Transcription
Welcome to send better emails. All right. Sorry, I missed the countdown again. You always should give me a verbal cue, to be fair. No, it's all good. So, Mr. Copeland, we're about to go live. Are you ready?
I was watching a clip of Laminal getting dragged down by a Portuguese midfielder. How have you managed to do that? 'Cause we were talking about what we're going to talk about this episode, and somehow you found like a two-second gap to watch a football clip. How did that happen?
I happened to already have the, uh, the football subreddit open, and so it was just happened to be on my screen when I flicked onto that tab. Right. Okay. Fine. Fine. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I mean, that that should give any football fans listening will now have a clue as to when we're recording this, 'cause I guess this will go out quite a long time after actual recording. Yeah. I hope email trends don't change in the next three weeks, otherwise this will be really annoying. Yeah. Maybe email marketing will finally be dead. Yeah. You mean it's not already? No.
And that is a good segue. That is a good segue. Yeah, we're doing, we're doing mythbusting today. This is kind of like a bonus episode, I guess. I don't know whether we'll release it on a Monday or a Thursday, but, but we're going to, we're going to flip things around a bit because whereas previously in these bonus episodes, Jamie has been feeding me like the fun stuff that I have to work with, this time I'm going to be feeding him the myths and he's going to be sharing his thoughts, analyzing, dissecting on the spot. Jamie, you haven't seen these myths. No. So, this time James will be giving the myths. I'll be receiving the myths and I'll give you what am I supposed to do when I've got them?
Uh, just, just riff on them. Just say, is it true? Is it false? How much, how many kernels of truth are in these myths? Are they complete BS? You know, and then maybe, maybe you can give them like a score. I don't know. I feel like the scoring system works well in these special episodes. Like maybe you rate them out of 10 based on like how BS they are. So, 10 out of 10 is like full BS. Okay. Not even a kernel of truth. One out of 10 is actually, that's not really a myth, that's true. Okay, cool. Let's get these, let's get the kernels going. I'm going to get my myth-busting glasses on.
All right. An interesting trend, James, just whilst we're here. Yeah. Um, people are watching us more now as opposed to listening. Before we were heavily skewed towards listening. Now we're heavily skewed towards watching. That worries me because I definitely don't optimize for appearance when going onto these podcasts. Have you ever optimized for appearance? It's looks maxing. That's what they, that's what the Gen Z's call it. Looks maxing. Looks maxing. Yeah, we're doing all the time. Optimize for appearance is what the email marketer descri, uh, would would describe it as. But yes, looks maxing. It's like maximizing how good you look based on your kind of fundamental assets. Have you heard of that before? No, I didn't know that. So, what would I do to be looks maxing? Well, put on your myth-busting glasses would be a start. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, there we go. Looks maxed. You're right. It doesn't roll off. I think I might have got this wrong. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, hopefully there's no Gen Z people listening. Yeah, there won't be.
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Right, we've got Mr. Bust. So, without further ado, myth number one. Mhm. It's better to send your email on a Monday rather than a Friday. Okay. Myth number one. What are your thoughts?
My thoughts on that are it might be. Okay. But you don't know unless you've tested it. I like it. Okay, good. I feel like I'm under pressure here as well. Yeah, it's tough. It's not easy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I think every time I give like my take on it, I might just end it with a little inflection. So, it's like a question and then I'm going to wait for your approval and then I'll be like, "Okay, fine. Good. That was a that was a good Australian accent." Yeah. I don't normally do. I can't do any accent, so I'm not doing an Australian one. No, that's fine. That's fine. Um, yeah, I think so. It's Sunday is definitely one of those things that we that we want to test. Uh, and my, if I was to say, I might say I think Monday is a better day than than Friday. That's the only thing that I could say with any certainty. That's my hypothesis. Then I test it and then I know when I've got enough data whether Monday is better than Friday. Um, but that also goes for every other day of the week. I think there is a sometimes um we can get hung up on trying to find the perfect day when we have to consider we might want to move on and test other things.
Yeah, that's a really, really strong start. Okay, good. Uh, we, we're rating these on the BS scale, right? We are. I do. Before we get to that, I do want to say that you can't cop out of every myth by saying we need to test. Uh, at some point you're going to have to draw a line in the sand. I want to say that now because the other four could also be answered with, we need to test. Uh, so, uh, you get one, we need to test, and you've used that already. That's your, that wasn't in the T's and T's. Well, I know, but I can make these up as I go along. Um, I also want to a quick bonus question before we get to your rating. Do you know what day of the week Matthew McConaughey sends his newsletter? Yes, I do because I sign, I'm reg, I'm signed up to it. Yeah. Um, I'm trying to remember though. Is it, is it a Friday? M. It is. It's a Friday afternoon. Yeah. Um, which is, I guess on paper, a lot of the other marketers would say that's the worst possible time to send an email because people have kind of clocked off by that point. And you know, people aren't reading their work emails on a Friday afternoon, but that's exactly why McConaughey sends at that time, Jamie, because he he wants to kind of, he wants to be part of that bridge between the working week and the weekend. Yeah, it's the art, the, I can't remember what it's actually called, but it's all about the art of living. Exactly. Yeah. Lyrics of living. That's a lyrics of living. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
Okay. So, what are you giving that myth out of 10? Um, I actually think that's, I, I'm going to give that a fairly low score, I think, because it's a quite a legitimate question, albeit, you know, from a naive place. I'm going to give that a four out of 10. Okay. On the BS. All right.
Myth number two. Including emojis will always improve my open rate. So, it's up, it's down to testing. It is. That's the problem. I, I was so intent on making the joke, I didn't actually listen to what the question was. Would you mind repeating the question for me? Yeah. Including emojis will always improve my open rate. Uh, in the subject line, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, I, I think this is a spoiler for when I get around to the BS score. I think it's going to be quite high on a BS score. Um, I don't think it always will. I think there are other things that that will impact open rates to a much higher degree than whether or not we put an emoji in. It's quite an outdated thing to be hung up on. I think as well, maybe when you created your first Mailchimp account, you know, 10 years ago, you might have said, "Well, do I, you know, is this, I'm going to get hung up on this and should I or should I not do it?" Um, I think there are more important questions around how can I impact my open rate than whether there's an emoji in the subject line or not. It is a tactic, and I'm sorry, it is something that you will need to test as well, but it's such a small tactic in a big armory, you know, arsenal of of tactics that you can use to impact open rates. So, that's my take on that. Um, is it like obsessing over whether your the corners of your buttons are sharp or rounded? Yeah, I think so. It's it's a kind of a very cosmetic thing. Look, it does do good work. You know, I could open my inbox now and and there are many subject lines um with an emoji in. But the ones that are, I definitely know are newsletters. So, are they standing out like I think they are, is the, you know, is the other thing? Difficult one. Something to test. Everyone's got different opinions on it. Your audience might be different. How many caveats can I get in here? Yeah. Kind of situation. But it is true. I mean, a lot of these myths will have caveats, of course. I think probably the most powerful use of emojis that I see is when a brand chooses one emoji and just always uses that. I think that can be, that's quite an interesting use of them. Yeah. So, like if you, if you manage to associate your brand with a particular emoji or like a particular color and maybe you just include like the the the circle of that color um so, you know, you're always sending something purple in your subject line, then you know, that's that's quite interesting. But, um, yeah, I, I get one here from a guy called Rob from Salmon Labs. Um, and every single subject line, I believe, starts with like a little sushi emoji. Yeah. See, that's nice. So, it's recognizable. And we spoke about email brand. Yeah. As well, and that probably plays into that a little bit in in a previous episode. Yeah.
Okay. I like it. So, uh, BS score. I'm going to put this quite high actually. I'm going to go, uh, maybe this is my, I feel quite strongly about that. So, I'm going to rate it quite highly. Maybe we can't do seven. Mustn't do seven. So, I'm going to rate it eight. Why? Why not seven? Is that a rule? Yeah. I can't. There's some podcast or something or some creator who says you can't ever rate it seven 'cause it's a bit of a cop-out score. Okay. Yeah, fair. I get that. Um, all right. Third, third myth. Recipients will get angry if you miss an email. Uh, this is another one that's, I, I think can't test for anger. I mean, you can't. Well, you probably could. You probably could. Um, yeah, I think that is a bad myth. I think if you, if you think that, I would say 99.9% of the people that send emails out are doing any form of email marketing, if and if they, if any one of them think that, my first reaction would be, get over yourself. Um, I think the impact of missing a week is felt by you, not by your audience. Um, and and so if it's going to negatively impact anyone, it's going to ne negatively impact you in terms of like your momentum, um, in terms of like, uh, the, uh, the likelihood that you're then going to miss another one, uh, straight afterwards. Um, and about the results that you may have got if you had to send an email, all of that stuff. I think no one's going to get angry if you miss an email unless you have, unless you're someone like Ticketmaster and you've said that you're going to announce a show and that tickets will be live on this deadline, but the email never gets sent, then people might be angry. You'll get all the Swifties after you or Oasis fans. But I think for most people, no one's going to miss your email, if I'm honest.
Yeah, I think you're, you're right to put that caveat at the end because some email is, some, some, some email is used by businesses as a form of alerts, right? And so whether that is, um, your, uh, you're getting an email from the Premier League to let you know that there's a fantasy football game week coming up, or whether it's Ticketmaster. Some people are depending on emails in order to be reminded of certain things happening. And maybe in those instances, it could cause a problem. But generally, there's that, that's a weird gray area. Those alerts emails, just quickly on a, on a tangent, those alerts style emails where you might be expecting them, they're kind of in that weird gray area of marketing, but also maybe transactional. Yeah. Yeah. I, I know what you're saying. Yeah. You know, it's not, you know, that's what. So, I think those are slightly different. And obviously transactional emails like order confirmations and delivery notifications and all that stuff that people are going to get angry if they don't get those sometimes, but pure marketing emails and particularly newsletters. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm going to get, I'm going to rate that quite high. I'm going to rate that eight out of 10 as well. Okay. Nice. Nice.
All right. Myth number four. Boring looking emails get less engagement. Um, we know this to be for the opposite to be true. M. So, I don't know if we wanted to talk about that too much other than to say that we, I'm going to use that T word again, not not testicle, but testing where we have tested this and engagement is always much higher if we strip things back. Um, but the important thing here is what that says about the variety in in the coms you're sending. So, someone, um, you know, we're talking about sticking out in the inbox, we're talking about making a higher impact when we when we land in the inbox as well. And we're doing that if we're sending a plain text email, we strip it all back. Um, and plain text doesn't just mean take the devices and the header out. It means format it like it's a plain text email, like it's coming from one inbox to the other, not from an email platform. Um, those um are more personable. They tend to get higher engagement. And there's only one example in the past two years where we've sent a plain text email and it didn't get better engagement. Um, so that's what I have to say on that.
Yeah, it's kind of crazy really, isn't it? Um, that like being able to say that is is is kind of crazy because this is this isn't something that we've tested three times and one of them didn't work and two of them did. Like we test this regularly. Um, so the the ratio must be significantly in favor of um boring looking emails getting more engagement, sometimes significantly more, Jamie, as with the recent test. Significantly more. Um, and so, yeah, uh, it's, um, this is this isn't just a myth that kind of has kernels of truth. I would say this is actually, maybe I'll go as far as to say it's misleading. Jamie, what do you think? Yeah, 100%. I think it's, and you, you've tried purposely tried to mislead me and the audience here with that question. You're a tricky customer. Yeah. Yeah. Try and catch you out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually re-watching that, funnily enough. Yeah, I know. That's why I dropped it. Oh, fair. Okay. Forgot I've mentioned it to you. Um, okay. So, uh, I'm expecting a big score here. Yeah. And just to say, you know, this isn't that we, we've tested this and, you know, last, I think it was last week I reported one to you, James, where we said, "Okay, we've got some webinar spots to fill. Um, so we want some good engagement here. It got 10 times as many clicks because we elected to do a plain text email." Um, so, yeah, a high BS score. I'm going to go nine out of 10 there because I'm saving 10 out of 10 for something that's really heinous.
Okay. I mean, we've got one myth left, so this, this, this better be it, I suppose. I hope it's, I hope the heinousness is, uh, is on a level for you. Yeah. Sending to fewer than 100 people is pointless. Um, there's no myths here where it's actually true. Is that obviously intentional, right? 'Cause we're myth busting. Yeah, we're myth busting. Yeah. But these are all, what I would say about these myths is that these are all things that at some point, either a client or prospective client has said to to me. Okay. True. Yeah. Um, no, emailing, um, less than 100 people is worth it. The, the analogy that I always use is, you would be, unless you're Steven Bartlett, which I think even he would be very happy to have less than 100, you know, 66 people in a room, uh, and to be able to speak to those 66 people in that room. If we visualize our audience like that, all of a sudden emailing 66 people feels different. Okay. It's not as pure a form of engagement as having those people's attention in that room and, you know, the buy-in they've had to exhibit to to be there in that room. But if we, we want to visualize 66 people, not 66 email addresses that addresses that are listed in my list on my ESP. Uh, these are people that are are signed up to hear from you. You should send them something. And something that you've brought up a couple of times on this podcast in different episodes is, uh, 66, uh, private yacht buyers are different to 66, um, why can't I think of something not very costly, like stationery, office stationery supplies. Yeah, you know, we're talking about high-value individuals there. So, it depends on what you're selling. It depends on all of these things. But I think there are very few examples that I can think of where emailing less than 100 people is not worth your time.
Yeah, I'd, um, throw in a quick acknowledgement of segmentation here as well because, um, yeah, you know, yes, your total list might be under 100 people, and even in that instance, we'd say it's worth it. But also, you know, we work with some, uh, clients who send a newsletter only for their current clients. They have a client newsletter, and there's only 45 people on it, for example, but they are all people that pay them every month for for their service, and they're all people that might pay them more for different services. Um, so this 45, there's, there's a huge vested interest for the business to spend time and effort emailing this 45 people because they're incredibly high value. They want to keep them sweet. They want to have that point of contact, and there's always the possibility of upselling them a service or getting them to leave a review on something or or nominate us in this award or whatever it might be. So, um, yeah, to echo your points, Jamie, yes, it, it depends on the, the, the people in question, but generally, uh, it's always worth sending those emails, even to a small list.
Yeah, agreed. I think, um, and so this is, this is a myth that's been busted. I think, um, one thing I would say as well is, um, my train of thought is gone. Sorry, that's me sapping away at your train of thought. Yeah. No, it's all right. My own, my own train of thought came barging in and derailed yours. Your unstoppable force met my very immovable object. Um, yeah. No, I've lost my thought there. But I think, um, no, I've got it back. Sorry. So, some people, you know, other marketers will will talk about how, um, one email subscriber is worth 100 social media followers. Okay? So, if you've got 66 people on your list, you're talking about what could be, you know, the same value as over 6 and a half thousand Instagram followers or whatever. If you're a business that has less than 100 people, okay, well, you might be posting five times a week on LinkedIn, uh, and your LinkedIn page has only got like a thousand followers or whatever. Um, so, you know, do that math as well. Um, I would say to kind of put it in perspective. Very nice. Give it a score. Um, this one I'm going to go 9.5 out of 10. Wow. Okay. Okay. Didn't, didn't quite hit the 10 out of 10 on the list. I'm going to say 10 out of 10 for something else. My father-in-law actually says you can never get 10 out of 10. It's true because there's always room for improvement. But yeah. Yeah, I guess maybe that says something about what my father-in-law says about me. But you said don't worry about the 10 out of 10. Just focus on getting five first. No, very nice. Well done, Jay. We'll no doubt do more myths because there are plenty in in email marketing. We didn't even do the big one, which is email marketing is dead. The one that we we flirted with at the start of the, uh, of the segment. So, um, that's, that's just, that's why that's a clickbait myth, though, isn't it? Everyone knows that's not. I mean, there might be some people who think it is dead, but I read that social media is dead the other day. So, did you RIP social media? Social media, no. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe we all are, to be fair. I was on it. I've been on it like five times today. I can't be that dead. Yeah. No. Um, anyway, right. Thanks for that. I enjoyed, I enjoyed being asked questions really well on the spot. Thank you. Yeah, good work. Okay. Well, good to see you, mate. Yeah, nice, nice chatting. Yeah, likewise. All right, Tara for now. Bye. Bye.
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