Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

E-mail Advice from a man crazy enough to stop the Hulk

Lots of people struggle writing e-mails.  I’m a copywriter and I struggle with it sometimes.  I get. it.  I’m sure Jillian Michaels eats a bagel or skips it’s a workout every now and then too.  It happens.

So how do you write good emails.  One that gets read by the people on your list?

You can go the hypey route if you want.  You can focus on hooks, persuasion gimmicks, clickbait, and closing techniques.  In the end you’ll feel so dirty you’ll want to take a shower.

That’s a lot of work just to see unsubscribe notices filling your inbox like stimulus checks in 2020.

You want your e-mails interesting and entertaining, along with some value for your reader. 

I was reading the book Marvel Studios:  The First Ten Years.  When Marvel Studios was filming the Incredible Hulk, William Hurt (General Ross) was asked about being part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  His answer I thought summed up what really matters in writing e-mails.

He said, “I have to consider the character.  As an artist, it’s my job to ask, “Is the character I’m playing interesting enough?  Is he true enough, you know, to who we are as people?  Are they believable?  That is my anchor.  The really good artists pull it off.”

Change a few words in there and look what happens…

It’s my job to ask, Is the e-mail I’m writing interesting enough?  Is it true enough, you know, to who we are as people?  Is my message believable?  That is my anchor.  The really good marketers pull it off.

It’s about being true to you and your message and being sincere with your audience.  John Wooden  put it like this.  “Sincerity may not help us make friends, but it will help us keep them.”

When your message is interesting and believable the rest will work itself out.  Because your list will see your name and read your e-mails because it’s you.  Not because of your catchy subject line and perfect grammar.  

Adam

Lil Nas X ‘gets’ Seth Godin

Let’s pick up where we left off.  Breaking down Seth Godin’s Marketing in Five Steps.  To recap, the first step was:  Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling , and a contribution worth talking about.  

The second step is: 

Design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.

Years ago I met a lady who was a teacher and school principal.  She took over a small charter school in a low income area.  Her K-3 classes were full of kids with with low test scores.  In a couple of years she turned the school around.  How did she do it?  With music.  

It seems math, science, and things that bore the pants off 2nd graders is more fun when you sing it. She said the tougher the child or learning disability the better singing and music is for them.

Surely you’d think the media would pick up on this.  They should be implementing programs like this all over town, right?  

Nope.  Almost no one knows about what she does and most educators don’t care.  They think she’s crazy or that her school is an isolated case. That kind of thing can’t work “here”…

Famous rapper Lil Nas X used to be an aspiring rapper on Twitter.  He promoted his songs using memes and short videos. You’d think an aspiring rapper would file his song on the Billboard rap charts.  Where everyone loves rap.  He didn’t.  Nas listed his song Old Town Road on the country chart.

Almost no one cared.  Except Billboard who removed Old Town Road for “not being a country song”.  With all the chatter Billboard’s decision caused, two weeks later Nas’ song was No. 1.

Build it and they will come.  No.  This ain’t field of dreams.  

Build it for one, make it cool, and she will tell her friend.  That’s what Seth is talking about.

Adam

Writing Copy isn’t Just about Spacing

“Now, listen up. When a person first looks at something you have written it should be something that looks inviting to read. Easy-to-read. When he looks at your page of copy he should be drawn to your copy like a convict is to a Penthouse Magazine.”

Gary Halbert, The Boron Letters

Gary Halbert was never one for subtleties…  So how do we apply this advice from one of the best copywriters that ever lived?  

A lot of website design is done for us.  LeadPages, Wix, Click Funnels, they make our lives easier.  E-mail is another story.

I understood this in the beginning but Neville Medhora really helped this point hit home when I took his Copywriting Course.  Good spacing is a thing but don’t forget extras like using different colors, underlining, and using bold and italic text.   

Take a look at one of his e-mails.  

Neville uses a headline, sub-headlines, bold letters, and little arrow thingies (and this is one of his more simple e-mails).  He regularly uses a lot of little fun cartoon drawings, graphics, photos, and he plays with paragraph alignment.  These are all tips that make your e-mails more inviting.

If you don’t follow Gary’s advice the opposite will happen.  Instead of drawing in your readers you will repel them. 

Adam

Marketing Impossible to Ignore

“To become more fascinating, you don’t have to change who you are. You have to become more of who you are.”   

-Sally Hogshead

If I could summarize my biggest shift in marketing over the last year it would be becoming more of who I am.  I admit I do have an interesting story as a comic book artist turned marketing guy but that just scratches the surface.  Why should you care?

Marketers promote their secret sauce nowadays, but too many miss showing empathy and understanding.  It’s so easy to get caught up into tactics, systems, and great subject lines.  When everyone is doing and saying the same stuff we all become easy to ignore.  

What’s near impossible to ignore?  Understanding.  When you speak to your ideal customer with empathy they think, ‘he gets me.’  And from then on you’ll have a person who WANTS to hear from you, read your emails, and look at your ads.  

Fishing Out Writer’s Block

Blank screen.  What do you write?

Coming up with good ideas to talk about can be tough sometimes.  

Holidays are usually my cop out.  Especially if you use a website like Holiday Insights.  You can find all sorts of outrageous ‘days’ to talk about like Hammock Day and National Marshmallow Toasting Day.  

Bill Veeck was a baseball team owner who knew how to get butts in seats.  In 1941 he bought the cash-strapped and last-place Milwaukee Brewers and turned them around.  He invented wild new concepts like ladies night and shooting off fireworks after the team scored.  These things are normal now but back then they were revolutionary.

I’m not suggesting you need to reinvent the wheel by the way…   Look at Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.  How easy was that?  Lets take one of the most terrifying fish in the ocean and let’s talk about it for a week!  Sounds simple to me…

In picking your subject my only caveat is, talk about something you enjoy or find interesting.  Chat about it and anchor your business goals to it.