SECRETS of Letter Format Emails THAT WORK! 📩 Ask Us ANYTHING❓ | Ep. 373

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, not That Podcast presented by Marigold. These is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in ridiculous questions. We try tackle one of each. If you wanna submit a question, just go to j schon.com.

Jay Schwedelson: There's a button that says podcast, another one that says, ask us anything. And if you wanna submit. I mean anything you got. So let's jump into it. Our first question, we'll do the work one before the ridiculous one. We got a question from Charlotte, from Miami. You know, Miami's about 45 minutes from me. You know what I just saw?

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause I'm getting like all these local advertisements that there is a new laser. Abba Disco, disco Show, Abba, you know the band with uh um, mama Mia. Down to Miami. I will not be at that. Not that I don't like abba, I do like abba. Um, I don't like laser shows. I don't like planetariums. Um, I haven't been in a, a long time.

Jay Schwedelson: I think planetariums are really, I. Really weird. Why? Um, first of all, the narrator's always a try hard. It's like the narrator's like, and now the universe, like you've never seen it before. I'm like, get a life loser. And the other problem with planetarium, it's not that you ask, I always talk about the most random things, is that people like lie down and they get like really like.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't know. They spread out and I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, stop it. Anyway, me, I should stop it. Let's jump into your question, Charlotte. Okay, Jay. We use letter format emails to drive performance, but they are tanking since we went to a new format. Why would that be? Okay, well this is super interesting.

Jay Schwedelson: So letter format, emails, meaning you send out an email. It looks like a, it's a letter, like a one-to-one communication. And I don't care if you're a consumer brand or a business brand, all brands do this. Why? Because at a high level letter format, emails, ones that are not like graphic heavy. Do really, really, really well.

Jay Schwedelson: But there's been a trend in marketing that is sort of ruining letter format emails, and people don't realize that they're screwing up letter format emails. What do I mean? So I'm sure all of us, all of you out there have gotten emails and you open it up and it's text, right? It's words, it's not image heavy, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: But the trend that's gone on the last year has been a migration away from real. Letter format emails. The ones that actually look like a person may have typed it out and written it to you. Right. And what people are migrating to at brands business and consumer brands have migrated to is a letter format that is like a hybrid.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. It's still only. Words, basically. But it has some HTML coating. It has padding meaning like there's space around the words. Maybe there's a slight background color, like it's a little yellowish or tan. Maybe there's like a branded header. Um, and, and you know exactly what I'm talking about. And when you open those emails, when I open those emails, and I'll share with you the data that we have, when you open those emails, you instantly like, oh.

Jay Schwedelson: This isn't really a one 20 email. This isn't really a letter format email, right? This is, uh, something that's trying to pretend like it's a letter format email. And so the, when you're doing that, it's actually crushing, hurting performance in a big way as compared to doing the real deal, stripped down, no background color, no extra spacing and padding and stuff like that.

Jay Schwedelson: Emails so. We looked at data, uh, for stripped down plain text letter format, emails versus kind of that hybrid letter format emails. And we looked at about a hundred campaigns where, um, there was a head-to-head test of, of an AB, basically. And what we found was pretty interesting. One thing that we found was that.

Jay Schwedelson: On the stripped down version of the letter format, emails, people had a much higher likelihood to actually reply to the email to actually hit reply and write something like, Hey, I'm interested. Send me the guide. I want the discount code, whatever. Because when you get these stripped down versions of the emails, you actually think it might be coming from a human or somebody's actually checking the response to those emails and we actually saw a 600% higher average reply rate on the stripped down version versus the H TM L one.

Jay Schwedelson: Because the one that's kind of like got the little bit of more HTML vibes, like it's a little more graphic, heavy vibes, um, people are like, I'm not replying to this. I know there's no human. Behind it, but the more important stat. Was on click throughs. We actually saw that the hybrid letter format, the one that, again, is not really the stripped down version.

Jay Schwedelson: Actually year over year, we've seen a 25% drop lower click through rate than the actual true plain text stripped down version. Now, the question that's always asked is if you have a plain text version, it's not actually plain text. Technically, you're still sending it out as what's called an HTML email.

Jay Schwedelson: And the reason that you want to do that is it is still valuable to have your logo in the message right in your signature or something like that, uh, because that actually does help out quite a bit. Uh, so it is a text. Only email, a plain text email, but it's really an HTML email. But what you're not doing is an adding in kind of like all these different, you know, buttons and little images and icons, things that make it seem instantly, like it's not actually a one-to-one email.

Jay Schwedelson: So if you are letter format. Strategy is not working. It's probably because you're trying to live in both worlds. You're trying to live in the graphic world and the plain text world, and you can't do that. A letter format strategy has to truly be a letter format strategy, or it's not gonna work. So again, if you're thinking about letter format, emails, just think about what is your goal. If your goal is to really have it, have that one-to-one feel, then truly make it look like it's one-to-one. Alright, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Sammy, from Detroit, and Sammy said, Jay, have you seen that the TSA.

Jay Schwedelson: Starting to allow you to wear shoes through the screening and they're not gonna make you take off your shoes anymore. Are you okay with this? And do you love going through airports? Uh, okay. Well. Am I okay with the shoe thing first? Yeah. Listen, uh, I don't like taking up my shoes. Anything to be safe, of course.

Jay Schwedelson: But if they're like, you know what, your shoes are fine. Cool. Leaving my shoes on. 'cause, um, it's, it's all, everything's disgusting. So taking up your shoes is disgusting. It's all disgusting. Do I like going through airports? You know? I love going through airports because, uh, assuming that my flight's on time or I'm not going to like Atlanta, uh, you know, like you go to the Atlanta airport and you, you land, and then they're like, okay, you know, you land in a whatever and then your connections in B whatever, and you find out that you have to become, you know, like Carl Lewis and be an Olympic, uh, sprinter and you have to run and take seven trains.

Jay Schwedelson: And have four different sweats go on while you're getting there. So, no, I, I like to avoid that. But in general, why do I like the airports, number one? Um, I eat things in airports that I don't eat anywhere else. Like it doesn't count for some reason. Like Cinnabon, I can get a Cinnabon in an airport. I would never get a cin bun.

Jay Schwedelson: Not in an airport, but like the calories don't actually count. I dunno. If people know that whatever you eat in an airport, it actually doesn't count. It's this weird kind of like, uh, uh, vortex that you could eat whatever you want, airport. So I do that, which is super weird. The other thing is I get a lot of joy.

Jay Schwedelson: I know this is terrible. I'm probably, this is wrong for me to say, but I love being in an airport, like at eight 30 in the morning, and I'll look over and I'll see somebody just crushing a Jack and Coke like. If I saw people drinking Jack and Coke at eight 30 in the morning, anywhere else, I'd be like, what is going on over there?

Jay Schwedelson: But when you walk through an airport and you see people all just sitting at a bar crushing whatever at eight 30 in the morning, like, yeah, go. You have a great day. Whatever. That's amazing. I, I, I, I don't actually love what goes on at Starbucks. I. Because I, I don't know if they're giving out Taylor Swift tickets at every Starbucks in every airport, but it seems that way because every Starbucks at every airport has a line which is totally prohibitive because I have multiple times, this is how ridiculous I am.

Jay Schwedelson: I have ordered something. I've waited on the line. I've ordered something and then my flight would be too close to taking off, and I couldn't wait to get my coffee actually paid for it, didn't have the time to wait for it. And I left without ever getting my coffee, which is the dumbest thing a human being can do.

Jay Schwedelson: So I love certain things about airports. Wow. I just went down a rabbit hole. You just asked me about shoes and I just said all that. Uh, anyway, listen. I appreciate you do me a big solid, okay. If we're not connected on Instagram, let's fix that. Find me at J Schon on Instagram. I share really ridiculous things.

Jay Schwedelson: You're awesome and uh, thanks for being here later.