The Truth Of Long And Short Form Email Copy.

1- Long copy reality.
2- Short copy reality
3- The bridge that changes everything.

First, let's look at the reality of long copy in emails.

Your click-throughs were pretty high in the beginning, weren't they? But then, pretty quickly, those click-throughs dropped down way low even though you have a high open rate.

You may have convinced yourself that this is just the natural progression of a list. You tell yourself that it's normal for the click rate to drop on this scale.

Here is what really happened. Your readers love you, you have built a great relationship with them while using your long copy approach!

What you didn't take into consideration is that you are training your list to become your pal instead of training them to click the target link you are promoting.

While they very likely read every single email you send them, and they enjoy the stories you tell, they simply do not see any urgency related to the emails you are sending them.

So, a lot of your emails are getting set aside to be read later "when things settle down" (which doesn't seem to happen much)

Your general flow is a long email telling a story the reader can relate to, and this really strengthens your relationship, and then you do a little soft sell near the bottom, and this removes any urgency.

So, you have trained your people to be your friend, and at the same time you trained them that your emails can wait until later.

Ouch! This is certainly not what you intended!

So, let's cover short email copy.

Very direct, straight to the point, high-impact call to action.

In the beginning your click-rate is sweet, high click throughs, lots of sales, you're doing great, and then... You aren't.

You see your list attrition spiral out of control. You start getting a lot of unsubscribes, and a whole lot of people who seem to just be filtering your email out of their inbox.

Bottom line, you do great on conversions after the click through, but your list diminishes at about the same rate you are able to build it, so you end up sort of stuck in place.

You work hard to build that list, but can't get ahead because of your brutal list attrition ratio.

Again - This is certainly not what you wanted!

Fortunately, the solution is a hybrid between the two... Test it for a week, and you'll see the results and understand that you can recover the viability of your list quickly, as well as start getting ahead with your list growth.

First, understand that if you were doing traditional long copy, you have trained your list to largely ignore your target links, and if you were doing traditional short copy, your list starts ignoring you because they fill like you are just using them as a piggy-bank. (no one wants that).

So, for you long email copy folks, cut that soft sell pitch off of the bottom of your email, and on the top of your email go ahead and put a short form high impact call to action to get that click.

So now your email is formatted as:
1- Strong short call to action to get the click
2- Your story for relationship building.
End result... Retraining your people to give you the click while still enjoying the benefits of a strong relationship.

For you short email copy folks, continue your high impact short email, but under your signature, do a p.s. on your email.

In this section, tell something about yourself. Some non-work related project you have been working on, some funny thing that happened at your house recently, something that relates to the reader that you are a regular human being too. Let them visualize you at home.

So now your email is formatted as:
1- Strong short call to action to get the click as usual
2- Your little something personal for relationship building.
End result... Retraining your people to stay subscribed and active since now you are making yourself more human and likable to them.

I am by nature a short copy guy for emails, yet I have an extremely dedicated base of followers because I let them in on my regular-guy side.

Example, I tend to talk about whatever I might be doing with my tractor, or out in my woodshop lately.

I also occasionally encourage them to write back to me and tell me what they have been up to.

Most don't write back, but the ones that do, I take the time to thoughtfully reply to. Yes, it creates work for me, but it also massively boosts the relationship.

Over a little time, once you get your old list retrained and new people coming into your list are being trained right in the first place, you will enjoy the rewards of both methods combined.

You'll get a lot more clicks, and you'll build relationships fast, easily, and without feeling forced.

This is the method I have used for close to 20 years. I test long/short every single year, and without fail, this hybrid method always wins massively.