70: How to unleash your creative genius in email [Email Teardown]
Wondering how you can take your emails to the next level?
I’m doing something a little different in this episode of ill communication. I've dug into my email archive and pulled out one of the best emails I've ever written and sent to my list. It had a huge open rate, click-through rate and got a ton of replies and engagement.
In this episode, I will read the email to you and then I'm going to do a teardown, which is where I walk you through the email highlighting or tearing apart the strategies I used to show you the different elements you can use to write a brilliant email.
This email teardown will give you a great blueprint for how to create an email like this, and you won't have to play three trumpets or tap dance to get your brilliant message and story out there.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The content of my best-performing email of all time
Why this email worked and what I could have done better
My strategy behind the links I included
How you can use this email to make a brilliant email too
I hope you enjoyed this email teardown and that it gave you some inspiration so that you can create content where you share a moving or meaningful experience with your audience and get tons of engagement using my email as a blueprint.
If you want to watch Chandelier, performed by Postmodern Jukebox for yourself, you can check it out here. If you want to read the original email discussed in this episode, you can find it here.
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[00:00:03] Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started.
[00:00:52] Hello my friend. I'm doing something a little different on this 70th episode of Ill Communication. I've [00:01:00] dug into my email archive and pulled out one of the best emails I've ever written and sent to my list. It had a huge open rate, click through rate and got a ton of replies and engagement. I will read the email to you and then I'm going to do a tear down, which is where I walk you through the email highlighting or tearing apart the strategies I use to show you the different elements you can use to write a brilliant email. This was an email I sent two years ago in November of 2021, and it remains one of my best performing emails of all time. The subject I was moved to tears. Preview text. How to unleash your creative genius. I was moved to tears. Last Thursday, my beloved Chad and I went to our first live indoor music concert in almost two years. We saw a postmodern jukebox pmjay at a local [00:02:00] concert venue. If you don't know them, you have to check them out. They take today's pop tunes and turn them into swing and songs from the 30s, 40s and 50s complete with a horn section, stand up bass, killer keys, out-of-this-world vocalists and an MC, and a tap dancer and a Swedish musician whose first song was a trombone slash singing combo of Madonna's Material World.
[00:02:27] And her last song was Pharrell's Happy, where she played eight different instruments, including three trumpets all at once. It was a theatrical spectacle. The singing, the showmanship. The shtick. I chair danced my booty off until the encore, when everyone finally stood up and danced. It was pure magic, watching them reinterpret popular songs by artists like Lizzo and Kings of Leon into a bebop big band experience. The showstopper. Sia's chandelier. Now, [00:03:00] that song is a tough one for most singers to sing and then in brackets, fully trained vocalist here, by the way, and the way performer Danny sang the shit out of that song brought me to tears. She sang the words in a way I hadn't heard them before. She held notes and emotions even Sia couldn't have imagined. It was pure genius. What's crazy is that this is a remake. Postmodern jukebox used existing words and chord progressions from a song most people know. Then they infuse their own tempo, timing, and creative spin. Here's the thing the constraint of the lyric and music helped them unleash their creative genius. It's why I go on so dang much about copywriting. Formulas and templates. Formulas and templates get a bad rap, but this is why I love them. When you sit down to write with a formula, you constrain your [00:04:00] thinking, and that constraint actually allows you to innovate and write more creatively and quickly too.
[00:04:07] And it's why I'm working on a secret project that's going to allow more businesses and charities to experience the power of copywriting formulas and writing prompts to create their own genius showstopping copy. Stay tuned for that, hopefully before the end of the year. By the way, this week I created a fab new formula to help you write an amazing bio. I'm happy to share a sneak peek with you. Just hit reply and let me know if you want it. If you need me, I'll be singing my heart out into my hairbrush. Pretending I'm living in a bygone era. Kim PS watch this whole video and imagine your experiencing it live. And then there's a YouTube link. Be warned you'll go down the postmodern jukebox musical rabbit hole. Enjoy! P.s hit reply if you want a sneak peek of my latest [00:05:00] copy formula for writing your bio, and that's the end of the email. Okay, so now I'm going to tear down this email and highlight for you why I think it performed so well. First up, the subject line I was moved to tears. This is a great subject line because it creates drama and curiosity. People are going to want to click to open and hear the story and the preview text. How to Unleash Your Creative Genius offers an amazing promise and reward for opening and reading the email.
[00:05:31] Now, as we get into the body of the email, you'll see I use the same line for the start of the email as I used for the subject line. I don't always recommend this, but it's such a powerful opening line and it makes the reader want to read the next sentence. I was moved to tears. So in this opening line, I'm actually. Starting at the climax where I'm being moved to tears. But then I back up and give context. I tell you where I was [00:06:00] and with whom I introduced Postmodern Jukebox. I intentionally use a lot of incomplete and run on sentences to add to the drama of the story. There are short two and three word sentences, and then a long run on sentence about the amazing trombone player. It paints a picture of the spectacle that it was. Lines like the singing, the showmanship, the shtick use alliteration and rhythm to give the email a lyrical, almost a musical quality. Now, if I was to improve that line today, I might reorganize it as the showmanship, the singing, the shtick. So the rhythm of the sentences goes four syllables, three syllables, two syllables. It might have been a little more lyrical if I'd ordered it in that way. And then I introduce the climax the show stopper colon Sia's chandelier.
[00:06:54] This is a simple and powerful sentence that flags the reader to pause. If someone's [00:07:00] just skimming the email, the sentence will stand out and catch their eye. Even if they don't fully read the whole email, they'll understand this is the climax of the story, because this is the song that moved me to tears. And from this climax, I segway into the point of the email. I use phrases like what's crazy is this is a remake. Here's the thing. It's why I go on so dang much about, and it's why all of these phrases help connect the dots between my story and the takeaway for the reader. They're like the little breadcrumbs that help you get to the point. And the point is that just like the constraint of the lyric and music helped Postmodern Jukebox unleash their creative genius, so do copy recipes and formulas help you unleash your creative genius? After I make the point, I tease a project I was working on at the time to help business [00:08:00] owners unleash their creative genius. And then I talk about a new formula I created for writing a bio. Looking back now, I probably should have taken out the part where I teased the future project because it really doesn't add anything to the email other than maybe a little curiosity for the reader. But I think now having a single call to action to reply for the bio formula would have made this email even stronger.
[00:08:25] And instead of asking for a reply for the bio, I could have made it a one click to access the formula and then I could have tracked it a little better. You'll also notice that I broke the rule of one in this email, as there are actually two calls to action, one to get the bio formula and two to check out the Postmodern Jukebox YouTube link. If this were a sales email where I wanted my reader to buy one specific thing, then I would only put one call to action, or one link, or one click to take. But this wasn't a sales email. This was [00:09:00] an email designed to nurture my list, to deliver value and entertainment and help my readers get to know me, which includes the kind of music I love. So including the link to the YouTube video is an important strategy, and I intentionally put it in the PS rather than hyperlinking it earlier in the body, because I wanted my reader to read the whole email before clicking away. And by offering just one link to click in this email, it was very clear to my reader what to do. Which was strategic because a I'm teaching my audience how to click a link, and b the song is truly spectacular and spine tingling, and so many people who click the link to watch the video then came back and replied to the email, thanking me for sharing it with them.
[00:09:52] In the end, it had a 50% open rate, a 13.4% click rate, and lots and lots of email replies and engagement, [00:10:00] which is pretty great for a nurture email. So maybe you'll want to go back and listen to the email again and pay attention to the word choice, the sentence structure, and the Segways. Or maybe you'll want to go to the show notes so you can read the email itself in the show notes. You'll also find the link to the remake of chandelier, and when you watch it, I know you'll get chills and tears too. I just watched it again as I was preparing for this episode, and I was reminded about how brilliant this remake is. So definitely click the link to watch the video, and then I want to encourage you to create content where you share a moving or meaningful experience with your audience. This email teardown gives you a great blueprint for how to do it, and you won't have to play three trumpets or tap dance to get your brilliant message and story out there. Thank you, thank you, thank you for hanging out with me today. I'll see you here again next week.
[00:11:00] And [00:11:00] that's a wrap on today's episode of Ill Communication. Hey, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, I would love if you would leave a rating and a review to let me know. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss out on the tips, prompts, and strategies I share in every episode. They're designed to make you an ill communicator too. As always, you can check out all the links and resources from this episode on the web page. Just head over to Kim keel.com/podcast. I'll chat with you again next week.
Resources Mentioned
Watch Chandelier, performed by Postmodern Jukebox
Check out the email discussed in this episode
Additional Resources
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