How to Write Email Copy that SELLS with Matthew DeFeo

Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody. Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Creator Crew. If you want ad-free extended episodes of this podcast in the form of a podcast called Build Something More, as well as access to a community, live streams, bonus episodes, and deals, check out buildsomething.club and sign up for just $5 a month. You’ll get a bunch of great content and you get to support the show directly, which I deeply appreciate.

Now, today on build something more, Matt and I talk about his past, which is incredibly interesting. He was prior law enforcement, he moved out from his house around eight years old because of some things that his parents got into and just very, very interesting background story before he made the pivot into what he does today. So this is definitely a great story you’ll want to hear.

Again, if you can hear that, I should say, if you head over to buildsomething.club, you can sign up for $5 a month or $50 a year, get two months free. And every member gets an exclusive member chip. That’s a customized poker chip in the mail. Head over to buildsomething.club today and become a part of the Creator Crew.

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of How I Built It, Episode 223 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. That is a tagline I’m trying out, which is why I’ve stumbled over that. But anyway, I hope you like it. If you do let me know. Write me at joe@casabona.org and tell me what you think.

The sponsors for this episode are TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar. You’ll be hearing about them later in the episode. But first, I want to bring in our guest, he is the copywriter at CopyPulse. He is going to tell us all about rocking our niche or niche with emails that capture hearts and minds. This is something that I am so interested in. I’m really excited to talk to him. His name is Matt DeFeo. Matt, how are you?

Matthew DeFeo: Doing good. Glad to be here. And thanks for taking me on.

Joe Casabona: My pleasure. Now, we met because you… I’m gonna let you tell this story from your side and then I’ll add my context. But you reached out in a cold email and I responded glibly as I often do, and then you just killed me with kindness. And so we ended up meeting. Why don’t you tell the story of how it all worked and what went through your mind?

Matthew DeFeo: Sure enough. I do a lot of cold emails. At that time, I was doing around 1,200 cold emails a week. A lot of it was automated. The one you actually got was automated. And I did verify each person, like make sure it’s in the right categories that I wanted to reach out to, because it doesn’t do me any good reaching out to a gas company when I’m doing copywriting for podcasters and stuff like that.

So I reached out to you and you were a little skeptical at first, which is typical. I mean, how many emails do you get like, “Hey, I’m from Nigeria and I need money for whatever.” I get it like. It’s skeptical. So you responded like, “Oh, I don’t want you to be over encumbered in your schedule.” Because I had sent you like, “Hey, I’m looking for new clients and I have about 22 people interested right now, but I want to be the right people and set up my clients away. You know, that makes me happy, and so I can do a better job for them.” We’ve all been in those positions where we work for the people that are not right for us. I didn’t want to do that again.

So you responded and honestly, I just felt like I connected with you through your website at first. I love the pictures. I went through it and I was like, “Okay, cool. This guy’s legit and he seems real nice, down to earth. So I’m gonna send him a video.” And I just broke it down to you know, “I’m not lying to you. Here’s the proof. Here’s the results.” That’s what ended up getting us together.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, I hope my response didn’t make it seem like I’m less nice. But you’re right, you get all these emails that are like, “Hey…” I legit like the day before your email got one that was like, “I read your article about Xbox.” And it was like a two-sentence article I wrote in 2006. And it was like maybe you can link to our resource. I’m like, “Do you know at all what you’re doing right now?” So I just kind of figured it was another robot thing.

But yeah, we got together. You gave me lots of great advice. And that I think was really helpful. I’m definitely excited to tell more people about kind of what you do in your services. I guess let’s start there. You did the cold outreach. What were you reaching out to me about? What’s your bread and butter?

Matthew DeFeo: Honestly, bread and butter is emails. I am switching my focus from sales pages, landing pages, things of that nature to just straight emails. And the reason is, is I like seeing the results quickly so I can make quick adjustments for my clients. It makes it easier for them and it makes them able to see it right up front what I’m doing, and see the results almost immediately.

I mean, you send to 100,000 people, within 10 minutes you have results. It’s a big difference. And honestly, I just like it. It’s just so much more personal. It’s a lot more storytelling than a sales page or landing page. I mean, you can have a story, but I’m a story writer. I love it.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. You’re absolutely right. It’s so addicting. My emails go out Monday morning at 7:40 and at eight o’clock, I’m like, “How many people opened it by now? How many people clicked? Did I get unsubscribes?” So you’re right. It’s really addicting. And it’s really interesting. I haven’t done deep testing, but I will see kind of what headlines seem to hit better, faster. But I think that’s so great.

And you’re right, it’s a lot more personal than a landing page. They tell you a landing page, basically just be headlines. At least that’s what I’ve read. I don’t really like that. But then I just skim landing pages anyway. Like I don’t really read. I’m just thought, boy, right, where’s the price?

Matthew DeFeo: Right.

Joe Casabona: I mean, you mentioned like a whole bunch of reasons why you like email. But what was the thing that made you think, “I should move from landing pages to email?”

Matthew DeFeo: Honestly, it was my second client this year. I’m working for Cutco or Vector Marketing. And I don’t know, I just really connected with my client. His name is Mike Monroe. He’s been fantastic. He let me do everything I needed to do. So from researching the market, to interviewing, to just getting down and dirty with all the information, statistics. And it was really fascinating. And I just really grew into it.

And then hearing all the stories from that one particular client was amazing. Because what typically happens is that when you have a mass product, or you’re well-known, you get all kinds of stories. Like, “Oh, it wasn’t very good.” Or, “This is a scam,” or, “I didn’t really care for it,” whatever. Or you get the ones that are just so excited to be on an interview that they basically blow it up. And you’re just like, “Okay, where is it?”

What I found with this particular situation was that everyone was almost concise. I can almost predict what they’re saying before they say it.

Joe Casabona: Wow.

Matthew DeFeo: That’s how consistent it was. And I was like, “Maybe this is better for me because, first of all, I do really well with doing interviews. Being prior in law enforcement, I’m pretty good at it anyways because of that. So it was very fascinating and it was easy fit for me.

I’ve done emails before and it was just so because it was mainly Click Funnels and things like that. But this one was one I was like, “Okay, this is it. This is what I want to do.”

Joe Casabona: That’s great. And so you mentioned your prior law enforcement. I don’t know how much you tell that story. But maybe we can dig into…

Matthew DeFeo: Sure.

Joe Casabona: …what made you do the switch later in Build Something More. I think that would be a fun story. Maybe not a fun story if I’m remembering the details right. But it’ll be an interesting story. That’s great. It’s always great to have a client that kind of gives you the breadth and the autonomy to kind of do a new job the right way. I think it’s reassuring as a freelancer.

Matthew DeFeo: Very. The fact that he trusted me to do all this with almost no prior experience with him. I’ve had experience with other people. He pretty much said, “Hey, this is me, this is what I want. Go do it.” And it was fantastic. I loved it. It was a great experience. I’m actually just waiting to get the next project from him. So it’s been fantastic. I’m definitely going to be doing this more.

Joe Casabona: Nice. That’s fantastic. Let’s move maybe one level out to big picture stuff. The reason that you’re focusing so much on emails, email campaigns is because… you know, I suspect that there are a few reasons for it. It’s not Facebook, you own the list. I’ve been telling people who are starting podcasts, like build your list. Your call to action should be build your list. Because those are people who are buying into your idea.

I guess to ask as directly as possible, what kind of ROI, what kind of return on investment can you get from investing in your email list?

Matthew DeFeo: Well, let’s just say by optimizing your email list and paying into it, for every dollar that you put into it, you get 42. That it’s been studied quite a bit. I think it was HubSpot that did that statistic. So far I’m finding out a little bit higher than that for my clients. Around 55. But it’s sort of hard to track too, I’m not gonna lie. Because every business has their own Click Funnels and has their different processes in how they want to attract their ROI. Because if they’re just focused on getting more subscribers, the return on interest is different than somebody who’s doing profit only.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: Great! We’ve set the stage now. Listeners, you should be very interested in this because for every dollar you put into your list, you can get around average, we’ll say 42 bucks. You mentioned user interviews and doing some research. What kind of research are we talking about here? Is it research on who to target your mailing list to or what to write to them? Or like the content upgrade to get them to sign up? What are we talking about?

Matthew DeFeo: All of that actually. And then a little bit more is what they’re saying about your product. I was working for a company called Charge-Check for a while. And immediately when I got there, I was just like, “Okay, what is this product?” And it was the CS10 and some serial number. After talking to three people, I was like, “No, you need to change this. Everybody’s calling it the all in one charging station.” I mean, that makes sense. Like you know what it is immediately, not CS10. Like nobody knows what that is. And their click-through rate was 18% higher.

Joe Casabona: Wow.

Matthew DeFeo: Yeah, I mean huge difference within one little tweak. When I actually do an interview with the clients or potential clients, I always asked like, what do you see in this product? What has been your experience and what have you used in the past? For example, for Cutco Knives, it would be, “Oh, just I go to the store to the mall, and I just buy a regular knife and whatever.” And then they experience Cutco knives, how sharp they are and so on and so forth, and then that forever guarantee, and it’s just like, “Oh, this is how knives are supposed to cut?”

So sometimes it’s an experience of the product, but sometimes it’s an experience of the service rendered too. For example, your podcast would be a service, even though it’s free. And so people are using your podcast to help themselves, whether it’s a business or email, whatever. You want to really niche it down. It’s up to them.

Using that information from comments, talking to them personally through emails, I read them all. I think I did over 17 different interviews for Cutco. I talked to charge text customers directly on the phone. Immediately when they called, they’re actually asking for help for certain things. They’d be like, “Hey, you want to jump on this real quick. I’ll give you five bucks or whatever.” It was really beneficial, really beneficial.

And what you’re really looking for is how they’re saying it, what they’re looking for, and their previous experience. Those are the three main things. Honestly, the overall impact it has on their lives. If it’s just a little impact, let’s just say, I don’t know, a pen, you know, it’s a pen. But if you have a pin that keeps going out, it’s gonna make a huge impact on your business if you’re a person who writes everything down. So that impact would be huge for somebody who’s like a secretary or something like that.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Funny you mentioned pens. I’m a gigantic pen nerd. I mean, I guess if you looked at my about page, you know.

Matthew DeFeo: I do know.

Joe Casabona: That’s a great example. Again, it makes a lot of sense. When you mentioned the name the CS10, whatever, it made me think of the Sony noise-canceling headphones. They’re just so bad at naming their products. It’s like the WX0000104 or something like that. I mean, maybe first have a pronounceable name for your product so people can talk about it.

Matthew DeFeo: Absolutely.

Joe Casabona: First of all, you say doing interviews with clients, potential clients, these are essentially customers of your clients. Right? That’s who we’re talking about here. So like you said, with the Cutco knives, like what are you looking for in a knife or whatever. And then you also mentioned incentivizing interviews. You didn’t specifically say that, but “do you want to hop on a call? I’ll give me five bucks.”

Because one thing that I have found is that I’ll email some section on my list, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’d love to talk to you, blah, blah, blah. Let’s make it better. If you are interested, hop on a call.” And even as I’m saying this out loud to you, it’s all about me. I just made it all about me. “Give me your time, so I can make my thing better for other people.” How do you get people to say yes to user interviews or client interviews?

Matthew DeFeo: Well, for Cutco it was really easy. It was in their contract.

Joe Casabona: Boom! I’m updating my End User License Agreement right now.

Matthew DeFeo: You know, to be able to share anything market-related, it’s already in the contract. So you don’t sign anything. That’s one barrier. Another one was we offered free knives. Something simple. Honestly, it doesn’t cost them a whole lot of money to do that. So it was really reasonable for them to do that. For charge check, it was like five bucks. You know, “Hey, but here’s five bucks,” or “we’ll send you a free charging cable.” Simple.

And people honestly are just like, “Oh, cool.” Even if it’s a half-hour to 45 minutes you’re talking to these people, a free charging cable, this thing, oh, free. Even if you don’t have anything like that for somebody who’s just starting, having a half an hour conversation with him about their business, not about what you’re getting them will help them because they know who you are.

For example, you do a podcast. They know who you are, they know you have guests on there. They know your information is valuable. So having a half-hour, even 15 minutes is valuable to them.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Again, that makes a lot of sense. I tell people when they’re starting memberships to offer things that are low effort for you, high value for the member. So like don’t offer a daily half-hour episode if you’re not prepared to do that, because then you’re not going to deliver on your promise.

And it’s kind of the same thing here. Five dollars or a charging cable for a company that makes a charging thing is very low cost to them. But it’s like a piece of a physical good that they’ll remember. The same thing with the knives. People are gonna use the Cutco knife and they’re gonna think about Cutco.

Matthew DeFeo: And honestly, the charging cable is probably like $1. And they just increase their sales by 18%. It’s no brainer. For other people who are just starting an eBook dedicated to them or customized to them would be good, too. You could have something like a template. “Oh, well, for your website, I would change this, this and this.”

Joe Casabona: Wow, that’s brilliant.

Matthew DeFeo: Thanks.

Joe Casabona: Because you’re right. It could be low effort. I would use probably Design Pickle to design an eBook and just be like, “Make sure I can edit this part,” and then send them off something that’s just for them. That’s fantastic.

Matthew DeFeo: We can also do a quick video like I did for you. Five minutes or 10 minutes, something like that.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. And you connected with me. Because you were very clear to say my name and address the issue, right? You didn’t just send me… Because you get those emails that are like, “I made this video just for you.” And it’s like a year old upload on YouTube that’s like, “Hey, you. Thanks for buying my book.” I’m like, “All right, you don’t have to tell me it’s just for me and it’s a year old or whatever.

Matthew DeFeo: I think people are catching on to that stuff now. I really do.

Joe Casabona: Right. It’s like the Evergreen webinar where they’re like, “Hey, we’re live right now. Hey, generic names that are probably in the chat.” And then it comes off as disingenuous. But then when you get a genuine… I guess the genuine stuff hits harder when a lot of stuff is not.

Let’s talk about what I teased out at the beginning. You’re just a wealth of knowledge. So rocking your niche with emails that capture hearts and minds. I’m sure many people listening have an email list. Maybe they’re unhappy with the open rates or the click rates, or they have high unsubscribe rates? What should people be focusing on when they’re writing their email?

Matthew DeFeo: If I can do it on top of the mountain and say one thing, it’d be subject lines. Subject lines and then story. Because subject lines to get them to open the email, and then the story for them to actually read through the email, and possibly click on whatever you’re offering, even if it’s just an article. Those are the two things.

Joe Casabona: So let’s start there. Subject lines. I use ConvertKit. They let me A/B test subject lines. I will say this with full knowledge that I don’t use it, which is now dumb as I’m saying it to you. What should the subject lines be? I know you have a few examples here, if you want to mention those. But mine are generally very… again, a Developer Matter of fact, WordPress 5.7, and using CRMs, and a book I read.

Which I mean, for the people on my list, I get like 20% open rates, but now I’m wondering, like, “Can I get 30% if it’s like a better headline or a subject line.

Matthew DeFeo: Oh, absolutely. Some people have 60% open rates?

Joe Casabona: Wow.

Matthew DeFeo: It’s really ridiculous. Like, “I’m like, oh, wow, that’s a good open rate. I don’t know if I can do that.” But in all seriousness, it’s just trying and then retrying, and then trying and then retrying. My little secret that you actually had me fill out was honestly one night, we’re sitting down at the dinner table, and my daughter who was three at the time, she’s like, “Daddy, don’t talk to squirrels or hot dogs,” out of the blue. And I’m like, “What?” I looked at my wife and I was like, “That’s a good subject line.”

So I made a story out of that. Honestly, people are like, “What are you talking about?” Immediately when they see that and I get really good open rates off of that. But that is in my automated sequence. They already know me a little bit. They know I’m a little off-kilter on subject lines because it stands out. It works. I am not a fan of “Name+your business” or name and then whatever else is there. They know by now that you’re not writing that specifically for them. Does it work? Yes. But I think honestly, more customization and more thought put into subject lines will help you.

There’s plenty of generators out there That will automatically spin whatever you put in there. And honestly, I start there. I start with the generator and then I’ll write, I don’t know, hundred subject lines, or 100 titles or whatever. Because essentially a subject line is a title. But if you twist it up and make it unfamiliar to most people, they’ll click it.

Joe Casabona: Interesting. It’s interesting you say that. Because I read somewhere that for blog posts or YouTube videos, you should write 15 to 20, maybe 25 possible titles, and that the good ones probably won’t happen until towards the end, because the first thing you come up with is never going to be the best one. Right?

Matthew DeFeo: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: So I think that’s really interesting. If you know a generator off the top of your head, I’ll throw in the show notes. Otherwise, I’ll find one, and I’ll put them in the show notes.

Matthew DeFeo: I don’t know the names of them. I haven’t bookmarked but I will send them to you so you have them.

Joe Casabona: All right, sounds great. And you’ll be able to find those over at streamlined.fm/223. Those will be the show notes for this episode. So subject lines. I love that because I mean, you know, there was a show on probably one both of us where we might both be too young to remember the Kids Say the Darndest Things.

Matthew DeFeo: Oh, yeah, I remember that one.

Joe Casabona: It’s just “don’t talk to squirrels or hot dogs.” My daughter says things to me. Like we have a half bath, and she’s like, “Daddy, this is a bathroom.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” She goes, “Where’s the bath tub?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. That’s a really good question.” It’s just funny how kids’ minds work. Maybe I can steal that. “Where’s the bathtub? Or why is this called a bathroom or whatever?”

Matthew DeFeo: Definitely could. You definitely could. Where’s the bathtub? And then have it about like trash emails or trash websites? You know, throwing out the toilet or whatever.

Joe Casabona: Oh, I love it. That’s awesome. Okay, so subject line… super important. They get people to open the email. If we are doing A/B test, I’m sure that the A/B test subject line is not unique to ConvertKit. Though, I mean, if it is, check out ConvertKit. But I’m sure it’s not.

So when we are A/B testing, how different should they be? Should they be like dramatically or slightly? Because the way the ConvertKit one works for anybody who doesn’t know is it’ll take I think 25% of your list, and then divide that in half and send half A and half B. And whichever one has the best rating, open rate, click rate, whatever, it’ll take that and then send it to the rest of your list.

Matthew DeFeo: Basically, what I would do is the same body, but different subject lines. And then you can do vice versa once you know the winner. So change the body and have the same subject line. Does that make sense?

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. So AB testing will have the same body, A and B, B as the winner. So now we take the B headline, have two different bodies and A/B test that.

Matthew DeFeo: Correct. And you don’t have to change the whole body. You could just change the sentence where the link is, or just the first few sentences or just one sentence. I know there’s copywriters that have just changed one word and converted 13% better.

Joe Casabona: Wow.

Matthew DeFeo: It’s amazing and sort of mind-boggling at the same time.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: Okay, so drill down in your testing. That’s really good. Again, you’re absolutely right. I was talking to somebody today, I’m doing a promo video for them, and he said that basically, they tested their call to action and like adding the word like “book a private call,” private increase the click rate in like by some percentage. I feel like people underestimate the importance of doing these kinds of tests right? Me too. I make a page and I’m like, “Well, I can check that off of my list and move on to the next thing. But how much money am I leaving on the table by not revisiting that in three days, five days, a month?

Matthew DeFeo: I also think that when you are just starting out or even mid-level business, is that you have 100 things on your list, and you want to get them done so you can make more money. And so sometimes you don’t see all the problems that might be there. For example, running a copywriting business, I have trouble figuring out my own copy because I am in it and not seeing it from the outside. And so I hired coaches. And it’s okay. That’s perfectly fine.

As a human race, we can see each other’s problems a lot better. By asking your friend or a coach or a copywriter, “Hey, what is wrong with this?” or “do you see anything that I need to change? Oftentimes they’ll point it out right away.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. You’re right. That is human. I was talking to my wife about something with… maybe it was kids. She was talking to one of our friends who also has a four-year-old and my wife was like, “Yeah, I told her to just do this.” And then she’s like, “How come I’m not taking that advice myself?” And I’m like, “Because it’s easier to solve other people’s problems.” It’s just easier. You’re not in it. You have less skin in the game, your head’s not filled with all of your objections. So I just think that’s really interesting.

So subject lines: number one important thing. Second most important thing is the story inside. Because without the subject line, people aren’t gonna read the story, right?

Matthew DeFeo: Right.

Joe Casabona: Again, some really good advice that you gave me on our first call was I showed you one of my emails I recently sent out and you told me, I don’t have enough storytelling in there. It’s all just like, “Here’s the thing. I like it. Here’s why it’s good.” Why is storytelling important?

Matthew DeFeo: Well, since beginning of time, we have told stories. Whether it was drawing pictures on the wall or actually communicating them person to person. And it’s the only thing that’s transcended up to this point. I mean, everything else has changed: the way we cook, the way we do things, the way we build stuff.

But for whatever reason, story has stuck because stories are so captivating. I mean, they make your imagination go wild or create all kinds of possibilities. And stories are also very entertaining. I believe businesses both have to be entertaining and selling at the same time. It’s because people want to hear a story. They want to be entertained. They don’t want to just go, “Hey, Buy my product.” Right?

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Matthew DeFeo: Or “Hey, this is this is so great because I did this.” People want to be able to read something that is entertaining fun, and something that will stick with them.

Joe Casabona: I think that’s a really good point. A lot of people in the WordPress space listen to this podcast, and what you used to see on plugin sales pages all the time is like, “Built 100% in React,” and “it’s really fast on the back end.” And I’m like, “Only developers care about that.” If I am trying to find a CRM for my business, and I want a WordPress plugin, I don’t care that it’s built in React. I care that I can get a reminder when I need to follow up with a client.

Matthew DeFeo: Exactly.

Joe Casabona: Stories can show also how useful it is to somebody. Whereas another story might show a different possibility, a different niche segment of somebody who might use it differently but same software. So it all depends on the person.

Matthew DeFeo: Yeah, absolutely.

Joe Casabona: I can hear the listeners right now, some of them are saying, “I don’t have any interesting stories.” What stories do I tell?

Matthew DeFeo: Okay, that’s easy. When you go down and sit at somebody else’s table and people start talking, what is the story that you go, “Oh, this happened to me at, I don’t know, Hawaii. We had the worst time. Our car crashed. Our plane was late, whatever.” Tell that story. What’s different?

Yes, you’re not sitting down on the table, it’s not live maybe because it’s an email. But if you’re able to capture those moments and what you say at those dinner tables, that is a story that you should share with everybody else. If everybody else is laughing in front of you, everybody else is going to laugh at your emails too, and have a good time with it.

So a little secret of mine is to write down stories. Just that a little quick blurb, for example, that Hawaii story is actually legit.

Joe Casabona: Wow.

Matthew DeFeo: That actually happened to me. So it’s written down. Some of the other stuff is like wherever we overcome. Like my mom was a prostitute. My dad was a drug dealer. So, I mean, those are big things that people were like, “Whoa.” It makes you stop and look.

For example, maybe those things haven’t happened to you. What has happened to you and your clients. Any blunders that you’ve had? Okay, learn from them, share them. I mean, everybody knows we’re human, we make mistakes. And if they can learn from you, that is still a story that you’re sharing.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: That reminds me of I think it’s my most popular Instagram story. Not that I have a lot of Instagram stories, but some of my most popular Instagram content is where I was clipping my eight-month-old son, and I clipped his fingernail except they got his finger. And he was like bleeding forever. And I just tell us I had to call an ambulance because I didn’t have a car with a car seat in it. And it was just like a train wreck. The EMTs were amazing. I’ll link to that because it is a good story. I got a lot of supportive emails and like, “Parenting is hard. I totally understand.” And then people told their own stories. So if you’re thinking, “I don’t have any stories to tell,” if you have lived on this earth, then you have stories to tell.

Matthew DeFeo: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can always tell friends stories too and just leave them anonymous.

Joe Casabona: Right. Yeah, right. Absolutely. That’s another really good point. Either about your friends or things that your friend relayed to you. This is what comedians do. A good comedian tells a good story whether it actually happened to them or not. Right?

Matthew DeFeo: Right.

Joe Casabona: Dana Carvey in one of his first stand-ups that I saw in like 1995 tells a story about how he went to George HW Bush’s White House and stayed in the Lincoln bedroom and had a conversation with George H. W. Bush just so he could do his impression. And I was 10, and I thought for the longest time that that actually happened. And I was like, “Oh, that didn’t really happen to him.” That’s crazy.

This has been great. Man, I can’t believe we’ve been talking for a half-hour already. Let’s talk tips for the listeners. You’ve given us a lot of good advice. If you’re telling people maybe one or two steps that they could take to improve their mailing list today, we know the subject lines important, but what else can they do to make sure that they are creating good emails?

Matthew DeFeo: Can I actually give you four?

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Matthew DeFeo: And the reason is because if they’re not getting into their inbox, and they go into spam, they don’t even have a chance to open it. So I recommend setting up your email correctly. That means going into your domain name and setting your SPF and DKIM. And the reason is it’s just gives verification that, yeah, you are the owner of this website. Yes, this is your email. And yes, you’re sending it to this person. So it gives some kind of tracking for Google and other mail accounts. So that is mistake I made in the beginning. And I don’t know if you know how much it costs me. That’s tip one.

Also, follow other people that do good copy. I mean, particularly to copywriters because they typically know what they’re talking about. Honey Copy is somebody I follow religiously. He’s really good. I do have to warn you that he does cuss and so does a Middle Finger Project. I mean, obviously, they do. But she writes amazing subject lines. I often refer to her when I’m stuck in a subject line.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. I will link both. I follow Honey Copy and his emails. I think it’s his, right? It’s that a dude?

Matthew DeFeo: Cole Shaffer?

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. His emails are very entertaining. And I’ll have to check out Middle Finger Project. I’ll link them both in the show notes.

Matthew DeFeo: And then use humor. Once they’re subscribed to you, you can send them gifs to relate to them more. If you send them out in a cold email, not going to go over well with Google. For whatever reason, they mark it as spam typically. And only have one link if you do cold emails.

Joe Casabona: So you said gifs, like the animated images?

Matthew DeFeo: Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Casabona: That’s so interesting.

Matthew DeFeo: So basically, I did a whole thing about my dog who’s actually sitting right next to me, and how he’s writing the email for me to get clients. And it was really funny. And everybody laughed at it. That got it. But what I found out was 75% of them were going to spam because of the gifs.

Joe Casabona: Wow. I guess Google essentially knows… and I guess we’re talking specifically about Gmail here. But like you can’t see the face I’m making, but everybody has a Gmail account or a Google Apps account. It’s all the same. So Google knows, essentially, when you’re doing a cold email, and if you use too many gifts or too many links it gets marked as spam. Is that…?

Matthew DeFeo: That’s pretty accurate. Majority of them. My last tip is to use a warm up email provider. So Lemlist… there’s actually one on App Sumo right now for sale for like $59 or something like that. And they warm up your email. So basically, it’s people responding to you with bogus information, honestly. So let’s say I don’t know Bob is talking to me, but it’s a computer, and we’re just sending emails back and forth. So it basically builds up value in Google but it’s not actually you doing anything.

Joe Casabona: So this is if you’re like creating a new email address?

Matthew DeFeo: Yes. This is new emails. Even if you were typically getting in the spam, if you start this warm up, it’ll start unmarking your spam in other people’s mailboxes.

Joe Casabona: That’s why. My mind is so blown right now. About a year ago, I guess… So my old man always said, “Buy cheap, get cheap.” And still does. He’s still alive. He says, “Buy cheap, get cheap.” And I thought I don’t need to pay for G-Suite, I could just use the hosting email that I get on SiteGround or whatever. And then like a bunch of people were like, “I never got your email.” And I found out most of my emails going to spam because I did not set up SPF or DKIM appropriately.

And then I went through it, but it was like kind of too late. I just ended up mixing that email service and moving over to Google Apps. And then once I started paying Google, they were like, “All right, yeah, I guess you’re legit now.” But it wasted a ton of time because I tried to go the cheap route. So buy cheap, get cheap.

I never knew about… and I’ve been a web developer. I’ve been in technology for over 20 years and I did not know about this until like a year ago. So that’s super interesting. Follow other people, of course, get inspiration from people who are doing it, well use humor, and warm up email provider. That’s so interesting. I’ll link to Lemlist and I’ll check App Sumo. I mean, I’ll probably just pick that up, because it’s super interesting. It sounds cool.

Matthew DeFeo: It’s super cheap. Lemlist, honestly, I had them for a little bit and I didn’t really care for what they were sending back and forth between the bogus emails. I mean, it was not conversational.

Joe Casabona: Oh, so it was just like random word generator?

Matthew DeFeo: Yeah, pretty much a spinner. Then I got the one on App Sumo, and it’s like a legitimate conversation. I’m like, “Okay, Google probably won’t pick up on this as much.”

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. They probably hired somebody to actually write [inaudible 00:46:55] conversations. That’s super cool. That’s super cool. This has been amazing. If you are a member, of course, be sure to stick around for Build Something More. We’re going to dig into Matt’s past a little bit and what made him switch from law enforcement to email writing and copywriting.

If you are not a member, you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. But before we get into that, I do need to ask you my favorite question, Matt, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

Matthew DeFeo: Trade secret is honestly ask for referrals in your emails. Every single one and make them funny. So one of the emails “Is don’t be greedy. If you’d liked this email, forward this email to a friend so they can learn how to sell Trump’s spray tan.” Because that was a big media thing. He looks funny, the hair would pop up or whatever. I mean, he was in the media all the time. He still is a little bit. But during that it was a hot topic. So I thought, “Oh, how can I incorporate this into my emails, and make it funny?” So that’s what I did. Now, for somebody else who’s maybe not really good at writing humor or whatever, include a gif.

Another one I did was “learn so well that you can sell Chewbacca a hair removal.” It’s cheesy, but funny. You know, I got shared. I got shared quite a bit. And I was actually surprised at how well it did. Also, my second one is for people who are having a high unsubscribe rate, hit “Enter” five times after your body of the email. That way your unsubscribe, they have to scroll down to unsubscribe.” And people are lazy. Let’s just be honest. Like we want everything done for us. So it makes a big difference.

Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. That’s interesting, because I’ve seen kind of the opposite of like, “Here’s a giant of subscribe button if you don’t want to be here.” I mean, if you think you’re offering value and you just want to improve, little…

Matthew DeFeo: Mainly it’s for people like Amazon. They’re sending out millions of emails a day, and they just want them to get your inbox and hopefully, you click on them. So eCommerce sites typically get a lot of unsubscribes. The [Sherpa? 00:49:30], whatever… you know, that’s what they did. They increase their unsubscription rates quite a bit because of just hitting “Enter” five to eight times, whatever. It’s amazing.

Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. Awesome. Well, there’s lots of great stuff to unpack here. Matt, thanks so much for spending time with me today. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?

Matthew DeFeo: Copypulse.com. It’s spelled just like it sounds. You can also look me up on Facebook, same thing, CopyPulse, or Matt DeFeo. My name is spelt weird. So D-E-F, as in Frank, E-O.

Joe Casabona: All right, I will be sure to link all of that and everything we talked about, lots of tools for you to look into today over on the show notes at streamlined.fm. Be sure to stick around in Build Something More. But Matt, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Matthew DeFeo: Thanks. It’s been pleasure.

Joe Casabona: And thanks to a TextExpander, Restrict Content Pro, and The Events Calendar for sponsoring this episode. They make the show possible. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.