Episode 2: Who writes the best email?

 What's wrong with my attire? I'm wearing a black plain shirt. You're wearing a shirt with, what do you know? Cat hair all over it right here. Hang on a second. All right. You did ask me to show you your cats 'cause you were so interested in cats. 'cause you're a cat lady. I won. I won't take anything you're saying until I come to your house and prove that doesn't stink of ammonia.

All right. Because I never said it doesn't stink. Am those aren't the cats? That's just me. All right. Okay.

Today, will and Jen are gonna put their email skills to the test, something that I think they're both very familiar with. Uh, this time we're using Close now. Will and Jen, your task is to follow up the following email that I'm gonna read out loud and make it better at the end. Stelli, the CEO of close is going to critique your emails and choose the best one.

All right, here's the scenario. You just received an inbound demo request from Michael Scott at Dunder Mifflin. They had a positive trial of close and want a demo to learn more. You gave him a call within five minutes of his form request, but he didn't answer. You left a voicemail and you need to send a follow-up email to make sure you don't lose this hot lead.

Let's take this bad email and turn it into an excellent one, worthy of a quick. Reply. I'll drop you guys this email in the chat so you can get a closer look. Just left you a quick voicemail. It does what I cannot stand, which is adds the word quick to something, which only makes that word and phrase longer.

So if you say, just left you a quick voicemail, that phrase is now one additional word. I cannot stand that. It's also a full whole on sentence. We don't need to be writing sentences in the subject line, so short to the point. That M dash is screaming AI copy immediately. Um, even though they are apparently real copywriters do use them, I don't believe that.

Um, so AI is subject one for sure. I, I, I, I don't. Disagree with Jen's point about just and quick it's added waffle. It could just be left you a voicemail. Yeah. Or voicemail. Same effect. If anything more click worthy just sounds kind of desperado. I know it sounds like a marketer or someone who's like behind their goal and they're like, I have an inbound lead.

Like I've never been more excited in my entire life. This is the best thing that's happened to me all week. We're gonna give you guys both five minutes to make it a better now. Totally. By the, I'm starting the five minute timer in three. Two, one.

Can I make noises? Distraction. You are so distracting already.

Oh, I haven't had enough coffee or, or buy events today to pull this one off. Hang on. I love how you both have your readers on. It's like so fast. Oh, I know. We've aged, we, yeah. Since last season.

You'll have just a minute and 21 seconds left.

10 seconds left. So come on, let's finish up those emails. I'm about to make you stop writing. Hands off to be up. We got 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hands up. This is crap. I know. That was my initial reaction as well. This is. Want to first, Jen to go first since you went first. If you know how to screen share on this one, I know how to screen share.

I know how to share my screen. This is some like eighties girl band song. Okay. Okay. Don't act like you don't like the eighties. I really like eighties. Here's my email. All right. Lemme have a look at here. Close demo. Hmm. Did he ask a demo? I I, I don't mind it. It's all right. So you'd like to see a demo of close.

Do you have a account link that I can use to pick a time, or should I say mine? I like that for sure. Off the bat, like you're doing pick, you want them to at the very top. So I, I'm, I'm struggling to find a critique on that one because again, if we read that first line, doesn't need to read the Let Rest Smart Executive writing tip there, Jen.

I'll give you kudos for that. Now on to the bad, the ugly. The Jen as I like acne did something similar. In addition showing how close, but you skipped the second line. Yeah, I don't care. Dwight mentioned your're debating memory from Scratch Street. That didn't happen. Don't lie to Michael Scott like that.

You didn't. I called Dwight. Oh, you called Dwight. See, the, the, the thing about all of this is like, I like how you didn't reference the voicemail because you never would've called them in the first place, Jen. 'cause we all know you're afraid of the phones. Um, so I like the fact that you've changed the entire narrative, that there was no ever no voicemail because you know, you wouldn't have actually made the call in the first place.

This would've been your first step inbound lead. No urgency. Let's send them an email. That's what you would've done in this situation. Let's be real. So I'm glad you've acknowledged that. Head on by not referencing the voicemail at all. Um, PS tell Angela I'm a proud owner of her cat calendar. Hang on a second.

All right. You did ask me to show you a cat 'cause you were so interested in cats 'cause you're a cat lady. I believe we had a bit of debate that you weren't a cat person. So now I'm getting kind of dispute. Are you lying to impress Michael, which is unethical or are you truly a cat lady? Jen. All right.

Whose house stinks of ammonia? There we go. I like calendars. I think those are the key two kind of key takeaways from here. You're lying. Um, the ps um, how did you find out about Angela's Calendly? This seems like made up fake personalization. If you ask me when I was researching it, 'cause I still research inbound leads.

Angela's cat calendar came up. Pull up the website where that calendar exists right now. Prove it. It's, it's private. You can't access it. Uh, I, I give this a and I'm being, I'm, I'm gonna be actually not as mean. I'm gonna give this a b plus, A minus. Wow. A minus. I don't think you need the vm. I don't. What I don't like is when people leave a voicemail and then they tell you 55 times they left a voicemail.

Someone can see if they, if they left a voicemail. So I'm gonna challenge on that one, but go ahead. Okay. I would like just dun miff and close. I do agree with your logic of don't do dunder mifflin dun miff. And close is more of a familiar tone. I like that. And you want the name of the company in the subject line, I think.

'cause you're looking for something that they already established familiarity with. I do love this line. Looks like yourself, Dwight and Jim has been poking around in clothes. I like the language of poking around because you're not assuming. Like the first email did that. It's a serious thing and it's happening.

It, I think the casual tonality means like you recognize they're exploring a tool, they haven't made a decision. So I actually really, really love that. Typically looking at new tools, while rewarding can be a bit overwhelming, especially when moving from spreadsheets, I, I like that because I think, again, it gets at the elephant in the room, which is, I'm looking, but I don't know if I actually wanna make the jump.

So I love that you acknowledge it. I love the, the part around, have a couple ideas. I think this is the thing that we offer. To miss in cold emails is people are really interested in ideas before they're interested in products. The reason why I referenced the voicemail twice, by the way, Jen, you wouldn't know this because I know you don't make any calls, but oftentimes if you can highlight that, if they don't answer this email, that you are actually reaching out another channel.

It's up to tie a bit together, a big, it's called, um, combo prospecting, where you can, when you can your voicemail through email. So the idea is this is gonna point, that's gonna point towards this and it's gonna tie together. Oh, that's a connection between that person who called me. This also showing that I'm probably gonna call 'em again.

So you better respond to this email if you wanna get rid of me. So you're threatening them in a sense, yes, but not directly. Okay. I think if you had just started with, looks like yourself, Dwight and Jim, and I saw in my in.box preview looks like yourself, Dwight and Jim. I'm like, Ooh, here's someone who knows multiple members of my team.

That to me is a higher payoff than left you a voicemail. That is like, fair enough, fair enough. I screened that person's call, so I'm probably gonna screen this email. So difference in opinion. Now you're gonna find out who won. Do we really need to? What? What are you the host now? Whatcha doing? Typical man down.

Sit down and know you. You don't need to mansplain this to us. Now let's go to Elli to see who won. We're gonna come meet next time and then we'll crown a winner on this episode. You guys. Uh. Let's go to study's feedback. Well, let me read the email. I'm not gonna read it out all at once, but I'll let you know what I think.

First and foremost, the most important thing to me is the subject line. If the subject line isn't great, I'll never see your email, so that's the the most important thing I'll judge. Would I see this in my inbox and would I want to open it? Closed demo, so this is not bad, but it's also not as activating as possible.

Closed demo could be also an automated email. I'd love for this to be like your demo request. Your request yesterday at 9:00 PM or something. It was a little bit more making me remember that this was about my request and that this was truly written by a human. I'd love it more, but it's okay. It's kinda sweet.

I think this is more human. This is more like, hey. I could, you know, I saw that you want a demo, I could send you a link, but you can also send me a link. So this is a pretty good email. It's sweet, it's sort of not too long-winded. It references both sort of somebody else that I'm working with as well as a kind of a reference, another company that's done this successfully and it.

Tries to like, you know, schmooze me by telling me something about like, you know, and I don't know who I'm anymore in the office reference here, but you know somebody I know and you're using their calendar. So it has a lot of schmoozing in here, a lot of referencing, warming me up, which is good. The thing that I don't love is the subject line.

I feel like it's too, it reads too autogenerated, not referencing the strongest conversion point, which is I requested a demo, I filled out a form, I did something. I don't know what I did, but it's something that requested a demo. I would reference to that strong or make it a little bit more human. I would not hate if it ended with a more clear next step.

It could be a little sharp on the action item there, but overall, I think pretty good. All right. Show me the next one. This references the voicemail that you left me. It does read autogenerated too many things in here that don't read quite as human to me, so. Don't love the subject line as much. Again, this is a really good email.

It reads very hum warm. It's charming. It's very likable. Probably you will like the person that sent me this, right? So it's very warm, very personable. So this is very good on a number of levels. The end has a bit more of a concrete action item. This is a personal style question. I like when I have to do less thinking, like when I'm burdened with less decision making, less thinking.

So one thing that I don't love in both emails is that the burden is on me to now decide what to do next here. I usually tend to try to take away that and make the decision simpler, smaller. Are you free here or there is usually easier for people to answer than when is a good time for you? I think that both emails are good.

I think subject line at Wills is worth the gents. I think call to action at the end. Will's is a little bit better than Jen's. Both of them are pretty strong on the charm attack, right? For different reasons. They're both very charming and very personable. So if I had to rate these, you know, this is very tough because you're both trying to influence me and hustle, which I appreciate at different points.

Jen hustled me at the beginning and Will is now like trying to ask me at the very end. This is too balance. Getting early, getting it early, but never stop. Never stop you. You have to keep hustling. That's, it's a good math. Between these two, it's, it's very 50 50. But in order to find the final winner between these two, can you give each of these emails a grading from A plus being the best to F, meaning they failed.

They're definitely not apps. They're also not a plus in my book, so I will give Wolf. Email a B minus. It's good, but it's lacking in two really important areas. I think the subject line is gonna prevent me from opening, which really hurts the rating. And I will say that I would give gens a B subject line also.

Not that great, but much better, much more likely. I'll open it. That's the crucial aspect. This was too difficult. The biggest criticism I have for both of you is you made this too hard. One of you should stand out much more from the other. What the hell? Thank you to Stelly. Jen is now in the lead with two games to her name.

Will need you to catch up, bud. Yeah, I'm not gonna let it go. It's not everyone likes an underdog and I'll come back. Fine. You've just lit a fire into my as tel. Thank you Jen. Thank you. And I'll be back next week. I win. See them.

‍