Personality-led emails
This is where your emails take on the personality of a team member. Your strategy is based around conversational emails, usually in plain text form.
For example, beverage brand Brez often sends personal emails from their brand manager. Graza has their interns write monthly digest emails. Blueprint’s whole email strategy revolves around text-heavy emails from the founder Bryan Johnson.
The reason why this strategy is so powerful is you’re sending personal emails from an actual human and not a corporation. When a customer opens the email, they don’t immediately think you’re trying to sell them something.
Inspiration: Blueprint, BREZ, Graza
Persona-based segmentation
Another way to make your emails instantly stand out is to make them ridiculously relevant. For example, wine subscription brand Gratsi ran an A/B test and saw a 41.7% increase in conversion rates by delivering hyper-specific content to 4 buyer personas.
The downside to this strategy is that it’s time consuming. First, you need to figure out who your customers are. This requires you to collect zero-party data at high engagement touchpoints (like post-purchase or welcome pop-up) OR use software like OuterSignal.
Then you need to create identity-based segments in Klaviyo. And finally, for each campaign, you switch up the angle for each persona.
Infotainment/Humor
“People buy more happily when in good humor,” – Dan Kennedy.
If you think marketing is about delivering the most value, think again. People don’t stick around to be lectured all day. They stay because they are bored and are yearning for some entertainment.
How you deliver your message matters just as much as the message itself. Personally, I tend to gravitate towards brands that are funny. My friend and mentor Chris Orzechowski is a master at this.
The emails he writes for Carnivore Snax are unhinged, hilarious, and an extension of the founder Mark’s personality (see point #1).
Inspiration: Carnivore Snax, Tushy, Liquid Death
Craftsmanship
This is a non-negotiable for brands that sell high-end fashion, fragrances, art, or wine. If a customer lands on your product page and sees a $200 sweater, they’ll want to know why the hell it costs so much. Yet, you’d be surprised to know how many “luxury” brands sell themselves short with lazy discounting.
To enhance the perceived value of your products, you need to talk about your process. If you sell olive oil, where do you pick your olives? Why is that region superior? How does it make my food taste better? If you sell tequila, how long does it take to grow the agave? Is it harvested by hand? What’s the flavor like?
In other words, you need to do some Claude Hopkins-maxxing.
Inspiration: AVALINE, TOAST, Carnivore Club
Storytelling
You can tell a story with words or with images. Hostage Tape often sends 200-300-word anecdotal emails (like this one) where they tell short, entertaining stories to promote their products. You set the scene with facts, introduce some conflict, and position your product as the solution. I think it’s genius.
If you prefer image-based emails, you can show cool people doing cool stuff with your products. Oru Kayak nails this. Almost all their hero images feature adventurous people traveling around scenic places around the world.
The point is, when you become a customer, you feel like you’re one of those cool people. It’s all aspirational marketing.
Inspiration: Hostage Tape, Oru Kayak, Oakley
Interactive Games & Quizzes
Interactive/gamification emails break the marketing pattern and can easily double your list engagement.
Mr. Beast’s brand Feastables often hosts quizzes where fans have the opportunity to learn more about the brand and win prizes. Ridge runs NFL-themed product launches and giveaways during Super Bowl season. Hiro embeds brain puzzle games into their strategy.
These types of emails simply work because they’re fun.
Inspiration: Feastables, HIRO, Ridge
Unique Mechanism
If you write email copy for supplement brands, you need to know the difference between a benefit and a mechanism. Simply put…
A unique mechanism explains why the prospect is currently struggling with a problem AND how it helps overcome that problem (with proof).
Too many supplement brands focus on the benefits (e.g. more energy, better sleep), and not the unique mechanism. That’s just not enough in saturated markets where customers have become numb to claims that often feel like empty promises.
If you’re interested in learning more about unique mechanisms, I highly recommend checking out Stefan Georgi’s article on this.
Inspiration: Bite, Magic Mind, Create Wellness
What’s Next
Combine 2-3 strategies from here, and watch your email engagement (and revenue) go up.
If you want me to implement these strategies for your brand, click here to apply for a free audit.
