In this episode, you’ll discover:

* 00:24 – the FIRST step to writing killer email copy

* 00:36 – one pitfall where beginner copywriters screw everything up

* 02:10 – the question in a prospect’s mind that you MUST answer to make sales

* 02:23 – an example of a bad pitch (Does YOUR copy sound like this?)

* 02:40 – what to do instead

* 03:15 –  a framework you can use to “pitch without pitching” EVERY time

Tweetables:

* Answer this question: what’s in it for ME? 

* You have to learn to pitch without pitching.

Transcript:

Download PDF transcript here.

It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder guy here again with another McMethod video session. Today in this video, I want to talk about a common mistake that I’m seeing a lot with otherwise good copywriters, people who’ve learned how to write an email. That means email should be conversational. You’re looking at one to two sentences per paragraph. Some paragraphs are going to have one sentence, one line or even one word. I’ve done this. Once people get that, that’s just the first step. They’re doing well, but they often make a mistake.

This surprised me when I first started seeing it. I’ve been seeing this with coaching clients recently. This is where they’ve got the conversational part down pat. They can tell stories. They can have fun with it. They can write a good email, but then when it comes to pitch, when it comes time to say, ” I have a product, here’s why you should buy,” is they fumble it. I’ve seen this with … I’ve just done some work with a client who has a huge sales following. They’re driving a ton of traffic at it. They have this problem. Some of the emails are great, right, usually when they’re not pitching, but when it comes time to pitch, they focus all on the pitch, on the offer. “Here’s why we’re so amazing. Here’s why this product is so great. Here’s why this offer is just incredible.” They forget. They really drop the ball. They forget to address the “what’s in it for me.” This mistake, if you want to boil it down, it’s failing to answer this question of: What’s in it for me? When you write an email, especially when you write a pitch, and this is what I’m talking about in here, is the mistake really shows up when it comes time to pitch.

If you’re going to pitch before you can say, “We have a promo,” or “Here’s the product, it’s four DVDs,” or whatever it happens to be, you have to explain why your prospects should even care. The product doesn’t matter; the offer doesn’t matter. The $1 trial, the frequently asked questions, whatever the way you frame me up, none of that matters unless the person already believes that you can help him. All of that only matters in the context that you can solve their problem. Until you sell them on the idea, until you convince your prospects, your subscriber, that you can solve their problem, they’re not going to give a damn about some $1 trial or about the product or any of that sort of stuff. When it comes to the pitch, if you want to avoid this mistake, you have to learn to pitch. I hate to say this,