The Best Bait-and-Switch Email Copywriting Trick

Don’t pull tricks in your email subject lines unless it benefits the user

Great open rates don’t always lead to great conversions. Trying to pull a sneak attack on your users that have chosen to give up their valuable email address in exchange for your information does not build a healthy relationship. The moment a user starts seeing you as trying to sell them instead of trying to provide them with valuable information, they’ve already started moving their mouse to the “delete” button.

In fact, many people who use email clients like Outlook and Apple Mail, will skim their overfilled inbox with one eye on the new emails and their clicking finger on the delete button. “Inbox Zero” is the latest fad in getting people to ignore and delete as many emails as possible.

With that said, it’s more important than ever to create quality emails that deliver on exactly what they promise. Catchy headlines like “A favor to ask” and “I didn’t hire you for a reason” work really well for Marc Cenedella from TheLadders.com. They work well because they’re followed up with content that is just as intriguing.

The email “A favor to ask” almost sounds like a promotional email, however you’re intrigued enough to open because the subject line is so open-ended. If you’re familiar with Marc’s email newsletters, you also know that he is more clever than to ask for you to give him money as “a favor”.

Instead, the email starts as follows.

“Last week, I took you on a photographic tour of TheLadders.com headquarters in New York City. This week, I’d like to ask a favor:

Would you mind sending us a photo of you?”

[text_ad]

Within the first two lines of the email newsletter, Marc has told you what the favor is, and lets you know immediately that he’s not trying to sell you anything. Further down in the email, you’ll find that the real “favor” is giving them a testimonial:

“If you’ll please include a little blurb — your name, hometown, your profession, and how you’re using TheLadders or how we can make the service even better — that would be great.”

How clever, right? However, Marc goes a step further to build trust with his readers by letting them know that the testimonials and photos “will be used for internal purposes only, and will never be used in our marketing, PR, or publicly in any way.”

This is the most promotional sounding email you’ve probably ever read without it being even an ounce of a true promotion. Yet it causes the reader to keep reading because your question is… “what’s the catch?”

By writing an elaborate email that looks and sounds like a promotion that is then followed up by an innocent request, you’ve captured the reader’s respect. In essence, he’s turned a promotional email into an editorial, rather than the other way around. If you’re a reader of his newsletter, how likely are you to open another promotional headline?

This isn’t to say that the email has no dollar value to Marc. While the copy is in the forefront, the entire right side of the email is full of links to their website.

So, when’s the last time you did the old “bait and switch” that actually benefited the reader?