Sell Like Crazy

Takeaway: Send plain text emails rather than HTML-enhanced emails.
2. Talk to them like a friend

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So, how do you cut through, get noticed, and eventually sell to your list?
First up, write conversationally and don’t try to sell them straight out of the
gate. Instead, just get your message read first. The only way to do that is to
get your emails in the cherished ‘P’ group by being more personal.
Just write like you would to a friend. It’s just fine to start an email with
‘Hey there’. Let people into your lives a bit, show them your personality, as
quirky as it might be.
This is the opposite to how most companies write emails. Their writing
screams, ‘I’m trying to sell you!’
Use short sentences and write the way you talk. Good email copywriting is
not super-dense technical stuff. The last thing you want is an overwhelming
wall of text when someone opens your email. You want your emails to look
approachable. Lots of small paragraphs, or even better, single lines of copy
– just like the example below:

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A good test is to read everything you write aloud. Make sure everything
reads smoothly. Great emails feel like a conversation between you and your
best friend.
While you want to give your readers a glimpse into your life, remember,
ultimately your readers don’t care about you or what you do. They only care
about themselves and what you can do for them. The tone, your stories, and
everything is else must be geared to make the content engaging and
entertaining. The bottom line is, all of your email copy should focus on
your reader’s needs and wants.
3. Study the herd and do the opposite
Think of the landscape and context in which the reader will read your
email. Will it be seen — or ignored — in a sea of other emails vying for

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their attention?
How can you make them pick you? Look at the promotions tab or spam
folder of your inbox right now. Most of the emails you’ll find there will be
doing the exact same thing. The subject lines will be the same length, the
same casing, the same kind of tone – maybe even the same emojis in the
subject line. If other people are going long, then go short. Study what the
other people your readers are subscribed to are doing – and do the opposite.