At the end of Q2, I was working with a client that was struggling to get traction. This client was selling a very niche product into a notoriously difficult space to reach through email (IT). Although they had a wide total addressable market, the copy wasn’t producing nearly enough meetings. By reworking some of the copy to better reflect what’s important to their audience, I was able to get this client 100% of total meeting from Q2 set in the first month of Q3.

Here's the copy that failed

Let’s take a look at the copy that was being used originally:

Hi {FirstName}

Jim, the {Title} of (CUSTOMER), was dealing with the massive headache of figuring out how many laptops had been issued in the company since his former department lead didn’t have a solid asset management process in place.

Within his first month of working with (CLIENT), Jim found out that his company had twice as many laptops as they had employees.

Jim isn’t alone either. (CLIENT) is trusted by companies like Apple, Uber, Snap and Yelp to help remove the headache associated with asset management.

Do you have time on {3 days} to discuss how (CLIENT) can help you turn the nightmare of asset management into a simple process?

Best,

Metrics:

• 298 Delivered
• 24 Opened
• 0 Replied
• 0% Open / Reply Conversion

Those are horrible numbers, even for IT. Here’s why:

• It’s too long. Even though it’s only 4 sentences total, that first sentence alone is enough to get someone to stop reading.
• It’s written in the 3rd person. If you read your emails out loud and they sound like a commercial, something is wrong.
• Dynamic tags were too complex. Although the use of dynamic tags in emails can really add a level of personalization, this email was total overkill. The dynamic tags added no value to this specific message, especially the {Title} tag at the beginning.
• It’s not written for the right audience. By that, I mean that this email is written in story form, something that can be effective to certain audiences, but absolutely won’t be effective for other audiences. IT employees are notoriously dry and to the point. The last thing they want to read is a random story about someone they don’t know.

Here's the copy that performed

Now that we’ve looked at what was wrong with the first email, let’s look at the revised copy:

{FirstName},

Imagine if asset management came with zero stress.

We help consolidate your asset data into a single platform to give you a stronger grasp from purchase to end life.

This simplicity saved (CUSTOMER) $60k in the first 3 months.

Can we carve out 10 minutes for an intro conversation?

Best,

Metrics:

• 335 delivered
• 59 open
• 10 replied
• 17% Open / Reply Conversion

Why did this copy work?

Why this performed better:

• It’s brief. Overall this email was less than half the character count (307 vs 662). By cutting out the fat, this email became more approachable by busy IT executives who don’t have time to read lengthy emails.
• It’s direct. There’s no fluff, there’s no unnecessary jargon. It opens with a simple sentence asking them to imagine what the prospects life could be like, moves into how it’s accomplished and a brief social proof, then wraps up with a succinct CTA.
• It’s written for the right audience. Although this point is related to #1 and #2, it’s important to note that this email was written with the idea of selling to a specific persona, IT Directors and Executives, who are busy and overloaded with poorly written emails, like the first one. By focusing on being both succinct and direct, this email alone was able to turn a significantly higher response rate and generate more meetings in 17 days of being sent than the entire previous quarter.

Points to note:

• The open rates are still very low. This is a subject line issue and a topic for another post, but this subject line was something that was revisited a few times over the course of this campaign and resulted in the open rate increasing by over 2x.
• Not every meeting was set on email 1. Several meeting were set on follow-up emails related to the initial email, but the body copy was involved in getting the meetings set.

Key Takeaways:

• Know your audience. If your audience likes brief and direct emails, you should be sending them brief emails.
• Don’t write emails in the 3rd person. Remember to read them out loud and ask yourself if it sounds like a commercial.
• Take out unnecessary dynamic tags. If they truly add value to the email, leave them in. Otherwise, they are just clogging up the copy and can actually make the email appear less personal than having none at all if your audience picks up on it.