Please critique this email!

Let me ask a sincere question:

If YOU got that email, would you feel compelled to buy?

I would say you have to heat up the prospect with a series of emails, approaching them from all sorts of different angles.

Like medical problems, embarrassment, not being able to do the things they use to do, etc. and how that can all go away if they just dropped a few pounds.

- Rick Duris

Kris - that was an excellent breakdown of my email. I love your pointers about the urgency I need to create for customers and how I need to relate to my subscribers. "Email marketing should sound like a friend referring another friend" is something that I believe will prove to be invaluable for this campaign.

Thank you for spending the time on that email. It really helps me out!

RickDuris - You're right, I probably would not be compelled to purchase it. Ahh well, back to drawing board, eh?

Metronicity - Good suggestions - I'll be using them for the new version.

I agree. There is no flow to it. You are not grabbing the prospect by his fat gut and sticking his face in the biggest benefit (from the beginning). Then keep them going and going until the call to action. Way too long an email. Most emails I actually read (not from friends/family) are maybe 3 paragraphs (short ones at that) and lead me to a video or something free that I cant do without.

Was going good until we got to here. I almost laughed out loud, it was like I was listening to a real guy ( I really got into the script you had before the above quoted paragraph, I thought it was good stuff) but then the "real guy" took off his mask and started doing the hokey-pokey saying "super fantastic amazing deal!". A real friend would not "metaphorize" their fat loss as "melts fat like butter on a skillet". Think about if you were talking this script to a friend. Once you said the above quoted paragraph, your buddy would give you a weird look. :p Then when you continue the metaphor "the fat dripped so fast, I stopped buying clothes for months". This is getting too "cute" now. Your getting too much into your above metaphor. Which is not usually how a person would speak.

"or else we'd have to return the stuff before I'd even get a chance to wear it!"

And now we have a run on with an odd metaphor. So I would defiantly revise it as such:

I couldn't believe how fast I was shedding the pounds. It was ridiculous. I remember a funny story where my wife and I went shopping for some new jeans that would fit my thinning waistline. We found a nice pair, bought them. But then after just a couple days even those jeans started falling loose because I was shedding those pounds too quickly! My wife just rolled her eyes and said, "I'm not coming with you this time, go and get those jeans yourself!".

The first part, is too much. 3 Day fat burning machine miracle. Fat burning machine, again, not something you would say in a conversation. And miracle we were praying for is a very bold statement for just one little email. If you were writing a long salescopy where you spent the first 5 paragraphs or more just focusing on pathos then yes you can use those powerful words - it would fit better then. But this is just one email, using words like praying for a miracle seem too much. I would take the approach of:

The stress of being overweight was finally lifted from my shoulders. I had spent so much time and hard earned dollars buying the wrong stuff. I wasted my time and money buying useless pills, supplements, and crappy workout machines. I could have been spending that time and money on my family! I am so grateful that I had discovered the truth on how my body actually worked. It was like I just pushed the right button, and blam! My body wanted to burn fat, all the time.

As for the rest, just pay attention to using cheesy, and out dated words and phrases such as, drop the bull, gizmos, holy cow.

Now for your call to action there is one major problem. If this is your product, that you created, then you can say go to my website. But if you are an affiliate, then you want to approach it by saying something along the lines of. "The time and money that I saved by following this system paid for the price of the investment I made buying the system". The mistake you made was that you spent all the time in this email giving your version of their problem, showing them your solution, then telling them, "Hey! Go to my website and buy my product!" It makes all of the above that you wrote become impersonal. You just put up a stop sign saying "This is my product, and I just wrote all of the above so that you would buy it".

I know I said to really follow through with that call to action. However this emails purpose is to create a LEAD and your websites purpose is to finalize the sale. This email is also pre-selling that lead, so that when they get to your website they are so hyped to buy they click your pay button.

Do not try to finalize the sale in the email. Just provide the link saying to head over to the main site to get the full details. Something along those lines. Remember you do not want to break your persona in this email. Like if you were talking to your buddy or some person on the street. You wouldn't spend 10 minutes telling them about your journey with fat loss then end the conversation by saying "Hey get your credit card and I'll charge you now and you can get my solution!" But you would say, "Hey, you should totally just go for it and check out ********* right now! I already tried it out, so I'm sure it will work for you too."

But if this if your product that you made yourself, then you should be selling the salescopy outlining your expertise. In which case your first section is good, minus the changes I outlined. Then you want to sell your expertise in "The Simple Truth" section, giving some hard facts of your findings while testing whatever solutions and whatever. At that point you can say to head over to my website for full details.

But at no point are you saying get your credit card out and buy now. Because good emails are to create a lead and create hype. The link they go to from that email will pretty much finalize the sale and thus bluntly tell them to get the credit card out and buy now.

So again, emails are to help you create hype and excitement (and I do not mean using exclamation marks, I mean writing some emotional and relative information) they are the gateway to the sale. Your site or the site of the product owner is there to sell the product and finalize the sale.

Call to Action on an email is like "Head over to the main site to get full details", and call to action for the main website is "get the card out and buy now" along those lines.

I agree though, you made some good progress Prawn, I really think the intro was much better, minus the latter paragraphs. The call to action needs some work, but for the most part the story was sort of believable. Try to curb the rest of your sales copy "The Simple Truth" part, according to the above that I've mentioned and I believe you will have a starter copy to test with.

Remember, it is all about testing. Send traffic to the starter copy, change some things and monitor conversion.

Good luck!

Kris

Agreed.

A story needs the following:

* A setting (a time and a place).
* A beginning, middle and end. You can leave off the end if you want to create a cliffhanger/open loop.

Also, an email should not read like a mini sales letter. Stay away from any sales letter elements when writing an email.

Good luck with your campaign.

Ah, love your stuff Metronicity. Your style is original and works. Glad to see your input here

Be good for all of you to listen when this man speaks

Haha, yeah I forgot about that ad, I stumbled upon it a couple years back.

Alright, Prawn you really have some work to do. I don't know what you were trying to accomplish here but you are NOT helping your copying writing skills by copying another's work.

You are here to learn how to be better. Not show off your copy and paste skills!

Honestly man, why are you here? Your wasting your time just piecing together a sales copy from other peoples copy because you are learning nothing!

If you remember anything that I've said in the past posts remember this.

Success in anything in business is about learning and developing your ability to perform.

This is not a business for quick profits, scamming, and lying to make it rich. You will not get anywhere.

And really Prawn, if you choose that route, you will be crushed by the rest of the IM's out there that are doing it the right way.

Your shooting yourself in the foot. And that is a very stupid thing to do is it not?

Kris,

BTW - Thanks Dan for the heads up. It was very disappointing, but it is always better to be informed.