I’ve been doing some testing on you…
Despite being the oldest daughter, I recognize that I don’t know everything. (Let’s make that our lil secret)
A few months back, I kept seeing folks talk about a popular email marketing program with some heeeeefty promises. I’m big on staying in my lane, but I’m also a big ‘ole eavesdropper and nosey about what’s under the hood.
So I joined!
Naturally.
After going through the course, I decided to A/B test some of her approaches to Messaging and emails with my own content.
On one hand, we have overlapping copy philosophies like Messaging relevancy or the power of a small list. Cool!
But then, she taught against a lot of factors that kick ass for me and my clients.
When I’d submit copy for review, they asked me to ditch my unhinged subject lines and speak to pain points.
AND THEN, they had the audacity to ask me to cut out storytelling in my emails.
Not only am I obstinate, but I’m competitive – so I set out to prove a person wrong that knows nothing about me and probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about my A/B testing.
(To think I’ve made a career out of being this ridiculous…)
Here’s a lil highlight of what I found:
SUBJECT LINES
I sent 6 emails with Emelie-style subject lines and 6 speaking to transformation/pain points.
Same emails.
On average, my subject lines generated a 71.8% open-rate vs the traditional marketing approach, which averaged 50.1%.
That’s a 21.7% difference!
My email list sits at 488 people. By using my Brand Voice, an average of 106 MORE subscribers read my emails.
Note: A killer open rate is pointless if your email content sucks, but we’ll circle back another day.
STORYTELLING
For this one, I sent 12 emails with the same, Emelie-style subject lines. The CTAs were the same too. The only difference: 6 emails included storytelling and 6 got right to the sale.
Disclosure: I did leave in my usual antidotes, side-dialogue, and Brand Voice. I couldn’t go full robot, my b.
We’re going to look at the click-through rate (CTR) as our metric.
On average, using storytelling generated a 6.3% CTR vs not, which averaged 0.3%.
Literally a 6% increase.
Quick math:
71.8% opens → 350 people.
6.3% of 250 → 22 clicks to my sales page / waitlist / WHATEVER.
This is how having a small list is a non-issue, by the way.
(Your audience size is enough – read this email if you don’t believe me.)
Storytelling is a form of VALUE.
Value ≠ exclusively educational, how-to content.
Folks also find value in entertainment, connection, empathy, and general camaraderie. This is where storytelling comes into play, which is WAY over-complicated.
Ready for the secret formula?
Story + Segue + CTA
Voilà!
Storytelling? Easy.
Telling stories people actually give a 💩 about enough to read and buy? Not as easy, but here’s my biggest tip:
DETAILS. DETAILS. DETAILS.
Tell your story like it’s hot gossip and give us all the juice!
Folks tend to either end up with huuuuuge chunks of text, or not much copy so storytelling feels like pulling teeth.
→ If you’ve told your story and are staring at a page full of text, laughing at how much of a monster you are:
LOVE the word vomit! Now, let’s cut back and edit. But one sec…
→ If you’re looking at a sentence on a screen and feel like the worst writer ever:
Don’t sweat it! I want you to turn that sentence into a first bullet-point. Then, start listing out other details about the experience or moment. Pull in an analogy or a random side-thought.
Details are NOT “Imagine this…”
That is fluff.
Cut it out.
Moving on…
When you’re editing your brain dump, focus on the details that matter.
Here’s a sample without detail:
”He put on his gear and I wish I spent more time preparing.”
And the same sample with detail:
”As he put on his own gear, I regretted not staying up the night before watching dirt bike beginner tutorials on YouTube.”
I didn’t tell you what brand his boots were and what YouTuber I watched and, and, and…
Knowing how to use the right details and cut out the rest can be a make or break for your conversion. Readers get lost with irrelevant, or too many details.
Don’t mistaken details for length.
Nobody ever stopped reading an email, sales page, or anything because it was too long. They stopped reading because it wasn’t interesting.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I have a LONG ASS About page. (2,519 words, to be exact. For context, you’ve read less than 800 words here.)
And people regularly tell me they read my whole About page.
Storytelling captures and holds attention, so utilize it!
