Jay Schwedelson is an email marketer. He’s sent billions of emails in the last decade.
And Jay has learned that small changes can have a huge impact on your clicks and responses.
Because, Jay says, it’s not about what you say in an email. It’s how your reader processes your email that makes the difference!
At B2B Forum 2023, Jay shared his expertise with a captive audience.
And in just 7 minutes, you can get some of Jay’s best insights. Watch the clip or read the transcript below.
If you’re an email marketer, you can get Jay’s newest data-backed insights into email marketing—plus multiple other email marketing, content marketing, and lead nurturing sessions—at this year’s B2B Forum in Boston. With more than 50 sessions covering everything B2B, it’s the conference where driven marketers like you go to get inspired and educated to do your best work.
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So I just want to talk for a second about how we read email.
Because a lot of times we do everything backwards.
We focus on the greatest copy, the greatest creative, the greatest everything.
It’s not reality of how we actually consume email, what we need to focus on.
Here’s how we actually read email.
We look at the from address first, right?
We look at the subject line—the first half of the subject line, really. We might look at the pre-header… maybe.
We look at the headline, and then we look at the call to action button.
That’s it!
We don’t read what you’re saying. At all.
And if you’re not focused on those things? It’s a fail.
This is how we consume email. It’s not about the words. And by the way, if you put too many words, they’ll just forget it. They’ll get rid of it.
It’s really important to understand how we read email.
Why do I say that? Speed.
Speed now in email is everything…
But also telling people how bored they’re going to be is working incredibly well right now.
All these emails say the same thing, right?
So it says, “take our two minute survey. Two minute quiz. Your five minute read… Jay, you got a minute? Three minute demo. Two minute tips.”
It’s literally telling the person, “listen, we suck. We know that, okay, we’re going to be really boring. BUT it’s only going to be two minutes.”
And when you tell the person it’s only going to be two minutes, it’s only going to be five minutes, only going to be three minutes, it does incredibly well in all of our marketing.
So in the last 90 days… when you put [the number of minutes] in the subject line, it is increasing open rates by 28% because you’re telling the person they don’t need to invest that much time.
“It’s not going to be that bad, I promise. Okay? It’s not going to be so bad.”
If I put in the subject line, “this is going to be 90 minutes,” you’re like, “no chance. Thank you very much. I’m out of here. Smell you later.” Right? So that doesn’t work.
In the preheader, it is gold. The preheader is the second subject line, right? You got your from address. You got your subject line. Then you got the pre-header, which is the second subject line.
If you are using that real estate for, “if you’re having trouble viewing this, click here,” that’s horrendous. Okay? That’s 1985.
Don’t do that.
Do not do that.
No one’s having trouble viewing anything because I haven’t opened up your email yet. Okay? That’s how that works.
You want to use that real estate to get them to open the email. And when you tell them it’s only going to be a two minute read, you’re like, “all right, I got two minutes.”
[Telling how long it takes] increases open rates by 19%.
Even the content in your newsletters in your newsletter…
Here’s Google’s newsletter, right?
They put next to all the different content pieces, how long of a read it’s going to be, right? They’ll put in there, next to the article, “four minute read.”
Because they know we’re like, “do I have time for this? Okay, I got time for this.”
Number of minutes in the body copy increases your click through rate by 17%.
It’s this management of expectations. It’s this, “hey, we get it. We’re boring. We’re not that boring. We’re four-minutes boring.” Right?
So it works really, really well. You see it there? Alright.
I like how this slide says “super fast tips.” I wasn’t talking fast enough before. So there you go.
Oh my God, if you haven’t done this Mentos thing, we should all do that together later.
I showed this one to my kids. They go, “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”
I was like, “what’s wrong with you? You guys don’t put Mentos in soda?”
“We don’t really drink soda.”
I’m like, “what is going on? I’ve lost my mind. Go drink soda. Live on the edge.”
Look at this horrible slide. Holy cow. And you got to like “Fanta-stick,” right? I mean, that is like the greatest. There’s nothing better than that meme.
These are my favorite ChatGPT prompts. (By the way. I dunno if you heard this thing called AI. I heard them mention it once or twice at the conference.)
So everything else about AI, everyone talks about these big ideas. Take over the world, do this, do that.
I’m going to tell you literally my favorite prompts that I think are game changers for email that are really easy to do and how I use it.
So the subject line prompt that is my favorite—and it’s really about the same concept across the board—is the best thing you do in a subject line, the number one driver to why somebody opens up an email, is having a sense of urgency in your subject line.
Fact.
“Offer expires today.” “Tomorrow’s the webinar.” “This is your last chance,” right?
Urgency is number one.
So if you… take the subject line you’ve written—I don’t care what it is—you write, “here’s your subject line,” and you write, “please rewrite.”
(I always say, “please.” Every time I go to ChatGPT, I say, “please.” I don’t know why I do it. I’m trying to break that. I’m like, I literally write, “please.” Very weird. I don’t know what that means. I’m like… the robots, I’m scared of them.)
Anyway, “please rewrite,” and you put your subject line in, “to be more urgent, but with less than 50 characters. And don’t include the word urgent or alert because that’s bad.”
That’s my favorite subject line prompt.
My favorite call-to-action prompts are kind of the same thing, it’s “rewrite the call to action ‘download’” “Rewrite the call to action ‘register.’” “Rewrite the call to action ‘shop now’…
“Without saying ‘download’ or ‘register’ or ‘shop now’” because those are horrible words. Those are horrible words. They don’t work.
And then the last one. And this is amazing, if you’re not doing this, creating content takes a lot of time and energy and whatever. And we just don’t have it.
You can take any piece of content that you have… So let’s say writing newsletters is like the bane of everyone’s existence. Takes forever. By the time it gets out the door, thank God it’s out the door. I have to do it next week? I’m going to lose my mind!
So here’s what you want to do.
Take that newsletter, or take your blog post, or take any content that was a pain in the butt. You stick it in ChatGPT, and you give it very specific instructions.
Take this newsletter, control C, control V, put it in there and say, “rewrite this to a top 10 checklist… Seven pitfalls to avoid list… A quick start guide with eight bulleted ideas… A LinkedIn post with a hundred words.”
You give it super specific instructions and it will take what you created, which is a pain in the butt, and it’ll turn it into your content for the next two weeks. Okay?
And yeah, you got to edit it. You got to move it around.
But to just write all this content and then just use it for that one thing is an epic waste, an epic fail.
And you could reverse it.
You could even take a LinkedIn post and say, “turn this into a newsletter of 800 words,” or whatever you want it to be. It’s an easy way to do it.
Back to the call-to-action prompts.
When you write your call-to-action buttons, the buttons in your emails, when you write them in first person, it leads to a 28% higher overall click-through rate.
So instead of “register,” you say, “I want in.” Instead of “register,” try “save my spot.” Instead of “register,” “yes, I’m excited.”
Your buttons can say whatever you want.
Not taking advantage of the little things?
I mean, think about it. You did nothing, you’re increasing your click through rate by 28%.
All you did was change, kind of, the frame of mind of what the person’s seeing.
Published July 17, 2024
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