Sell Like Crazy

Assess the Terrain
Inboxes are busy and crowded places. Most of your audience is on multiple
lists. Your direct competitors. Non-direct competitors. The works.
In order to write emails that get opened, you should know how your emails
stack up and stand out against those you’re battling against for your reader’s
attention.
Sign up for every email and/or newsletter from people in your industry. See
what these people are sending out, how frequently they’re emailing, what
their subject lines are, what type of content and CTAs they’re using in their

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emails.
That’s right: You need to see every email your competitors are sending.
Then start what’s called an ‘email swipe file’, which I recommend you
divide into folders in Gmail, Outlook, or whatever you use. This allows you
to take a panoramic view of the market and the landscape you’re fighting
for attention in.
Look, even though the subject line is one of the shortest elements of your
email, it’s the one part you should be willing to spend the most time on. It’s
the key to sucking people into your email. Get it wrong and almost
everything else doesn’t matter. Get it right and watch sales go through the
roof.
Preheader Text That Burns With Intrigue
The preheader is the short summary text that follows the subject line when
an email is viewed in the inbox. Many mobile, desktop, and web email
clients use preheader text to give the reader a preview of the email’s content
before they open it. Here’s an example in Gmail:

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Preheader text is what I call the ‘sniff test’ used by subscribers as a pre-
screening tool along with the subject line, because it’s the second thing a
subscriber sees when they get your email.
It’s these two elements they use to decide whether or not this email belongs
to the ‘P’ group or the ‘C’ group, and whether or not they should open your
email.
As we’ve already covered, if your emails don’t get opened it’s impossible to
get people to click-through and take your desired conversion action, like
making a purchase or an enquiry.
People are time-poor and looking for any excuse to deem your email
irrelevant so they can delete it. Preheader text makes it easy for them to do
this without even clicking into the email.

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This means the copy here must be on point. The key with preheader text is
not to tell the whole story and to have it burning with intrigue. Think of this
section as the headlines and blurbs you see on the cover of the trashy
magazines we’ve talked about – the ones that use intrigue to entice readers
to pick them up and find out more.
Be careful. If you tell the reader everything, it removes all the intrigue
enticing them to click open and find out more.
I’ve found it’s generally best to take some of your email body copy, ideally
mid-sentence, and modify it to make it work as the preheader text.
It’s also great to use a ‘cliff-hanger’ or the ‘open loop’ copywriting
technique where you leave the reader wanting more.
A cliff-hanger is a scene in a movie, book, newspaper story, or TV show
that holds something back from the reader or viewer.
The promise is that if you keep reading or watching, you’ll eventually be
rewarded with what you want to know.
Suspense and intrigue are the main ingredients of a good cliff-hanger.
Using curiosity as the hook in preheader text keeps things sort of vague, yet
gives the reader just enough to make them want to know more. Nothing is
more effective for raw clicking power.
Examples:
‘Man showers in lemon juice, you won’t believe what happens next.
Find out here >>’
‘Leading cardiologist says carbs are not the problem (this is)’
‘I walked into my manager’s office and said these 3 simple
words…’
‘Cat comes face-to-face with a rhino and both creatures’ instincts
just take over’.

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With that said, you don’t have to use pure suspense or intrigue to create a
great cliff-hanger. There are other approaches including:
Humour
Amazement
Doubt
Challenges
And while the most effective cliff-hangers are unique and personal to you
and your audience, you can also think of cliff-hangers as common phrases
like these:
For example
Let me explain
Here’s what I mean
Here’s why
Sound silly? It’s not
Case in point
This is how
If you can’t think of a unique and personal cliff-hanger, then go with one of
the above. Using preheader text in your emails will get you more opens,
more clicks, and more sales!