As you can imagine, I’m on a lot of email lists.
Copywriting… Marketing… Anne Summers… Philosophy…
I’ve noticed something recently with a few copywriters though.
They all seem to now be ending their emails on:
“Hope that’s useful, cos that’s all I’ve got for today”
As a copywriter, you tend to pay attention to stuff like this.
When you see something weird once, you look at it, analyse it for a bit and then push it to one side, but when several different people use the same idea… again and again…
… you sit up and really pay attention.
They MUST be using it for a reason.
It’s like when I discovered the principle of “loss aversion” – the idea that we’d much prefer to AVOID losing £10 than gain an extra £10.
Once I learned about that, I started using it everywhere. Like this highly swipeable subject line for example:
“Don’t miss out on this, [FIRSTNAME]?”
So I look at the sentence again…
“Hope that’s useful, cos that’s all I’ve got for today”
Nope. I can’t see it.
Again:
“Hope that’s useful, cos that’s all I’ve got for today”
Still no.
I’ll tell you what it reminds me of…
It reminds me of when someone tells a long-winded joke that gets no reaction, and they follow up with the tagline…
“True story…”
… as if that either makes it funnier or justifies the unfunniness.
It also reminds me of one of the best pieces of advice I got when working in radio – always end on a punchline.
It didn’t have to be a funny one, but every story or link should always have a clear and definite end.
If you have to resort to:
“…well … er… what do you make of that?”
… you’ve failed.
That’s what I see when I read “Hope that’s useful, cos that’s all I’ve got for today” in my inbox.
It feels almost apologetic and you should NEVER be writing emails that you have to apologise for.
I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I feel.
(HAHAHAHAHAHAHA – God, even my dog saw that gag coming!)
If you’ve got a point you want to make, make it.
You only have to apologise if you’re a first-class arse about it, so make all your emails are apology free by following the patented “Holt point-making protocol”:
1. Make your point, clearly and decisively,
2. Don’t be an arse
(This “non-arse” technique is also handy for when you’re wrong and need to do a u-turn)
In tomorrow’s email, I’ll give you a super-easy way of doing this.
The idea I’m going to share with you not only makes your emails clearer and easier to read but it’ll also make them faster to write too.
How’s your interest level? Piqued?
Good. Keep an eye out for my name in your inbox tomorrow…
John
P.S. Yes, I did think about ending with “hope that’s useful, cos that’s all I’ve got for today…”, but the comedy police dictate I can only do ONE highly predictable gag per email and, to be honest, I was pushing my luck with the “I’m sorry” one…