How To Write Emails People Love To Read

For the last three months, Rugby Bricks has maintained an average email open rate of 52.6%; the industry average is 40%.

Our open rate was 35.5% nine months ago.

We hypothesised that our increased open rate has come from others referring more readers. The reason they are referring more people is because they love our emails.

We changed our emails from text to image-based a few months ago. Here is what they look like now and why Katie liked reading them:

Here is how to replicate the same format with your own newsletter:

1. Find a visual representation of what you do in your business. The more topic-specific this is, the easier it is to illustrate.

In our case of showing technique differences in rugby, it is straightforward to show where you should be receiving a spiral pass and where you shouldn’t.

The goal is to show a clear before and after.

2. Grab two screenshots of something you’ve changed; how to do this on a Mac, and here is how to do it on a PC. You want two images: one before you made the change and then one after the change.

3. Head to Canva and use this template (I’ve already made it fit for 600 x 600, which is the format for any email reader). Once there, click “File” and click “Make a copy”.

4. Insert your screenshots to match the size of the images already there. The X will show what isn’t the best method, and the ✓ symbol represents your change.

5. Write some copy about your before and after images. We aim for 300 words per image at maximum.

Notes:

Businesspeople send and receive an average of 121 emails a day.

The average adult is exposed to an average of 247 marketing messages a day.

You must deliver your message sharply and succinctly to cut through the noise.

We’re not saying long-form emails don’t work (this newsletter takes roughly 2 - 5 minutes to read), but the average person won’t read them.

If you believe your customer is an average person, share helpful information quickly.

P.S. Last week, we wrote about great artists stealing. We stole the email format we use for Rugby Bricks from Harry Dry’s Marketing Examples.

The Father of Advertising On Making Great Ads

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, built one of the world’s largest agencies in the late ’40s.

Last year his agency, Ogilvy, generated $5.9 B in revenue.

Here is one of his famous one-liners on ads, “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”

The visual format, we presented earlier allows the reader to absorb a lot of information with little effort applied. Looking is faster than reading.

Beyond the metrics, testing, analytics, and marketing tools, advertising must be informative.

If you want to sell a product give the buyer as much information as possible before they purchase.

There are hundreds of ways to make people buy something but no one ever said “I’m glad I had less information when I bought that.”