LOCAL MARKET MONOPOLY EPISODE 81
How to Write an Email That Converts – From the Subject Line to the CTA
Podcast by Clarence Fisher
email that converts

About This Episode

Are you ready to learn how to make your emails convert like crazy?

Well, this episode is here to help you turn your email campaigns into irresistible, conversion-driving masterpieces!

We'll show you how to write a subject line that catches your reader's attention while still being straightforward.

Then, we'll talk about keeping your readers engaged with relevant and authentic content. We'll even give you tips on how to create a story that resonates with your audience.

Finally, we'll get to the Call To Action (CTA), which is crucial for turning readers into customers.

We have some powerful techniques to share with you for creating CTAs that make people want to click.

Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, we have plenty of great tips to help you improve your email game.

So tune in now and get ready to learn!

author avatar
Clarence Fisher

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Have you subscribed to the Local Market Monopoly newsletter yet? Each week you get one actionable digital marketing tip delivered straight to your inbox. Designed specifically for small businesses like you who want to increase their market share and grow their online presence. Each tip focuses on strategies for growing your online reputation, increasing your company's reach, and improving sales and referrals without wasting money on ineffective tactics. Sign up now at localmarketmonopoly.com and start receiving our best of the best strategies immediately.
Hey, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly, Clarence Fisher, your host. Here it is, episode 81, and what I'm going to share with you today is how to write an email that converge. We're going to go from the subject line to the CTA as they say in the country here, from the Ruda to the Tuda. Stay tuned, be right back. Whoa.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the Tills tactics and strategies. The most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.
Welcome back to Local market Monopoly. Clarence Fisher, your host. And for those of you who are not from the country and never heard that term, it applies to the pig. If you say someone, someone says, Hey, I eat hog from the Ruda to the Tuda. You can use your imagination and understand it's everything in between. So we're not talking about that enough. Hog wash or hogging around, they say hogging around. Okay, anyway, joke over. Getting down to business. How do you write an email that converts? And again, we're going to start with the subject line. Last episode, which was episode 80. We talked about how to build your email list. And if you did, if missed that, go and check that out because we should all be building our emails. But our email list. Now, let's say we've got people on our email list. How do we write an email that converts?
And this is something that we are actually concentrating on working on ourselves. What is a good open rate? Okay, a good open rate, actually a good clickthrough rate. We're talking about conversion. Lemme give you two numbers. A good open rate. If you're getting anywhere from 15% on the lower end to I guess about 20% is median, is average. I know if I see 20% or above, I'm, I'm happy if I see 15%. So if you're getting 15% open rates, meaning how many people open you? If you send to a hundred people, 15 people, is that 15? Yeah. If you send a hundred people, 15 people open, then you're, you're good. If I send to a hundred people, 20 people, 20 plus people open, then I'm good. One of our last emails had a 38% open rate. I was ecstatic. So now we know the percentage of that.
We're looking to open the emails, but when we look at convert, we're going to be looking at how many people click. So of those, let's say 20% that open, we want to have 2% at least click wherever you're sending them or take whatever action you want them to take. Anywhere from two to 5% is going to be great. Now, I'll tell you this, a lot of the emails that we've been sending have been getting 1%. So just yesterday I got with the team, I'm like, Hey, we need to focus on getting these through rates up. We're getting great open rates, but we can double our click through rates. And of course, if that happens, you get more people taking action and you make more money. So that's what we're going to talk about today, is how do you get your emails to convert? So number one, you want to choose an attention-grabbing subject line, and that's how you get them to open.
Okay? Start your emails off on the right foot with a great subject line. I shared a headline, oh no, that was in the Main Street marketing coach on a Main Street marketing coach call. By the way, if you want help implementing all of this stuff that we talk about, all of the strategies, all of that, go to MainStreetMarketingCoach.com. And we have a, what's called a marketing meeting every Thursday at 2. And I actually walk you through this stuff and I give you tools and accountability is a big thing too, but you get the stuff that we don't have time to go into here. And I'm actually walking through your specific business. But I will tell you since I brought it up, one of the things that we talked about was headline analyzer, if you can Google that. And then also co-schedule came out with Headline Studio, which is an AI that helps you create better headlines.
And I covered that in last week's marketing meeting, so that's why that wasn't in my head. But you want to create attention grabbing subject lines that imply a benefit to the person for reading the email. You could send an email that offers a deal or a discount in the subject line, something that's like time-based or is personalized. You know, have the subject lines of your name. This is for you. And you can test these, see what works best with your audience. But you want to make sure that you have a great headline and headline analyzer. Like I'm saying, if you Google that, it'll give you a score of what professional copywriters the score that they have. I think it's about 20 to 30% EMV words, emotional value words, and you can see how your stacks up to that and kind of play with it until you get it kind of in line with what professional copywriters can send out.
So next, you want to take advantage of the preview text. A lot of email programs. Now you have this subject line, and then you also have this little preview text, and that shows up in the email client anywhere from 35 to 140 characters that you can put there. And when you use that, there's a couple of approaches that you can take with the preview text. You can use it to supplement your subject line. So you have the subject line as saying one thing, then the preview text kind of compliments that, or you can use it to highlight something else that's going to be in the content to encourage people to open the email. So it's a time sensitive offer on the subject line. And then in the preview text, you're not going to want to miss this. That would be something that supports the subject line. So that's a good way to use the preview text.
Filing for the employee retention credit. ERC is a no brainer. It's an incredible way to give your business a cash injection of up to $26,000 per employee as part of the Cares Act Covid relief package. If you were able to retain your employees during this challenging time, chances are you may qualify for ERC even if you've already received PPP. And even if your revenue didn't take a hit. How cool is that? ERC is a grant. Not alone, no need to pay it back, no credit check, no risk. Get in touch with our partner bottom line now at www.employeecreditclaim.com and make filing easy. Just five minutes can help secure some serious funding. Go to employeecreditclaim.com.
Okay, next, we want to make sure that the subject line and the preview texts are relevant to the body. This is something that I correct, not often anymore because we're learning this, but as the emails get written that we send out, sometimes we can get caught up in creating a really compelling headline to where I have to reply back. Are we answering delivering on the promise of this in the email? Are we delivering on the promise of this in that podcast episode? If not, it doesn't make sense to have people open an email only to not get what you said, what you promised in the subject line. You don't want that. That's how people unsubscribe. So your subject line, your preview text must be relevant to the body of your email. The job of the headline is just to get people to open. The job of your first line is to get people to get to the second line.
So things need to, you know, keep on the promise. And then when you're writing, nowadays, the best emails are conversational. If you've noticed on the emails that we're sending out now are more along my personality. The email that we sent about the simple birthday ideas, I actually start the email with, this is really difficult for me to say, but after so long, the other day I ended up cheating on my, and then the next line it said, diet, come on, stay focused. What were you thinking? My wife was with me, right? And so it, it's like I'm having this conversation in this email, and that email had a 38% open rate. And really the subject line is what got people to open. It also had a pretty good click-through rate. I can't remember what the click-through rate was, but the subject line was very simple.
It was just simple birthday ideas, simple birthday marketing ideas you need to implement now. And then we got down and I was very conversational in the email. So people like to read now how you speak. Do not overuse all caps or exclamation points. We get it. You can bold things. And also don't get crazy on the bold. If you bold everything, you're bolding nothing. Nothing stands out if you're bolding everything. So use them sparingly. Plus all caps means you're shouting at someone. We don't want to do that. You can bold things like the benefit in a sentence. So what are they going to get? Bold that. But don't overuse bolds or all caps or exclamation, and then choose words that stir up emotions. One thing you can do is when you're writing, go ahead and write it, but then go back. We learned this in Toastmasters, when you're speaking, when you're writing a talk, you just write the talk.
You write you. When you're writing a speech, you just write the speech. Same thing with an email. You just write the email, then go back and see how you can add more color to things. How can you make it more colorful after you've written it? Okay? When you, and it will increase. That will speed up your writing if you will. Just get it out first. Just get it out. Then go back and edit, then go back and add colorful language to it. So we've got the attention grab and headline. We've got your preview text that supports the headline. We're making sure that the subject line, when I say headline, I mean subject line. We're making sure that the subject line and the preview text are relevant to the body. You're keeping the content conversational. You also want to make sure that you're using short paragraphs.
Most emails are being read on mobile. So we have a rule here that every paragraph is one to two sentences max. Because if you get a 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, nah, that's a lot. But if you get a four or five sentence paragraph, it looks like just blocks. And I'll tell you what happens when people see blocks. This, it happens. It is the same way on the email as it is on your webpages. You have to have short paragraphs because when people see the blocks, the mind says, I don't want to deal with this right now. I don't want to spend time trying to wade through this. So try it one sentence to two sentence paragraphs on your emails. Keep it conversational. Don't overuse all caps or exclamation points. Don't bold everything. And then of course, go through and add some colorful words. Now you do at this point want to start.
Think about psychology and use it to your advantage. FOMO is real, fear of missing out. If you can add some of it, if it is a time-restricted offer, a time-sensitive offer, definitely use that. Don't use if it's not, you're only going to add this bonus for this amount of time, or you only have so many slots available, use that. And then also, if you have social proof, you can use that. This doesn't have to all be in one email. You can use social proof in one email. You can use fear of missing definitely on your emails that you send before a sale is over. But social proof is really, really powerful too. You got a customer, client, patient that has used that has had a good result from what you're sharing, definitely put a line or two in there from them. Okay? And always, always include a call to action.
Here's the thing that I see a lot of times is people will put too many call to action or too many different call to actions. I'll put it like that in their emails. Your email needs to have one purpose, and your email is to get them over to whatever that content is. If you are, let me put it like this. Let's see. If you're selling something, let's say the consultation or let's say a product, you're selling a product, the email, the email's job is not to sell the product. The email job is to get people over to the page where the page sells the product. I know it's crazy, but try it. So the subjects line job is to get the email opened. The email contents job is to get the click over to the website, over to the booking page, over to the product page so that the person, so page right there, can sell them on why they need to schedule an appointment with you, why they need to purchase that product.
So only have one, I'm going to say one call to action only send them only have one offer. One offer. You can have multiple call to actions throughout your email, but only have one offer. What else can I share with you? Oh, also, I mean, segment your email list if you possibly can. A lot of softwares allow you to do this. Now you can tag people depending on what they're interested in. For instance, our MainStreet Marketing coach, people get emails that people that are just on the regular newsletter don't get that. People who are on the podcast list don't get, you can segment your people and you a really should do that because it makes it even more personal. Now, you can test, you can ab test emails. That's getting a bit advanced where you say, I've got an email list of 100 people.
I want to send 50 people this subject line, and I want to send 50 people this subject line. And then let's see how many people, let's see what the difference, which email wins. Then whichever wins. I said, if you have a hundred people, if you had a hundred people on your list, you would send, let's say just for example, I would say let's send 10 people this subject line, 10 people, this subject line, whichever one wins, we're going to send to that subject line to the other 80 people. Okay? When you start getting a sizable list, you definitely want to do that. You want to just say, Hey, let's test this on a very small portion of our list, and then whichever one is the highest converting, we want to send that out to the rest of the list. And that is a very, very profitable thing to do.
So the bottom line is when you create your email, there's really not much to not to this. When you start doing it, it becomes second nature. Like we concentrated for a long time on the subject lines, how do we get these emails opened? Now we have really great email open rates. Now how do we get people to click through and go to the more people to click through and go to the content? As I said, we're sitting at like 1% every now and then 2%. We need every email to be at least 2%, and that's exactly what you want to do. So we're focusing on this ourselves. And you say, Hey, well Clarence, I mean this is what you do, right? Yeah, absolutely. And you know about the barber's son.
The barber's son is what brought Afros back cause he never got his haircut. That's exactly what's happening. And so we're looking inward now. After spending so much time all of our time or working on a client's stuff, if this helps you, let us know. Give us a rating, a review. If you think it could help someone else, forward it to them. You can post it on the social media and tag us. Clarence Fisher, hashtag Local Market Monopoly. Going to see you on the next episode where we've never talked about this before, but we're going to talk about it. It is TikTok. Yes, yes, yes. We're going to talk about it on the next episode, and I will see you there while I'll continue to help you own your block.

Closing: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit localmarketmonopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.

Resources

Note: Some of the resources below may be affiliate links, meaning I receive a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to make a purchase.

How to Get 212 NEW Customers Calling You Every Month!

Want your phone to ring off the hook? This FREE 5-Day Email Crash Course on Google Business Profile Optimization guarantees your business ranks higher, gets more reviews, and attracts more customers, clients, or patients—fast!

LISTEN ON

NEXT EPISODE:
Episode 82: 10 TikTok Trends for Local Businesses: What's Working Now