Email Breakdown 13 How to Ask Questions That Keep Readers Hooked

In this week's video, I reveal a tactic Natural Health Sherpa uses almost to guarantee their readers can't resist opening their emails...

And show you how to ask a question in your first line of copy that makes your reader want to read more instead of clicking away like fleeing from the plague.

Click on the video and watch as I change your copywriting life in three minutes... or less.

Transcript

It's been a while since we did an email breakdown, so I thought I would do that this week.

I'm going to do another Natural Health Sherpa email. I'm not going to talk about the whole thing. There is just a couple of things I want to point out here.

First of all, they are still using their front line to get the attention in the inbox.

So what I'm saying here is if you look right here, the from line is "avoid rice."

So imagine that in your inbox, you've got all these from lines and then a subject line.  Basically, an attention grabber that pulls your eyes to this particular email.

It's working great for them.

Most of their emails are like this, and I'm seeing more people start to use this.

This is a tactic because once everyone's doing it, they won't have the same effect.

But just something to notice for right now.

And what you'll also notice is they use the from line to work with the subject line.

So first of all, it pulls my eyes to the front line.

"Avoid rice."

If I eat rice, that's going to get my attention, or I might be curious.

And then anti-inflammatory foods.

If I'm interested in my health, I probably know what that means.

If I'm on Natural Health Sherpa's email list, I'm probably interested in health, so I'm probably going to click on this.

Right.

And the second thing I want to point out is a lot of times people use questions in emails or their copy.

And using a question in an email is a double-edged sword.

It works great if the answer is yes, but not so well if the answer is no.

So let's imagine that I'm selling a health product and say, "Hey, do you have ten pounds to lose?"

And I go, no, maybe I want to lose 15.

Maybe I want to lose five.

Maybe I want to lose 100.

So it's a lot easier if I answer no and click away from the email.

The writer of this email did an excellent job starting this email with a question.

"Did you know that eating the wrong foods can kill immunity and leave your body vulnerable to disease or infection?"

If I answer no, then I didn't know that.

And I'm going to read.

If I answered yes, I still want to keep reading because...

"Did you know eating the wrong foods?"

I know some bad foods... but do I know all of them?

Are they going to tell me something I didn't know? If I'm super health-conscious, am I missing something?

So I'm still very likely to continue to read.

So the thing I want you to take away today is some marketers are still using the front line to get attention in the inbox.

And it's even more powerful when you use that space to back up your subject line, making it more likely for someone to click through.

And number two, if you're going to use a question in your copy, especially to kick it off, make sure it's a question that it doesn't matter if you answer yes or no... you still want to read the rest.

That's it for this week's Copy Conversations.

If you would like some help creating emails, you can hit me up here.


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