Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

Write emails people will read v2

Write emails people will read v2

An iteration on my class at GA "Write emails people will read"

Colin Nederkoorn

February 26, 2013
Tweet

More Decks by Colin Nederkoorn

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. What will we cover? • Email is an extension of

    your business • From Addresses • Noreply • Subject Lines • Transactional • Marketing • Content • The Lizard Brain • AIDA • You vs. Me • Plain Text or Fancy? • How many choices?
  2. You now have to decide what 'image' you want for

    your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place. David Ogilvy
  3. ACTION REQUIRED: Aspen Sunsetting David Dollar From: Subject: WTF? Who

    is this? Why are they writing to me? Is this spam or important? What not to do
  4. Better... You’ll need to migrate your Heroku App David from

    Heroku From: Subject: Who is this? Why are they writing to me? Is this spam or important? It’s David from Heroku! Because I need to do something with one of my apps Important
  5. Colin Nederkoorn (@alphacolin) is now following you on Twitter! Your

    Amazon.com order of "The Walking Dead, Book 4" has shipped! ZIPCAR: You reserved Focus Hatchback Flagpole (Inman Sq East) from Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 7:00 AM - 11:00 PM Clarity: Don’t need to open.
  6. Are we crazy to not want MORE opens? Opens are

    not always a measure of success Earn goodwill by serving the needs of customers. Use for transactional email
  7. Intrigue: Can’t help but open. This is what someone who

    makes $200,000+ sounds like What would you do with an extra hour every day? How to Get Lots of Sales Leads Fast
  8. “The idea of the lizard brain is this: it is

    hungry, it is scared, it is selfish, and it is horny. That’s it’s job, and that’s all it does.” - Seth Godin
  9. 1. Turn water into soda in seconds! 2. Leave your

    gloves on and still be able to text 3. Harness the sun to charge electronics 4. Discreetly monitor home or office with this hidden video camera 5. Keep your shoes odor and bacteria free without the spray can 6. Seal your attic entry and reduce your heating and cooling bill by up to 20%. 7. Potty train your cat faster than most people can potty train their kids Where to get ideas?
  10. Send text when: • You want people to reply •

    You’re building a relationship • Offering help or assistance e.g. Password Reset, Surprise Personal Email
  11. Send fancy when: • You have lots of visuals •

    To look official • Help organize complex information • Including sensitive user information e.g. New photos uploaded, Invoices
  12. Sending in a single column is the easiest way to

    make things work on mobile @media queries images: max-width: 100%
  13. 0 10 20 30 40 Standalone Email Digest of 4

    Incremental reservations per restaurant
  14. We found that the shift from 4-12 offers increased overall

    revenue per thousand emails deployed by over 300% (i.e. other restaurants were getting more reservations too - probably because consumers saw a depth of choices and were more inclined to come to the site).
  15. Give people 1 choice When onboarding them into your product.

    When asking them to correct an error or update information When decisions are high-regret and complex.
  16. Give people multiple choices When decisions are similar and low-regret.

    But test to find the right number of choices!
  17. To Do: Review the first email someone gets from you.

    What’s the primary action? How many choices are there?
  18. Remember that the people you address are selfish, as we

    all are. They care nothing about your interest or your profit. They seek service for themselves. Ignoring this fact is a common mistake and a costly mistake Claude Hopkins
  19. People don’t care about YOU. They only care about themselves.

    From Neville Medhora’s “Kopywriting Kourse”
  20. 1. Surprise Personal Email Subject: Help getting started? Hey {first_name},

    I’m Colin, CEO of Customer.io. I wanted to reach out to see if you need any help getting started. Cheers, Colin 30 minutes to 3 days after signup
  21. 1. Surprise Personal Email 22% [reply rate]. The important thing

    is we are learning a ton of stuff about our customers early in the funnel, spotting patterns and improving the product/docs. James Smith - Bugsnag ( We get a 17% reply rate for our email )
  22. 1. Surprise Personal Email Start manually... send 10 emails today

    to new sign ups. Automate later... Experiment with timing to find what works best for your customers.
  23. 2. Start a newsletter. Your product is a cross-sell from

    the newsletter. Build trust Teach your audience things of value whether or not they ever pay you.
  24. 2. Start a newsletter. The newsletter kept him engaged. Chris

    signed up 7 months ago. Now he wants to find a way to be a customer.
  25. Thanks! Sign up for weekly advice so you can write

    better emails: http://bit.ly/S9jXN2