I just bumped 194 words of so-so copy to the “cutting room floor” that I keep at the bottom of every Google doc.
That’s where copy goes when it’s not totally awful, but it’s also not really working. This way I still have it in case I need it later.
Hat tip to Sage Polaris who taught me the cutting room floor trick
It’s much easier to save something for later than admit that it isn’t working and throw it in the garbage. It’s like the expired food in your fridge: you know you’re never going to eat it, but you spent good money on it so you’d better leave it there in case an unexpected guest turns up with a taste for mouldy applesauce.
I had an idea I was trying out but it really wasn’t working, even after I’d let it sit for 24 hours. Very quickly I started falling into a deep black hole of self-doubt.
It’s too hard.
I don’t feel inspired right now.
Maybe I used up all my inspiration and this is it.
My latest emails were so good; A disappointing one is basically inevitable.
What is life even for, anyway?
My therapist marvels at how quickly a basic inquiry can make a hairpin curve to “…and I will be alone forever.”
I was just on the cusp of being alone forever when my seven-and-a-half years of email copywriting experience kicked in and I said to myself, Tarzan, your idea isn’t working. Put that mouldy applesauce on the bottom shelf and try something else.
So I did.
And here we are, 249 words and 19 minutes later, and, not sure yet, but I think I might be back on track.
You tell me. Is this email working for you? Subscribers consistently say they like having a sneak peek into my writing process. (See the bottom of this email for a minute-by-minute breakdown of a recent email.)
So far I only checked my phone once to listen to a 1m7s voice note from a lover…for the eighteenth time. Plus I “accidentally” checked my email once.
If you’re an email marketer like me, you probably get stuck all the time. Probably a lot more often than me. Here’s what I suggest you do when that happens.
Move your crappy copy to the cutting room floor and start over.
Most writers have a warm-up routine. Now you have one too. It’s called “writing something that sucks” and it is the first step to writing something good. Congratulations. You’re halfway there.
Have a backlog of ideas to pull from.
If I wasn’t so busy worrying about being alone forever, I would’ve remembered that I have a spreadsheet with 43 really good questions my subscribers sent in for my Ask Me Anything a while back. (Here’s the replay, btw.)
Just asking your subscribers, “What’s your #1 struggle when it comes to [the problem you solve]?” is a great way to get material. Ask your IG followers if you don’t have enough subscribers for that to work.
Even easier, ask ChatGPT ← For best results, prompt it to phrase those struggles with dialogue that uses concrete examples and vivid detail.
The answer is almost never in the fridge, but going outside helps.
My best ideas for emails often come to me when I’m brave enough to take a quick jaunt through the forest before sitting down at my desk. I usually get like three great ideas without even trying. This only works if I don’t have my phone with me (no Spotify or podcasts!), so the hardest part is retaining them.
It’s also fun to check if the answer is in the fridge, just in case. In this case it actually kind of was.
Okay, we’re now at the 611 word mark so it’s time to wrap up. That’s another question people ask me a lot. How long should my emails be? Now you have the short answer. The long answer is a lot less satisfying, trust me.
The good news is that I’m actually kind of obsessed with this topic and once I get going (i.e. once I’ve written a bunch of crappy copy) I could write about it all day.
I bet you’re a little bit obsessed with your work too, which is a good thing for an email marketer to be. Just write about what’s keeping you up at night, and at your desk after 5pm.
And if you have to serve your guests expired food now and then, it’s really not that big a deal. Don’t wait for every email to be perfect in order to send it. That is the highway to ghosting your list completely.
Send it anyway. Your next email will be better, promise.
Hopefully mine too.
XOT
P.S.
That cutting room floor copy? It gets used only slightly more often than your expired goods get eaten.
P.P.S.
The idea I tried that wasn’t working? I borrowed it from one of my peers, Maegan Megginson, who said to me in a Voxer note “I’m opting out of urgency.”
“You should write an email about that,” I told her.
“I already did,” she said.
Isn’t she brilliant? Turns out I was not able to recycle her idea ♀️
P.P.P.S.
Wrote that last P.S. using a scrap of copy taken from the cutting room floor. Hope you like mouldy applesauce!
FINAL WORD COUNT: 896 words
