“Print copy update” email... 🥁 10/10

*Blows cobwebs off screen* it’s been a while! So much for weekly emails, huh. (If you’ve been languishing too… hugs from afar.)

Anyway, onwards. 

Have you ever buckled under the pressure to concoct a whizzbang subject line? Struggled to decide how much detail is enough detail? Felt let down by the usual copywriting formulas and “hacks”? Ditto x100. Today’s teardown is for you.

The email we’ll be looking at is one of those magical examples of inspiration hiding under rocks. 

It also offers a window into the five elements of human personality, which I’ve found helps make sense of abstract entities like products, services or organisations, giving a steer on messaging large or small.

The backstory:

Many years ago, when I would look in look in the mirror and see not a freelancer but a fraudster frantically flapping around in all directions, I signed up to an email list. 

It was the email list of a man who knows a lot about positioning. That’s the lush patch o’ land you own in somebody’s mind that whispers (wordlessly!!) what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, and how you differ from the alternatives. Yes... positioning is a beast. I have yet to master it myself, seeing as the flapping still occurs at least once a week. Flap flap flap. The fact that it happens less often I owe in no small part to folks like this fella. 

(As usual I’m anonymising the teardown out of courtesy, but I know that some of you reading this may be interested in his stuff. Want the name? Holla, I’ll share it in private.)

He’s written a book about positioning for independent consultants. Obviously I pray that this book will enable me to kill off my flapping once and for all, so when he announced its release, offering free copies in exchange for honest reviews, I bit his hand off. I opted for the print version over digital because I am not one of those Terminator-esque startup founders who can chomp through 15 nonfiction books a week. It’s much harder to neglect a kilo of cellulose.

And then… 

...crickets. 

Where oh where was my bible for freelance salvation (no pressure mister)??

That’s when I received an email explaining the delay. Hallelujah! 

Why did it work? What can we learn from it? Read on to find out.

If you enjoy this teardown, please consider flicking it on to someone else who’d get a lot out of it ✌ (and if someone fabulous forwarded it to you, you can subscribe here, it’s free!).

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Subject line: “Print copy of Xxxx [book title acronym] update”

Yes yes yesss! The subject line I never knew I was waiting for!

Bland though it looks, it’s doing more heavy lifting than a nuclear-powered Popeye. 

A common debate I have with clients is around subject lines they perceive as “boring”. Darn straight, a phrase might not be catchy in isolation. But it’s about context. If you’re telling the reader the right piece of information, right time, right place, you don’t need to tart up the lingo, you can let your message speak for itself. 

What’s more, the subject line is frontloaded with the noun that the reader is most likely to recognise: “print copy”. So what, you say? Well, the default in general is to use the reverse of this order, i.e. “An update about [whatever]”, leaving the reader clutching at straws until you’ve revealed what [whatever] is. Often that’s fine... but in this instance the alternative would be “An update about your print copy of Xxxx”, burying the critical nugget of meaning in the middle, where it’s most likely to get missed at a glance.

And may we nerd out about acronyms for a moment? Now, normally, normally, acronyms are TBAAAC (to be avoided at all costs). Here though, it works as a secondary descriptor after “print copy”, saving on real estate so the subject line doesn’t get truncated. Plus, design theory tells me that the visual weirdness of the acronym may have caught my eye amongst everything else in my inbox, causing me to notice this email before any others. 

Right, let’s quickly whizz through the rest of the email in two big chunks. There are a couple more valuable points we can take away from it. 

“Hey, just a super-quick update: I'm still going to send you a physical copy of Xxxx. But it's taking a while.

When I ordered proof copies of the print version of the book, they printed and shipped out in about 2 days. I ordered 60 what are called author copies of the book (Amazon supplies them to me at the cost of printing plus shipping) on April 5 and they should arrive Apr 20 - 22, but they haven't printed yet.

This is... fine, but I was expecting it to happen faster. Sorry to keep you waiting, but once they arrive I should be able to get them turned around and in the mail to you in a few days.”

Too much info? To a stranger to this guy’s schtick, perhaps. But judging by hundreds of his emails and podcasts… transparency and attention to detail are part of The Way He Does Things. And that matters, for reasons we’ll go into further below. I lapped it up.

“What's funny is that some folks have ordered the print version themselves from Amazon and already gotten and read the whole thing. If I'd sent y'all vouchers to comp you the book directly from Amazon you too would have already gotten it, but I wouldn't be able to sign and write something personal in the book, which would feel like a loss, so I'm glad I'm doing it the slower way I am.”

This could *so very easily* come across as a humblebrag. And yet. I sense from the things this chap has said and done in the past (for example: testing out a paid email subscription, talking about the experiment upfront, acknowledging its failure at the end, then gently putting it to bed) that he really means it. 

And this, this is the essence of brand. What’s your driving force? Do you prove it by repeating your patterns of behaviour over and over again?

I’m no psychologist, and of course it is totally unacceptable to psychoanalyse someone I’ve never met, so... sorry in advance... but I am going to do it anyway to make a point. The author’s actions suggest that he is high in openness and conscientiousness on the (scientific evidence based!) spectrum of the Big Five personality traits, sometimes referred to as OCEAN. The other three are extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

People talk about “tone of voice”. Often, they then unveil a wishlist of adjectives or brand archetypes, with hope in their eyes and optimism in their voice, and I weep for a more pragmatic tool for us to think about this stuff. Perhaps the fault lies with me here as someone who should’ve gone into coding not copywriting, but what if OCEAN was that tool?

“Anyway, just wanted you to know what's happening with the print version that's eventually headed your way.

-P”

---------- End ----------

Conclusion: 

Email Teardown Club score = 10/10

I mean, I’ve carved out a week of holiday next month to read this book. I cannot wait. Catch you on the flap, err, flipside.

Do any of the ideas in this teardown seem useful for something specific that you’re working on… or have I made matters *more* confusing, not less? Hit reply, I want to know! All feedback helps me make future emails better for you.

Cheerio,

Corissa 

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These teardowns are my gut reactions as a customer, mashed together with my copywriter background, to investigate how messaging really lands outside the sender's ivory tower. I’m only a sample size of one. Agree or disagree with my take? Give me a shout! I love exploring other perspectives.

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