Last week, I discussed how I love seeing companies that operate in my hobbies/interests do email marketing well.
Thus, I broke down a welcome email from a cool ammunition company called AmmoSquared.
Since these companies that combine my personal and professional interests are so rare, I’m breaking down another email from them today.
This time, it’s a “testimonial barrage” email.
These types of emails seem simple: Hit your list with an email full of testimonials.
You barely have to do any “writing”. Those happy customers did that for you! Just copy + paste a few times, and boom goes the dynamite.
Except there’s one little inconvenient fact:
The testimonials must actually address holdout hesitations among customers.
If customers are concerned about the delivery process, and none of the testimonials address such a thing, you’re missing out on sales.
You must pick yours strategically — and AmmoSquared did an excellent job. Read on to see how.
About
AmmoSquared, or AMMO², is best described as an ammunition depository and bank.
You put money into the account to buy that AmmoSquared stores for you. You can exchange calibers, take delivery, and send it to others digitally (aka transferring ownership to someone else).
You can set up auto-transfers to stockpile on autopilot and take advantage of dollar-cost averaging.
In short, it works like a precious metals depository/storage company. I mean, it kind of is a precious metals depository/storage company. Because, you know, brass, copper, lead, and steel are involved if you know what I’m saying.
The Email:
This email is almost all testimonial. I will discuss all the email’s elements, but the focus will be on the testimonials: What they say, why AmmoSquared chose each, what objections they overcome, etc.
As for the format…
Like the first one from AmmoSquared that I broke down, it offers a tasteful mixture — mostly plain-text with a dash of visuals.
The cool thing is, I responded to this very email…
And someone responded to me pretty quickly:
Fast customer service. Lesson in there.
But for now, let’s get into the email…
The Subject Line:
A straightforward subject line to set the stage for the testimonial barrage:
The capitalization catches the eye. AmmoSquared emphasizes the number of satisfied customers here.
Plus, there’s a hint of exclusivity. It’s not just “we have THOUSANDS of happy customers!” It’s “Join THOUSANDS of happy customers!”
You get to become part of something bigger. Another sneaky little pebble that tips the scale towards sales.
The Body Copy
AmmoSquared opens the body with their logo, a menu, and a GIF (trust me, it’s a GIF in the actual email):
The multiple CTAs immediately work for AmmoSquared’s business model. They aren’t selling a bunch of individual products — they have one long-term offer that is a bit more complex.
So it doesn’t hurt to give the customer several options. If they want to learn how it works, they can. If they want to check out a blog post, they can. If they have a specific question, they can click HELP.
Now, about that GIF: It’s that guy right there saying “Here’s a couple reviews” as that text flashes on the screen.
Adds a nice visual element. Gets the reader a bit more engaged.
Into the first chunk of copy we go…
Reiterating and paying off the subject line immediately. Good stuff.
Further: AmmoSquared meets the customer where they are in that first sentence of normal-sized text. Customers may be hesitant, even if they have learned how AmmoSquared works. Simply acknowledging that
Oh, and customers tend to look at testimonials specifically because many last-minute hesitations come from not knowing what life is like with the offer. I know I’ve done that before buying pricey stuff. So it makes sense to preface the testimonials with that bit of copy.
As you’ll see, these testimonials aren’t random. Each is here to cover a pain point or objection.
Case in point:
Ammo prices are a HUGE pain point in the gun community. Trust me. I know. This was especially true during 2020 when ammo prices shot through the roof (pun intended).
In my professional email opinion, this testimonial probably sealed the deal for many customers. AmmoSquared can get you ammo during a shortage… and at a reasonable price!
The other stuff — seeing what’s on backorder, your storage, and price per round — are nice bits of “quality of life” copy (to borrow a game dev term). But the focus is AmmoSquared’s reliability.
The next few testimonials are shorter, but that doesn’t mean they lack substance. How about this one:
Some good overall stuff about how the people are nice and the company is great.
But notice that last sentence. It dimensionalizes the benefit — it puts it into terms the reader can understand and helps the reader visualize what using the offer would look like day-to-day.
Put another way:
People know what a 401k is and how it works. People might not know what a “ammo subscription service/bank account/depository” is. So the 401k analogy here clarifies things for the customer.
Next up, we address another potential objection — customer service:
Not saying that AmmoSquared has good or bad customer service (it’s actually good in my limited experience). However, customers never know for sure about customer service quality until they’re a customer.
Hearing it from another customer soothes that anxiety.
I’ve lumped two testimonials into the next section:
The second one is generic and adds to addressing the big pain points, so let’s focus on the first.
California has perhaps the strictest firearms laws in the US (You can guess my opinion on that, but we’re sticking strictly with facts for this post). These laws include several restrictions on ammo, including types you can buy, how to ship it, etc…
Yet California is the largest state by population. And it has a LOT of gun owners. This testimonial alleviates an objection in a huge market segment (California gun owners). Not to mention the nice comments about customer service quality.
Onto the last testimonial…
So much to break down here.
For one, the big-picture “future-pacing” sentence about revolutionizing how people buy ammo. It helps the reader feel they’ll be part of something bigger if they become a customer.
Not just any customer, though… but an early adopter.
They’ll look cool and smart by showing their gun peers and friends this new, innovative company. If the company becomes a huge, household name, they get bragging rights as an early customer. They also get to play a larger role in shaping the company by providing feedback at an earlier point in time.
I like how this testimonial gets specific about this customer’s experience. They explain how they “just wanted to try AmmoSquared” and now they’re hooked. Makes the benefits seem more real.
About the typos — they’re no big deal. A typo or two in a testimonial won’t matter if it doesn’t detract from the testimonial’s substance.
With the testimonials done, AmmoSquared urges the reader to check out the Reviews page if the reader is somehow still skeptical:
As I harp on, AmmoSquared’s business model doesn’t lend itself to an immediate “buy” for most. The offer is a bit more novel and complex.
So AmmoSquared aims to educate, clarify, overcome skepticism, and build loyalty while presenting buying opportunities. Perfect reason to include the reviews page. It could be the final push the customer needs.
Also, more traffic to the site helps SEO.
The mention of reviews being added DAILY is smart. It tells the reader that AmmoSquared has a large and growing base of happy customers… and it dismisses any objection along the lines of “These reviews are 3 years old. That’s not representative of the company now.”
Oh, and the Reviews page lets reviewers upload photos. Visuals help concretize the benefits of AmmoSquared’s ammo depository and delivery services.
Finally, AmmoSquared’s standard block of CTA copy:
Give the customer an opportunity to sign up, answer questions themselves, or ask questions directly via the customer service email.
Finally, a button that takes you to the site in general. More time on site = SEO juice and more time in front of the compelling website copy.
Takeaways
Here are some big takeaways:
1. The Copy Mechanics
As I’ve said 100 times, testimonials are so useful because they’re other customers’ words. You do less work to write a testimonial email, yet you’re more likely to “hit the target” with and convert certain customers.
Other small mechanical takeaways include the multiple CTAs for this business model (including a button to visit the site), the personalized language, and using italics for testimonials and bolding for names. Oh, and the images at the top.
These elements break up what would otherwise be a wall of text, making the email more attractive to read.
2. The Email Structure
The testimonial barrage email structure is fairly simple.
- Get a sentence or two of context
- Add a chunk of testimonials
- Add your CTA.
AmmoSquared follows the same structure that I laid out with some slight modifications for their business model.
That’s good — no need to reinvent the wheel here. Make adjustments for your business model but keep the focus on the testimonials.
3. The Overall Strategy
Not sure if this is part of AmmoSquared’s welcome sequence or not. I also get regular newsletters from them (they’re essentially the first half of blog posts with a CTA to finish reading on their site).
However, it works well in a welcome sequence for clinching subscribers that still haven’t bought. It casts a wide net among customers yet surgically addresses outstanding objections with the words of happy customers.
Testimonial-style emails like this could also work well in a new product launch and even just as simple broadcast emails if you’re building out structured broadcast campaigns.
Overall, they’re quite versatile from a strategy point of view. Just make sure you pick testimonials relevant to the pain points, desires, and product benefits for a given sequence or campaign.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list using the signup form below.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Share this post with someone who would find it helpful or insightful.
- Check out AmmoSquared if you want to own some precious metals — aka brass, lead, and copper! 😉