I just got a pretty decent email from the Movember Foundation asking me to sign up again this year (to be fair to them, they sent it over a week ago – it was more that I only just read it).
It looks like a personal email – check out the format, the subject line, and the initial tone. It’s got his email signature with a phone number in it. In fact, I thought it was a personal email until I saw the ‘view online’ and ‘unsubscribe’ links at the bottom.
Personal is great, especially if you’re making a high-bar ask.
There are a couple of things I would’ve done differently:
- Had a reply-to address that looked like his actual email address (even if it wasn’t)
- Made the tone more casual – this still felt like a promo email once I got past the initial introduction line
- Put the ask in a lot earlier
- Re-sent (kicked) the email a few days later
I’ve tested an almost identical personal approach before and it performs really well, but it needs to be on something where you’re asking for something a little *more* than normal.
Try adding this to your next testing cycle.
By the way, I did Movember back in 2011 when I was living in Canada. Here’s the horrendous result:
Yeah, I know.
