Write Emails That People Actually Open

0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

0:21I'm going to make a safe assumption here, which is that you send a lot of email. I send a lot of email. And have you ever stepped back and wondered, what mistakes am I making? Oh boy, so many. Okay, so let's start with the subject line. Well, that's a good place to start because it's where most people start. It's the first thing that people are going to see when you email them. So you better get that right. And who do we have here to tell us how it all goes so very, very wrong? I'm Laura Belgray. I am the founder of Talking Shrimp, co-creator of The Coffee Cure with Marie Forleo and author of the upcoming book, Tough Titties, on living your best life when you're the effing worst.

1:02The effing worst, that's subject lines. No, okay. The book is not actually about subject lines. I'm just going to read from her website because it's such a wonderful description. Tough titties is one big permission slip to be a dork, a sometimes unspiritual slacker, a late bloomer, and ultimately unapologetically you. So go check that out. Again, it's called Tough Titties. But why are we talking to Laura right now about email? Because... I am known for copywriting. And this was her thing for a long time. She was a copywriter in the entertainment space. Nick at Night, TV Land, Bravo, Fandango. But my umbrella mission in this world, in the strange space of internet marketing that we just called the space, is helping entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, people ending inpreneur, find the words in the chutzpah to make their business a full expression of their personality.

1:54Because that's how you get as close as humanly possible to getting paid to be you. and who does not want to get paid to be them? This is kind of the best way to get paid. And it all starts with a subject line. Now, that and a couple other things. This is what we're going to be talking about on today's episode of Problem Solvers. Laura Belgray is going to walk us through how to write the emails that people actually open and engage with so that you can get paid to be you. And you don't have to sit around and say, tough titties, even though you should get the tough titties book. Okay, coming up after the break.

2:29On this show, I hear from people who help solve problems. But you know what? Do you want me, Jason Pfeiffer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, host of this podcast you're listening to right now, Problem Solvers, to help you solve your problem? Because that is something that I am available to do on a platform called Intro. On Intro, you can book me for 15 and 30-minute sessions, as well as a whole other range of experts from Entrepreneur and elsewhere. And you can find me and book my time at intro.co slash Jason Pfeiffer. Again, that's intro, just, you know, I-N-T-R-O dot C-O, intro.co slash my full name, Jason Pfeiffer, F-E-I-F-E-R.

3:16So maybe I'll talk to you soon. All right, we're back talking with copywriter extraordinaire Laura Belgray about how you can write emails that actually get you paid to be who you are. And we started by talking about subject line. So let's pick up right there. How do you write a great subject line? And what are the common mistakes that people are making? I see so many mistakes in that field. One of them is, for me, writing formally and businesslike in title case. So title case is when the first letter of each word is capitalized and you can get away with that certainly. And especially if you are a media outlet, say like I subscribe to air mails newsletter.

4:00And so I expect those to be in title case, like a headline. However, that screams newsletter. So when I talk about emails, about writing emails, it all comes back to, for me, the idea of making every email you write, what I call an EFAB, which is an email from a bestie, because we go through our inboxes in the same way we go through our mail, right? Standing over the garbage can, like junk mail, junk mail, junk mail, junk mail. Ooh, something for me. Junk mail, junk mail, junk mail. Ooh, something for me. Rarely is it something for me with regular mail. We go through our inboxes that exact same way.

4:35Just kind of delete, delete, skip, skip, skip. Oh, this looks like something for me. So to make your email feel like it is from a person to a person, hopefully a bestie, you want to make that subject line feel informal, casual. Like what would back in the day when we actually used email to write to our friends and not just text, like what would we write in the subject line? We'd write something really informal. Sometimes we skip the subject line. Sometimes it would be like, I have to cancel, you know, frowny face or you going to this or what time we meeting, those kinds of urgent, casual, very intimate subject lines.

5:15And they were very informal. And nowadays, I'm sure we've all been, those of us who are a little older, have been schooled by younger people that it's rude to punctuate our texts, like a period on the end. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. Yes. Yeah. At the end of everything. Exactly. So I like to play around in my subject lines with using no punctuation. I don't do it every time, but I often will leave it unpunctuated because it feels more like any fab that way. So that's number one is making it feel informal, casual. So this is interesting because I am already violating a rule of yours. The first rule already violating, which is that I have been doing the title caps.

6:00And I guess that's the media training in me to write that way. But also, I guess I was doing it because I, it felt like it matched the thing that I thought I had to do. So let me tell you the thing that I thought I had to do, which also feels slightly counter to what you were just describing, which was to signal the value that is going to be in this newsletter. I get newsletters that don't do that. Garbage Day is one of my favorite newsletters. It's about internet culture. And The subject line is always random word salad. It references something in the newsletter, but I don't know what that is.

6:38But I open it anyway because I love Garbage Day. But I keep writing my newsletter subject lines in a way that tries to communicate, this is the reason that you should read this. This is the thing you're going to learn. And that necessarily lends itself to something that feels a little more crafted and a little less from a bestie. Tell me if I'm thinking totally wrong about this, or maybe there's a middle ground. Well, I think, no, you're not thinking totally wrong about it. I think that you should test it because a lot of our favorite, you know, if we're signed up to a lot of things, a lot of our favorite newsletters might be in title case and in that formal style that signal is to signal value, value within.

7:22But, but I do maintain that we go through our inbox. Like we go through it in that way, just kind of looking for something that feels immediate and to just us. And I think those are the things that we open first. Now, once you've built up a loyal following, there are going to be tons of people who will open your email no matter what it says in the subject line. But it's very possible that they will open it even faster, be more likely to open it that day that they have a ton of things in their inbox and like aren't opening anything that's not urgent. if you put it in informal, non-title case, sentence case, or even no, no capital letters.

8:05All right. I'm going to A-B test this. This is going to be fascinating. Okay. Hi, I'm breaking in here. This conversation took place maybe two months before I actually recorded this episode. And I did start testing it in my email newsletter. My newsletter, in case you don't know, is called One Thing Better. You can find it at one thing better.email. Just type that into a browser, one thing better.email. Each week, one way to do your work better. And I had been doing these title case subject lines. And I started not just lower casing them, but then also coming up with a casual format where each time the email, the subject line starts with the thing, like the thing that you hate, the thing you want to do, the thing holding you back.

8:55And I started to A-B test that structure against a more traditional structure. And over and over and over again, the lowercase casual, the thing subject lines, always one. And so now I have since shifted over into just doing that. And my open rate has increased and it is all thanks to Laura. So thank you, Laura. Okay. So I asked Laura, where else does she see people just really screwing up with their email? So if it is a newsletter, like something that you send regularly and it has a name, don't use, I think, don't, don't say like my awesome newsletter, number three 56. And you know, and the next one is my awesome newsletter, letter, number three 57.

9:40Seen a lot of that. Yeah. I see a ton and I'm like, what a waste of real estate. Because I don't know what that's about. Now, the second thing that I mentioned here, which is I've mentioned there are three things that get your emails opened. The second one is preview text. And so the preview text being those first few lines that we see in our email viewer, right in the window, right below the subject line, that's also important in real estate. And that can support or add to your subject line or be something entirely different. But you don't want to neglect that. And so that's an opportunity to put in something even more intriguing.

10:19Or if your subject line is kind of is vague and vague in a good way, intriguing, like, well, this was embarrassing, right? We don't know what it's about, but we want to open it to find out what was embarrassing. Maybe the next few lines can give a little more of a hint of what it was about or what the experience was like. My face turned red. I pitted out in two seconds and wanted to drop through a hole in the floor. Or just to keep promoting garbage day, for which I do not get any compensation. So I'm just looking at the most recent one. So he always, his preview text is always read to the end for, and then he says whatever.

11:01So the subject line here that I'm looking at, which is not in title caps, it is lowercase, is the, can my parents use this thing right now test, which is fun. and then the preview text is read to the end for a good Twitter reply. And I have to say, I fall for the read to the end for every single time. I'm like, oh, I want to know what's at the end. That's a good one. I haven't tried it. So I like that, especially because the subject line there is so good. I want to know. I want to know what that is. So I'm going to open it. Now, the thing you don't want to leave in your preview text is all that default garbage that sometimes it gets pulled up from the top.

11:36That's like copyright 2023, all rights reserved, prefer to see this in your browser, all that kind of garbage just screams newsletter. And so I will probably not open it. Just it's an instant decision. You're not thinking, you're not, we're not overthinking it. Should I open this or shouldn't I? We're just at a glance. Like sometimes I, I don't know what made me open an email. I just find myself opening it. And then I go back later and like, oh, that was, it was that preview text or it was the subject line. It's just, if it feels immediate, if there's some kind of friction or conflict implied or valuable information implied, like I've got to know how to do that in the subject line and preview text, then you're going to open it.

12:19So like neglecting those two areas or making them feel too business like, too newsletter, like those are all mistakes that I see made very commonly. And again, if you write great newsletters. So the third thing that I referred to or alluded to that gets your emails open is trust. So you write great newsletters people love, and they are inclined to open anything that you send. You've built up trust with them. So if failing the first two things, their trust might get them to open up your email. But still, why not up your odds by making the the subject line great and catchy and the preview text also.

13:01So that's the first set of mistakes. Another mistake that I see a lot is writing to both in your head and on the page, a group of people rather than one person. So when I talk about writing an email from a bestie, that means both in your mind and on the page writing to one person. And think about the origin of email. It's mail, right? A letter used to be, unless you wrote it on a carbon copy back in the day, which my dad used to do and send it to people. Yeah. Or Xerox it or like those chain letters. Generally, a letter was from one person to one person. It was always personal. And so when you start, first of all, thinking in your head of many people, you start to water down your message and I think pull back from being intimate, truthful, powerful in your writing.

13:58You start to think, oh, this might offend some of these people, and this might not appeal to these people. How can I make it appeal to everyone? When you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one, right? But then also on the page, when you address your reader as, hey, everyone, or some of you this, but some of you that. It waters down your message in a sense and I think dilutes our sense of our engagement with the email, our sense of responsibility. Again, these aren't things that we actually process and think about. Just a non-cognitive like reflex makes us feel like, oh, I'm not responsible to engage with this email.

14:42Like if you have a parent who would always or who does forward like send you mass forwards or write. My dad used to my dad used to send emails to like 100 people, not even in this, not in the BCC field, not in the CC field, but in the main in the main one. Yeah. In the main one. And they would always be like how not to get attacked in the parking lot or. Sure. Or guess who's Jewish? Yeah. Oh, classic. I've gotten plenty of those. But nobody, nobody who's a recipient of that feels obligated to reply because it is very clearly not to them. It is really to nobody. And that, and it's a very compelling point that you make, but take me into how to apply that to writing something that isn't inherently personal.

15:28So let's say that somebody, I mean, we could take two examples. We could take a personal brand example where let's say my friend, Paul Kicks, who writes It's a newsletter about writing and particularly from an angle of journalism and book writing. And so his newsletter is a lot of tips on creativity and things like that. And it's not really intended to be addressing like a conversation, an individual person. But I am very interested to hear how you apply the kind of personalized thinking to something like that. And then let's just take something else, which would be, oh, I don't know, you own a local restaurant and you have a newsletter that you're just trying to engage your local community, remind them that you still exist, get new menu items in front of them, whatever the case.

16:19Talk to me about how people who are writing those kinds of newsletters, personal brand or business case, can do it while keeping an individual reader in mind and infused through their writing. Yeah. Okay. So let's start with the personal brand and just say, yeah, newsletter on creativity. So it might not address the reader at all. I like to, but say it does. And it uses the form, the you second person. And it's saying like, rather than saying many of you might find you sit down to write and there's a terrifying blank page and you're blocked. Just putting in that. And I see, I see this all the time.

17:02And people are inclined, do feel inclined to say, to address a group of people. So you don't even have to say you, but I think that it is engaging to speak to your reader as though they're one person and do speak in the second person, or it might be in the first person. Like, let me tell you a story. Like I sat down last night, I sat down to write this email and I couldn't think of a thing to say. And it might, it might, if you want to add a little intimacy, like I couldn't think of a thing to say to you. I was thinking, you know, I was picturing you getting this, expecting something great from me, nuggets of wisdom, beautifully written, and nothing came out.

17:42And here's what I did. So you can put a little you in there and like, just imagine that there is that you are writing it to a friend and it will just, just in tiny ways, it'll make it feel a little more intimate. If you do picture that one person across from you and think, what if I were writing this to my best friend? How would it be a little different rather than it being an article that I'm going to share to everyone? I think because of the nature of email and how we process it and how we open it, I think that it serves the email to give it a little bit extra intimacy more than you would with an article.

18:21Right. So it's not like, just so people are clear, it's not like you're suggesting that every email that's, let's be frank, mass blasted to an audience has to be written like an intimate love note, but rather that everything that you're writing should be infused with the intention of it being reached by a single individual. And that there's just something in the language that you use and the way that you present that carries that awareness of the person who's reading it. Yes. Well put. You said it way better than I could have. I got to be able to speak second. So it was easier. Yes, that's true.

18:59Okay. So you cheated. I think, I think it makes a big difference, especially if you are sending what we call value emails. I put value in air quotes because I think there's so many forms of value, but in terms of teaching something actionable takeaways or tips, I think that it serves you to inject some, not just personality, but personable-ness, that feeling of it into those. Because over time, we start to think, oh, this is that newsletter. And we don't feel personally connected with the writer of it. And then we might stop opening it when we move into a different season of our life and like, okay, I'm not in the mood for tips anymore.

19:42However, if we feel connected with that writer and there's something personal about them, we feel like, oh, this is to me, I should open it. And we still enjoy engaging with it. It's a real human relationship at that point. Yes, exactly. So you don't create that without addressing the reader in some way. I use, because I use my emails to sell and form a connection. I also like to form a real connection, even if I weren't selling. I like people to feel like, oh, my gosh, this was just to me. You were speaking just to me. You've been reading my mind. I feel like we were sitting down having a conversation because that bonds them to me.

20:19Right. That's that connection is really important. I like to use the first name a lot, not too much because that feels a little bit like a tick. If you use it too many times, it's like when somebody touches your arm over and over. They touch your arm like once or twice during a conversation. You're like, oh, I like this person. They keep touching it. It's like, wait, there's something wrong with them. Keep saying your name, Jason. If every time I start a sentence, Jason, I say your name, Jason, then it becomes a little weird, Jason, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling weird now. Now it's feeling, now it just got weird.

20:49But if I say once to you, in particular, Jason, that I want you to blah, blah, blah, that it just, it has an impact and people respond to it. They really like it and feel like we are friends. You want your reader to feel like your friends that will create loyalty and it will create if you do end up selling, get them to want to buy from you. We buy from people we know, like and trust. Right. So so that's those are some examples of what I would do if I were a personal brand. We're talking about a restaurant. It is a little different. We don't need that much intimacy from a restaurant telling us that gooey cinnamon rolls are back at brunch.

21:32That's all I need to hear. and I want to say, you know, I want to hear about their, maybe I want to hear about their Valentine's Day. I don't actually, but maybe theoretically, I want to hear about their Valentine's Day reservations are now open and there doesn't have to be that much Laura in it for me to not, it doesn't have to be addressed so specifically to me to respond to that, but it's still a good idea to think of that one person rather than, hey, everybody. Mm-hmm. Let's just dig in next and maybe finally, because this is such a big subject and we'll touch it in a couple of ways, which is what's in the body of this email?

22:15Because people start newsletters and if you're the personal brand, I think partially you're wondering, am I delivering some kind of consistent thing each time, some set of rubrics, some kind of structured something, or am I just going full out essay? People care about me. I'm going to give them something each time and God knows what it's going to be. Boy, I get emails that are like that, both of them. And then if you're a brand, I think that there's the question of, do I just get right to the point as you were describing, or do I try to infuse some kind of personality or some behind the scenes or something that makes people feel like they're engaged in a part of my brand and not just being sold the sticky buns, which are probably very good.

22:59Maybe We're not going to go get them anyway. So what's your recommendation for how to treat the actual structure of what it is that you're writing and whether or not that email should always be infused with the same intention or if it's okay to mix it up? Yeah, I think it is fine to mix it up. I don't think you have to be consistent at all, except in your voice, in being yourself, especially if you're a personal brand. You want that to be consistent, but sometimes it might be a fairly long story, something that happened to you that taught you a lesson that arcs to some kind of meaning or that demonstrates something about what you want to about an offer that you're making.

23:41And that's why I created, for instance, now I'm selling something called the welcome sequence workshop. And so I'll say like, that's, that's exactly what a welcome sequence does for you. And I created welcome sequence workshop. So, so that you never have to leave your guests unattended again, when they come through your virtual door, that's just an example. So that starts with a whole like analogy about a party, or it might've been a story about a party, etc. So I like to tell I like to tell stories and then segue to a takeaway or a point. But it doesn't always have to be that it could be a short message, like real quick today, I'm at the salon getting my I'm getting my nails buffed right now.

24:24So I'm just going to dash this off to you. I want you to know that this like this thing is happening tomorrow, or just had a single thought for you today. And it might be one point that might change their perspective, whatever. So you can do all different forms of that. I like to always have some injection of storytelling. It doesn't have to be a beginning, middle and end, but just some scene, some, something that makes us see something or experience something or see, smell, hear, touch, taste, whatever it is. So something a little bit sensory maybe. So I, yeah, I don't think, I don't feel like you have to do the same thing every time.

25:02I do believe that value, that we have a misunderstanding of value, that we get the, that's why I put it in air quotes before we get, right. Especially if we are in the space and studying marketing and aware of it all, we'll hear the word value over and over and over. I'm here to add value, drop in value bombs, you know, hear that value nation. And, and we get the sense, right? And we get the sense that value has to mean something teachable, something that is an actionable takeaway. And I believe that value can come in so many different forms. You are giving me value if you entertain me, if you shift my perspective, making me think, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way.

25:48Inspire me to try something new. Give me one tip. Give me one recommendation. that is high value. Like just, just listen to this podcast episode. I think you'd really love it. Here it is. Like that's enough for one email or a book that you're reading or anything, a show that you think is garbage, but you're watching anyway. And, and most of all, you're delivering value. If you make me feel less alone, if you make me feel seen, if you make me say, Oh my gosh, you're in my head. This is exactly what I needed to read today at this very moment. Thank you so much for sending it. So there are many forms of value.

26:25And you want to remember that when you sit down to write your email, like it does not have to be epic. I've taught all everything that I know. I don't have anything new to teach today. That's okay. You don't have to teach every time you sit down to write an email, even if that's the premise of your newsletter. Sometimes we want to break from learning things. And sometimes we want to break from having to like implement. I'm like, I'm not implementing squat today. I just want to, I just want to laugh. I just want to be distracted. So that all different kinds of value there. And it doesn't have to be epic.

26:56I always remind people that nobody ever unsubscribed because your email was too short. Right. I think that that's something that people worry about. It's something that I worry about myself, which is that if somebody reads something that I sent them, that doesn't feel wholly fulfilling in some cup overfloweth kind of way that they'll say, eh, this wasn't worth my time. I drive myself to make sure that it's this complete thing. And I think that that's probably incorrect because I have a friend at Google, for example, who writes a internal Google newsletter that's basically two sentences and then a couple of bullet points.