Email Copywriting Series – On How To Write Honest Copy That Sells – Chapter 1. Cut Bullshit Phrases! 💩

Gibberish marketing talk is hard to avoid. Most sales emails are full of it.

Just a bit of sleaziness hides into your copy without you realizing it. Cliches sneak inside your emails just because you couldn’t find the right words.

How can you eliminate these marketing nonsenses and write some honest copy that actually sells?

This 3 part Email Copywriting Series is trying to help in that.

Follow these tips, and your copy instantly becomes more sincere, more enchanting, and more persuasive! 🤩

Let’s look at the 1. Chapter now!

➡️ Cut Bullshit Phrases

Now you may ask yourself what are these Bullshit Phrases anyway?

I refer to those catchphrases so overused they’ve lost their meaning.

Let me give you a few examples and I am sure you will know which ones I am thinking of:

„world-class,” „easy to use,” market-leading,” „high-quality product,” „excellent customer service,” „scalable,” „cutting edge,” „flexible,”

and the list can go on… 😓

They are making the copy sounds corporate rather than human. And most importantly they are not helping your customers understand why they should buy from you.

These phrases are coming up when a business forgets about its identity and why is in the business at all. So it’s starting to write for a faceless crowd rather than to its favorite clients.

➡️ How to spot these bullshit phrases:

✅ Can you clarify these words in other ways?

Let’s take „excellent customer service” for example.

What does excellent customer service really means? How do you visualize excellent customer service?

You and I can imagine service excellence in many different ways. Talking to a nice and helpful person or getting help 0-24 every day of the week, etc.

When phrases lack specificity, they’re often bullshit phrases.

✅ Does the word sound hypey?

When is something truly a “high-quality product”?

When is a new feature truly “awesome”?

If you’ve discovered a cure for HIV, you can call that it’s “groundbreaking”. If you’re an Olympic gold medalist, yep, that’s “world-class”. 🥇

But if you came out with a new T-shirt design or reduced your shipping time from two weeks to just one then let customers do the talking for you. Get testimonials and ask them what they think of you and how your service has changed their life.

✅ And the biggest one… Would you use this word in a conversation with a friend?

I am not sure about you, but when I talk with my friends about what I do, I am not saying things like „I am planning world-class email marketing strategies for eComm stores.” Or „I am setting up pioneering email automations for robust revenue growth”. 😆

I might just say to them that I am helping to eComm stores to get some extra revenue with email marketing and automation.

When we’re with friends, we likely to use real words. We don’t use words to impress, but to express our thoughts.

To get rid of crappy phrases, use meaningful words and be so specific that readers can picture your content. 🖼️

For now, that’s it…

Read Chapter 2. and Chapter 3. as well if you want learn more!