How to Write Email Copy which Helps Blog Posts Go Viral
A complete breakdown of how to use fantastic email copy to encourage people to share your content
Last Thursday, over 5,000 people received an incredibly compelling example of how you can use effective email copy to drive people to read your blog.
Marketers like Patrick McKenzie and Nathan Barry have been evangelising the benefits of growing an email subscriber list for years. By building a list of subscribers and sending them regular, valuable content, you can gradually raise an audience of people who are eager to consume your products and services.
The simplest way to do this is to encourage people to subscribe to your blog via email. This way, when you publish a new post, you can release it to a list of people who have opted-in to receive your content and are already excited to read it.
However, your job doesn’t end when you gain a subscriber. Each post you publish is an opportunity to make simple tweaks which help ensure that your subscribers will engage with the content and share it.
The email I received is a perfect example of how you can use email copy to drive engagement and sharing of each post you write. We can learn a lot from it.
The context
If you weren’t already aware, Alex Turnbull — CEO of Groove — has been writing an awesome series of posts detailing exactly how he and his team brought their customer support company from nothing to over $30,000 per month in revenue.
These posts have all been incredibly successful. In just 5 weeks, they’ve generated 82 thousand unique visitors and hundreds of trials for their SaaS product.
Last week, I subscribed to receive updates from the Groove blog. On Thursday, I got my first email notification from them.
Dissecting Fantastic Email Copy
This is how it greets me:
Happy Thursday,
Already this is better than your average email.
The Groove subscription form didn’t ask me for my name when I subscribed. This is a tradeoff that all newsletter publishers face. Do you collect a name and produce more personable emails or collect only the email address and increase your subscription rate?
Without having access to names, so many email authors just use a generic salutation such as “Hi” or “Hi there”.
“Happy Thursday” is so much better because it is fun and light-hearted. It invokes feelings of happiness.
This is vital because the “happiness” emotion is a key factor in encouraging virality and enjoyment. By making your readers smile before they even open your post, you can increase the likelihood that they will share it.
It continues with a short introduction to the article Alex just published.
I just wanted to give you a heads up that our latest post, the first of two about how we grew our “Journey to $100K a Month” blog to more than 5,000 subscribers in five weeks, is now live.
What this (slightly convoluted) sentence does really well is build interest. Who wouldn’t want to read about a strategy which grew a blog to more than 5,000 subscribers in just 5 weeks.
By getting the recipient interested in the content, you increase the likelihood that they will click through and start reading.
The next three sentences are pure gold.
As a subscriber, you’re getting this link about an hour before the post goes live on our blog’s homepage.
Building urgency is an excellent way to get people to act. When I read this for the first time, I could honestly feel myself thinking that I should take advantage of this opportunity for early access.
Think about how simple an idea this is. All Alex has to do is ensure that the post doesn’t show up on the homepage until an hour after he sends the email. It costs him nothing but makes me feel privileged in a very subconscious but very real way.
By building urgency, Alex helps ensure that all subscribers read the post immediately. This reduces the cycle time of any subsequent sharing, increasing the chance that the post will go viral (think of many people all tweeting in the space of a minute compared to the same number tweeting over the course of a year — the former will be much more noticeable).
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Comments are valuable. For one, they provide the appearance of traction. When you see a blog post with a hundred comments, you know that the author has real authority and distribution power.
They also provide Alex with feedback. He can see from the comments what people want to read about. This means that subsequent posts can be even more accurately tailored to the communities tastes and even more likely to engage.
When combined with the urgency built in the previous sentence, this reminder to comment ensures that people with early access are eager to throw in their two-cents. They know that their first mover advantage gives them the possibility of top comment on a post which is likely to have large distribution.
By encouraging lots of comments in a short space of time, the email ensures the appearance of authority and community and provides the author with valuable feedback.
And if you dig it, please share it with anyone who you think might find it useful.
Asking people to share a blog post is fairly standard. My Granny would probably think of that if she had a blog.
This email goes one step further though. We’ll examine how after we look at the closing paragraph.
Thanks again, and if there’s anything I can help you with, feel free to respond to this email; I read and respond to every message.
Cheers,
Alex
CEO, Groove
Once again, Alex is trying to elicit feedback and engagement from subscribers. This is vital when trying to convert subscribers into customers.
By the way, he actually does respond to his emails. I know because I emailed him!
P.S. Here’s a handy pre-populated Tweet to help you share the new post :) http://clicktotweet.com/wVA5d
By including a sharing link directly in the email copy, Alex enables me to tweet this post in two clicks without even having to open it.
Reducing friction in the sharing process is sure to reduce the viral cycle time and increase the total number of shares. That’s exactly what we want to ensure wide distribution.
Takeaways
How can you use the techniques that Alex employs when emailing your own subscribers?
If you’re going to do anything after reading this breakdown you should;
1. Try to create a sense of urgency in your email copy. Get subscribers to engage with the content *now* rather than later. Provide an incentive for them to read the post as soon as it becomes available rather than storing it in Instapaper or Pocket for later. This will compress the feedback loop needed to achieve virality.
2. Make as easy as possible for people to share your content. Make sure all sharing fields are pre-populated with content which will excite Twitter users. Include sharing links in the email copy rather than only on the post itself.
3. Weave emotion into your writing at all times. Even when doing something as seemingly mundane as writing a subscriber notification email. Target feelings of happiness, interest, amusement and surprise for the most effective response.
This was originally posted on my blog where I write about A/B testing and marketing.
