How to Write Copy that Sells

Despite the fact that people would try to convince you that it’s all “happening” in social media now, that there’s no need for email. That’s bull-feathers!

Email is still the number one way to get things sold on the internet. More things are sold via email than any other method, even more than Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Plus.

The problem is that most people are doing it wrong. If you’re doing it wrong, then of course it won’t work for you. So, if you’ve had that experience of trying to sell via email and it didn’t work out, you’ll probably learn things in this chapter that will change the results you get from email.

With so many new forms of communication available (think social media, messaging services, and texting, just to name a few) – why does email still work at all?

First, it’s personal. Email is the number one way we communicate with our friends. Yes, we do texting and messaging, but if you think about it, for most of us the majority of communication we have with friends and relatives and co-workers is via email.

Probably, but not today... and not next week, next month, or even next year. Therefore, we need to master communicating via email.

Even if email does go away, the principles you’ll learn here will hold true no matter what the medium.

The most powerful reason I think email works is it’s very much a point and click selling medium. People see something in the email that interests them and they click on the link, which puts them in directly in front of the message we want them to see.

Used properly, email can multiply your business results. Let’s begin by examining the concept of email sequences.

Exactly what kinds of emails do you need to write and send to your list? How do you deliver them?

There’s room for improvisation, room for testing and trying things that are different from what I’m recommending – or what anyone else is doing.

I will give you the fundamentals here, a general framework of how to think about your email marketing.

There are three core “types” of marketing emails you need to be familiar with.

A “campaign” is a series (or sequence) of emails that are sent over time for one specific promotional purpose, like a product launch or promotion. “Live” simply means you’re writing the emails as you go, in real time.

This is where autoresponders come in. An autoresponder is an automated email sent without human intervention. The sequence is timed (one email per day, or one per week, etc.) and triggered when a customer takes a certain action like making a purchase, signing up for a webinar, or registering to receive your newsletter (just to name a few).

This is where you send an email to everybody on your list for one specific intended purpose. It’s not a sequence. It’s not automated and it’s not a live sequence, because it’s just a single email. There are times and places where this is appropriate.

Let’s break this down and talk about these three categories, what they mean and how you can build them yourself.

A product launch is a large-scale product rollout; that probably means you’re doing a big advertising campaign. You may have joint venture partners or affiliates promoting at the same time, so you’re trying to achieve a certain amount of critical mass awareness of your product rollout. This can bring you a concentrated surge in sales.

All told you may write 10-20 days’ worth of emails in this product launch sequence. Maybe one or two emails a day for the last few days... and it’s all done “live.” It’s written as you go, so you can respond to questions, and to changes that happen in the marketplace. You can include references to news and TV shows, and other current events in your email that prove they’re live. This kind of timely content will also match and mirror the experience and daily life of your prospects and readers. This is very powerful, because you can respond to questions and comments you get via email and surveys you may be conducting.

A promotion would work much the same way, but is more of a smaller-scale kind of advertising campaign that does not center around a large coordinated effort. You may be promoting an existing product or a new product, maybe a small ticket item, $47 or $97. Probably, you’re just mailing to your house list. In other words, there are no JV partners mailing for it, it’s not the kind of critical mass media, attention-getting endeavor that a product launch is.

And yet, you’re still promoting, and many of the same kinds of email copy that you’re going to write for a full-scale launch will exist in this campaign.

Then there is the campaign sequence that I like to refer to as the “meter-mover.” You might want to increase the number of comments on your blog post, for instance, so you send emails that have a call to action asking people to comment on a blog post or on a podcast episode ... or you may ask them to share something via social media, on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or LinkedIn. These are all email broadcasts that are designed to move the meter on one or more of these particular channels.

What about campaign sequences that are automated? These are similar, but the difference is they’re not taking place in real time. They’re not being written “on the fly.” You’re not able to make timely references to current events, or respond to people’s emails because all your messages are preloaded.

An onboarding sequence is a good example. An onboarding sequence is a series of emails that you write that introduces people into your way of thinking, into your worldview, and helps them get to know, like, and trust you. This may be a series of seven to upwards of 30 emails. The construction of such a sequence would be a book of its own.

Next is the pre-event autoresponder sequence, which I call “the tractor beam” sequence. If you’re a Star Trek fan you know a tractor beam is the magnetic space-beam the Starship Enterprise used to draw other objects and ships to herself. That’s what a pre-event autoresponder sequence does – it draws prospects toward you.

The most visible example of this might be if you’re holding a webinar to promote the launch of your product. Leading up to the webinar, you might have an email you send out to get people to sign up for the webinar, and then after they sign up, they’re placed on your email list and they receive a 4-7 email pre-event autoresponder sequence that is sent out over a period of 4-7 days. This sequence sells them on the benefit of actually attending the webinar they just signed up for.

Next is the post event autoresponder sequence that I call ‘the pattern buffer’ sequence. The pattern buffer term also comes from the Star Trek TV series (might as well stick with the theme, right?). The Starship Enterprise used a technology called the transporter, which was a beam used to transport people from one place to another. When the person was taken into the transporter mechanism, they were “disassembled’ at the atomic level and then reassembled at their destination (usually the planet below).

In the meantime, where were they? They were in what was called the “pattern buffer,” the “memory” of the transporter device. My point is that the particular people on your list we’re now discussing are those who signed up for your event, but for some reason didn’t buy the thing you were selling.

What happens to them? Do we just abandon them to outer space? Let their molecules dissipate into the vastness of the universe? Or do we hold them in the “pattern buffer” with the hopes of being able to reassemble them as a customer at some point in the future? That’s exactly what we do, we put them in the pattern buffer... and that’s exactly what a post event autoresponder sequence is – a series of emails that happen after the event. This sequence either points them back to a replay of the webinar (in this example), or to another piece of content in another format which may be more appealing to them.

Why is this important? If they didn’t attend your webinar, maybe it’s because they hate webinars. Maybe they wanted the information so much that they signed up for the webinar and then realized how much they dislike webinars and decided not to attend.

What do you do? Maybe you make a video replay available to them. Maybe you make a PDF version of the information available as an eBook or white paper. Maybe you do a teleconference call. Maybe you have a short edited version where, if they don’t want to watch a 60-90 minute webinar, maybe you have 10 minute video they can watch. The point is, you give them other options for consuming the material. This may give you a better chance of communicating the sales message to them. We see on average 20-30% of our sales come through the post event autoresponder sequence.

What about the people who bought? For them, there is the post-sale autoresponder sequence. You might ask why that’s important. They already bought, why would you bother them? You might worry that this will remind them they bought it, and then maybe they’ll ask for a refund. The whole point of the post-sale autoresponder sequence is actually to solidify the sale...

That’s why I call these post-sale autoresponder sequences the “automated retention machine.” You want to retain their business, so this automated retention machine (A.R.M.) reaches out to put your arm around them, and allows you to walk alongside them, saying, “You bought this for a reason, it’s going to help you. Let me show you how to use it so you actually get the help you wanted.”

This is an important sequence that you should write for each product you sell. Firstly, so you have a lower incidence of refunds and secondly, so that the people actually use what you sold them and benefit from it.

If that happens, then they will be more likely to buy something else from you in the future!

Next is the “social equity refill machine of niceness”... admittedly it’s a long name, and I came up with the name so I could make the acronym “S.E.R.M.O.N.” Why a sermon? You’re preaching to them to get them to come back to “church.”

What on earth am I talking about? The S.E.R.M.O.N. is a series of emails that are sent out with no intention to get them to sign up for any new list. No intention to get them to sign up for a webinar. No intention to get them to buy anything.

Maybe it’s a free video training that you made for them just because you thought it would be helpful.

Maybe you send them an email to someone else’s free training (and not as an affiliate). Maybe you saw an awesome TED talk that you thought they might find useful or inspiring. You can send that to them and it creates good will. It refills your “social equity account” with them... just because you were nice to them.

Now, I’ve told you about these sequences. You understand what they’re for. They can have any number of emails in them. Any of these sequences can be three emails long, five, seven, fourteen or thirty. I know some of my clients that have email sequences that stretch out for a year and even two into the future, for each of these particular kinds of sequences.

These are principles for writing your emails, as well as mechanics of how to send campaigns, etc. If you follow them, you’ll get much better results from your email marketing. These are the principles you need to follow when writing your marketing emails.

This might seem to be basic, might seem like email 101, but there are always new people coming on board to the online business world who don’t understand that sending email of a commercial nature (which is: email that asks people to buy something, email that could be considered advertising, email sent without permission) is called spam.

Spam is not only impolite, it’s actually against the law. Make sure you comply with the spam laws and only send emails to people who ask for them.

To send email to a large subscriber list, you simply can’t use the Apple mail app on your Mac or the Outlook app on your Windows machine. You can’t do it. You need to use a company that specializes in delivering email marketing, a company that automates the process of people subscribing to your email list and unsubscribing from receiving emails.

All of that needs to be automated. And not only that, companies like AWeber, InfusionSoft, Mail Chimp and more, all have compliance departments that ensure your email is compliant with the spam laws. They also make sure that your emails are getting delivered. They keep you off the spam blacklists.

So, for all these reasons, you definitely want to use a reputable email delivery service. There are many good ones. I’ve named three and there are many more. It doesn’t matter too much which one you pick, as long as they’re reputable, well known and have been around for a while. They’re going to take care of all the hard stuff for you. Choose one and stick with it.

I say stick with it, because moving from email service provider to email service provider is difficult.

Which means, if you have thousands of people on your email list and you change from AWeber to InfusionSoft, you’re inevitably going to lose people in the transfer. So it’s better to pick a provider and stick with them from day one. I promise you whatever provider you pick you’ll have complaints about them, you’ll have problems with their service. Some part of what they do isn’t going to suit you exactly right, but it’s probably not worth switching providers over, unless it’s critical to your business, because of the inconveniences and loss of email subscribers that I just explained.

People aren’t going to give you their email address just to “get your newsletter,” because they believe you’re going to spam them.

You must offer them a compelling reason for them to want to opt in. A report, a video, a mini-course. Something.

If I sign up for your email newsletter and I have an expectation that you’re going to deliver helpful information, and not advertisements, but you send me one promotion after another, I’ll feel like it’s spam. If I feel like its spam, then it is spam. Maybe not legally, but practically and emotionally it is. This means I won’t like you and I will unsubscribe. Even worse, I’ll stay on your list, eat up your bandwidth and I’ll never read your emails.

So give web visitors reasons to opt-in and explain to them what they’re going to be receiving. If they’re signing up to get a premium, like a checklist or an eBook, video or whatever your email opt-in magnet might be, then make sure they understand that they’re also signing up for your email newsletter, in which you will tell them about interesting news, tidbits and helpful pieces of information. Then, you will also tell them about special offers that you have available regarding your products and promotions.

Surprising as it sounds, mailing more often can reduce spam complaints. That’s because when you mail frequently and consistently, your readers won’t forget who are are! If they sign up for your list and they don’t hear from you for six weeks, and then you send them an email – bam! Spam complaint!

Again, you probably know what an autoresponder is, but in case you don’t: this is a program that automatically sends a timed sequence of emails to anyone who subscribes.

It could be one email a day for seven days. It could be one email a day for 30 days. It could be one email every other day for 45 days. You determine the frequency and you can even make it on specific days after the initial sign-up. It’s a preplanned, preprogrammed, preloaded sequence that’s delivered automatically to each person in your email list, based on when they signed up for your email list.

This is very powerful, especially if you’re using sequences to introduce people to you, your company and your services and let them get to know you through a series of storytelling or illustrative emails.

We talked earlier about why people opt-in. They opt-in for that opt-in or lead “magnet,” something you’re giving away that prompts them to want to give up their email address in order to get the thing you’re giving away.

Work harder than other marketers to create Lead Magnets of Unusual Value. Go beyond what everyone else is offering. Offer a Lead Magnet that is as good as someone else’s paid product. I think you should offer, not only the premium that you’re giving away, but also “sell” your subscribers on the value of the email newsletter itself.

This is one that lots of people miss. I see this mark missed many times by people who don’t understand that just because I signed up for their email list doesn’t mean I’m going to stay signed up. Or maybe I will stay on board, but I won’t read the emails delivered to my inbox. They may even show as being opened because I see them in my preview pane in my mail app, but I never really read them, and instead delete or archive them.

Don’t take it for granted that anybody is interested in reading your next email. Give them a reason to want to read it. Make sure when you write the subject line for that email that you’re writing it in such a way that makes people want to open the email. We’ll talk more about that later.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re asking them to pay money to buy a product, but you do want people to get into the habit of clicking on a link in every email you send. The point of this is that you may have them click on a link to watch a video, or to read a blog article, or see a funny cartoon. Most of the time these links may not be to your own material.

Maybe the links go to other resources, other websites, other people’s materials on the web that’s freely available, so you’re not stealing anyone’s material. You’re linking to something they published publicly. Believe me, no author of any blog is going to get upset if you send traffic to their blog. No YouTube creator is going to get upset that you sent people to their video.

You want your readers to be in the habit of knowing that every time they get an email from you, there’s always something interesting to click on. You send 10 messages that have a cool video, tip or article or something that benefits them and they click on the links time after time... and then when you send the next email, that has a link to one of your products or your product launch sequence, then they’ll click on that link, too.

The instant assumption they make is that this too is something valuable that I want to watch, read or experience. It’s important that you’re asking for a sale in every email. Usually the sale will be a click on a link.

Most people won’t read your signature file. Don’t think this is going to revolutionize your business. It is real estate you can use, so why not use it? Why not, in your signature file, have a link to your website, your blog, podcast, other products, surveys or special deals? I think it’s good sense to use that real estate effectively, even if only one person per month makes an extra purchase that they wouldn’t have otherwise made. If you don’t use your email signature file then you wouldn’t get that one sale, which is maybe 12 additional sales per year. What would that be worth to you? Maybe it’s even more than one. It’s wasted if you don’t use it.

We’ve covered automated emails, using timed autoresponder sequences. Don’t forget about the broadcast email, the email you send out “live” to your entire list. The value of sending a “live” email is you can reference current events, things that happened today in the news or on the calendar.

This provides proof this email was written today, that it’s not automated. This makes your emails fresh and timely, and much more powerful than they would be otherwise.

What do I mean by the “Most Wanted Response” (or MWR)? Just this: if the reader only does one thing as a result of reading this email, what is that?

It needs to be one thing. What is the one thing that you most want them to do?

Know what your most wanted response is for every email that you send before you even craft it.

This is one of the most commonly made mistakes in email marketing. Most marketers send emails that have three or four different links to various offers and pages. That means their email has three or four different objectives. They’re trying to accomplish several things with one email and it’s confusing to the mind of the person receiving the email.

There’s one principle we know about the psychology of selling for sure: the confused mind decides nothing. If you make too many requests of a reader in a single email, they will delete the email and move on to something else. They won’t click on anything or make any decision.

in your email. You maybe have more than one link to the call to action in that email, but only one action that you’re asking for.

You want each email to feel very personal to the recipient, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you use the person’s name. It means you speak to them in a way that’s relevant to the material they were interested in when they signed up for your list. You’re speaking their language, and talking about the subjects of deepest interest to your core audience.

Anticipated means that you’ve set up an expectation. You’ve written emails in the past that were so interesting, so intriguing that when they read your subject lines for each new email, they anticipate something interesting, something useful, or something profitable.

Curiosity is obvious, in that you write subject lines that arouse the curiosity of the reader. Your reader is asking...

“I wonder what it is that’s so urgent that I have to read this email today?”

This is important and often overlooked. It’s very powerful. One of the hurdles we have to overcome is skepticism and the fact that our readers often don’t believe us... or aren’t sure if they believe us.

One way to overcome that is to begin each email you send with a very firm, incontrovertible truth. It could be today’s date. Most email delivery services provide you with a way to stamp the current date on the email on the day in which it’s received.

That way when the recipient opens the email it has today’s date as the first line. That is an incontrovertible truth. Or, you could start with something like... “Ray Edwards here writing to you.” That’s a truth that’s incontrovertible, it is in fact coming from me, so you know it’s true.

It could be, “I know what you’re thinking as you’re sitting there reading this email, you’re wondering what it’s about.” You have to be careful with rhetorical statements like this because they may or may not be true, but saying you’re “sitting in front of your computer right now,” or “on your smartphone or tablet reading this email,” is fairly safe. It’s probably going to be true for 99% of people reading the email. (No, I’m not quite sure how the other 1% are reading your email.)

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve tested it myself and proven to my satisfaction that starting with some fact, lends more legitimacy to your email. This makes the response you get to that email higher and more positive.

It’s okay to use headline templates to create subject lines, but don’t format them like a headline or title. In a headline we use what’s called “title case,” all the words are capitalized except for the articles and conjunctions. Use regular sentence case in your subject lines, just like you do when you write a regular email to a friend. In fact, I often will use NO capitalization or punctuation at all in my subject lines, because that’s the way friends write subject lines and emails. I want my email to look as though it comes from a friend.

The lead for your email is anything that appears in the “preview pane” of most email clients. If the reader isn’t using the preview pane then the rule of thumb is that the lead is the first sentence or two of your email. Put a link in the lead that accompanies the main benefit.

The point is, when someone opens the email, there’s a link available right at the top, before they have to do any scrolling. That’s not the only link you want in the email, and you don’t want to be obnoxious about it, but you do want that link available to them right up top.

I know there’s a lot of controversy in PS’s in sales letters and in emails. Some people feel that it’s cliché and overdone and doesn’t make any sense, because why would you put a PS in an email when you can always go back and put whatever you want to in the actual body of the email.

The “PS” originated when people wrote letters on paper with ink and couldn’t erase what they had written. If they wanted to add something, they used a “post-script” (“after written” or “P.S.”).

What’s the use for the PS in today’s modern age? I don’t know for sure, but I do know it works as a marketing tool. My theory is that with sales letters and emails alike, people often scroll to the bottom of the page or the bottom of the email to see what’s for sale, and how much it costs. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have a PS there for them, along with a clear call to action.

This includes the link you put in the lead and the link in the PS. You want one additional link somewhere in the body of the email.

Don’t overdo it. Don’t use 15 links in an email. Three is a target. If you’re sending a short email, you may only want to use one.

Zeigarnik is the last name of a psychologist who studied the quirk of human memory that deals with “open loops.” We tend to remember more about subjects that are unresolved. The example used in the Zeigarnik study was one of restaurant waiters and waitresses who still had a ticket open.

For a party they were serving with an unpaid check, the server tended to remember the details of the customer’s order. What they had to eat, what stage of the meal they were in, etc. They remembered all those things and perhaps even remembered the name of the people at the table. However, once the check was closed and paid, and the guest had left, they could no longer remember the details of that particular party or order.

Why was that? It’s the same reason that cliffhangers work in weekly TV series. You tune in because psychologically you “need” to close those loops.

How do you create this effect in email marketing? There are two simple ways you can do it.

First, you can tell a story in an email, and leave the next part of the story for the next email. You could just write, “that’s all the time I have right now, if you want to find out what happened to Jack, you’ll have to look for tomorrow’s email where I explain the rest of the story.”

That’s the Zeigarnik effect, stretching them from one email to the next. Or, you could write, “I don’t want to put the rest of this in email, but I’ve posted it on my website so click here to get the rest of the story.”

That’s the Zeigarnik effect that pulls readers straight to a web page. Perhaps even a sales video. You’re using the desire that human beings have to close these open loops, and using it to get people to read the next email or to click the link.

Make the email look and feel as though it’s coming from a friend. When friends send us an email, it doesn’t usually come with a logo, stock images, and starbursts screaming SALE! or 25% OFF NOW THROUGH MONDAY!

This should go without saying — and probably should have come earlier in the list. If people want to be unsubscribed from your list, don’t get upset. You don’t want them on the list, because they’re just going to cause you problems, and they will think you’re an annoying pest. Stop it!

This is part of all major email service providers; they actually force this auto-unsubscribe link to appear at the bottom of all your emails. That way whenever you send an email out it always has an unsubscribe link. Be aware that not everyone reads the words that say... “to unsubscribe click here.”

Occasionally someone will send you an angry email asking you to take them off the list and to stop “spamming” them. Your temptation will be to email them back and say, “What, can’t you read? Didn’t you see the line at the bottom of the email that said ‘click here to unsubscribe’? Just click the link.”

Don’t send emails like that because it’s not worth your time, and it’s insulting. Just click the link for them, unsubscribe for them and say no more. Problem solved.

Those are the 21 principles of powerful emails that sell. And now, one more principle, which will help you preserve your peaceful state of calm, relaxed creativity.

This doesn’t mean that I’m suggesting that you ignore legitimate complaints from your readers, subscribers and customers. Those should be taken care of right away, but not by you. If you’re the marketer, the copywriter, the one creating... the last thing you need are people sending evil, nasty messages that are deriding your character, criticizing your work and making you feel bad. You don’t need to read emails that are a big fat bummer. It’s not good for your psychology or your business.

My assistant has a standing rule from me, “I will read any email that requires my attention, any email that is positive feedback, or that will make me feel good about my work. I do not want to read any emails that are negative in nature. Please do whatever needs to be done to make that person happy.”

My assistant also knows if there’s a real reason I need to be involved, even if it’s negative, I want to hear about it. So she filters out 95% of all the negative criticism emails I get, because it doesn’t help me, or help the other person for me to hear those emails.

If it’s a criticism or complaint she feels I need to hear about, she will often summarize it in kinder, gentler language and pass it along to me.

The point: don’t ignore people. Take care of your customers, satisfied or unsatisfied. Be careful of your own mental hygiene and psychology. There’s no need to read your critics’ remarks if they’re just going to bring you down and cause the quality of your work to deteriorate.

CHAPTER 4 QUICK SUMMARY:

21 Keys to Persuasive Autoresponders and E-mails

1. Use E-mail Marketing to Build Permission-Based Lists. Prospects who give you permission to market to them are most likely to buy. Honor (and widen) the circle of permission.

2. Use a Reputable E-mail Delivery Service. If your e-mail doesn’t get delivered, you won’t make any sales; getting it delivered is a full-time job.

3. Give Web Visitors Reasons To Opt- In, And Set Their Expectations Properly. You must offer some sort of premium to entice visitors to give up their names and e-mail addresses.

4. Avoid Spam Complaints with Frequent, Consistent Mailings. Surprising as it sounds, mailing more often can reduce spam complaints.

5. Use Autoresponders as Robotic Sales Agents. A sequence of contacts is a powerful way of delivering your sales message.

6. Give People an Unusually Great Reason To Opt- In. Work harder than other marketers to create Lead Magnets of Unusual Value.

7. Give People Great Reasons to Stay On Your List. Don’t take it for granted that anybody is interested in reading your next email. Give them a reason to want to read it.

8. Ask for a “Sale” in Every E-mail. Treat each e-mail like a miniature sales letter; just be clear what the call to action is for that particular e-mail. Get them in the habit of clicking on your links!

9. Craft a Powerful Signature File for All E-mails. This is a powerful action device. Don’t forget it.

10. Use Broadcast E-mails for Promotions. Broadcasts are great for promotions and launch sequences (time-bound offers).

11. Know Your Most Wanted Response. If you don’t know it, how can you elicit the desired behavior?

12. Use Only One MWR Per Email. The confused mind never buys.

13. Craft Subject Lines Using the PAC Formula. Write your subject lines so that they are personal, fulfill anticipation, and arouse curiosity.

14. Start Each E-mail with Undeniable, Confirmable Truth. For instance, you might start with the date; subtle credibility.

15. Use Headline Techniques, but Not Headline Formatting. Avoid making your e-mail look like an ad.

16. Put the Main Benefit in the Lead, with a Link. The first paragraph is the lead, and you should have a link to your MWR in that paragraph (or following it).

17. Use a PS That Summarizes the Main Benefit and Provides a Link. Just like in your sales letter, the PS may be the only copy in your e-mail the prospect reads.

18. Place a Minimum of 3 Links to Your Call to Action in the E-mail Body. The first two will get most of the clicks.

19. Send Short E-mails That Create Zeigarnik Effect. Your MWR is most likely to get the prospect to visit a Web page.

20. Send Emails That Look Like They Were Sent by a Friend. You want your emails to look like those of a friend, not like sales fliers or newspaper ads.

21. Always Honor Unsubscribe Requests. Avoid needless headaches.

The Zen Master’s Email Rule:

Don’t Read Complaint E-mails. And whatever you do, don’t get involved in replying; have someone on your staff do it for you. Preserve your peaceful state of calm, relaxed creativity.