SELL LIKE CRAZY: How to Get As Many Clients, Customers and Sales As You Can Possibly Handle

by Sabri Suby

Subject Line Length Most email subject lines are between 41 and 50 characters. This is what I call the ‘death zone’. Why? Because everything average is wrong, and research shows this is the least effective character length for email subject lines.

For subject lines, from 1 to 20 characters is where the magic happens. My own findings are backed up by recent research from Yes Lifecycle Marketing. Their research also concluded that emails with shorter subject lines tend to get significantly higher open rates and click rates.

even though the subject line is one of the shortest elements of your email, it’s the one part you should be willing to spend the most time on. It’s the key to sucking people into your email. Get it wrong and almost everything else doesn’t matter. Get it right and watch sales go through the roof.

The key with preheader text is not to tell the whole story and to have it burning with intrigue.

for maximum inbox deliverability and open rates, you should prioritise your send days in this order: Tuesday: This is hands down the #1 best day to send emails, according to the majority of the data from these studies. Thursday: If you send two emails a week, choose Thursday for your second day. Wednesday: While no single study showed that Wednesday was the most popular, it came in second place several times.

send times based on data: 10 am: While late-morning send times were the most popular in general, several concluded the best time to send emails is at 10am Another notable time is 11am. 8 pm-midnight: I bet you didn’t expect that one. It looks like emails generally receive more opens and clicks later in the evening. This is likely due to people checking their email before going to bed. 2 pm: It looks like you might be successful by sending your emails later in the day as people are checking out of work mode or looking for distractions. 6 am: This makes complete sense given that research from the Center for Creative Leadership shows that 50% of you begin your day by emailing in bed.

Test Everything! Everyone is wrong until proven otherwise – that’s my motto. With this said, you’ll need to test these days and times against your own list.

First up, tone is everything. Unlike a classic novel, where you know what tone to expect, writing for email is different. It’s much more personal and conversational.

It doesn’t matter how valuable your content is. If your tone is dry and boring, it’s an effort for your subscribers to read it, and they’re met with resistance at every line.

Listen: When you write email copy, you should never lie, never cheat, never use poor taste, never use trickery, never be crass, and never insult your reader’s intelligence. However, you absolutely must stop watering down your copy, playing it safe, and making it lifeless, boring, and lacking in passion, all in the hopes of not offending those who’ll never do business with you anyway. Instead you must entertain, excite, and spark passion in your readers. Be polarising. This will enable you to form a friend-like bond with your audience by being ‘real’ and levelling with them and not trying to be some uptight prude.

Subject line/Preheader: Grabs your reader by the throat and forces them to keep reading. After reading your subject line, their brain should be burning with intrigue to find out more. Lead: Drag them into your copy by captivating them with an interesting statement or ‘pattern interrupt’ that jolts them to attention. Body: Fascinate them with a gripping or unusual story or example. Call To Action: Get them to click, share, buy or do whatever the primary call to action of your email is.

HTML emails actually decreased both their open and clickthrough rates.

Simple plain text emails seem to reflect the personal nature of email, while HTML-enhanced emails scream ‘commercial mass marketing’.

No one wants to feel like you’re marketing to them. They’d rather feel like they’ve opted in to receive information that will help them reach their desired outcome.

Use short sentences and write the way you talk. Good email copywriting is not super-dense technical stuff. The last thing you want is an overwhelming wall of text when someone opens your email. You want your emails to look approachable. Lots of small paragraphs, or even better, single lines of copy

A good test is to read everything you write aloud. Make sure everything reads smoothly. Great emails feel like a conversation between you and your best friend.

3. Study the herd and do the opposite Think of the landscape and context in which the reader will read your email. Will it be seen — or ignored — in a sea of other emails vying for their attention?

4. Make it visceral: bring your email copy to life with specifics Vague copy is a one-way ticket to inflicting email blindness on your reader.

Boring: ‘Increase your sales’ Specific: ‘Stop for a moment and imagine what it would feel like to double your sales in the next 90 days… profits would skyrocket… you’d be able to increase your bonus…

Boring: ‘You’ll lose weight and look great’. Specific: ‘You’ll finally be able to fit into that sexy little black dress and turn heads wherever you go… and even be the envy of all your friends’.

The call to action is a command. Be specific and tell them exactly what to do – don’t ask them! It means using proven phrases like these... Go ahead and check this out now. Claim your spot here. Click here and I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Sign up here and you will discover...