SECRETS of Letter Format Emails THAT WORK! 📩 Ask Us ANYTHING❓ | Ep. 373

0:01Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. Each episode is packed with quick tips. They're super short. And at the end, we have some fun. Let's jump into it. And thanks for being here. We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long, we get in questions. We get in work questions. We get in ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. If you want to submit a question, just go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast. Another one that says Ask Us Anything. And if you want to submit, I mean, anything you got.

0:38So let's jump into it. Our first question, we'll do the work one before the ridiculous one. We got a question from Charlotte from Miami. You know, Miami is about 45 minutes from me. You know what I just saw? Because I'm getting like all these local advertisements. That there is a new laser ABBA disco show. ABBA, you know, the band with Mamma Mia down in Miami. I will not be at that. Not that I don't like ABBA. I do like ABBA. um i don't like laser shows i don't like planetariums um i haven't been in one a long time i think planetariums are really really weird why um first of all the narrator is always a try hard it's like the narrator's like and now the universe like you've never seen it before i'm like get a life loser and the other problem of planetariums not that you ask i always talk about of the most random things is that people like lie down and they get like really like, I don't know, they spread out.

1:38And I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, stop it. Anyway, me, I should stop it. Let's jump into your question, Charlotte. Okay. Jay, we use letter format emails to drive performance, but they are tanking since we went to a new format. Why would that be? Okay. Well, this is super interesting. So letter format emails, meaning you send out an email, it looks like it's a letter, like a one-to-one communication. And I don't care if you're a consumer brand or a business brand, all brands do this. Why? Because at a high level, letter format emails, ones that are not like graphic heavy, do really, really, really well.

2:18But there's been a trend in marketing that is sort of ruining letter format emails and people don't realize that they're screwing up letter format emails. What do I mean? So I'm sure all of us, all of you out there have gotten emails and you open it up and it's text, right? It's words. It's not image heavy, whatever. But the trend that's gone on the last year has been a migration away from real letter format emails. The ones that actually look like a person may have typed it out and written it to you, right? And what people are migrating to at brands, business and consumer brands have migrated to is a letter format that is like a hybrid, okay?

3:02It's still only words basically, but it has some HTML coding, it has padding, meaning like there's space around the words. Maybe there's a slight background color, like it's a little yellowish or tan. Maybe there's like a branded header. And you know exactly what I'm talking about. And when you open those emails, when I open those emails, and I'll share with you the data that we have, when you open those emails, you instantly like, oh, this isn't really a 120 email. This isn't really a letter format email, right? This is something that's trying to pretend like it's a letter format email. And so when you're doing that, it's actually crushing, hurting performance in a big way as compared to doing the real deal stripped down, no background color, no extra spacing and padding and stuff like that emails.

3:57So we looked at data for stripped down plain text letter format emails versus kind of that hybrid letter format emails. And we looked at about 100 campaigns where there was a head-to-head test of an AB, basically. And what we found was pretty interesting. One thing that we found was that on the stripped down version of the letter format emails, people had a much higher likelihood to actually reply to the email, to actually hit reply and write something like, hey, I'm interested, send me the guide, I want the discount code, whatever. Because when you get these stripped down versions of the emails, you actually think it might be coming from a human or somebody's actually checking the response to those emails.

4:41And we actually saw a 600 % higher average reply rate on the stripped down version versus the HTML one, because the one that's kind of like got the little bit of more HTML vibes, like it's a little more graphic heavy vibes. People are like, I'm not replying to this. I know there's no human behind it. But the more important stat was on click throughs. We actually saw that the hybrid letter format, the one that, again, is not really the stripped down version, actually year over year, we've seen a 25 % drop, lower click-through rate than the actual true plain text stripped down version. Now, the question that's always asked is, if you have a plain text version, it's not actually plain text.

5:25Technically, you're still sending it out as what's called an HTML email. And the reason that you want to do that is it is still valuable to have your logo in the message, in your signature or something like that, because that actually does help out quite a bit. So it is a text-only email, plain text email, but it's really an HTML email. But what you're not doing is adding in all these different buttons and little images and icons, things that make it seem instantly like it's not actually a one-to-one email. So if your letter format strategy is not working, it's probably because you're trying to live in both worlds.

6:07You're trying to live in the graphic world and the plain text world, and you can't do that. A letter format strategy has to truly be a letter format strategy, or it's not going to work. So again, if you're thinking about letter format emails, just think about what is your goal. If your goal is to really have it have that one-to-one feel, then truly make it look like it's one-to-one. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Sammy from Detroit. And Sammy said, Jay, have you seen that the TSA is starting to allow you to wear shoes through the screening and they're not going to make you take off your shoes anymore?

6:46Are you okay with this? And do you love going through airports? Okay. Well, am I okay with the shoe thing first? Yeah, listen, I don't like taking off my shoes. Anything to be safe, of course. But if they're like, you know what? Your shoes are fine. Cool, leave my shoes on. Because it's all, everything's disgusting. So taking off your shoes is disgusting. It's all disgusting. Do I like going through airports? You know, I love going through airports because assuming that my flight's on time or I'm not going to like Atlanta, you know, you go to the Atlanta airport and you land and then they're like, okay, you know, know, you land in a whatever, and then your connections and be whatever.

7:26And you find out that you have to become, you know, like Carl Lewis and be an Olympic sprinter. And you have to run and take seven trains and, and have four different sweats go on while you're getting there. So no, I, I like to avoid that. But in general, why do I like the airports? Number one, um, I eat things in airports that I don't need anywhere else. Like it doesn't count for some reason, like Cinnabon, I can get a Cinnabon in an airport. I would never get a Cinnabon, not in an airport, but like the calories don't actually count. I don't know if people know that whatever you eat in an airport, it actually doesn't count.

8:02It's this weird kind of like a vortex that you could eat whatever you want airport. So I do that, which is super weird. The other thing is I get a lot of joy. I know this is terrible. I'm probably wrong for me to say, but I love being in an airport like at 8 30 in the morning and I'll look over and I'll see somebody just crushing a Jack and Coke. Like if I saw people drinking Jack and Coke at 8 30 in the morning anywhere else, I'd be like, what is going on over there? But when you walk through an airport and you see people all just sitting at a bar crushing whatever at 8 30 in the morning, yeah, go, you have a great day, whatever.

8:37That's amazing. I don't actually love what goes on at Starbucks because I don't know if they're giving out Taylor Swift tickets at every Starbucks in every airport, but it seems that way because every Starbucks at every airport has a line, which is totally prohibitive because I have multiple times, this is how ridiculous I am. I have ordered something. I've waited on the line. I've ordered something and then my flight would be too close to taking off. And I couldn't wait to get my coffee. I actually paid for it. Didn't have the time to wait for it. And I left without ever getting my coffee, which is the dumbest thing a human being can do.

9:19So I love certain things about airports. Wow, I just went down a rabbit hole. You just asked me about shoes and I just said all that. Anyway, listen, I appreciate you. Do me a big solid, okay? If we're not connected on Instagram, let's fix that. Find me at Jay Schwettleson on Instagram. I share really ridiculous things. You're awesome. And thanks for being here. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time.

10:03Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % free, visit guru events.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John Martha Stewart and me guru events.com check it out