Email Breakdown #53: Greco Gum Part 1

Want that sharp, s3xy jawline like the movie stars and models have?

Some of it is genetics.

Another part of it is body composition. The leaner you are, the less fat is held on your face… meaning your jaw comes out.

However, the simple act of chewing a lot can play a role as well.

See, jaw muscles are like any other muscles to some degree. Provide them enough stimulation via resistance training, and they grow.

But they ain’t your glutes, hams, or quads. They ain’t designed for maximal loads at low reps.

They need lots of low-intensity resistance training…

In other words, chewing.

It won’t necessarily make the bone more defined (that’s what makes sharp jawlines look sharp), but bigger jaw muscles can add to the look a bit. I did some research, and yes, people with strong jaw muscles do have a bit nicer of a look to their jaws.

No need to eat more to train your jaws, though. That defeats the whole point since you’ll put on weight.

You can instead chew on mastic gum — a harder type of gum made from a type of tree in Chios, Greece.

One company that sells this gum is a humble little online company called Greco Gum. And they “get” email.

I jumped on their list and got lots of great emails, so it was hard to pick one. I settled on a classic “belief-shifter” email for you to look at.

Read on…

About Greco Gum

Greco Gum is an online company that sells mastic gum — gum designed to help you strengthen your jaw muscles and, in theory, build a more defined jawline.

The company was founded by Logan Wright. Logan had used other mastic gum for years but got fed up with how hard it was to get good mastic gum in the US. Shipping fees were high, and delivery took forever. Not to mention a lack of consistent quality.

Greco says the gum is slightly bitter, followed by a pine and cedar-like flavor. Not bad. Not super artificial and sugary-tasting.

But taste isn’t the point. The health and jaw strength benefits are the point. Chewing it strengthens the following muscles, per the site:

Masseter
Temporalis
Lateral pterygoid
Medial pterygoid

Greco Gum also claims mastic gum can:

Improve breathing — Chewing helps release certain types of stem cells that respond to stress. These stem cells promote maxilla growth, widening the palate and airways.
Enhance overall feeling/well-being — Greco says mastic gum has antioxidants clinically shown to ease digestive/GI issues, among other things.

As the name implies, Greco Gum sources its products from Greece. Specifically, the island of Chios, where this stuff had been made for millennia. Per Greco, Chios is the only place where the ingredients can be produced (resinous sap from the Pistacia lentiscus tree).

Alright, enough science. How about that email…

The Email: Shifting Beliefs

We’ve got a quick belief-shifter email from Greco Gum. It hones in on an objection — skepticism about whether growing your jaw is possible (and a follow-up objection, if mastic can do that).

The email is shorter than it appears — about 30% of it is a testimonial — but it gets the job done.

Right off the bat, I like the formatting. The logos at the top (something I recommend most brands do for most of their emails).

That tannish background is one of the brand’s colors, and the text almost seems to have the slightest blue tinge to it.

Subtle, but infuses a bit of brand personality.

Now let’s get into the meat of the messaging…

The Subject Line and Preview Text

Our subject line follows a classic formula — “the truth about *insert customer goal*” to get the curiosity going:

Greco hyper-focuses on one problem: growing your jaw. So they don’t need to do much here to get the point across.

Notice how there’s no real whiff of sales agenda here. It’s just offering to educate you about your jaw.

I like how the first letter of the first word is lowercase. Also a simple yet effective technique to grab the eyes.

Preview text complements the subject line well:

Now, the customer knows they’ll learn some “truth” about growing their jaw… AND why they need the product Greco Gum happens to sell to solve it.

So the sales agenda tiptoes in, but to an appropriate degree.

And again, the first letter of the first word is lowercase.

The Body Copy

The email starts strong by connecting to the reader’s main goal — getting a s3xy jawline:

This whole section exemplifies “meeting the customer where they are.”

The customer identifies themselves with that first line — they, too, found Greco Gum while researching ways to get a more defined jaw.

The piece in quotations uses some simple psychology to strengthen the connection.

One way I might change this is to make this section “Many who find us ask ‘is it really possible to develop a strong jaw from chewing alone?” Not a huge change, but it does streamline the copy without a material loss in meaning. I do admit it takes a bit of the “conversational” edge to it, so it’s a trade-off.

The next line reassures the customer that their objection is valid:

Validating the objection builds trust with the customer because you aren’t trying to “sneak past them” or anything.

Plus, Greco touches on a pain point within the objection — substandard commodities. The whole “things aren’t built to last anymore” and all that.

The brand is appealing to the “reject modernity, embrace tradition!” type of crowd (of which I am a part to some degree).

This email could still be a complete piece without this section… but it would be much weaker. It would simply be a “question and answer” rather than a “belief shifter.”

Case in point — the next section, which contains bullets on the “how” and “why” of Greco Gum and jaw development:

Without that single line of copy addressing the objection before this section… this section would not hit as hard.

As for this section, each bullet helps build the case for Greco Gum. Each covers a different benefit… and each benefit builds up to the customer’s goal.

For example, the first bullet in the above section addresses what I discussed at the start of this post, too. Volume matters.

Then, we get a little more sciency:

I like using quotes around niche-specific colloquialisms. Draws attention and adds a bit of a “secret mechanism” type of feel to the phrase in question.

People into fitness (probably a lot of this audience) understand what the “pump” is (blood flowing to the muscle being worked, especially during volume-heavy workouts). The quotes around “jaw pump” signal to the reader that Greco Gum’s using a niche-specific phrase.

Oh, and all the sciency stuff. That’s great, too. Adds authority.

So now the reader knows volume matters. They know the “jaw pump” helps. That’s why mastic gum works.

But one more objection: you can get that from regular gum, right?

Not so fast:

This is naturally the next objection once the reader knows that chewing, in general, helps the jaw. Most customers would just buy their favorite brand of chewing gum at the store or on Amazon if they had no reason to believe Greco was superior in some fashion.

It’s good that Greco said, “offering more resistance”. Without that line, it would be unclear to the customer why harder gum is better. I mean, it makes sense intuitively…

But you generally want to actually state the benefit to be more persuasive and clear.

Great framing for building trust. Temper expectations while continuing to exude confidence in your product.

Greco acknowledges that mastic gum won’t completely change your life. It’s just one tool… but a potent (and, for their marketing purposes, necessary) tool.

And then they follow that line up with some social proof:

Boom. Lead with the benefit. That’s a lot more powerful because the testimonial here tells a story about the result. It’s future-pacing and focusing on the result, not the product. It’s more subtle than naming the product.

The testimonial continues:

That’s another awesome way to frame the benefit — someone else didn’t even recognize the happy customer here. Greco includes a quote from the testimonial-giver’s acquaintance to make it feel more real.

Similarly, the bit about “She said it in Japanese” makes the testimonial more grounded as well. It adds some real-world context.

We finish up the email and testimonial simultaneously:

Only now is the product mentioned. Like I said, the whole testimonial hits harder by future-pacing the desired result… and then bringing in the product.

Even if the reader knows Greco Gum is why the customer in this testimonial experienced the results.

And then that last sentence. It seems generic, but it isn’t. Some products in this space may blow smoke about the results they achieve without actually achieving them. So to have a customer say Greco Gum works backs up Greco’s earlier claims in this email.

Two other things:

First, the button isn’t “Get your Greco Gum”. It’s “Start Sculpting.” I like the creative flair. It’s also results-focused — you’re sculpting your jaw, not chewing gum.

Second, see that line at the very bottom of the screenshot?

Always good to encourage replies (assuming you can logistically support replies in terms of list size). Helps deliverability and makes you feel more human.

Takeaways

Here are some big takeaways:

1. The Copy Mechanics

The copy itself is concise in most cases. No droning on or anything. The only small change I’d make would be cut a few words from the lead. But even then, that can change the conversational tone a bit, so it depends on Greco’s goal there.

Line spacing is plentiful, enhancing readability. Greco varies sentence structure to keep things fresh.

I also like how the brand colors are worked in. Instead of black text on white background, it’s black (with what looks like the slightest hint of blue) text on a beige background. And an orange button with the same text color.

One other small suggestion — perhaps make an explicit CTA before the button. Again, small change. But it never hurts to be overly clear.

2. The Email Structure

The structure’s pretty simple. Connect with the customer’s objection, reassure them that the objection is legit, then diffuse the objection.

As long as you know your customer’s objections, this format is pretty hard to screw up. Mostly plug-and-play.

The testimonial at the end is a nice touch to strengthen the objection-busting and transition to the CTA absent that explicit CTA.

3. The Overall Strategy

Greco sells literally one product. This product. So the strategy here is to continually provide “pebbles” that tip the scales toward buying that single product.

Zooming out even further — I like the “one product” approach.

Businesses don’t need to have 1,000 SKUs if it doesn’t fit their model. After all, business is ultimately about finding a hungry market and satisfying that hunger.

If all it takes is one product and some creative copy, then so be it. Small, simple, and nimble can beat large, complex, and bumbling.

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.
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Check out Greco Gum if you want to sculpt that sharp, angular jawline… or, at the very least, get better at eating chewy foods!