“Write your email to one person.”
“Act as if you’re writing to a friend.”
There’s a reason these sage pieces of advice are so often given to those looking to improve their copywriting…
They work.
With more ads than ever hitting eyeballs and inboxes, people appreciate emails that sound less “salesy” and more “helping a friend.”
They’ll open and read if it’s something genuinely helpful.
That doesn’t mean skipping the sale. You can sell without being explicit…
Growth Tools does just that in the email I break down below. Keep reading!
About Growth Tools
Growth Tools is a marketing company offering various tools and programs to help coaches and course creators enhance their marketing and grow their businesses.
Some of their tools include:
- Don’t Hit Publish (Writing improvement tool)
- Dripscripts (Email and sequence templates)
- GoViral (Referral campaign builder)
- ListGoal (Email list lead gen and list health monitoring)
Most of their tools are free. They also provide free resources, like email templates and checklists.
Their paid products appear to include a coaching program and certain courses. However, Growth Tools requests that you book a strategy call with them so they can figure out what’s best for you.
Being a marketing/martech company, Growth Tools knows how to do marketing. You’ll see that play out in the rest of this post.
The Email: A Simple but Personable Webinar Push
This email is a reasonably simple push to a sales webinar. Thus, the email isn’t fancy. But that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective.
It does its job well by being personable and concise — read on to see how so.
The Subject Line: Benefit + Curiosity
Benefit + curiosity is one of the most versatile subject lines. You dangle a benefit in front of the reader, but they must click the email to get that benefit.
In this case, it’s a tip for coaches and course creators to improve their ads.
A couple of things here:
First, notice the “(307% ROI)” at the end. Humans prefer specificity to generic promises.
Putting it in parentheses also lets Growth Tools cram that figure in without making the subject line too long. Compare it to:
Simple ad had for coaches and course creators that could offer 307% ROI
See? That’s way too long. It sounds less punchy, but it also would get cut off in the subject line field.
Speaking of specificity, Growth Tools called out their target audience smoothly. I’ve seen quite the hamfisted attempts to do this elsewhere — brands will try to cram every demographic and psychographic audience trait into their headline to try to catch their audience’s attention…
Yet it doesn’t work because people’s self-concept isn’t based around their various demographic and psychographic characteristics.
Anyways…
The other thing I like here is the lower-case first letter.
This is another little tactic to get more eyes on the subject line. It’s most effective when you use it infrequently, but not too infrequently.
If you want to try it, you can always split test the tactic with your email list.
Begin to Shift Their Beliefs
Good sales writing shifts beliefs. It gets the reader to think differently about something. It changes their mind.
Emails that tap into a customer pain ratchet up the belief-shifting power.
In one sentence, Growth Tools begins that process by tapping into an audience problem with an assertion.
The problem Growth Tools appeals to is quite niche-specific…
But something tells me it caught the reader’s attention. After all, Growth Tools is a marketing company — they know how to research and speak to their audience.
Plus, they offer coaching and courses themselves. They know the problems coaches and course creators struggle with.
Regardless, Growth Tools must back up their assertion with some evidence.
Show Them Why The Traditional Way is Wrong
Now, Growth Tools must show the reader why the old belief is wrong.
Here, they explain the futility of doing things the old way. Per Growth Tools, coaches and course creators invest tons of precious time and money into something with a high likelihood of failure.
Growth Tools then shows why the old methods fail so much.
Each bullet hits on a different pain point/experience the target audience has likely gone through. This casts a wide net within the narrow target audience they have to capture the attention of as many readers as possible.
Striking a Balance Between “Salesy” and Conversational
Here, Growth Tools starts the segue to the CTA.
It’s not a blatant sales pitch, though. It sounds more like they discovered some amazing secret that they genuinely want to share with the reader.
Many will detect a sales pitch coming at this point, but it still feels like a friend wants to share something cool with you.
Plus, they throw in a mention of results they managed to achieve with this method. This starts building the reader’s curiosity — again, without losing the “friend sharing a cool secret with you” feel.
At this point, the reader wants to find out what this is all about.
Call to Action: Save Your Seat!
The email provided a real tip and hinted at a possible solution without pushing the sale too hard.
By the time we hit the pitch, the value proposition is natural. A free webinar to learn this cool secret Growth Tools discovered and copy it for yourself.
Notice how Growth Tools put the times in there across several time zones. Making things easier for the reader is always better.
Lastly, you’ll see the email is “written” from the founder’s (Bryan’s) perspective. Keeps the whole “friend talking to a friend” feeling strong.
Reiterate, But With More Specificity
Good PS’s do two things:
- Attract the reader’s eyeballs
- Convey the entire email’s point to the “skimmers”
This PS does just that.
It explains just how valuable this secret is (they spent over $750k and lots of time to discover it), discusses the big benefits (easy to make and earned 307% ROI), and reveals how to learn it (free workshop).
Takeaways
One big takeaway here is to treat each email as a “letter to a friend,” not a “corporate speech to a crowd of people.”
The other is that many of your broadcast or promo emails should be shifting customer beliefs towards those that make them want to buy (without lying to them, of course).
Putting these two concepts together is incredibly powerful. Your emails feel like a friend who genuinely wants to help another friend and is enthusiastic about doing that.
This makes the reader feel as if you care — that you don’t see them as a mere money bag.
Not to mention, it makes your reader eager to read your stuff, even if they’re not ready to buy what you’re selling.
What to Do Next
- Get on my email list.
- Reach out to me if you want help writing emails like this one.
- Check out Growth Tools if you’re a coach, consultant, or online course creator who wants a bunch of tools to help you market your offers better.