Advice

10 Real Life Subject Lines Companies are Using and Why They work

November 11, 2019 by Lovelyn

Subject lines are crazy important for your email. If you don’t believe me, check out your inbox. It’s probably jam-packed with lots of emails vying for your attention.

How do you decide what you’re going to read?

Some of that decision is based on who the email is from, but part of it is also based on the subject line.

The subject line of an email is very much like the headline of an article. It’s your subscribers’ first point of contact with your email. It’s the thing that lures them in and gets them to read your message.

With that in mind, let’s look at famous subject lines and why they work. It will give you ideas for subject lines you can use in the future.

“Hey” – The Obama Campaign

“Hey” was the simple one-word subject line the Obama campaign used five times. They kept using it because it kept getting opened. Why would this subject line work so well?

It’s casual, like something a friend might write to you. The familiar tone piques your curiosity when you see that it’s from Barack Obama and not from a friend.

Casual, friendly language in the subject line shows familiarity and will make your subscribers pay more attention to your message.

One-word subject lines are also good because they pique curiosity.

Another subject line that the Obama campaign used was “Dinner?”

It’s another example of a one-word subject line that piques curiosity.

What one-word subject line could you use? Remember that your subject line needs to tie in somehow to the body of the email you’re sending.

“You’re missing out on points” – JetBlue

People hate the idea of missing out on something. Whenever you can imply that they are not getting something someone else is getting, they’ll open your email.

People are much more sensitive to losing something than gaining something. It’s called loss aversion. You can read more about it in Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

“10 Bizarre money habits making millennials richer”- Refinery 29

This subject line works for so many reasons.

People love lists that will teach them something new.

The word “Bizarre” makes them curious. They’re expecting to see unusual financial advice they haven’t heard before.

The subject line also goes against what’s commonly reported in media about millennials not being able to find jobs and having way too much student loan debt.

Whenever you can have a subject line that runs contrary to commonly held beliefs it will get your readers’ attention.

“Pairs nicely with spreadsheets” – Warby Parker

I’m a giant nerd, so I love this subject line.

This subject line is perfect to make people wonder what on earth could possibly pair well with a spreadsheet.

If you want to look at a good example of e-commerce emails I suggest signing up for Warby Parker’s email list. They do a really good job with follow-up emails and keeping the subscriber engaged.

“Products the celebs are wearing” – Sephora

In this celebrity-obsessed culture, most people are interested in what famous people are doing. People are especially interested in what celebrities are wearing if they could just go to their local Sephora and get it themselves.

This taps into curiosity because it doesn’t tell you what the products are. It taps into the desire to look like a celebrity and the fear of missing out on the latest, greatest products that the rich and famous are using.

“25% off all your favorites” – Guess

This is a classic subject line for e-commerce sites that are having sales.

Just announcing to people that there is a sale will get them to open. According to a poll, 68% of all millennials said that they made purchases because of an email. That’s a heck of a lot of people.

When you do have sales make sure you market them through email.

“Stop wasting time doing mindless work” -Evernote

This subject line points to a common pain point that the Evernote customer has and promises that help them.

If you can tap into the pain that your ideal customer feels and help them solve it that is a great way to improve your open rates.

Remember though you always have to deliver on the promise. That promise can be delivered on in the email itself or in the link that you provide to your website.

“Get more kitchen space with these easy fixes” – IKEA

Here’s another example of helping your reader with a common problem. The bonus here is that the fixes are easy. People love it when you show them an easy solution to a problem that thought would be hard to solve.

“The price dropped for something in your cart” – Target

If you have an e-commerce business and you don’t have an abandoned cart sequence shame on you.

This type of email is brilliant because you already know the person was thinking about buying the item. Maybe they didn’t buy it because the price was too high. Telling them about a price drop is a way to get them to come back and make that purchase.

“Mary, check out these hand-picked looks” – Guess

Personalizing your subject lines works. That’s why people still do it.

Try adding your subscriber’s name to subject lines and giving them suggestions that seem personal. Here they achieve this with the use of “hand-picked.”

When coming up with subject line ideas remember that subject lines with these traits get more open rates…

casual tone
curiosity piquing
personalization
problem-solving
promising to teach something unusual, new, or different
tapping into loss aversion
tapping into fear of missing out

I hope this short list of subject lines companies are using gives you some ideas the next time you sit down to write an email for your business.

Marketing Lessons from the Jeffree Star & Shane Dawson Makeup Launch

November 4, 2019 by Lovelyn

Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson broke the Internet last week, and it was all the result of a genius marketing move that I’d like to explore in today’s post.

First off, who the heck are Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star?

If you aren’t that familiar with YouTube, you might have no idea who these people are. No worries. Let’s take a minute to make sure everyone is caught up.

Jeffree Star was a MySpace personality and singer who moved to the YouTube platform. Nowadays, he’s most recognized for his influence in the online makeup guru space. He is the founder of Jeffree Star Cosmetics and is reportedly worth upwards of $50 million. As of writing this post he has 16.4 million YouTube subscribers.

Shane Dawson was an early YouTube adopter who got his start on the platform doing lowbrow sketch comedy. He’s been making YouTube videos for over a decade now and has amassed a loyal audience of 23 million subscribers. He has evolved into a documentary filmmaker on YouTube who is making long-form content that gets millions of views.

A Profitable Collaboration

About a year ago Dawson made his first documentary about Jeffree Star in which he gave viewers a look behind into Star’s makeup empire. The original series got upwards of 20 million views.

After the success of the first documentary, they decided to do a more in-depth collaboration that would take an entire year to film. In it, Dawson would learn the ins and outs of the cosmetics industry and release his own makeup line under Jeffree Star Cosmetics.

After the sixth episode of the documentary dropped, Dawson’s makeup line went up for sale online. The results were mayhem.

So much traffic crowded onto sites selling the products that the websites crashed.

Shopify had difficulties managing all the traffic.

People waited in virtual lines for hours only to find that the items in their carts were sold out by the time they could checkout.

Looking at some of the comments people left I saw things like …

“I’m not even into makeup, but I felt like I had to get this eyeshadow palette.”

“I was so emotionally invested I didn’t want to miss out.”

Let’s look at what made this so successful

Granted both men have sizeable online followings, but neither had sold out of this amount of product so quickly in the past.

What sales lessons can we learn from this?

Sell with story

When your prospects are emotionally invested in your product or service, they are much more likely to buy.

The documentary took people on an emotional journey. They saw the creation of the makeup from conception to finished product. They witnessed the deals that were made, the obstacles that had to be overcome, and the drama behind the scenes firsthand.

This inside look at what went into the creation of the product made the viewer feel like they were part of the process.

Don’t be afraid of being yourself

The documentary didn’t shy away from the messiness of the lives of the creators. There were emotional highs and lows. Dawson talked openly about his anxieties over the process.

Dawson included his engagement in the series.

We saw how Starr delt with a largescale theft in his warehouse.

At one point we see how Star does his best to continue on with business as usual even though he is desperately worried about his seriously ill dog.

In the end the audience saw how much they really care about the product and the experience of the people who buy it.

Collaborate strategically

Both men have big followings, but they wouldn’t have gotten the results on their own. Working together, they maximized their audiences and broadened their appeal.

Long-term marketing

People online knew about this collaboration a year in advance. There were hints and rumblings about it on social media. When the original trailer finally went up it got people talking. The documentary started over a month before the makeup line was released.

This was truly thinking in terms of the long haul when it came to marketing this makeup line.

To get better outcomes consider using some of these tactics yourself.

Sell with story
Be yourself
Collaborate
Use longterm marketing strategies

When you do you’ll find that prospects will connect more with your product and be willing to join endless lines to buy.

Hope this article gave you something to think about.

How to Sell Anything, No Sleaze or Hype Required

October 31, 2019 by Lovelyn

I’m going to be honest with you.

Before I got into copywriting, I thought sales was sleazy. I guess that was my problem in life because when you think about it, most everything you need to do to earn a living somehow involves sales.

I couldn’t get the image out of my mind of the sleazy used car salesman. (No disrespect to used car salespeople out there. I’m just using the trope because most people know what I’m talking about.) You know the type, he’ll tell you anything to get you to buy a broken down piece of junk for way too much money.

I used to think of sales as over-the-top hype, making empty promises, pressuring people to spend money on something they didn’t really need. I just plan thought of it as yucky.

My thinking started to change when I read the book To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink. That book got my gears turning and flipped the way I thought about sales on its head. Inspired, I read a few more books about sales. Though I was thinking differently, I wasn’t quite ready to change yet.

Studying copywriting is what pushed me over the edge, in a good way;) My casual interest in understanding sales, fascination with human psychology, and love of writing made this profession the perfect marriage of my interests.

Enough about me.

Let’s talk about you.

You’ve got an amazing product or service to offer the world, but you haven’t been able to get it out there because you are afraid of selling. You don’t want to come off as pushy, gross, or sleazy.

Here’s my advice to you.

If you don’t want to come off as pushy, gross, or sleazy, then don’t be pushy, gross, or sleazy. Now that that’s taken care of, let’s look at what selling really is.

Selling is telling people what you have to offer and how it will help them.

Do you have something that you’re selling that will help people?

Will it make their lives easier or less stressful?

Will it save them time or help them accomplish a goal?

Will it just keep them entertained?

Great.

Tell as many people as you can about it. Don’t be shy. Tell them because you’re super proud of whatever it is you do, and you know it works.

That’s the first step. If you have something that will help people, it is your duty to let them know about it. The exchange of money for that product or service is only natural, but we’ll deal with any money hangups you might have another day.

If you are a good, honest person who wants to help others, you’re in the position to succeed in selling because one of the most important qualities you can have as a salesperson is empathy.

The truth is that the overhyped, pushy kind of sales that you hate comes back to bite the salesperson in the backside later. You don’t want that.

But if you’re not doing all that stuff, how do you sell? Actually, the answer to that is easier than you might think.

#1 Talk about the problem you solve and the emotions or feelings your prospect is experiencing. Show them that you know where they’re coming from and that you empathize.

#2 Tell them about your solution and show them examples of your solution working for others.

#3 Ease any objections they might have

#4 Thoroughly explain what you’re offering them.

#5 Invite them to buy. Be specific about what they need to do to buy.

#6 Give them a reason to buy now rather than later

That’s a very basic layout of how you can go about selling your products or services to someone.

Of course, there are nuanced ways to use language to influence people’s decisions, but right now, I just want to make sure you get the basics. The next time you are ready to try to sell something, be confident, be empathetic, and follow these basics steps. You’ll be surprised by the results.

Achieving Product Market Fit

February 10, 2017 by Lovelyn

This is a sample intro paragraph and can be used to hook visitors into reading your article. You can change the appearance of this by editing the style sheet.

This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what is on your mind. This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what is on your mind.

This is a sample heading

Understanding Your Customers

February 10, 2017 by Lovelyn

This is a sample intro paragraph and can be used to hook visitors into reading your article. You can change the appearance of this by editing the style sheet.