A little over a week ago, one of my clients launched their brand on Kickstarter.

They’re called Carnivore Snax.

And they’re taking off like a rocket.

Their project got fully-funded in under 90 minutes. And they raised over $65,000 in their first 24 hours.

Not too shabby! Especially considering they’re selling a food item with a pretty low per-unit price.

Now…

What’s the deal with me featuring my own clients here on Email of the Week? Am I breaking my own rules?

Nope!

The reason why is because I’m going to be featuring some emails their team whipped up for the campaign. They did a great job and I wanted to break down WHY I think these emails in particular worked well and helped the campaign.

On top of that…

I had a lot of people reach out asking about Kickstarter launch strategy in general… so I thought this would be a good chance for me to FLEX a bit, as I’m actually pretty fucking great at crowdfunding projects – if my past campaigns are any indication. (*Ahem*… *ahem*… and *ahem.*)

Any product launch or crowdfunding campaign you ever do will be a large scale project. There are tons of pieces of copy that need to be written.

And if you’ve ever done launches before, you know there’s a lot of blocking and tackling involved.

Every email you send is important. There are a LOT of pieces of information you need to convey to your customers – information independent of the fun, sexy “persuasive” copy bits.

Sometimes you need to dedicate some of your emails to focusing on walking through your customers what’s going on and what they need to do in order to ensure you have a successful launch.

You’ll see what I mean in a second…

Today, we’re actually going to dive into TWO emails from the Carnivore Snax launch.

Consider it a double whammy!

I really think you’re gonna love this one…

So…

Without further ado…

Let’s dive into this week’s Email of the Week!

This is the 34th installment of my Email of the Week series. (Catch up on previous episodes here.)

And in case you’re new around here, here’s how this all works…

The Rules For Email Of The Week

Each week, I go out into the wild to find a super-effective e-commerce marketing email… and I break down what made it work. My goal is for you to tune in each week, so I can teach you strategies and best practices YOU can use to make your own emails better.

I find these emails in my inbox, but I also accept suggestions from readers who have a remarkable email they’d like to share.

If you recently received an email that was so awesome it made your jaw drop, I wanna see it.

Forward it to me (chris at theemailcopywriter dot com) with a brief message about what you liked about it. If I choose to do a breakdown of the email you sent, I’ll give you a shout out and link to your site.

The only rule is… you can’t pick yourself.

Now then, without further ado, let’s check out the Email of the Week!

Meat: Nature’s ONLY True Superfood

How can I describe Carnivore Snax to you?

Well…

Imagine being able to carry around a ribeye in your pocket… that you could eat anywhere… without the mess… and without it tasting like shitty beef jerky or biltong.

THAT is what Carnivore Snax is.

Think of a potato chip, except meat instead of potato.

It’s also been described as a meat pastry, if you can imagine that.

They have a great product.

And… they actually have pretty good emails.

Emails are the most underrated piece of your campaign. Everyone focuses on their video, sales page, Facebook ads… but emails are sometimes an afterthought for some campaigns.

In my opinion…

Emails are the most important.

The people on your list (or prelaunch list) are going to make up an overwhelming majority of your backers. So you NEED to make sure your email game is on point if you’re going to have a successful campaign.

Now, the two emails I’m going to show you aren’t exactly the sexiest emails in the history of persuasion.

But in the case of a large scale launch or Kickstarter campaign… clarity often trumps persuasion. (That’s something I learned from Angie Colee, my Copy Chief when I was on Jeff Walker’s team. )

And THAT is exactly what both of these emails do.

They are SUPER clear and convey super important messages that you need to understand if you’re going to become a backer. They’re not going to lose backers because people “didn’t know what to do to support the project.”

Very important stuff.

Take a look…

LOVE this subject line.

Why?

Because it looks personal. It’s real. It doesn’t “feel” like a marketing email at all.

It looks like an email a friend would send you.

A+

 

What’s really cool about this email is the strategy here.

If you’re a serial Kickstarter backer, you probably know how their ecosystem works.

BUT…

If you’ve never backed a crowdfunding project before, the concept might be new to you. And navigating the checkout/pledging process might be a little confusing.

That’s why I LOVE this email.

This wasn’t the first email sent.

Mark did a great job of pre-selling through prelaunch content before the launch even started. Thousands of people on the list already knew they wanted to buy. We don’t need to firehose them with persuasion.

What we DO need to do is ensure that they know exactly how to complete the checkout process.

The copy in this email is straight and to the point.

It lays out the important details you need to understand BEFORE you can make the decision to pull out your credit card.

When it comes to understanding the conversation in your prospect’s mind… that also means answering the questions they’re too afraid to ask in public.

Read that last line again.

The video was filmed with Loom, one of my favorite pieces of software. So the GIF was autogenerated through Loom… which definitely increases clickthrough rate.

What I love about this too is that it’s not some fancy video in a studio or anything like that.

It’s real, raw, authentic.

Great choice.

Those videos tend to outperform the fancy ones, especially nowadays.

Overall, this email is short… to the point… and effective.

Let’s take a look at one more…

 

This email went out in the evening on launch day.

I call this the “social proof” email.

Basically, after you open up ANY kind of launch… you want to email people 8-12 hours later to let them know how much of a rush there was for your product.

We often buy things because we see other people buying them, too.

It’s why we’ll pull into a restaurant with a crowded parking lot on a Saturday night… but we’ll avoid the one with an empty parking lot like a plague.

Now, with a Kickstarter campaign… this kind of email works even better because the “pledge” amount and backers are front and center on the page.

In fact, one could argue that Kickstarter is one big schmeckle-measuring contest: the bigger your number is, the more everyone wants to see what all the fuss is about.

If you saw a project with only $300 of backing after a week… you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable giving them your money.

But if you saw that a project you liked got funded in less than 90 minutes… you feel a LOT more confident in pulling out your credit card.

Let’s take a look at that body…

 

 

I love this intro.

It’s tight and pithy.

They use a humorous analogy to SHOW their feelings. And then they pivot right to the reason for the celebration.

What this piece of body copy does, when combined with the screenshot from the campaign, is it shows you how successful the project is already.

It alleviates your fears.

It gives you confidence.

And…

It gives you a bit of FOMO.

Great copy, great strategy.

This next section brings your attention to the action they want you to take.

YOU should back RIGHT NOW to get this bonus… before it expires.

Fast action bonuses are the name of the game when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns. The bigger your sales numbers are in the first 48 hours, the more the platform’s algorithm will show it to other people on their site.

Why do the algorithms work this way?

Well…

They obviously get a % of the money raised.

So If you owned the platform, you’d wanna give preference to the projects that are doing really well… and you’d want to help them raise even MORE money because clearly the project is a winner.

The platform and the creator have a mutual interest.

This is why email is so important – you can’t just launch without any kind of email prelaunch OR follow up.

You gotta have a big rush right at the beginning if you want momentum. Otherwise, the remaining four weeks of the campaign will be a real drag.

In the last part of this email, they provide even more social proof. Except this time, it’s SPECIFIC social proof… featuring comments from backers.

These are essentially testimonials.

Again…

This part ratchets up the FOMO and gets others excited about backing.

All in all…

Super solid email strategy from Carnivore Snax.

They got a great team and an awesome product.

And YOU should definitely back them if you’re into this kind of thing.

Keep up the great work Carnivore Snax!

Big Takeaways from Carnivore Snax

  1. Social proof, social proof, social proof.
  2. Make your subject lines look like something a friend would write to you.
  3. Keep your copy tight and pithy.
  4. Use pictures strategically.
  5. Mix different types of social proof: numbers + testimonials.
  6. GIFs usually increase click-throughs.
  7. Clarity trumps persuasion.
  8. Sometimes you just need to tell people what they need to do in order to buy… instead of just focusing on persuasion.
  9. Plain text is what gets people to buy, not email design.
  10. Bonus work for all kinds of products and YOU should be using them, too.

What You Should Do Next

  1. Subscribe to my email list so you can get ALL of the Emails of the Week delivered straight to your inbox, automatically.
  2. Leave a comment for me below and let me know what you liked about this email.
  3. Send this breakdown to someone you know who has a physical product business. You might help them pull off an epic product launch or kick some ass on Kickstarter.
  4. Back the Carnivore Snax Kickstarter! They truly have an awesome product you’ll love… especially if you’re carnivore/keto/low-carb/paleo.

 

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