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Email copy from great companies

goodemailcopy.com

253 pointsghosh28 comments

I don't think this is good copy at all... (And definitely not just due to the bad jokes.)

    Yo, you signed up for Rabbut
    Ashley,

    Do you know who’s awesome? You are.

    Do you know why? Because your blogs are about to get more action than you got
    on your honeymoon. Thats right, more email collections and more personalized
    updates than ever before (what did you think I meant?)

    Before you pull your head out of the gutter,
    answer me one thing. Why did you sign up for Rabbut?

    I ask because:
    1.) I want to build the best tool that you can possibly get
    2.) I can’t read your mind
    3.) Who doesn’t want more action? (Still talking about your blog!)

    And lets be honest, no one wants to spend all night long figuring out
    how to setup your emails, so take this, it’s a quick start guide:
    https://rabbut.com/a-hand-held-guide-to-start-on-rabbut/

    If that doesn’t work, hurry up and email me so I can help you
    solve your problems. That way you’ll have more time for your
    personal life. (This time I don't mean your blog.)

I understand what they're trying to do, but it's still kind of awkward. I tend to avoid references to intercourse in my business emails, and it seems a little bit crass to do so in blogs-as-emails-as-a-service software, as well as in-parentheses jokes (they just seem forced unless it's satire).

Having a look at their website it's a pretty small shop, so can't expect them to have a dedicated marketing team to write copy.

There are also at least 5 grammar mistakes in it.

These are great examples but other than the authors personal preferences its not clear what makes these examples effective.

It would be good to understand the underlying philosophy and style of communication for each example, so you can piece together what would work best for your project and brand. Not all of them are the same.

I'm not even sure if these examples are that effective. What makes them effective? If the measure of success is whether or not one actually reads the copy, then for me the best approach is to right it like a personal message. In that case the success of email copy is predicated on deceiving the recipient...?

There needs to be a way to filter out the most successful ones. Such as filtering or sorting by open rate or click through rate. Otherwise you're assuming they're successful just because it's a popular brand which is not always true.

How would that be possible? You can't compare across brands, because as you said, some are successful because they're a popular brand, which would affect CTR and open rate too.

Well there is this I found with a quick search: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/good-copywriting-practices...

Essentially, use a hook, get to the point, don't be too wordy, be impactful, and make a connection.

I'm somewhat hesitant to post this link since it's a bit self-promotional, but I wrote up my thinking about what makes good product copy: http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/how-to-describe-your-produ...

IMO, more startups would be struggling to write any copy at all before it's about effective copy. So I can see this being very helpful as a starting point.

MailChimp's voice & tone guide at voiceandtone.com does a nice job of explaining the 'why'.

Thanks for the tip. I can recommend this guide after reading it. It does a nice job of defining the right tone of voice in success messages, account creation, press releases, legal content and failure messages. It starts with the user feelings and shows an appropriate response.

Edit, added direct link: http://voiceandtone.com/

No doubt these are good copy, but why are they good? What can I learn from, say, an email from Trello announcing they're at 10m users that applies to my startup with 100 users besides "write good copy"?

It's often hard to put that sort of thing into words.

Mimicking things that provoke a good gut reaction or are proven to have been successful is a huge part of the startup game. I think samples like this provide some good 'compost' for developing taste, provoking some gut reactions, and inspiring your own takes on the ideas (a bit like Dribbbbbble et al do for designers) - more than direct advice like 'avoid adjectives' or 'always try to use the active voice' might.

Anyone else a little fed up with the "Hey, I'm the CEO of the company emailing you! This message is TOTALLY not automated." style of onboarding emails?

Maybe because we all know it? I recently had a co-worker talk to me about some email she got from a service. To me it was an obviously automated email but she (I guess) did not share the same thoughts.

I also /know/ it was automated because I got the exact same one.

Great resource. Writing onboarding/transaction e-mail copy is tedious yet important.

Also checkout Mailgun's blog post for fully responsive css/html e-mail templates:

http://blog.mailgun.com/transactional-html-email-templates/

Very cool.

Relevant is a project I have to index all email newsletters:

http://emailnewsletterstand.com

That's so cool. Are there any ideas for sales/pitch emails?

That's probably harder to find, but it'd be really helpful.

When I saw this title the first thing I thought was "Buffer has to be all over this"...

But they're not included at all, am I the only one who was pleasantly impressed with Buffer's communications?

Good MVP, just scrape your inbox and curate the best.

I'd love to see more examples.

Before they got too annoying, I thought whoever that was writing the AppSumo deal emails was really good.

One thing I would do is add in sharable links to some of the content? I wanted to refer to some of it to someone else but I don't see a way of doing it? All I see is the main domain's URL consistently, no share button AFAIA (As Far As I'm Aware).

The best copy I've ever seen is from a second hand bookseller: http://instagram.com/idea.ltd

I'd love to see an option to see the original design of all the mails.

I would have never heard of frontapp.com if not for this page. Front looks great!

- "Send the emails you want added to this directory to goodcopy@frontapp.com"

I don't like this... it would better if I could send a PR to some git repo.

While this would be a great option for engineers, I'm certain forwarding an email is much easier for the vast majority of people.

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