0:00: This, by the way, is the kind of hypothesis you only develop when you have the behind the scenes view of your brand’s different products under that one big brand umbrella. 

 0:08: Welcome to Email swipes, where we peek behind the scenes at the emails that catch your attention and earn their place in your swipe file. 

 0:15: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran, and in the following episode, we’ll dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform. 

 0:23: And inspire your own email work. 

 0:26: I’m Miki Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for 8 and 9 figure sassin e-commerce brands like Shopify, For Sigmatic, and Sprout Social. 

 0:33: And I know that hearing the background stories to these emails will help you turn pie in the sky insights into plug and play actions. 

 0:39: Ready to make inspiration tactical? 

 0:41: Let’s go. 

 0:42: First, a quick recap of the email we discussed last week that we’ll be digging into today. 

 0:48: How to win better clients as a Samrush agency partner. 

 0:51: Join the platform. 

 0:53: Andres SEO expert, $2000 per month increase per client. 

 0:57: One client acquired. 

 0:59: Generating high quality leads and setting yourself apart as an agency, a case study. 

 1:03: Andre’s SEO expert leveraged its expertise and familiarity with Semrush to start attracting stronger leads as an official agency partner. 

 1:11: Years of experience, Semrush Academy certifications and a dedicated partner page allowed the US agency to level up its SEO game and become much more visible to prospective clients. 

 1:21: Number 1, become a Semrush certified agency. 

 1:24: Andre’s SEO expert needed to prove its proficiency by passing two certification exams via the Semrush Academy. 

 1:30: Number 2, create an agency partner page. 

 1:33: Once certified, the agency could connect with a global community of marketers and expose itself to better prospects via a dedicated landing page, the perfect place for brands to find trusted partners. 

 1:43: Number 3, attract bigger and better clients. 

 1:45: Thanks to its newfound status as a Stemrush agency partner, Andre’s SEO expert started enjoying higher quality leads versus other partner agency platforms and even landed the largest client on its books. 

 1:56: Being listed on the platform gives me quality leads with an excellent level and ability to understand the digital and organic context. 

 2:02: Andres Castro, CEO and founder, Andre’s SEO expert. 

 2:07: Become an agency partner. 

 2:08: Get found by bigger and better clients on the Samrush agency partner platform. 

 2:12: There’s no time to lose. 

 2:13: Get certified. 

 2:17: This episode was a master class in teamwork and collaboration. 

 2:22: Sure, there was the obvious teamwork in the main bit of the story that it took collaboration to come up with the whole mosh idea, but there were many other teamwork nuggets in the rest of the episode too. 

 2:32: I wasn’t kidding when I told Taylor that I think that everyone who listens will apply to join their team. 

 2:37: They’re doing the team thing so well. 

 2:40: So let’s get into it. 

 2:42: First off, just the way that Senmrush structures the team is so genius. 

 2:46: It’s such a great breakdown to split the mass emails and the automations. 

 2:50: I’ve always felt like the two categories take such different skills, and it’s cool to see that higher ups at Semrush feel the same way. 

 2:58: And I love, love, love how they take the successful mass emails and thread them into the automations. 

 3:04: Genius, genius. 

 3:06: I do this all the time in e-commerce, and it’s cool to see it done in SAS too. 

 3:10: This reminds me of a similar strategy, using social ads to test messaging or design or offers. 

 3:16: Not only are your emails primed for success when you do this because you’re using your winning variations, but you’re also getting more value from each piece of work. 

 3:24: Using something once is such a shame. 

 3:26: This strategy gets you more bang for your buck and more buck for your buck too. 

 3:31: So takeaway number one, use your mass communications as a testing playground for automation. 

 3:35: And by mass communications, sure, I mean newsletters, but really it’s anything that’s one off for more MVP. 

 3:41: This can be newsletters, it could be Facebook ads, it could even be push notifications. 

 3:46: OK, next up. 

 3:47: Did you catch the really critical prerequisite to them landing on this idea? 

 3:51: It was Laura, the analyst, gathering the team and sharing insights. 

 3:54: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. 

 3:56: If you want to be data informed, you have to use your data, not just collect it. 

 4:01: I’ve seen this so often. 

 4:02: will expend effort, testing all sorts of different things and then not even use the data to inform future work. 

 4:09: Instead, they just run more tests. 

 4:11: I get it. 

 4:12: It’s more fun, but it’s a waste of resources. 

 4:15: So take away#2, don’t just collect data, use it too. 

 4:18: What else helped them land on this idea? 

 4:20: Clearly it was an outside perspective. 

 4:22: Even Taylor initially thought it was a wild idea. 

 4:24: It was only her willingness to test this that got the idea past sent, which brings me to two takeaways. 

 4:31: The first is that you’ve got to be a little crazy and you definitely need to keep an open mind. 

 4:36: This reminds me of a story. 

 4:37: Forgive me, I can’t remember where I heard it, so I can’t give any credit and I’m just going to embellish the details that I forgot. 

 4:44: There was a creative director whose team created an inordinate amount of award-winning ads, and everyone wanted to know her secret. 

 4:50: How did they continuously turn out such creative ideas? 

 4:54: She said all it took was one simple change. 

 4:57: When she got promoted, she instituted a policy. 

 4:59: Anytime someone put forth an idea at a brainstorming session, everyone had to stand up and applaud the person. 

 5:05: It sounds so childish. 

 5:07: Like really, they needed applause every time they came up with an idea, but that encouragement was all it took to get the team putting forth tons of ideas. 

 5:16: And the more ideas you brainstorm, the more you land on winning ideas. 

 5:20: Bold ideas that give bold results are scary. 

 5:23: If we feel too vulnerable to share them, we’ll miss out on great ideas. 

 5:27: So takeaway number 3 is to create a culture where you make room for the crazy, where there’s safety and new ideas and humility in accepting other people’s ideas that you think make no sense. 

 5:37: And the second thing that I took from this is the importance of an outside perspective. 

 5:40: We all come with our own experiences, our own styles. 

 5:43: Getting a fresh perspective can be all that it takes. 

 5:46: This is obviously a huge benefit to hiring consultants or working with other team members. 

 5:51: So take away number 4, share, collaborate, build in public. 

 5:54: Whatever it takes, try not to create in a silo. 

 5:57: Our next takeaway is really interesting, especially because later in the season, we’ll hear an email story that is the exact opposite of this experience, but enough spoilers, we’ll get to that one later. 

 6:08: Anyway, Taylor mentioned that they were sending the agency partner platform emails from Sam Rush. 

 6:13: People would opt in on the Samrush site and they’d get an email from Semrush upselling them on the agency partners platform. 

 6:19: This makes sense obviously, but pushed the envelope and said, Hey, what if we send this from the agency partners platform instead? 

 6:26: This, by the way, is the kind of hypothesis you only develop when you have the behind the scenes view of your brand’s different products under that one big brand umbrella. 

 6:35: Remember we talked about this in the Bitly Takeaways episode? 

 6:37: Customer experiences everything as the umbrella, even if the team is viewing everything as separate products. 

 6:44: Anyway, This was a cool test to switch the sender, and it works because of the pattern interrupt. 

 6:49: When you opt in to one brand and get emails from that brand, it’s expected, not a bad thing, but if you can break things up from time to time and send the offer from someone else, it feels much more exciting. 

 7:00: In this case, it even has the feel of an invitation, like you’ve been chosen to join something special, not just being hit by an offer because you opted in somewhere. 

 7:08: So take away number 5. 

 7:10: Our brains start to ignore the expected. 

 7:12: Switching up the sender name and in this case even the branded elements of the email is a great pattern interrupt that can elicit more curiosity and attention and therefore more opens. 

 7:21: There is a risk to doing this, but we’ll talk about that when we get to the email story that had the opposite experience. 

 7:27: Yes, I am. 

 7:27: Keeping you in suspense. 

 7:29: OK, next takeaway. 

 7:31: Taylor mentioned how they’re in a slack group with all the company-wide marketers and product marketers and product managers. 

 7:36: There’s been a lot of talk about voice of customer in the copy world, and I’ve definitely been one of those voices myself, but there’s also a lot of gold hiding in your client or colleague’s voices too. 

 7:47: Internal people have tons of intel, and it’s so important to mind there also for objections and motivators and triggers and all that good stuff that makes for superb emails and offers. 

 7:58: It’s obviously important to temper all this with actual feedback from the customers, but don’t discount the value of internal research. 

 8:05: So takeaway number 6, tap your team for amazing insights. 

 8:09: Onto our last takeaway. 

 8:10: The copy in this email can be polished up. 

 8:13: For example, it took a while for me to realize that Andre’s SEO expert was the name of his company, and it wasn’t his name and a. 

 8:20: title, but missing a comma. 

 8:21: A simple thing like putting the name in single quotation marks could have fixed this, but that’s not our takeaway. 

 8:27: Our takeaway is that despite the roughness of the copy, this email still did really well. 

 8:31: How? 

 8:32: At first I thought it was just because the offer was a good one. 

 8:35: Who wouldn’t want an increase of $2000 a month? 

 8:37: And Some Rush is a recognized brand. 

 8:39: Becoming a partner seems like a no brainer. 

 8:42: But this wasn’t the first time they offered the partnership certification. 

 8:45: This email performed better than previous versions. 

 8:48: So it’s not the offer, it’s something about the email. 

 8:51: What is it? 

 8:52: It’s that magical mosh. 

 8:53: The case study template gave it a personal relatable touch, and the optimize your workflow template reduced friction and made it seem doable and easy. 

 9:01: Putting the two together just made it work really well. 

 9:05: So take away#7, copy is important, short, but strategy pulls even more weight. 

 9:10: Thanks for geeking out with me about that email story. 

 9:12: If you enjoyed either of these episodes, you’ll probably enjoy getting my emails, plus you’ll never miss another episode. 

 9:18: Sign up at ikibus.com/subscribe, and yes, that link is in the show notes.