Transcript:

Hello, happy Friday, December seventh, 2018. It's Monica and today I wanted to cover a few of the basics that I think that every email should have and the reason I want to cover the basics is because I've been talking to a few people who are just getting started in email marketing and I realized that they're getting a bunch of confusing information and I feel like they get really overwhelmed and they're like, “Oh, I can't write emails. It's too hard.” And I don't want that for them and I don't want it for you. So I just want to talk about a few little things that you can do to make your emails really a ton better. And it's very simple, right?

The first thing you need to do is have an enticing subject line and that subject line needs to be enticing to your readers. So you can go through and people will be like, “Oh, you know, what's the number one thing that gets an open?” Right? Well, it is the subject line, but also, what is enticing to your reader. So if you're talking about digital marketing, you probably want something that is going to be interesting, like, “How I got 17,000 leads using this one dot, dot, dot,” and that's also curiosity driven. Curiosity driven subject lines work very, very, very well. So if you are unsure of what's right, start to tell the story to somebody and then, stop at a good point. I talked about open loops a couple of days ago. Your subject line can definitely start an open loop, which is curiosity. So, curiosity is good. Anything shocking but true. Don't be in and don't be intrusive, don't lie in your emails. but you know, if you were shocked by something, stories of other people are really good. So, “Did you hear about Kevin” is a great storyline and that's also curiosity, right? So, I guess what I'm saying is use some curiosity.

Next step, we want to tell a story. Now this story does not have to be this huge elaborate story. It can just be two lines of what you're doing today. I just wrote an email for a client and it said like, “Hey, a friend asked me blah, blah, blah, and that's why I'm writing you this email.” That's a story. Okay. It was one sentence. I mean the whole email made more sense, but like the start of the story was one sentence a friend asked me that by the way, you can use that. A friend asked you things all the time or a colleague or a client or somebody asks you something- that's a story and that's a reason to email because if somebody asked you, 10 other people are thinking it, so use that for your email.

Also, if you don't really have anything to say, talk about what happened to your day. Something slightly interesting, like I did the other day with my broccoli story, a few videos back on the timeline. If you want to go somewhere the thing says something about I left broccoli in the back of the car, which is a true story, right? But I've had more people private messaged me about broccoli in the car than most in the other video, because it's relatable. So just tell us a little bit about what's happening with your life and it doesn't have to be super personal. I'm not telling you to give out details of my first born has, all of these problems. There's nothing like that. Just something that's interesting like “Hey we're planning on going ice skating later, but before I did that I wanted to let you know, Blah Blah Blah.”

So there's a couple of ways to introduce stories and it just gets the people reading your emails to know you a little bit better and build that relationship with them. And the last thing it needs is a call to action. So the call to action does not necessarily have to be like, click here to buy this product, although that's a great call to action and I think that emails are definitely a place to sell things and you're helping your readers when you sell things. So don't be afraid to do that. But also it could be “hit reply and tell me”. I know yesterday I talked about an email where I said you're going to “hit reply and tell me what your thoughts are”. I love ‘hit reply' as a call to action.

You can also send them off to traffic to your website. If that's your goal, you can send them to a video. You can ask them for comments on a Facebook post. Just be sure to make an ‘ask'. It doesn't have to be a big one, but you want your readers to start getting used to taking action from your email and the reason for that is two things. First is that if they get used to taking action and then when you've got a bigger ask of them, it'll be normal for them to say yes. So if you want them to do something like take a survey, which is pretty entailed, they're already used to saying yes to you, so do a bunch of little yeses before a big yes. Then the other reason is because if you want to sell more stuff to them, the more they say yes, the more they say yes, this is like this weird phenomenon.

I don't know if you've ever heard of something called the trial close, but it's like when you're in a Webinar, you're presenting something. If you start keep asking questions like, “Are you with me? Do you understand?” And People's heads are nodding yes right? That's what you want to see if you're on stage or if you're doing a Webinar, you want to say type yes in the box so that you get a lot of people responding so that they say yes, yes, yes, yes. And then when you come to the bigger ask, they say yes, it's the same concept in email. Okay?

So the only time there, one exception for the call to action and that's if you leave an open loop. So I've been talking a little bit more about open loops. So, one of the email sequences that we use a lot, the first email does not have a call to action.It's a seven-email sequence. The first email does not have a call to action because it's opening a loop. And that that means is, is that I'm starting a story, but I'm not finishing it. So I'm leaving readers with a reason to open the next email. And really that's the call to action is the open loop. So open tomorrow's email, that is a collection. So, um, well I'm not asking them to do something directly in that email. There. Call to action is open tomorrow's email to find the rest of the story. So the way that that works is if you're talking through something and you're telling a story, you stop at the most critical part. So I'll give you an example.

So, when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I moved from Los Angeles back to my little home town in Missouri and I was living with my aunt and I had these big dreams to build this big ecommerce thing. Well, it totally didn't work at all, right? Just like I had to do all these things and none of it worked. And so here I was a few months into this, not wanting to move back, feeling like a failure living in a small town, which doesn't really have a whole lot of work for, software developers or at that point too, I was developing requirements for software, but I mean there aren't companies big enough to support that there. So I'm like, “Okay, well what I do,” I'm losing mind, my dad is paying my truck payment. I was living with my aunt rent free. I was out of money because I had like developer level bills but like no income and so obviously I didn't plan very well and I owe this one credit card company, a lot of money and it was really stressful time for me. And then one day a high school friend that works for the Sheriff Department now knocked on my door.

All right, that's it. That's it. Then I would say want to know what she said. Read tomorrow's email- that is an open loop, right? You tell a story, tell a story, and then you leave an open loop. So that is a different way to do a call to action.

And so these are the three things. So when you're going through and writing an email, I want you to think of these three things and enticing subject line and interesting story, and a call to action. By the way, this is also true for just about anything. You write a sales letter, a video sales letter, a blog post, if you learn how to write in this style with these three things, then you are gonna have a much better response to your writing. So that's it for today.

But, I won't leave you hanging. So my friend from high school pulled up in the sheriff's car and she knocked on my door and I was like, “Hey Angie”. And she's like, “Hey, I've got some papers for you. And I was getting sued by the credit card company because I couldn't pay them.” So, that was actually the huge turning point for me when I packed back up, move back to Los Angeles, got a consulting gig at Disney to pay the bills while I continued my entrepreneurial dreams. And here I am several years later doing just fine, but that's, that was sort of my low point and I say it kind of easily now, but there was a lot of tears there.

So that's it for today. Hope this was helpful and let me know in the comments or send me a private message. I love to hear from you. I have a great weekend. Actually. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Have a great weekend.