Want to find out how to immediately supercharge your email marketing copywriting? Then let's find out about the Rule of One. This isn’t just a technique you can use in your email writing. You can use it across any kind of writing you do for your business – sales pages, sales videos… everywhere! And it will massively improve your conversion.

Ready to learn how to apply it? 

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SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:25) Grab our amazing resource Click Tricks totally for FREE!
(4:21) What is the Rule of One in copywriting?
(7:19) Use the same call to action across a whole email campaign. 
(9:18) Send people to landing pages where they can only make ONE choice.
(11:26) Write your emails to ONE reader.
(12:24) Give people ONE call to action (per email).
(14:25) The benefits of stacking your email marketing campaigns.
(15:54) Tap into the power of storytelling.
(18:07) Your Super Signature is the exception to the rule! 
(21:03) Subject lines of the week.

What is the Rule of One in copywriting? 

Whenever somebody writes copy for us (yes, we do hire copywriters because we're not professional copywriters ourselves), the one piece of suggestion we always give is to focus on the one idea we're trying to convey. What’s the one thing we want to say? Every time you put out any type of communication (an email, a headline, the opening of a sales video, etc.) you want to talk about one idea.

Equally, when it comes to email marketing, every email you send should talk about one theme. If you're sending an email about risk, the whole email needs to be about that. You don’t want to add social proof to that email – that’s a different theme for another day.

And if you're only talking about one thing, you’re probably also going to use one single story. Unless you have a few stories that demonstrate that one thing you’re talking about. And you do this because otherwise, people’s brains get overwhelmed.

So let's get into the specifics of this…

Use the same call to action across a whole email campaign

The Rule of One applies to individual emails but also to email campaigns. We often pick one call to action and effectively use that across an entire email campaign. If we’re running the Bribe campaign, for example (where we tell people that if they buy one thing they’ll get something else for free), every email we send as part of that sequence is going to have the same call to action. We lead people to that one action by using different hooks, angles, and stories in the individual emails we send as part of that campaign. 

Why do this? Because when you say too many things at once, people get confused and overwhelmed and end up not making decisions. The more directions you send people in, the more confused they’re likely to get.

Send people to landing pages where they can only make ONE choice

When we send someone to a landing page, we want them to only have one thing they can do on there. And that’s to click and buy or click an opt-in. There’s only one call to action on that page.

If you’re sending someone to a landing page to opt in for something, but you also have your blog and other items under the navigation menu, you’re giving people lots of choices and other things they could do. So they’re not going to opt in! Instead, direct people to one thing and one thing only so you don't lose their attention. Because confused brains do nothing! 

You want to create one singular narrative. Your job is to build a belief, which may start with a story that leads to a theme and some kind of lesson. Then you want to tell people the one thing they should go and do. Remember that people are looking for help – they’re not qualified to know what action to take. That’s what they’ve come to you! So you need to help them take action or make a choice. You’re the one who’s qualified to tell them what to do to get the outcome they desire. 

Write your emails to ONE reader

The Rule of One also applies to the way you send your emails. You want to address your emails to one reader rather than a ‘collective’, saying something along the lines of “Hi guys”. Imagine writing to one person and that person only.

When you do that, suddenly your email doesn’t sound like a marketing, corporate one. Instead, it sounds personal – something you'd send to someone you have a deeper relationship with. And when you deepen the relationships with your subscribers, you’re better able to influence them. You get to take them on a journey with you and feel things – experience emotions. And as a result, you get them to take action. 

Give people ONE call to action (per email) 

Always address just one topic (one theme) in your emails and be clear on the one action you want people to take. Don’t give them plenty of choices because they won’t know what decision to make. Instead, tell them about the best action they can take so they can move on to the next step in their journey with you. That’s what each email you send does – it moves people to the next step of the journey.

At the start of an email campaign, you might want to ask people to watch a video that talks about the problem they might be experiencing. As you progress with your sequence, you can let them know about your course or programme and ask people to check it out. Your call to action can change in the space of a campaign. You can start with a softer approach building curiosity and then, towards the end, make your one main promise.

The benefit of stacking your email marketing campaigns

The great thing about using multiple campaigns in your marketing is that each of them can have one main promise. And each promise can be different, even if you're promoting the same product or service. That's because the campaigns stack over each other. And by using this method, you're not overwhelming your audience by telling them everything at once.

At the same time, you're not blowing all your chances by sending everything you have to say in one go. When you do that, things get lost. With too much being said at once, people miss it. Instead, pick every single important thing you want your subscribers to know and put it on a pedestal. Give it space to breathe – give it a whole email of its own or maybe even a whole campaign! Shine a light on it so that people who are attracted to it see it all lit up – standing high and tall about the crowd – and can see it as the promise they need to go ahead and buy the thing they’re looking for.

Tap into the power of storytelling

To differentiate your emails (even if the call to action is the same, and you’re driving people to the same product), you can use storytelling. It allows you to ‘decorate’ the same thing in different ways. So you take the story about whatever happened to you on a particular day and link it to your main point and call to action. We have a whole podcast episode on that, so go and check it out!

In other words, you can choose to send a plethora of emails that include the same call to action but go about it in loads of different ways. But remember the Rule of One – each email has one story, one lesson, and one main call to action.

Your Super Signature is the exception to the rule!

There’s an exception to the Rule of One though, and that’s your Super Signature. If you’re inside our programme, you can find some training about this – it's called Super Signature Reloaded. What's your Super Signature exactly? It's a list of links at the bottom of your emails that includes everything that someone can do if they want your help.

The way we see it, the Super Signature is not diluting your call to action because it's a separate part of the email. It's further down at the bottom. You can even put a couple of lines above it to physically separate it from your main email.

And its job is to tell people that if they’re ready to take things to the next level, there are a bunch of ways you can help – the Super Signature gives them options. These can include free things like joining our Facebook group or listening to our podcast, but also buying our programme, or hiring our agency to do your email marketing for you.

It acts like a menu of quick resources that people can access if and when they need to. We stick it at the bottom (in the footer) of every email we send – it's a constant for us, and it makes us sales every week because people click on it!

You can make your call to action multiple times

One last thing to point out is that in the main body of the email, you want to make sure you have one call to action, as we said. But you can make that same call to action multiple times. In a daily email, we might just have one. But sometimes when we send emails inside our campaigns, we may have links to the same call to action two or three times.   

Join the Email Hero Blueprint

If you want to know more about the topics we talked about here (including how to wave storytelling into your emails and set up your Super Signature), check out the Email Hero Blueprint. It’s our flagship brand new programme where you can find everything you need to get more sales from your existing subscribers.

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is “anyone there??” It sounds like the typical subject line you’d use for a re-engagement campaign (such as our Revival campaign), but it had nothing to do with that. It was just a story that Rob told about being left alone somewhere.

It’s interesting because it’s designed to sound like a prompt or a nudge for people who haven’t been paying attention, but it's not. So you’re threading the line between using something attention-grabbing but that doesn’t feel clickbaity. The last thing you want is for people to feel like they've been deceived when they read your email. Also, with two question marks, you’re making a slight exaggeration, and that grabs people’s attention even more. So check it out!

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

The Biggest Mistakes You’re Making With Your Email Marketing Copywriting.

Mindblowing Techniques To Connect More Deeply With Your Email Readers With Rob Marsh & Kira Hug.

Comedian’s Secrets to Storytelling – With Kevin Rogers.

FREE list to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

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Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The Email Hero Blueprint 

Not sick of us yet? If you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn all about our ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days), The Email Hero Blueprint is for you. 

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent flow of sales without having to launch another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines. And you can apply everything we talk about in this show.

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