B2B Marketer’s Email
Background
I have been on Mark Firth’s email list for a little under a year. He is a well-respected B2B marketing consultant. However, his emails do land in my Promo tab time and again. But all is not lost. His emails have a lot of going for them and it’ll be fun to critique them—as much as I can—here. He obviously knows what he’s doing marketing-wise and copy-wise. But let’s have some fun with this email anyway.
Here is an email I received from Mark about ten hours ago on November 12, 2024.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Strengths
Mark starts off the email in a personal way by inserting my first name in the greeting.
He also starts off with a personal story from his life: This weekend we watched a movie…
The tone is conversational throughout which helps the reader connect and amps up the readability.
He connects the story of watching the movie to the current issue at hand in the email—the importance of family and finding time to spend with them and building a business which allows him to have that family time.
He draws on the pain point of many business owners—following conventional advice but not getting the desired results.
He gives detailed examples of the advice the business owners may be hearing and following that’s just plain not working—posting constantly on LinkedIn or spending a surplus of hours working.
He introduces his solution to this common conundrum—his Strategic Visibility System.
He uses specific, detailed numbers to show the benefits of his system—he’s made over $3.5 million using it.
He mentions the famous name—Tony Robbins—to add credibility to his offer.
Mark uses FOMO (fear of missing out) to present his offer—there are limited seats available, it’s a first-time offer, and early-bird access is available right now.
Mark makes the offer extra special by stating that the LinkedIn templates are previously ‘unreleased.’
He has a clear CTA—”Register here.’
And he signs it with his first name, Mark.
Weaknesses
Well, Mark is a marketing expert, so this section will be unsurprisingly short.
I’d like to see a closer tie in to the subject line with the body of the email. He could connect the two ideas of getting Tony’s attention with his strategic visibility system in a more powerful way.
I’d also like to see more specific benefits of his system to entice the reader to want to know more.
Mark isn’t making use of an interesting, inviting or moving favicon in front of his sender name. (For example, my favicon is a GIF of waves rolling onto a beach—very eye catching in someone’s overly cluttered inbox)
I’m going to be picky about his (lack of) use of periods at the end of his sentences. I get that this is the latest trend in email. However, I’m not buying into it. I suggest we don’t go to that extent of informality in our emails and we keep ending punctuation. For all that’s good in the world, let’s keep periods. Period.
If you’re a business owner and have an email list with over 1,000 subscribers, contact me at nancy@nancybushagency.com if you’d like help avoiding the email mistakes you read about here.
