Is Email the New Smoking?
Or, how to make email marketing work when everyone hates email.
Approximately 7,000 ago, in the late 1990s we were in this weird tipping point on the cultural shift that had everyone going from wanting to be the Marlboro man to fully realizing that cigarettes are bad, but still smoking because it just looked so badass.
If you were around then, you know the look that people got when you offered them a smoke – that particular wince that combined a mixture of longing, guilt, and defiance, followed up by,
“Ah, nah, I’m trying to quit.”
That’s what people look like when I talk to them about email marketing today.
It used to be so cool and exciting back in the day. Leather jackets were involved, at least based on all the pics I saw. Then the market got saturated, and we all realized that actually we hate email, but how else are you gonna market your business? A few marketing badasses held out as email marketing lovers, but the tide had turned. And now we’re at the point where email marketing has been declared dead about 8 times, but someone in your mastermind’s friend’s cousins’s favorite YouTuber still somehow makes it work and earns like, 27 figures a month, bro.
Everyone else? They get that longing/guilty/defiant look when we talk about email marketing – “Newsletters? Ah, nah, I’m trying to quit.”
Longing because when it worked, damn did it work. Guilty because seriously, does anybody want another email these days? And defiant because as fun as the idea of marketing off social media vibes sounds, you still need something more long-form for basically any business.
This is where this metaphor breaks down – because emails aren’t cigarettes, and don’t actually harm people that way. And because, unlike smoking, I’m going to encourage you to keep doing it. Just not in a way that annoys everyone involved. (Yourself included.)
Here’s why email marketing doesn’t work: we’ve been taught to do it like we’re selling timeshares.
You know the drill. You reel ‘em in with that sweet sweet opt-in (the condo in Myrtle Beach), and then you have a wonderful nurture series (ah, the joys of Bike Week!), and then BAM!
You put on your ill-fitting red blazer, sit ‘em down on the couch, and then try to badger them into buying a condo. Or your service. Whatever.
Turns out that sucks. Nobody enjoys it. And, despite what the internet will tell you, they didn’t enjoy it back in the email marketing heyday, either. There were just fewer people doing it, so we weren’t so terminally over it.
Even now, people aren’t tired of the medium of email in and of itself. They’re tired of being treated like dogshit by people trying to use email to sell things.
I know, because I’ve got the stats to prove it. For 17 years running now, the emails I write for myself and for my clients tend to average about 65% opens and 15-20% clickthroughs. Big list, small list, whatever, that’s about how it works out.
Those numbers are unheard of in the industry. You might get a fluke now and then, but over time? No way.
It’s not like I have the magic email wand that makes everything work. I just treat people like people. And I write very, very good emails.
Here’s how you do that:
Get it through your head that all copy is sales copy. Not in a Glengarry Glen Ross, “Always be closing” kind of way, but in the “You’re engaged in a conversation with people, and if they get all the way through that conversation, make it to your sales page, and then feel like you’ve had a personality transplant, something has gone badly wrong beforehand” kinda way. Everything you write should feel like one cohesive conversation, not a mix of “normal” content and “sales” content. This is excellent news, because it means you can…
Lose your “sales” voice. It’s not working these days, anyway. It sounds AI-ish. Despite what the templates tell you, you do not need to adopt some sort of separate, extra-persuasive sales voice in your emails to make people do things. In fact, that’s weird and off-putting. Your brand voice should sound the same, no matter where people encounter you.
Treat your subject lines like they’re promises. Because they are. When someone reads a subject line and opens your email, they’re taking it on faith that there’s something in there that’s useful for them. Maintain that trust, and they’ll open your stuff all day long. Screw around with it, and say hello to the spam blocker.
OK, but what do you actually write about?
Well … that depends. What do you have to say? Who are you talking to? What do you want? This is where you have to take a step back and think about your email strategy. If you’ve been to literally any workshop I’ve taught, you’ve probably heard me break strategy down like this:
What do you want?
What are you going to do to make that happen?
How are you going to know if it worked?
That simple – but effective, as long as you actually take the time to stop and articulate it.
So, in the case of my email marketing with Bolt, the main thing I want to do is to start a human to human conversation. That’s how my business has always worked: people get to know me, they like what they read, and they want some of that magic in their own business. That’s the forever-goal. I also have temporary goals, like when I run short sales email campaigns. Those might be to get sales (obvs), but they can also be to wake up my list, connect with referral partners, get people who aren’t a fit to unsubscribe … it depends on what I’m selling and what’s happening in my business at the time.
How I go about making my forever-goal happen is that I write very authentic emails where I muse about ideas I’m chewing on, and trends I’m seeing in business and marketing. They’re not especially polished. (That’s what the Substacks are for.) They are an opportunity for anybody to see how my brain works, and get a sense of my personality. I also support that goal with my nurture campaign, Honey, Everybody Gets a Biscuit! It’s funny. It’s very me. You’ll instantly know if you like me or not.
Finally, how do I know whether it’s working? I look back at my forever-goal of starting relationships, and reverse-engineer quantitative and qualitative metrics from that. Quantitatively, I keep a loose eye on sign-ups and unsubs, and pay a lot of attention to open rates and clickthroughs. I put a lot of stock in the number of personal replies I get to each email, because those mean somebody was really moved by it, and feels comfortable enough emailing me to let me know. And I pay attention to qualitative things too, like how I feel when I write the emails (does it feel like a chore, or do I enjoy it?), the types of people writing to me, etc.
See? The process isn’t hard, on the surface. But working through strategy requires you to be very honest about what you want, and about where your gaps are, and that’s not always fun. I suggest doing it with a friend.
The final step in your email upgrade? Learning the two structures that underlie every single email you write.
There really are only two. Their bones are very similar. But if you learn how to use them, it becomes approximately 7 zillion percent easier to write emails since you no longer have to reinvent the wheel, and your emails become so, so much more effective.
What are the two types, you ask? I’ll be delighted to tell you in this month’s free workshop!
Join me for The Only Two Emails You’ll Ever Need to Write on Friday, July 18th from 3-4 EST!
I’ll teach for a bit, then we’ll spend the rest of the time actually drafting some emails.
You’ll learn everything you need to know about how to write both types, and how you can expand this knowledge into literally every other email you write, ever. We’ll also do a mini-intensive on subject lines :)
Then, we’ll live edit your emails right there on the call. (Unless that super creeps your cheese, in which case, you’re welcome to email me yours any time in the week after the workshop, and I’ll edit it via email with you!)