I don’t tell many people, but I am a carnivore.
(Ok, now that’s public. Oops. Whatever.)
No, that doesn’t mean I enjoy a good ribeye every once in a while.
All I eat is meat (and other animal products).
Long story. But I figured that context was needed for this Email Breakdown.
You see, eating nothing but meat makes you more conscious of the meat you consume. For nutritional and ethical reasons.
I’ve started shifting towards meat from American-raised, organic, healthy, grass-fed, free range, and other buzzword farms/animals.
I’ve also become interested in consuming the whole animal — not just muscle meat. Organ meats are incredibly healthy, so I can cover all my nutritional bases.
But ew, liver. Amirite?
Fortunately, a prominent MD (who also follows the carnivore way of eating) launched a supplement company that makes supplements out of animal organs. Even the capsules are made out of animal gelatin.
I was presently surprised that their email marketing game is strong, too.
Let’s take a look at what I mean below.
About Heart & Soil
Heart & Soil is an animal-based online supplement company based in Austin, TX. It was founded by Dr. Paul Saladino, an author, researcher, practicing MD, and carnivore.
He’s clear that he’s not dogmatic about diet, which is a flaw some fall into when going vegan/keto/carnivore/other things that are not the Standard American Diet.
It’s why he recently started consuming raw honey and certain berries (which is otherwise a big no-no among some dogmatic carnivores).
Soapbox aside, Dr. Saladino believes in “nose-to-tail” animal nutrition. Aka we shouldn’t just eat juicy ribeyes and savory pork chops…
Instead, we should eat the entire animal as our ancestors did.
Both for the nutrition and to honor the animal that provides us such astounding sustenance.
That includes organs, connective tissue, bones, fat, and so on.
But many know the struggles of eating organ meats and other non-muscle-meat parts. Liver especially. Some like the taste, but many find it repulsive.
So Dr. Saladino launched Heart & Soil to create supplements based entirely on animal products. No plant products, as far as I know, are used in the capsules at all. It’s all desiccated (freeze-dried and powdered) organs.
I’m a new customer, having subscribed to regular deliveries of their foundational Beef Organs supplement. I also hopped on their list to see what kind of email marketing efforts they’ve got going.
I think they’re pretty good. Let’s take a look at one below.
The Email: Helping Customers Solve Problems… With Personality and Wit
(This email’s a bit long thanks to some images and many line breaks in the recipe. So I can’t post a screenshot of the entire thing here. You’ll see each section through the rest of the post.)
Recipes are an excellent form of content to provide your customers if you’re in any niche remotely adjacent to the human body.
Take supplements, for example. If you’re selling keto supplements, you could mix some keto recipes into your email content calendar.
That provides the audience with actionable content they’ll love and offers multiple angles from which you can segue to selling your product.
This Heart & Soil email pretty much does what I’ve described. What’s more is that it sounds like a human is writing it. The tone is conversational, and there are tons of emojis.
They’ve even got “behind-the-scenes” photos.
Let’s get into it.
The Subject Line
The curiosity factor is here. It’s just an interesting subject line. Not something you’d typically see in your inbox.
And when you connect it with the sender name (Heart & Soil), the reader will wonder what this email could be about.
I like the emoji at the end. Draws attention and adds personality.
Emojis can work well if they fit with your brand tone/persona. But all things in moderation — don’t go overboard on the emojis.
A “Behind-the-Scenes” Look at the Company
I love when brands do the “behind-the-scenes” thing. Getting sneak peeks has an exclusivity factor to it, but it also shows that real people run the brand.
It’s the same reason why people love to learn about, say, a celebrity’s personal life.
In this instance, we have a pic of a team member grilling (and they say his name, Dillon). That’s a “regular person” activity that also matches the brand (since they’re an animal-based supplement company).
Oh, and it masterfully segues into the topic of the email.
I appreciate the CTA visual at the top. It’s not intrusive or distracting but draws enough attention for people who may want to buy on a whim after opening.
Introducing the Recipe With Imagery and Personality
What a great mix of personality, descriptive language, and informative content.
Heart & Soil uses the burger talk from the last section to introduce the honey and explain the benefits of the food while making the reader’s mouth water.
That sets up a masterful segue to the food the reader will learn how to make — the Chaffle, a carnivore take on a waffle.
Honey, after all, goes great with waffles.
I like how the first sentence here is bold. It highlights a key piece of information relevant to the previous section of the email.
It also visually breaks up the text to improve readability. Underlining and italics are great for this as well.
And speaking of visuals…
The use of emojis is fantastic. They’re used in the right spots — not too many, not too little.
Explaining What’s Needed
Now for the recipe.
Heart & Soil explains the chaffle and reinforces that explanation with emojis. Again, mixing text with visuals and adding personality.
Then come the ingredients.
Nothing too special here. I will say it’s concise. Heart & Soil doesn’t feel the need to stuff fluff in here.
The Cooking Instructions + Store CTA
Heart & Soil finishes the email with the cooking instructions.
Not much to say here. They just deliver what they promised.
That said, they continue to use lots of emojis without going overboard.
Plus, some of the sub-steps are lowercase, while others are uppercase. I can’t tell if that’s intentional, but it gives a more human feel. It’s as if someone was excited and poured their heart into this email without regard for perfect use of language.
I do wish they segued into a CTA to visit the store.
As of now, Heart & Soil sells supplements. Not food. So it might be a bit difficult.
But here’s an idea:
They could throw in a facts section at the end pointing out all the vital micronutrients in this recipe…
Then tie that into some of their supplements that focus on those micronutrients.
One other minor change I’d make is to sign off as one person.
Dr. Saladino has a bit of a personal brand, so he could easily be the person “writing” the email and signing at the bottom. But if he doesn’t want to do that, it could be “John Doe from Marketing” or something along those lines.
These small touches can only make the email feel even more personable.
Takeaways
This email is the exact type of thing the readers are looking for. It’s useful content with personality — makes you feel like people with a purpose run the brand. Not a faceless company.
And I can tell you that, as a carnivore, I’m actually going to try this recipe when I get my hands on a waffle maker.
The biggest change I’d make to enhance this email is tie the recipe to Heart & Soil’s products for a more natural and forceful CTA.
For example, they might remind the reader of the organic, grass-fed animal products and use that to segue to their animal organ supplements.
In the future, if Heart & Soil adds food products — like raw honey — then recipe emails like this would offer tons of natural CTA opportunities.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Check out Heart & Soil if you’re interested in reaping the benefits of animal organs (without having to cook and eat them)!