I just sent out the following email. I’ve copied and pasted it in its entirety. The decision to use a plain text email was based on making it more readable and to appear more personalised. I’ve seen other startups such as Bufferapp and Photzy do this. When readers see a HTML email, they can put their guard up as it looks like a marketing email. I didn’t want it to appear like that. I wanted to make it very personal and in my natural voice.

I’ve been talking to Brett Fox about this a lot, and he decided to use plain text emails for Photzy with great effect. He also writes in a very personalised style and is one of my favourite copywriters (and growth hackers).

Enjoy!

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Hi,

Welcome to the first edition of my growth hacking and online marketing newsletter. Some of you have attended my class at General Assembly. Whilst others have expressed an interest in this topic and would like to know more.

I believe we are living in a new era where companies can grow very quickly using cost effective online channels and unconventional means. Online marketing and growth hacking present a wealth of opportunities to be exploited. Companies such as Paypal and Reddit seeded growth and faked traction. Startups like airbnb were able to leverage channels and platforms that were untapped to grow exponentially.

It works, and then it doesn’t. Over time these channels become less price efficient and less effective as other people discover them. Andrew Chen described it best in the law of shitty clickthroughs. Any gap of opportunity will close suddenly so its important to be one of the first to tap into them.

I also wanted to introduce you to my latest video – a growth hacking discussion on Google Hangout. Its a followup to my growth hacking class. I talk about the following topics: 1) how I hacked my linkedin profile to generate sales enquiries. 2) product tours 3) reverse engineer marketing. I will hold these online talks once a week on Sunday afternoons. If you are interested in attending my live hangout online or have questions you’d like me to answer, please reply to this email.

Lastly, I want to leave you with one thought which is remarketing. A lot of people think about marketing to new customers, but you should also consider remarketing to existing customers and prospective customers. There was a brilliant article I read recently by Neil Patel on “How you can use remarketing to close a business deal“. Its an interesting, simple yet clever way to re-market to your customers using tracking techniques, advertising and some old fashioned method – phone calls!

I hope you enjoy the weekend and get some well earned rest.

Regards,
Matthew Ho
Native Tongue Apps