AG1 Athletic Green: “Benefits” Email Psychology Breakdown
🧠 This education email from AG1 Athletic Greens has a lot to love (and some things I’d change). Here’s the psychology behind what works & what doesn’t 👇
You can watch the video breakdown below, or keep reading for a summary.
1. Subject Line
“Come for the convenience, stay for the benefits”
❌ This gives clever but not clear. What is driving me to open this email? I’d go back to the drawing board with this SL to try and leverage curiosity, knowledge, or something more concrete or interesting that makes the next step a no-brainer.
2. Headline
“Benefits you can actually feel*”
❌ I feel for the email marketing team on this one because these * are really undermining the reader’s attention and the strength of their message because they’re making claims that then need to be qualified (see end of email).
3. Header Image
✅ We love a visual in place of a list of copy (and this email is pretty copy heavy).
🧠 Picture Superiority Effect: Images convey more information, are better remembered, and are more attention grabbing than copy.
🧠 Haptic Imagery: When you show a person interacting with your product, you increase feeling of interactivity between your product and potential customers
4. Second Image
❌ The header is at odds with the list of non-included ingredients below.
🧠 Congruence: When copy and images flow together, information is easier to process.
🧠 Cognitive Fluency: This means something is easy to think about or process. When a headline and the body copy are at odds, people have to think harder to understand what the emails trying to say. It’s more complicated than it needs to be.
5. Checklist Section
❌ These check icons need to change to x’s — the tiny copy tells me that AG1 is free from this list. But the fact that there’s a check mark next to each of them makes it look like they’re in the product. This is a big miss but an easy fix.
6. CTA
❌ The CTAs would benefit from not being green as it is a brand color but is less salient because it’s used so much it can become wallpaper.
Studies show arrows in CTAs are helpful because they direct you to the next action.
Choice Hacking 3S Framework Score:
🎯 Simple: Is this email easy to navigate — is it clear what I need to do next?⭐ 3.5/5 This email has a lot of very dense information, but it’s well balanced with visuals to explain AG1’s benefits and easily scan.
🧠 Salient: Is this email easy to pay attention to and remember?⭐ 2/5 Because there’s so much information and the header is so general (“benefits”) it’s difficult to quickly understand and remember any specific details.
❤️ Soulful: Is this email easy to love and emotionally engaging?
⭐ 3/5 The personal connection isn’t here for me in this email, but that’s likely down to the subject matter in the email. An emotional connection could be created and/or improved by seeing real people drinking or feeling the benefits of the product. Right now the only potential human connection is the hand on the AG1 bottle.
PS. Getting traffic but not enough sales or clients? 👇
What if you could quickly understand your customers, get rapid expert feedback, and understand how to improve your conversion rate in under an hour?
👉 My popular Website Audit can help.
What is a Website Audit?
Part expert review, part user research, and part diagnostic, I will record a 45-minute video of your experience and share my initial recommendations in an actionable 43-point report.
Each audit will help you:
- ✅ Instantly understand flaws in your messaging, visuals, product pages, pricing, and design & information architecture
- ✅ Quickly identify areas where marketing psychology and persuasive design can help your business accomplish its goals
- ✅ Predictive AI analysis to help you objectively understand what users are noticing, and what they’re missing
Here’s what you get:
Here’s an example Website Audit video:
👉 Click to learn more and sign up
What Website Audit clients love about this service:
