That title pretty much explains this whole experiment!
We got Catheryn Lavery, the CEO of Best Self Co to let us use them as test subjects, and show us the resulting numbers.
THE EXPERIMENT:
See if I can write a flash sale email about a physical product:
We chose the Best Self Journal.
Some extra criteria for this experiment:
▸ Make 1 long email [Jump]
▸ Make 1 short email [Jump]
▸ Split test the results [Jump]
▸ Create this in 1 hour [Jump]
▸ Analyze what we learned [Jump]
THE LONG VERSION EMAIL:
THE SHORT VERSION EMAIL:
WATCH FULL ONE HOUR SESSION:
You can watch the entire experiment and writing process here (fun to watch at 2X speed):
THE RESULTS:
LONG EMAIL RESULTS:
▸ Sent to 51,054 people.
▸ 23.8% open rate. 12,149 opens.
▸ 2.4% click rate. 1,233 clicks.
▸ $6,170.01 revenue.
SHORT EMAIL RESULTS:
▸ Sent to 51,055 people.
▸ 25.2% open rate. 12,842 opens.
▸ 3.2% click rate. 1,631 clicks.
▸ $4,708.76 revenue.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
The long email got lower opens and clicks, but more revenue.
This is a common theme we see in lots of promotional emails. So if you’re going to send out any seasonal sale emails or flash sales emails you can try:
Email 1: Long form email showing the benefits of the product.
Email 2: Short form email reminding them the deal is expiring.
Hope you enjoyed this experiment!
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora
P.S. If you liked the video, subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
P.P.S. If you ever need help with your promotional emails, let us help you write them.
Neville, another great video, but you highlighted a dilemma that I often encounter with my freelancing clients. What do you do when you’re hired to achieve a goal of increasing Opens and/or CTRs, or run a campaign with a CTA of scheduling phone calls? How do you convince clients that opens and clicks as goals is stupid if what comes after doesn’t result in a sale?
Thanks Ryan! Best way I’ve found is to show them case studies and results like this.
The other method is to get them to let you split test to just 25% of the list. If the results are good, then you send more.
I’ve had a lot of clients who resist doing new things at first, but once you sho them the results that comes from better marketing….they allow you to take more charge.
Woah, this opened my eyes! Writing sales email is truly amazing.
That’s awesome Muhammad….I don’t think a lot of people realize how effective a good & clear email can be :)
Amazing content, Neville! Please do more of these types of videos!
Thank you Brandon, I’ll try to do a few more of these live re-writes. It’s usually just hard to find someone willing to be so transparent with the numbers 😳
I would love to hear your thoughts on really long (endless!) sales pages. People use them a lot and I find myself getting distracted about half-way – even when I’m their target audience.
Do you feel that such pages are effective in getting clients to buy or are they a turn-off?
Hey Tzirel, I don’t know if there’s a DEFINITIVE answer, but my thoughts are a sales page should be long enough to convince a person to buy.
For a simple product this can mean a very short sales page is needed.
For a complex (and not easily understandable product) a longer sales page might be needed.
I went through the process of assembling a sales page here, it might help!
https://copywritingcourse.com/sales-page/
Extremely valuable nuggets of actionable advice. Count this burgeoning marketer among your fan base haha.
Thanks Clint! Hope I can keep pumping out more stuff like this for ya :)
This is great! Trying my first flash sale next week, will implement. Thank you 🙌🏻
Hey Dani, best of luck with the flash sale, hope this experiment helps guide it :)
Thanks for sharing! I’m very curious to know about the landing page after they clicked on the ‘Order now’-button in the email. Does it go straight to the checkout, or is it a sales page with more copy? Thanks in advance!
Hey Adam, all of the “GET IT NOW” links went directly to this product page:
https://bestself.co/products/self-journal
Please Neville more videos like this!!! It’s mindblowing how powerful copywriting can be
Hey Albe, I’ll definitely try to do more along these lines. It IS sometimes pretty hard to find people who are willing to open up and share their stats like this (so shoutout to Best Self Co for allowing it)!
Thanks for sharing this.
I think it was mentioned in the video that the emails were going to be tested before sending it to most subscribers (20% would get the long version, 20% would get the short version, rest would get the winner). Do you happen to know what they decided not to do it?
Hey William, I’m not sure that’s correct. The split was 50/50 and Klayvio (their email marketing company) pulls a random selection to make sure the recipients are random.
The results came out here!
I got to know You through that vídeo.
I was thrilled to see you build that email from scratch. I’m a profesional in Email Marketing and from that moment I have Seen at least 20 of Your videos. Awesome Job bro. See you around!
Oh nice, thanks for watching Ennio, hope I can put out more good stuff for you :)
Oh yeah forgot to mention Ennio, make sure you subscribe to the Kopywriting Kourse YouTube Channel so you don’t miss any of the vids :)
This reminds me of part of the book by your favorite Ogilvy. He talked about the effectiveness of some of his long form campaigns and how many thousands of words they were.
Kwestion for you (:-D): Why did the long form have a lower open rate? Was that just randomness? Or was there a reason? Because from the email list, the viewer can’t see whether it’s a long email or not, right? So theoretically the length of the email shouldn’t affect open rate; it should affect only CTR, right?
Hey Darren, great question. It can be multiple things, but the long email had LOTS of links, LOTS of pictures, and LOTS of “salesy” talk. These are all things that push your email to Promotions.
Also the open/click rates weren’t that high. We recently spoke to Erin (who helped send out the emails behind the scenes) and were talking about our A/B tests, A/B/C/D tests, and even A/A tests…..where the results come out different every single time, EVEN ON THE SAME EMAIL TESTED AGAINST ITSELF!
So sometimes these numbers are super random, and unless they have statistically significant result (which this didn’t) I don’t pay attention.
The thing you CAN control is sending out great emails over a long period of time that people love getting :)
Hey Neville,
I got the idea behind writing the sales emails.
But, as far as I know…email’s job is only to take the reader from email to sales page.
And the things that you’ve written in the emails(like, a lot of proofs), these are the work of a sales page.
Email intrigues people, but you didn’t put any hook.
You melted down most of the objection in the email.
So, what is sales page for?
And BTW, did that email take prspect to amazon or any other site?
I’m not sure this is true:
“Email’s job is only to take the reader from email to sales page.”
You can DEFINITELY sell in an email!