Crafting Conversions: How we brewed Four Sigmatic’s Black Friday emails using customer reviews and a heaping spoonful of creativity

Nikki Elbaz: So obviously that was a gold nugget, and that’s where the subject line was born. 

 0:04: 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. 

 0:10: 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 and inspire your My own work. 

 0:21: I’m Mikki Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for 8 and 9 figure sassin e-commerce brands like Shopify, For Sigmatic, and Sprout Social. 

 0:28: 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. 

 0:34: Ready to make inspiration tactical? 

 0:36: Let’s go. 

 0:38: First, let’s read today’s email. 

 0:41: Gone tomorrow at midnight. 

 0:43: 2 times coffee plus 2 times matcha. 

 0:46: Save a latte. 

 0:47: Shake up your afternoon. 

 0:49: Ultimate smoothie kit, €99. 

 0:52: Save €111. 

 0:54: Up to 50% off is still on. 

 0:56: Pick faves. 

 0:58: Your questions answered. 

 1:00: Do they taste like mushrooms? 

 1:02: Nope. 

 1:02: Functional mushrooms don’t taste anything like portobello or crimini. 

 1:06: They have a slightly earthy flavor that you can’t even taste with all the other superfood ingredients like coffee, cacao, or protein. 

 1:14: This Black Friday sale was my first foray into the Disney world of the classic e-commerce Black Friday. 

 1:21: I had done many Black Friday sales before, sure, but for brands that had much more stayed sales, those brands had won maybe 3 offers that spanned the entire sale period. 

 1:33: After I signed on this project, I was headed the most dizzying spreadsheet. 

 1:37: Not only did nearly every day have a different offer, every segment did too. 

 1:41: Every other day I had a launch email and every other day I had a car close email. 

 1:45: It was a lot. 

 1:47: But the team was awesome, really helpful and hands on despite them hiring me precisely because they were so busy. 

 1:52: And the design team, I love, love, love the four sigmatic designers. 

 1:57: So many fun ideas and GIFs, they just transform everything into gorgeousness. 

 2:02: This wasn’t a typical project for me, not just because it was more classically sale sale sale. 

 2:07: I also didn’t touch the strategy, and we didn’t do any deep research either. 

 2:11: I’ll be honest, For Sigmatic is just such a cool brand. 

 2:14: I agreed to the work despite it being so not a typical fit. 

 2:18: Again, they were hiring me less as an expert and more as an extra set of hands. 

 2:22: My job was to just write the emails, and they weren’t very long emails either. 

 2:26: They were basically just subject lines and headlines. 

 2:29: I internally fought this at first. 

 2:30: It felt like I wasn’t doing my job, but that was exactly what they hired me for. 

 2:35: So once I got over myself, I got into my creative copy shoes. 

 2:39: This was really interesting because I originally trained as a creative copywriter. 

 2:42: Punchy’s nappy copy was the work I was doing day in and day out when I first finished art school. 

 2:48: But this time it wasn’t the same because I wasn’t the same. 

 2:51: I couldn’t ignore the conversion copy side of my brain. 

 2:53: I knew that I could be doing so much more than just punchy copy. 

 2:57: So even though we didn’t do any deep research, I did go deep into the customer reviews. 

 3:01: I just couldn’t write anymore without any data, and that’s how this email was born. 

 3:06: One of my favorite ways to write emails is using customer reviews, and I don’t mean those typical customer review emails you’re thinking of. 

 3:14: You know, those emails that are basically the brand gloating about themselves vis a vis their customer testimonials. 

 3:19: I mean swiping the reviews for voice of customer, building your emails based on the ideas you mine in the reviews. 

 3:25: I love this strategy so much that I built a whole master class on it called your customers should be writing your emails. 

 3:31: How to use customer reviews to cheat your way through more email campaigns. 

 3:34: It’s seriously one of my favorites. 

 3:36: You can get the link in the show notes. 

 3:37: It’s only $43. 

 3:40: Anyway, a lot of the reviews were using the phraseology of coffee with the frills or coffee with no frills. 

 3:44: So obviously that was a gold nugget, and that’s where the subject line was born. 

 3:48: We used it for this segment, which was a never purchased segment. 

 3:52: Sampers are obviously perfect for that segment. 

 3:54: We want them to try the product. 

 3:56: And because they’re new to the whole mushroom coffee thing, they probably like their coffee with the frills. 

 4:01: They need that reassurance that just because there are mushrooms in their coffee doesn’t mean they can’t still get their cup of comfort. 

 4:07: By the way, we did also use the coffee with no frills for the ground coffee that everyone reviewed as so smooth that they could drink it black. 

 4:15: Anyway, all the emails, in addition to having a zillion variations for the different segments and such, also had split tests for the subject lines, and they were multi-purposed for resents, whichever line one in the morning would be sent as a resent in the evening. 

 4:29: I told you it was dizzying. 

 4:31: No wonder they were busy, Anyway, we tested the subject line against try them all, which had a similar feel for a never purchased segment. 

 4:39: And it was also technically voice of customer, but not really because Try them all just doesn’t have that stickiness that really quantifies as voice of customer. 

 4:48: And that was that. 

 4:49: The sale was a resounding success. 

 4:50: Thank God. 

 4:51: This email, not necessarily more than any other, which is actually pretty interesting because despite there being a new quote unquote launch every other day, the very first emails, the real real launch, those were the ones that did the best, even better than the ones on Black Friday itself, which I guess just goes to show you that you Just can’t fake it. 

 5:09: It helps keep things exciting. 

 5:12: People like seeing new offers, but the everyday mini launches just couldn’t compare to the beginning of the Black Friday launch itself. 

 5:19: Would I do anything differently? 

 5:20: Of course I would. 

 5:21: I would add some body copy, continue the story of the samplers, give a little context, add some motivators, make people drool a little. 

 5:28: And we did a little, don’t worry. 

 5:30: We continued working with For Sigmatic into the following year and we managed to wiggle in a little more copy into the campaigns. 

 5:36: Hooray. 

 5:37: I would also change up the FAQ section, which was part of the required template. 

 5:41: Usually, I’m a huge fan of including objection smashers and sales emails, especially in e-commerce where it’s not so common, but this one feels a little too slow for an urgent cart close Black Friday sale email. 

 5:53: I changed the your questions answered headline to something a little more urgency driven, and I would definitely add a button, especially since the question so perfectly matches the hesitancy that can be solved by samplers. 

 6:05: Thanks for joining me for email story time. 

 6:07: If you enjoyed today’s story, give this podcast a review so email marketers like you can have more fun with email. 

 6:13: See you next week when we dig into this story’s takeaways.