Email Templates: Useful or Counterfeits Your Audience Spots a Mile Away?
So I received a sales email that was dolled up and I gotta tell ya, it was real pretty.
A big ol’ image, fun font colors, the whole nine yards.
But personally? Not my style.
And I’ve learned audiences generally don’t care about graphics. Plus, those can contribute to being marked as spam (just as this one was).
This was the first email about a new offer, and being the renowned marketing tactician I am, I knew the rest of the email campaign was to follow.
The next email came in and it was noticeably different, in that all the frills were gone.
It was back to plain Jane text and… huh…
“This looks really familiar.“
All the emails after the first were exact copies of ones I had written in a sales campaign a while back.
The words were changed (as expected), but the format and structure were the same — it was clear they were trying to mimic the ‘flow’ mine had.
But there’s a glaring problem with that: my emails aren’t built with templates or to be templates.
I don’t plug and play. Each piece of work is unique, written for exactly that email’s purpose, within the context of that campaign, for that offer, to that audience, at that time.
So it’s a little awkward seeing my emails shoehorned into fill-in-the-blank, MadLibs-styled templates.
I’ll show you the superiority of tailor-made campaigns vs ‘templates’. I’ll do this via open rates, but before I do, a quick note on that:
I don’t put much stock in email open and click-through rates. If something is clearly off or there’s a weird anomaly, they can help point to possible problems, sure, but only if they’re taken within context.
Looking at rates for an isolated email, without the context of the overall campaign and current sales coming through, is in my humble opinion, totally moot.
To illustrate this, I’ve had click-through rates as low as 0.5-0.7% yet the entire campaign sold out, to the tune of $300k.
Some would cry to the heavens about how low that CTR is... but maybe – and clearly – it was mostly interested and qualified people clicking through…
I know, what a radical idea.
I’ve had rates below iNdUsTrY StAnDaRd, yet that client shouted from the virtual mountain tops, “James has made me SO much money!!” It was her highest earning year and I worked with her for the majority of it.
Rates must be used within context, otherwise, they’re nearly pointless. So with that said… here are some open rates with very little context for me to flaunt around :)
Now there are two natural conclusions from this, at least one of which is true:
I’m God’s greatest gift to the marketing world for crafting subject lines.
The context of the overall campaign, and how it’s crafted from pre-launch to post-launch, matters.
I won’t deny #1, but I’ll certainly confirm #2.
“But that’s just open rates, so all you’re doing is
comparing subject lines, not the content of the emails.”
Maybe on the first email, yes. But the rest?
I wholeheartedly disagree.
Frankly, I don’t think my subject lines are groundbreaking.
I think they do their job (and obviously so), but I also think the subject lines for the copied emails were fine.
Not spectacular, but not terribly bad either.
So then why did my campaign maintain a 60% open rate through the entire thing…
…yet the copied emails dropped off a cliff?
The content and context of the reader’s journey across the whole campaign.
(And yes, of course, the difference in offer, too.)
That’s why each campaign I craft is unique.
There aren’t any plug-and-play email templates that do this.
Average writers mostly rely on their templates, and sure, they do their job for that level.
Great writers understand why the templates work, and then craft something unique, specifically designed for the current job.
And I’d say the results speak for themselves. Even when I was hired with a heaping sum of money to write ‘templates’ that could be used, I instead delivered a masterclass on email campaign design — the psychology within that as you take the reader on a journey from email one to email done.
The truth is that no matter how hard I could try to create a good fill-in-the-blank email template, it will never stand up to authentic writing.
It’s like being hungry. You can grab a reservation at a 5-star restaurant and treat your palette to an absolutely delightful meal…
Hitting every tastebud perfectly, lighting your mouth up like 4th of July fireworks with the perfect balance of flavors and seasonings.
Even if you get the recipe for that 5-star meal, your version might taste only like 3 stars.
Why? Because that executive chef is crafting art on that stove and cutting board, from years of focused dedication and experience, not just following a checklist.
So the next time you have a rumbly tummy, you can have a chef handcraft a meal perfectly designed for you…
Or you can whip through the TacoBell drive-through, get the same $2 burrito as everyone else, and spend all night on the toilet wondering why you keep doing this to yourself.
In other words: spend the extra cash on a writer who’s worth their spit.
They’ll take care of your audience and rake in more boatloads of Benjamins far beyond what you’ll ever spend on them.
