In many cases, the struggle isn’t a lack of topics to talk about.
It’s figuring out which of the dozens of possibilities you should write about today.
There’s one ultra-helpful filter you that can help you make that choice. I’ll illustrate with an example from last week.
The mail carrier dropped Valpak in my mailbox on Tuesday. If you’re not familiar, Valpak is a collection of ads/coupons from local businesses. Goes to every residence in selected zip codes.
You get offers from restaurants, cleaning services, auto mechanics, whoever wants to pay to insert their ad in the mailing.
I’m a nerd, so I enjoy looking through ads.
Got this from a bank with a branch down the street from my house…
Nice offer, right? Anyone looking for a new checking account may be tempted.
Problem is, the very next ad is from another bank in the neighborhood…
At first glance, it looks like a stronger offer by 50%. And depending on your specific situation, it may be a better choice.
How many homeowners completely forgot about the previous ad?
They’re even visually similar, so there’s no good reason for the first one to hold onto real estate in your memory.
So perhaps the second ad has the advantage. But there’s another problem.
Valpak arrived on Tuesday.
Here’s a self-mailer that landed in our mailboxes on Monday…
See what’s happening here?
Everyone’s doing the same thing! These ads don’t hint at anything different about the banks making the offer.
It’s very difficult to win under these circumstances. And advantage you get may not be sustainable over time.
Don’t get into this kind of competition!
Make your messages (and offers) different. Make them uniquely YOU.
It’s much harder for the competition to undercut you or rip off your idea.
That’s the filter. When you’re deciding what to write your email newsletter about, try not to say what everyone else is saying.
That includes just sending out market updates.
Want some more specifics? Here are 3 ideas you can use to pick unique and compelling ideas for your future newsletters:
The Fed’s rate cut yesterday (September 18) gave us an interesting illustration of how you can play with fear.
Here’s a subtle example.
It doesn’t indicate something bad is going to happen, but it makes you wonder what you don’t know about Jay Powell’s looming decision.
Here’s a more in-your-face angle:
For the reader who was certain the rate cut would boost his portfolio, this email may be a bit of a surprise. You have to read it to find out what’s coming your way.
Now, it’s time to talk about…
The Lie: You can educate prospects into buying.
This is a sticky one.
Because education is a good thing.
We want to have well-informed audience. And the rising tide of financial literacy/intelligence lifts all boats (especially in underserved segments of the population).
But as you’ve probably heard many times before, humans make decisions emotionally.
You’ve seen it happen countless times, right in your face. You explain a product, service or even just an idea to someone… give them an airtight logical argument for why they should move forward…
And they choose a less beneficial option. Or they decide not to do anything at all, even though their situation is likely to get worse with each passing day.
The issue isn’t education. It’s motivation.
So as uncomfortable as it may sound to some, it’s your job to help your potential clients get out of their own way and make the decision that’s best for them.
Your email subject lines can be the tip of the spear.
Appeal to motivational emotions. Grab your subscriber’s attention and trigger a motivated state by speaking to their:
fears and frustrations
pains and problems
dreams and desires.
Not just new information, lessons and strategies.
Again, I’m not telling you to avoid education. Rather, I’m telling you to use education as a motivational tool.
This may be a big shift in your approach, but it’s worth doing.
Truth #1 is that repetition kills readership. If subscribers think they know what you’re going to say, they won’t open your email.
You can avoid that by using various different angles and appeals in your subject lines. Highlighting relevant benefits is great, but it can get repetitive.
I know this is an uncomfortable truth for some. We want to keep things positive. To educate and empower.
But there are some legitimately worrisome realities out there. You know it and so does your reader. It’s a good idea to talk about those things.
Now, I’m not telling you to try scaring your readers pants off.
I’m encouraging you to tap into the fear and/or anxiety your subscriber is likely already feeling.
Here’s an example of creating a little fear without paralyzing the reader:
Firstly, there are few things that get our attention like fear. The human brain dedicates a significant portion of its energy to keeping us safe.
Our senses are fine-tuned to detect and respond to danger.
Secondly, humans hate losing… anything. Behaviorial studies show we’re twice as likely to take action to prevent a loss than to secure an equivalent gain (when the stakes are high enough).
That means fear gives you leverage when it comes to moving people to make a decision.
Don’t leave the reader in a state of fear, though.
Use fear to win attention and focus his mind, then shift into the solution he can take to minimize or eliminate the issue.
In my last post, I dissected a subject line similar to what lot of financial service professionals might send out if they wanted to try something “edgy.”
We discussed why that subject line may not accomplish what the sender hoped to do and explored some ways to make it stronger. You can read that post here.
Let’s expand on that idea a little more today.
I won’t take up too much of your time, but this information deserves to live in your head for a while. Let it marinate.
Truth #1: Repetition kills readership.
Variety is the spice of life. Including the inbox.
Here’s a screenshot of emails a really smart financial professional sent out recently.
This isn’t meant to embarrass or shame the man. He’s doing a lot of things right. But he’s fallen into the trap a lot of us are ensnared by when it comes to email marketing.
(He’s an accountant, but the lessons apply to financial professionals of all stripes.)
These subject lines call out the reader (I’ve blurred a few key words to further protect anonymity)… promise relevant benefits… and include “power words” like maximize and wealth.
So what’s the problem?
They all look and sound the same. A subscriber swiping through his inbox — which is what they’re all doing — may not be able to tell the difference between them.
He may think he’s seen today’s emails before. As recently as yesterday.
Also, highlighting benefits is important. But listing benefits nonstop starts to feel like either salesy or scholastic.
And what tells the reader that the email contains something he can’t find with a quick Google search or a scan of Yahoo Finance headlines?
You need to mix things up!
Tell intriguing stories.
Address pressing, pertinent problems you know your ideal client’s thinking about.
Give unique or contrarian perspectives on trending topics and news stories.
Share your personal/organizational philosophies so your reader can connect with your values and worldview.
This is especially important when you email as often as you should (weekly at minimum).
I said I wouldn’t take too much of your time, so let’s stop here for today.
Is this a good a subject line for a financial professional or educator?
Why or why not?
I’d say in most cases, it’s NOT a good one, and not because of what your compliance officer might say.
Here’s why.
Listen, I adore my wife. Marrying her was the smartest — and luckiest — thing I’ve ever done.
But when I read that subject line, my instant reaction is “OF COURSE she could.”
No one gets your blood pumping more (in good ways and bad) than the person you love most. So this idea isn’t as shocking as it seems at first glance.
The curiosity factor is weak, too.
A little specificity about how or why s/he’s going to make your heart explode could have gone a long way. For example:
Your spouse’s money habits may cause a heart attack
When you spouse buys THESE, heart attack risk goes up
Those aren’t better, even though they’re too long. But they’re still not great.
What would make it a great subject line? Maybe something like this:
3 money habits that can (literally) kill you
“The heart attack was your wife’s fault”
Money move deadlier than clogged arteries?
It’s aggressive, but the subject line would be even stronger if you implied you could be the one giving your spouse a heart attack…
That said, there are 2 things that I like about the original subject line…
1) If you’re sending the email to an audience that’s nervous about their heart health, they’re more likely to open and read because they want to know about anything that can stop them from having any issues.
2) It’s likely different than any other subject lines you’ve been sending. Predictability is not your friend in the inbox, so there’s good chance a subject line like this will spark some renewed attention from your subscribers.
We’ll going to talk more about email subject lines for financial service pros, educators and coaches in the next few posts.
You’re laying on the couch, scrolling on your phone and starting to doze off.
Just as you’re about to put your phone down, you get an email from the bakery you visit every morning on the way to the office.
It says:
“We’re giving away a dozen FREE DONUTS to our favorite customers — if you can come into the shop right away.
“The night shift employees forgot we close at midnight now, so they just pulled 300 fresh glazed donuts out of the oven. We can’t hold these beauties until morning. Get here by midnight and you can have a dozen FREE. The glaze is still dripping!”
You have 9 minutes to jump up and shoot over to the bakery, which is just down the street. You’d have to rush, but you can make it.
Or you could keep scrolling on your phone until you slip into sweet unconsciousness.
What would you do?
Now imagine a different scenario…
It’s 1:51 AM.
You had a brutal day. Your team stayed late working on a big project and they agreed to come in at 6:00 to help finish up before the deadline.
To show your appreciation, you promised the team donuts in the morning. But your favorite bakery doesn’t open until 6:30, so you picked them up tonight.
You just crawled into your bed to get a few hours of sleep.
At that moment, you hear your brother unlock your front door and walk into the house. He pops in whenever he’s in town and doesn’t want to pay for a hotel.
The first thought that crosses your mind is that you NEVER should have given him that key.
Your second thought: that dude eats everything in the kitchen whenever he stops by. And he loves donuts…
What do you do?
In the first scenario, there’s a strong chance you’re not taking any action. You’ll ignore the “irresistible” offer of free donuts and fall asleep on the couch.
In the second scenario, there’s a 99% probability you’ll fly into action. You’re jumping out of bed and running toward the kitchen to make sure your brother doesn’t eat your team’s donuts.
You see where I’m going with this.
We’ve always heard that people are twice as likely to take action to avoid pain than to enjoy pleasure.
Some more recent studies indicate that, in fact, people react just as strongly to gains as they do to losses.
Apparently researchers haven’t been able to replicate results proving that “loss aversion” alone has a significant impact on decision-making.
(I wanted you to hear about this from me.)
Now, I haven’t conducted any clinical studies. When I think about it, I haven’t run loss aversion split-tests in a while.
I assumed the old info was true.
But based on experience, I still believe loss aversion is a compelling emotional force. The scenarios with the donuts above are solid illustrations.
So what’s the big takeaway here?
You know me. I’m always encouraging you to test different ideas to see what works best for you and your audience.
If you haven’t tried loss aversion as a tactic to increase conversions, give it a try. For example, you can use:
disappearing bonuses
real scarcity where people will miss out on the opportunity
expiring credits toward purchase (instead of discounts)
Test this stuff against simply trying to “add more value.” Then draw your own conclusions.
My second point is this: Researchers found that loss aversion begins to take over when losses are serious (because self-preservation is a priority for the brain).
When you’re using the negative argument, intensify the size and severity of the potential loss. Show the reader how much it’s going to cost him not to act:
Heart disease is inching closer every minute if you [BLANK]
The IRS could take thousands right out of your bank… unless you [BLANK]
Your wife will lose interest in you if you don’t do [BLANK]
If you’re even a little nervous that your subscribers yawn when they get your messages, you’re going to like what we’re talking about today.
If you’re confident your emails are interesting and you’d like to crank up your must-read rating to an even higher level, this will be good for you, too.
I’m going to show you one of the best emails I’ve ever written.
It’s from a few years back, but you can’t help but learn something from this beauty.
And if you’re writing financial copy, there’s no reason you couldn’t use something like this right now.
Here we go.
(Eeesh! I just spotted a typo. Hilarious.)
Quickly, there are 3 main ideas you can take from this:
1. This email is essentially one big pile of PROOF.
Four high-caliber economic experts are all saying the same thing at the same time.
A large percentage of emails make claims and just expect readers to believe them.
Another sizeable percentage of emails make claims and explain them… but don’t offer actual proof.
Now, proof doesn’t automatically make copy interesting.
But overwhelming proof creates a forceful argument that’s hard to ignore (even if it’s unpleasant).
2. There’s a hint of conspiracy at play.
If all the former Fed chairs are talking about recession, why is the current chairman sweeping it under the rug?
And why is no one else talking about this? And why isn’t the current Fed chair Bazooka Jay Powell addressing it?
When your emails evoke meaningful questions in your reader’s mind, you give him reason to keep reading, clicking, and even buying.
And when you regularly create that experience for readers, they give you endless opportunities to sell them.
By the way, it’s worth pointing out that ANYONE could have written this email. The quotes are in the public record. Zero claims are made about the company sending the email.
So when people ask, “how do I sell my services when I don’t have much or any experience.” This is a decent place you can start.
3. It oozes urgency.
The danger this email talks about is just around the corner. You can’t really afford to think about this later. It demands immediate action.
Investors don’t want to get crushed, so they’ll pay attention and consider taking the action recommended.
Your emails are most effective when you address an urgent opportunity or danger. If your reader can push off a decision until later, he will.
You can’t always control that. Still, I encourage you to make every effort to add urgency to the ideas you share in your emails.
During my guest appearance on The Financial Rebel Show, this email came up:
Of course…
No one knows how brilliant and urgent your copy is until they open the email.
In my book Subject Line Science, I share 11 “made you look” secrets and dozens of examples to help you entice more subscribers to open you emails – and open in the right frame of mind to take action.
Worth checking out if you’d like to write hard-to-ignore emails.
(The “made you look” secrets also work for social media, video hooks and other places you need to grab attention.)
You never hear people talking about this, but it’s an important concept to wrap our minds around if you want to maximize your email marketing revenue.
Here it is: when discussing subject lines, most people only talk about getting opens. But subject lines have don’t just have one job.
In fact, subject lines have 3 jobs.
But before the recipient can open an email, it has to get noticed. To catch the scanning eye mid-scroll. That’s Job #1.
Job #2 is to entice opens. A subscriber will only open an email if he believes he’ll be rewarded for doing so. So a subject line must communicate that there’s value inside (and value comes in countless forms).
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone teaching about Job #3, which is this:
A good subject line should appeal to people in the right mental and emotional state to open, read with enthusiasm and take action – or put readers in that state.
In other words, the subject line FRAMES everything else that follows.
If you’ve been testing different kinds of subject lines and paying attention to the metrics, you may have noticed that the subject line with the higher open rate sometimes has a lower clickthrough rate.
Why?
Because different subject lines may attract different people, and people in different moods at the time. And they can affect your mood when you see them and decide to check out the email.
The unique combinations of curiosity, desire and emotion in the subject line can have a big impact on clickthrough rate.
Here’s where it gets wonky.
You’d think that the clickers (a majority of them, at least) would all be in pretty much the same mental space.
They’ve read the same body copy inside the email and based their decision to click on that.
Meaning the conversion rate on the page linked to should be relatively consistent between both subject lines.
But when you track the metrics, you see that’s often not the case.
I’ve seen the click-to-conversion rate (i.e. the percentage of people who buy divided by the total number of people who clicked the link in the email) on an order form differ by as much as 200% between test versions.
This is real data from a recent A/B split test:
Same send time. Same email body copy. Same sales page. Same order form. The only difference was the subject line.
The A version has a specific, big promise in the subject line – and it highlights a specific opportunity the subscriber believes could be very profitable. Those who open are curious about specific stocks.
The answer is not in the body copy or on the sales page. You’d have to buy the product to find out.
The B version is ambiguous. There’s a fast-approaching deadline… but that’s all we know from the subject line. Those who open want to know what they’re about to miss out on.
Again, the email body copy and sales page are identical for both emails. Both highlight the specific opportunity and the urgent deadline.
But the more urgent ambiguous subject line made twice as much money with fewer opens and a whole lot fewer clicks.
The tricky part is that you don’t always know which factor will prevail.
What does this mean in practical terms?
First, simply knowing that subject lines impact the deeper metrics, all the way through conversion on an order form, will help you get more value from your testing.
Second, think about what mental and emotional state is optimal for converting your readers.
Then test! Pay attention to what your list responds to. Not just what emails they open… but what kind of appeals lead to conversions.
You’ll get to know your subscribers in a more profound way than you may have thought possible.
Everyone knows subject lines are important. In my experience, most people don’t realize just how important they are or WHY.
Having read this far, you know something a most marketers don’t fully appreciate.
And there’s so much more to discover!
In Subject Line Science, I share many of my deepest insights I’ve learned about enticing people to open, read and buy from marketing emails.
You’ll also get dozens of templates, “made you look” power words and more.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not familiar with too many “offers” that get 50% conversion.
From any company.
Paid or free.
And then there’s Spotify Wrapped.
Fine, maybe it’s more of a feature than an “offer.”
But they package it up, offer it for a limited time and promote the heck out of it.
I haven’t seen this year’s numbers, but 51% of users checked out their Wrapped in 2022. About 14% of them also shared their results on social media.
The whole thing works pretty well. So well that YouTube and Apple have borrowed the idea. (Duolingo, too!)
What makes Wrapped so enticing?
It’s focused on the #1 most interesting topic on the planet: YOU.
We’re all the center of our own universes. So we’re incalculably interested in ourselves. How could we not be?
As an extension to that idea, we’re also fascinated by anything we believe can tell us more about ourselves. Help us understand ourselves better.
With Wrapped, we already know we listened to music all year. Spotify uncovers hidden patterns and tell you what your listening habits really say about you.
Over the years, they’ve diagnosed your music “personality” and assigned you to a city based on your music selection.
All ways of giving you ways to think about and categorize yourself in your own mind… share your (favorable) findings with the world… and compare/contrast/connect yourself with other people.
Genius.
People can get really attached to their categories. Myers-Briggs. Political parties. Astrological signs.
Even a simple dichotomy like entrepreneur vs. 9-5er.
And once they put themselves in a category, they can easily begin using it as the lens they see the world through.
This reality can produce profound influence.
Think about ways you can show your prospects and clients more about themselves. Help them understand themselves in a helpful new way.
And if you put them in categories you define – or give them a way to self-assess themselves into one…
You have an opportunity to shape how they see themselves, their optimal next steps, and more.
It’s a powerful position to be in. Use you power wisely.
P.S. Once people accept their categories, they see things differently. And they see different things.
There are certain ways to “trigger” those individuals with email subject lines.
I share more details about this in the Secret Handshake chapter of Subject Line Science, now available on Amazon Kindle and paperback.
This is one of the concepts David Garfinkel and I discussed on my recent appearance on The Copywriter Podcast. Enjoy!
Subject Line Science: 11 “Made You Look” Secretes to Get Emails Opened and Read.
Seems like everyone’s been asking for this.
It’s a quick read, but it dives deep into my process for creating impossible-to-ignore subject lines.
When you devour the lessons in this book, you (or your marketing team) will have the tools to write must-open subject lines that win attention, make subscribers excited to read and open the door for big sales.
You’ll also get some of the AI prompts I’m playing around with to give you even more fresh subject line options.
One of the 11 “made you look” secrets revealed in the book is what I call the “Tootsie Roll center of persuasion.” Here’s an example:
You’ll get a whole lot more insight about this in the book.
Subject Line Science will be officially released on November 17.
But when you preorder the book now for just $9.99, you’ll also get access to 3 exclusive bonuses for free:
The audiobook (also on November 17)
104 Steal these Subject Lines templates
Big Ideas for Unforgettable Emails video training
If you take action, this information can transform your email marketing results AND your business as a whole.
