# If You Don’t Understand Psychology, You Don’t Understand Email Marketing

Channel: Max Sturtevant
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVTTEsrysqw
Duration: 25 min
Language: English
Words: 5437
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/UVTTEsrysqw

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[0:00] If you open your email inbox right now, I guarantee that 95% of the emails that you receive from brands that you just skip over. And the reason that you skip over them has nothing to do necessarily with how they're written or designed. It comes down to one thing your brain sees the second that it sees something familiar. Now that I've over $250 million just from emails, I've seen this play out across hundreds of brands. The brands winning right now aren't necessarily writing better than everyone else. They're writing in a way that your brain literally can't ignore. A couple tweets in your email can take you from

[0:27] results like this to results like this. Every open, click, and conversion is driven by neurological triggers happening in your brain in the first literally half a second that somebody looks at your email. And once you understand those triggers, you can make every single email literally impossible to ignore. Even if you're selling something as boring as a multivitamin or furniture. In this video, I'm going to be going over eight neurological triggers. These are the same triggers that we've used to increase our email performance by over 50%. So, let's get into it. Let's look at my emails in my inbox right now. We have this email right here. Here's a 10% off discount

[1:01] with some testimonials. It looks pretty. We have this welcome email, 10% off and a little bit of information, best sellers. We have this email, 4th of July sale on the rise. Again, a graphic email with this discount and then some best sellers. Then this email right here, three lucky winners get $25,000 cash. So, this sort of offer. We have this 4th of July, use it or lose it, 42% off,

[1:23] cool little graphic here. And tons more. These are all emails that I've received from brands literally just in the past day. Have you started to notice something? These emails all look the [ __ ] same. That's why most e-com emails are dead the second they hit the inbox. Your brain literally pays less attention to things that it's seen over and over again. This is why 20% off basic sales, basic best seller emails just don't convert. The neuroscience in people's brains are just automatically ignoring them. So, the first neurological trigger that you can use is using pattern interrupts. There is literally a part of your brain that

[1:54] decides if something is worth looking at and is worth getting your attention. The brain is an energy conservation machine. If it can conserve energy to not pay attention to certain things, it's going to do that. But, what the brain also hates is new, because new could be a threat. So, when it sees new, it needs to really lock in and figure out what is going on here. So, that's when we want to use pattern interrupt emails. Emails

[2:16] that, put simply, stand the [ __ ] out. And specifically, we see a lot of success with emails that don't look like they're supposed to belong in the inbox. Let me show you what I mean. Now, here are some examples of what I mean by pattern interrupt emails that your brain just can't ignore. Guys, we literally sent this exact template for an eight-figure brand last month, and it was the best performing email of the month. Something so stupid. They're literally six words of copy. Weekend is calling, slide to answer. The subject line said incoming call. In an inbox full of just [ __ ] that's saying the

[2:44] same stuff, that stands out. That's a pattern interrupt that your brain, [clears throat] neurologically, is like, "Whoa, what's going on here?" And this just stands out. It's not like we're trying to do some crazy sales tactics on you. People actually respond to this. The next one that stands out because [clears throat] you don't see it in the inbox is this Reddit sort of style

[2:59] email, which is super duper interesting. It makes your brain be like, "Whoa, this isn't supposed to be an email." When it's literally just designed as a Reddit review. This one right here as well, to force engagement. In a subject line that says scroll to reveal. This is a new product release. And so, if somebody opens this email, you can bet your ass that they are going to scroll. Again, we did the same template for a brand, and

[3:19] it was their best performing email. Something like this, breaking news, this sort of like newspaper sort of article right here. This stands out. Everybody does a basic last chance email. And then, it should force engagement right here, sort of flowcharts to force engagement. If somebody opens this, it's not like any other email that they're receiving. So, they're much more likely to engage. These are so impactful, I literally created templates for all of these, and they're available every single month inside of my community. You see the scroll to reveal template, the weekend is calling template. We have this receipt sort of template right here, fully editable here on the right

[3:50] side. And new ones that come out every single month. I'm going to have the link down below, but if you just go to classroom email templates and resources, there's tons of juicy stuff in here. If you can see all the templates, for example, 15 exclusive ones that come out every single month on top of hundreds of preset templates right here. You can literally ask me questions whenever you want. You can see all the big wins that people are getting in live calls twice per week to get exclusive stuff directly from me. You need to create emails that are so unique that they just cannot get skipped. That is the first neurological

[4:17] trigger that you can use to make more money from email. Now, the next trigger is one that is very hard to get the hang of, but it's probably the most impactful. The easiest way to get your email skipped is by giving generic promises. Things like, "Oh, we help you be more healthy. We help with your libido. Our clothing products are ethically sourced." That does not do anything and that does not trigger the emotional responses that your brain

[4:38] needs to make an emotional decision. Humans are emotional creatures, and so we need to go deeper with what our emails are actually about. So, that is why you need to use what I like to call the banger angle. A banger angle is a basic sort of idea, but taken to the next level. It creates an emotional reaction or a reframe that the customer hadn't thought of before. Let's take a look at some examples going from a generic basic angle that will not make you any sales to a banger angle that

[5:06] will neurologically get people to buy. So, say we are a brand that sells healthy dog food. A general sort of generic angle which might get you a couple sales is give your dog healthier food. Something like help your dog live longer. But, that does not trigger any sort of emotional reaction within you. It's just kind of like stating a fact. Instead, we need to go deeper. A banger angle for the same sort of message is we want our dogs to live forever. Feed them Lyka. That takes the same message, but

[5:34] it ties in an emotional reaction to it. And it's a re-framing that the customer has not thought of before. Then, you can see the further explanation of every bowl you serve is a choice, one that adds up to more walks, more fetch, and more life. Our recipes are crafted to support real health because you're not just feeding them, you're protecting in time. That is the banger angle. What is that one line that the customer can just be like, "Wow, damn." We want our dogs

[5:58] to live forever, feed them like it. Let's look at this general angle that a lot of brands will go after. We are eco-friendly. Something like this having to do with like your packaging. Well, this brand, a more accurate banger angle that reframes things completely different for the customer is the average person will toss out 137 plastic toothpaste tubes in their lifetime. And then you show 137 plastic toothpaste tubes. And that is a banger angle because then they say, "This kit changes it all. Glass jar is for life." You make people visually see how much trash they're actually throwing away. And then lastly, a really common one for

[6:34] consumable brands is, "We use only the best ingredients." Everybody says that. How can we stand out from people and have a better reframe? Well, we can look at this right here. What we left out matters just as much as we put in. You show zero sugar, zero cake out, zero carbs. You think that's going to stand out and grab someone's attention more than, "Hey, look at all of our ingredients." Absolutely. That is the art of the banger angle. Take things deeper to use more emotion or reframe things in a way that the customer has never thought of before. The art of the banger angle, if you can master this, is

[7:08] the most effective at printing sales. The next neurological based trigger is also one that's a little bit more difficult to get the hang of. But I have a super easy process for you to make it as effective as possible and I have some great examples. This neurological trigger all comes back to the idea that humans are emotional creatures. They don't necessarily care about what's inside your product or what your product does, they care about what the product

[7:29] is going to make that person become. What will that person be as a result of using your product. And this is why identity based selling is so important. I also [clears throat] going going on a little bit more of an advanced concept called labeling and consistency bias. The brands who really have this nailed are brands like IM8 and AG1, where you sell the identity. And you do this with the sort of people you promote and the sort of people you have using your product. Take a look at IM8 in this specific section right here. Now, they're obviously very fortunate to have

[8:01] their partnership with David Beckham. And this is the sort of identity-based messaging that they have riddled everywhere from their ads to their landing pages. They call out people who have families and people who want to live a full happy everyday life. They call out their different ICPs like athletes and doctors. And with their different partnerships, they are showing what these people are like. And they physically are showing you all of the people that you strive to become and you strive to have that identity of. Same sort of thing with AG1. This is the identity that they're selling. The everyday sort of person who wants to be

[8:28] happy and healthy. They're showing people who are on the go. They're in shape and they're looking for all these different benefits. This is a great example right here of identity-based selling. Selling towards dads. And really showing what that lifestyle is like. Keeping up with toddlers, catching waves with the kids, or staying active in later years. You really can feel that identity. One of my favorite ways you can use identity-based selling to make more sales is with labeling. People neurologically want to live up to labels and expectations that have been given to them. If you tell somebody, "Hey, I love how you are a great listener." Then they

[9:01] have been assigned to that trait and they're like, "Oh my goodness, this is I have to live up to this expectation." And so in all the conversations that you'll have with them, they're going to be thinking, "Be a great listener." And they live up to that expectation. That is that consistency bias at play. People want to be consistent with what they've been labeled on. So, what I would do here to make this even more effective is I would call out the actual dads here and label them with a trait that your product aligns with. Say you are talking to dads who should buy AG1 for themselves. You would instead use the

[9:29] angle like being the present and health-conscious dad that you are for your kids, you probably care about what you put in your body and making sure that you have the sustained energy to keep up with your toddlers energy burst at 7:00 p.m. Something like this that labels them as the health-conscious dad. And then they're like, "I am a health-conscious dad." Well, what does a

[9:47] health-conscious dad do? He buys AG1. So, then you can hit them with the right hook there to buy your product. That's what identity-based selling does. Show what the people desire to be with partnerships and using correct models and imagery and label people with the traits that you want them to follow through and be consistent with. That is identity-based [clears throat] selling. Now, we're getting back to a little bit more tactical with this next neurological trigger. And that is specificity creates believability. There are a couple things that the human brain loves. It loves numbers because they're easy to conceptualize instead of words, and it loves specifics. That's why you

[10:22] want to use as many numbers and specificity as possible. This whole neurological trigger is just around using numbers as much as you can in your marketing. You should be doing everything in your power to get as many numbers as possible into your emails. Do outside research. Run customer surveys. Whatever you can do. Here are some examples right here on what that looks like. This is my favorite sort of one right here, which is using data from your customers and their results with the product. So, running a survey to your customers and seeing who actually improved and saw better results with the product. Do you think saying, "Our

[10:55] product works really well." is going to work as well as 91% of our members improved at least one key biomarker after 3 months? The thing about specificity in using numbers is that you can't fake it. Every brand out there is saying you are going to have better results and better health when you use our product. We can't really believe that. With numbers, you are forced to

[11:16] believe them. Your brain accepts them. 95% [clears throat] report better sleep quality. 87% receive faster physical recovery. 75% see a boost in energy levels. That's what moves the needle, improves that your [ __ ] works, and that scratches a neurological itch in your mind. Same thing right here. 92% of customers agree they feel more productive. Right here, that's going to do more than, "Hey, buy our product to get more energy." And this right here for breath, pulling outside research numbers here. 60% of people with bad breath avoid meeting people. 68% are avoided by their peers. 64% feel their social lives are affected. Pulling these [clears throat] numbers just really

[11:52] helps your brain understand and realize how important this actually is. So, this product then pushes their sort of uh breath cleaning product. That is how it's done. We need to use this as much as we can. The next neurological trigger is something that's going to make your life a lot easier. It is all around making things easier for your brain to understand. The more complex your emails are and [clears throat] the more spread your ideas are, the harder it is for

[12:17] your brain to ingest that information. I'm sure you've seen numbers on multitasking and how hard of a time your brain does in multitasking. Processing different pieces of information is just a very difficult. And also, trying to learn so many different things at once is very, very difficult as well. So, if you send emails with five different key takeaways that you want the customer to leave the email knowing, the customer is going to leave with nothing. Because say you have somebody's 100% focus and you send an email trying to sell five different points. Well, that means each point gets 20% of that person's attention. And so then, they really

[12:53] don't get that deep and try to remember five things at 20% is not going to be as effective as if you try to push 100% into one specific thing. This is all about reducing cognitive load and focusing on one core takeaway per email. This is what we want to have. Now, Magic Mind used to crush these in their old emails. Just keeping things so dead simple that you are essentially forced to not be able to forget and be able to actually leave every email with some sort of benefit. For example, Magic Mind has probably 50 plus benefits. They just sent a whole email the headline of

[13:29] enhancing the benefits of caffeine. So simple. We're not talking about how Magic Mind also helps with inflammation, energy, focus. No, none of that. It's just we enhance the benefits of caffeine. So it is so easy for me to remember that than try to remember so many different points. Just look at how simple this email is. They just try to double down on one thing so the customer leaves knowing that specific thing. Same thing right here. They just pick one specific small ingredient within the product and educate us on that. And the customer knows, "Oh wow, this has golden root and this is very good for me." And

[14:00] so it's much easier for the customer to take away information and digest it all. We want to reduce cognitive load as much as we can for all of our emails. We want to avoid as much as we can trying to do too much with our emails. We're introducing this product. We've a ton of different benefits that we hit on and all of these icons and different benefits and how we compare. This is just overwhelming the customer. It's not going to let them clearly take away one thing from that email. This person is going to leave remembering absolutely nothing. That's why we need to double down on specificity. The next

[14:32] neurological trigger is the one that I fall for the most. I'm a marketer and I kind of have an eye for when marketing is being done on me. But time [clears throat] and time again, I always fall for this. And this is because the human brain absolutely hates to lose things. What has more of an emotional effect on you? Finding a $20 bill on the

[14:51] ground or losing a $20 bill? [clears throat] When I find a $20 bill on the ground, I'm like, "Oh, sweet. Awesome." If I had a $20 bill in my pocket and then I lose it, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, what am I doing? I could have bought a Chipotle meal with that. I could have bought this. I could have bought this. Who the hell picked that up?" And I just hate it. Even though those are two equal amounts, losing just

[15:08] holds so much more neurological weight. So that's why we want to play as much as we can into loss aversion. So our goal, if we want to use this psychological trigger in our marketing, is to make people feel like they are losing something. We don't want to focus on gain as much as you think. A lot of

[15:25] people think focus on the negatives. [clears throat] The what is the customer losing? What is the $20 that people are losing? So, let's take a look at some examples of how that plays out. This is the perfect example cuz this is my favorite email that performs the absolute best. Instead of framing a discount as $10 off and being like, "Hey, place an order for $10 off." That

[15:45] is the same framing of, "Hey, gain $10." But, what if we can make it seem like we are taking $10 from somebody? That's where we use this store credit email. In this sort of framing, being like, "Hey, you have money in your account. You own $17.63. It is in your account. You have it. And we are taking it away. You have the

[16:04] email right here. Credited to account. This is how much is in your account. But, we are actively taking this away from you." So, users receive this email and they're like, "No, I can't lose this money. I can't let it go to waste. This is my money. You can't take it." So, then they place orders at an extremely high rate. And this performs a lot better than doing something like $20 off. I guarantee this less discount would perform better than $20 off. And it literally is just a discount code right here. We're just changing the framing to play into loss aversion. Here is another one right here. A Valentine's

[16:37] flash sale. The problem with most people and when they do sales is they do a time delay. Like, "Hey, 72-hour flash sale." But, that has no urgency behind it. And the customer knows that they can come back and get this offer whenever they want. But, if you change the framing to, "Hey, it is first 100 people only." It's like we are taking the sale away from

[16:55] people. And people don't want to lose. And they also cannot delay their order. They cannot wait 72 hours. People see 72-hour flash sale and they're like, "Oh, okay, great. I'm not going to buy it right now." But, if they receive an email like this, "It's first 100 people only." It's like, "Oh my gosh, I cannot lose this. And I have to be the fastest." So, that's why this performs so much better. As far as what you can do on a non-discount point of view, we want people to focus on how they [clears throat] are losing out on effort or they're losing out on time or anything like that. So, an example right

[17:24] here for supplement brand is you spend 5 hours per week in the gym. All that hard work is getting put to waste because you have improper supplementation. That's that framing and making people feel like they are losing instead of being like, "Hey, get 15% better muscle mass gain by using our product." That's not going to work nearly as well as being like, "Hey, by not having muscle, you're losing 15% of your muscle mass." That framing is going to work way better. So, that's what we want to focus on with this loss aversion. It's one of the most powerful triggers that you can use. This next psychological trigger goes back to the

[17:57] absolute beginning of humanity where we were all sitting around campfires. This is probably my favorite for getting the most engagement out of people. And what we need to understand here is that people love stories. They want to be a part of brands that have stories and they will buy from products that tell a story. You can take any email or any sort of benefit around your brand and add a story behind it and I guarantee it is going to get more engagement. This goes on the brand level and then also the email level. As a brand, you should have your story behind your brand everywhere. You should make people feel

[18:32] like they are riding the story with you. This is how you get continued engagement as a brand. Let's go into how you can do this on an email by email level. Here's probably my favorite email my team has made over all time. This is just telling a story about somebody using our product on a regular day. Crack, sip. [sighs] You can almost feel that right there and you can feel that crack and you can hear it right here. And you read this story, it's been a long day, you open the fridge, reach for a can of Hopper and fall onto the couch. The cool condensation runs down the side of the

[19:02] can. You reach for the tab, pull it back and hear the familiar crack followed by a light fizz. You pour the Hopper into a glass listening as it cascades lightly crackling and snapping over ice. You lean back, taking a short sip, then sigh. Lean back and feel the tension melt away. That's the sound of

[19:19] relaxation. That's the sound of calm. This right here gets crazy engagement. Tell the story of somebody using your product in their everyday life, so they can properly visualize it and understand it, and see and feel the benefits. And here's what it looks like when you do a sort of branded one in a little bit more of a direct response sort of style. This is an abandonment email right here, where we decided to throw in the founder story. Let's take a look at how emotional this is and how hooked you are into this brand and this product. Hey, it's Bobby, founder of ButcherBox for

[19:52] Dogs. So, we tie in a real person. That's the number one part of telling a good story. I want to take a minute to share something personal. The reason I created this brand wasn't because I saw a business opportunity. It was because of my dog, Maisie. Okay, that really intrigues you. She's a part of our family. She's been with us through moves, late nights, new jobs, and everything in between. Like most dog owners, I want her to live forever, or at least as long and as healthy as possible. Okay, so we kind of have the tension now starts to come into the story. When I started digging into what

[20:20] I was actually feeding her, I felt sick. That's the realization moment. And now the person's hooked. Even the so-called premium dog food brands with their fancy packaging buzzwords like human grade were still filled with question marks. And then it hit me. You have the epiphany moment, which is key for any story like this. If I wouldn't eat it, why would I feed it to her? So, I decided to make something better, something I could feel good about feeding the dog I love like family. Now that same food is available to you. And then how the brand ties it all together and what they do. This is a story that's

[20:47] relatable. It has emotional buy-in. It has tension, and it highlights how we're different as a brand before leading to that call to action. Some sort of basic abandoned cart email just saying, "Hey, you left your cart behind. Place an order." It's not going to convert nearly as well as telling the story behind it. My team actually created both of these emails, and so if you're a brand and you want emails that like this that follow all these psychological triggers that I've mentioned before to create emails that actually convert, then you should book a call below and we'll review all your email creative and give you some

[21:15] ideas on what we think would work really well for your brand. We've worked with over 100 brands, some of the fastest growing brands in the space, and we kind of know what we're doing with email and SMS marketing because we've generated over $250 million for our brands. If that sounds [clears throat] interesting to you, then click the link below. And the last neurological trigger that I want to talk about is just about familiarity. This is a very quick one,

[21:35] but one that is the easiest to mess up. People are more likely to buy from things that they're familiar with. [clears throat] You don't take advice from a random person, you don't go up and go into a stranger's car, and you don't buy products from a brand that you've seen once or twice before. You buy from brands that you've repeatedly gotten trust earned because you've just seen them so much. People are much more likely to buy from brands that they're familiar with and they have seen multiple times over again. So, the easiest thing that you could do and the best neurological trigger that you can follow to improve your results is just

[22:04] with proper frequency. Make sure you are in your customer's inbox as much as possible without losing too many unsubscribers. And typically, I recommend sending emails every other day to your list for most brands. You're an eight nine figure brand, then I would recommend getting this up to daily sends towards your base engaged list. But really, we just want to maximize our reach while having a three times the amount of people join our list compared to leaving. The easiest way to check that is by going to Klaviyo and then going into your dashboards and then your dashboards overview. So, click dashboards and then go to the overview

[22:34] dashboard. Then we want to add this card right here for subscriber growth. Then we're going to be able to look at the amount of people joining our list versus leaving. As long as we have three x amount of people joining, we are in a good spot. If you look at this brand for example, we're really cutting it close here. 65,000 people joined while 27,000 people left in the month of May. That is not at the three x point. So, we

[22:55] probably want to ramp down our sending. Right here, same sort of thing around two x. Same sort of thing here, but it's a little bit better around 2.5x. And this is more of the sweet spot for March right here. 79,000 people new coming in for the 24,000 people leaving. Now, you can make this ratio better by really focusing on your list growth and your pop-up forms, making sure you're getting a lot of new people coming in, but then also decreasing your frequency if you have to. But this is a brand that sends literally two emails every day, and

[23:21] still they are almost at that 3x mark. What I highly recommend, as long as you maintain that 3x at least new people joining to leaving, you can send more emails. Be in your customer's face every other day, and they will slowly become familiar, and they will eventually buy. Now, I want to highlight my private community again right here. We have 262 paying monthly members in here seeing results with email. We literally do two live calls every single week. One that is agency focused, and one that is email marketing focused that I lead. You can see the call recording right here. I literally pulled a real brand's Klaviyo

[23:53] on-screen, screen recorded all their numbers, including a live campaign calendar, our exact process at my agency, and then did a live Q&A after. You can see all the questions that people are asking all through this, and the wins that they're posting, the insights that I'm sharing. You get direct access to my DMs, and all sorts of other resources like a full email marketing course, and tons of resources and tablets. If that sounds interesting

[24:13] to you, the link's going to be below. You should definitely join and check it out. Now, to summarize, the brands that actually win at email aren't the ones that are just writing better subject lines. That's the bare minimum. That is not what moves the needle. They're using the inbox in the way that the brain actually works. So, I hope you use notes and got some inspiration from this video following all these neurological triggers. If you want to keep learning from me, then stay on this screen, click right here, and I'm going to go over the best Klaviyo email marketing flows training that you will ever watch. The

[24:39] same email marketing flows that we've used to help generate over $250 million for our brands. Click on that. I'll see you over there. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.

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