headline draws the reader in with a direct statement of benefit.
Then, the opening quickly builds proof and authority for the authors of the content with the line…
“… both having built and sold businesses for 8 figures”
Followed by a statement of benefit that promises something that everyone wants… The Silver Bullet in the form of a template… (go figure)
“… you’ll learn the secret to sending cold emails … including two templates you can put to work right now.”
Then, more proof is layered on with the statement…
“This is the exact process used to get interviews with people like Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia)…”

2. [TEMPLATE] Create engaging Facebook images [21.63% CTR]

Again… much of the success of this email is due to the offer.
The content (offer) is strong so the best route to take is to simply state the direct benefit of clicking.
This phrase…
“We’ve been testing a specific type of Facebook image post…”
… is important because it builds proof and gives the reader the sense that this something NEW.
And, notice that there is a promise of a useful resource to download and use. These downloadable resources are a recurring theme in many of our best content emails.

1. 212 blog post ideas [23.55% CTR]

Once again we have a downloadable resource available within this piece of content and the offer (content) is strong — in this case it is a mind map.
The offer is to get 212 blog post ideas and three of those blog post ideas are listed as bullets in the email copy.
Notice anything special about the three blog post ideas that are chosen?…

• The SAQ Post
• The Guard Down Post
• The Attack Post

Yep… they are all a bit curious and new.
We could have chosen to feature the blog post ideas you already know about like The List Post, The Link Round Up, etc. but that would have almost certainly decreased clicks.
…and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
Our 5 biggest fails… (Tell me in the comments section why you think these failed)

5. WARNING Only 178 T&C Tickets left… 2.34% CTR

4. Spooky discount 75% off Conversion conference 3.79% CTR

3. Survey Results (sort of…) 4.05% CTR

2. eCommerce Lessons from the Big Boys 4.91% CTR

1. Native Ad Hacks 6.17% CTR

And that’s it.  That’s our best email body copy over the last 12 months.

The post [Swipe] Digital Marketer’s Best Email Body Copy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.