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The Three Principles of Evolutionary Email Marketing
Why Email Matters
Oftentimes, email can seem like a strange, distant process-or at least, a regrettable necessity at best. We struggle through eking out email after email, with no idea of who’s reading it or if it’s really having an impact. We feel like spammers. But we have to do it anyway, right? Well, no-that is, if one realizes just how powerful of an impact emails can have. Emails can change lives. They can establish rapport. They can deepen your connection with your readers. In other words, you can be passionate about email marketing. Really, you can. Consider the following example: a woman with whom I spoke recently just started a dedicated spiritual practice. She had read an email that someone else sent out promoting EnlightenNext magazine. She got the email, clicked on the link, bought a subscription, signed up for an intensive, and found her spiritual path-and now, she’s an active practitioner in a major metro area. All because of an email. Email matters. You’re not a spammer if you’re changing lives, if you’re inspiring people with each email you write, if you’re building a new culture every time you click the “send” button. You’re an Evolutionary.
Introduction There are some general principles everyone should know about email marketing. They are, in a sense, even more important than the structure of any particular email. Internalizing these general principles will go a long way in your overall email marketing efforts: they’ll help you build a sense of community, connect more deeply with your readers, and turn the email-writing process from a drab, confusing process to an exciting opportunity for engagement.
Principle 1-Voice The “voice” of your copy is how it sounds to other people when they “hear” your writing (we all “speak” the text we read in our minds, and different voices lead to different experiences and responses in us). You want to write in a voice that people can relate to. In other words, be as human as you can without sounding cliché or trite.
What you certainly want to avoid is an institutional voice. No one ever speaks to institutions-they speak to human beings. When you’re writing an email, you’re speaking to the reader. Whether they listen or glaze over (or worse, delete the email before they’re finished reading) depends on how you “speak.” To get a feel for this, hearken back to the days when you were in school. Think about which professors and teachers excited you the most. For whom did you most want to do good work? Probably not those who stood at the front of the room and lectured in a monotone voice for the entire session. Right? It was the ones who were engaging, interactive, and perhaps a bit (or very) challenging.
The point is, the people you most want to work with, learn from, and befriend are those who speak to you as a fellow human being, who are interested in the relationship between you more than their own personal gain. The same exact principle applies in copywriting, and especially in email marketing.
If you’re with the reader, and if they feel that, then you won’t be some distant organization trying to convince them to come to an event or buy a product. You’ll be a fellow traveler along the path, so to speak, with something really valuable that you want to share with them. So that’s the first principle: “speak” in a human voice, a voice that your readers can understand and even like. When they see you as a peer, and you authentically see yourself as a fellow human being who wants to share something of tremendous value, and you communicate that passion wholeheartedly and transparently, then you’ll both be on the same page.
Principle 2-Email marketing is an intersubjective, or co-creative, process It can be easy to get “drilled down” in a single email and forget that we’re communicating with people with whom we have a relationship. In reality, though, every email is part of a process of relationship-building and real engagement. Emails shouldn’t be thought of as one-off shots to a list. They should be treated as part of an ongoing trajectory of deeper and higher levels of relationship and communion. While not every email can build upon the last explicitly, your relationship with your readership can-and should-grow over time. So before sending your email, take a moment to remind yourself of the fact that you are engaging in an intersubjective process with every person on your list; it will make a difference in your tone and the transmission that your readers get from you.
Principle 3-Take the reader’s perspective This is one of most foundational aspects of copywriting in general and email marketing in particular: always speak to the reader directly and put yourself in his or her shoes. As a general rule, copywriters will emphasize to include the word “you” wherever possible, and they’re right (from a certain perspective), but that’s not really the point. Here’s the point: even if you’re speaking about yourself-your own experience, why you’re excited about the email, what you’ve been thinking about-it should be entirely in the context of the reader’s relationship to what you’re attempting to convey to them: why it’s important, why it’s relevant, why they should act on your offer. For instance, I recently wrote an email on behalf of a client who wanted her colleague to promote her product. Here’s how it began:
Dear ___, Three years ago, she had only one client. No voicemails. A few emails-and that’s counting spam. She knew she wanted to get her message out there. But she didn’t know how. Today, she’s a New York Times best-selling author. And she wants to give you her entire blueprint of how she went from having zero clients, zero email subscribers, and zero book deals, to being an in-demand speaker, author, and consultant… booked months in advanced… [email truncated] Ignore the content for a moment. Instead, notice how the email didn’t have to begin with the word “you” (although I included it in the last paragraph), because the story related to-and perhaps even pinpointed-what the reader of that particular email was experiencing. And I wanted to convey that my client had also been in their same position at one time (she was), that she didn’t know how she was going to grow her business (she didn’t), and that she succeeded anyway and could teach them how to become successful (she could). The bottom-line: write your emails with the reader in mind; use the word “you” wherever appropriate, but mainly as a way to put yourself in their shoes; and speak directly to the reader’s situation, interests, and goals, as it relates to what you want them to do as a result of reading the email.
Thanks for reading. That’s it for the first lesson on evolutionary email marketing, I hope you found it helpful. Keep an eye out for the next round, where I go into the actual structure of writing an email.
