What’s shaking, email fam? It’s your girl Liz Wilcox, coming at you between the melodious sounds of leaf blowers and luxury hedge fences (oh, the mini-mansion life of my neighbors!). Before Chelsea bursts in from school demanding snacks, I hit record to drop some seriously juicy email marketing tidbits you do NOT want to miss.
Quick highlights:
- Bougie neighbor updates: Because what’s podcasting without a little suburban chaos?
- Listener shoutout of the week: Justin from our Facebook group shares his “confession” and a killer success story using the cult-favorite Pickles template (someone just booked a magic show from a years-lost client!).
- Experiment #1: One-Word Subject Lines:If you’re bored writing emails, shake things up! I’ve been testing (okay, basically obsessed with) one-word subject lines—think “Urgent,” “Balls,” “Fetch” (yep, a Mean Girls ref), and even “Poppycock.” The results? Sky-high open rates! Turns out, a little intrigue goes a long way (and makes preview text a breeze).
- Experiment #2: Sending More Emails (Gasp!):That’s right. Instead of being “annoying,” I found that emailing 3–4 times a week actually increased my open and click rates. Community gets stronger, inboxes get friendlier, and no one’s running away (they’re actually replying more!).
- Behind the scenes:A sneak peek at real data and the “why” behind these moves—nothing fancy or fussy, just what’s working right now.
Remember: You aren’t annoying your list—you’re becoming their favorite part of the week. Go hit send, experiment, and let yourself have a little fun with it!
Until next time, Liz 💌
P.S. If you hear faint leaf blowing, just picture me podcasting from the wilds of waterfront suburbia. We keep it real around here.
Links:
Check out Liz’s Email Marketing Membership here
Join the Email Sound Booth Facebook group here
Check out Liz’s free welcome sequence here
Liz’s Kit [Convertkit] affiliate link
Rather watch the Podcast? Check out WATCHLIZ.COM
Transcript
Yo, yo, yo. Liz Wilcox here. And I hope and pray that you can’t hear what is going on outside. My neighbors, they’re super bougie. I mean, I don’t know if they’re super bougie, but they do live in, like, a mini mansion on the water. And have, like, a hedge fence. You know what I’m saying? Like, they have, like, a privacy fence, but it’s made out of plants, right? So they’re always over there doing something. But anyway, I just hit record. I have, like, 10 minutes before Chelsea gets home from school, so I’ve got to record this. And of course, they’re like, blowing leaves. Or something, so hopefully you can’t hear that. And hopefully I just wasted 37 seconds. Of your time explaining it versus you actually hearing it.
All right, what’s up, Liz Wilcox here. You are listening to me ramble on. Episode 134 of the email sound booth podcast. And today I want to share with you two email experiment experts. Experiments. Two email experiments is the word I’m running right now. Super excited.
But first, I literally was pulling up Facebook because I wanted to get ideas for what the heck to talk about this week. And there’s a guy named Justin in our email sound booth Facebook group. Side note, if you’re not in there, get in there. And he just wrote the most amazing thing. He said, confession time and results. I’ve been really bad about sending out my emails. It’s been a couple of months. Ugh. I took the Pickles template. Side note, the Pickles template just came out inside email marketing membership, if you’re curious. Nine bucks. Just saying. So I took the Pickles template from EMM that dropped today and sent it to both of my businesses. He has an email list for web design and professional magician. My goodness. Had a web client respond with paid work. He wants some custom design work done.
Yay. Justin just got a client from a from a template called Pickles. This is awesome. He wants some custom design work done. And then on his magician email list, he says, I also had an old magic client from 2019 respond to book a show this summer. My God, today, Justin, this is freaking awesome. He says it works. Just do it. Even if it’s been a while, just do it. This is amazing. So shout out, Justin. Yay. We’re applauding you. I’m applauding if you can’t see mine. If you’re not watching on YouTube, I’m applauding. So anyway, awesome. So exciting. Back to your regularly scheduled program. Side note, there’s a gif of me saying that. Back to your regularly scheduled program.
Two email experiments I’m running right now. So the first email experiment, and if you’ve been on my email list for a while, you’ve noticed I’ve been doing this since about October, is one word subject lines. I am loving my one word subject lines. I think that’s so fun to come up with. You know, first I write my emails and then I come up with the subject line. So spoiler, I’ve got a couple coming out this week. The one that is coming out today is called, I think $3,600 is the subject line. Like, you know, the dollar sign and then 3,600. So excited to see how that one does. Then I’ve got, you know, but then let’s talk about. I don’t want to spoil all the rest. But even in the last few weeks, I’ve had one called Weekend, another called Urgent. The one that was called urgent had a 63.4% open rate and a 5.8% click rate. Amazing. I had one that I thought was really fun called Poppycock. That one had a 58.6 open rate. So the open rates are pretty good. There was one with the subject line open, 59.9% work. Actually, this one surprised me. I thought, people don’t like to work. Why would they open this email? But that one actually did better than open. It had a 60.4%. Also had one called Fetch. You know, if you’ve ever watched Mean Girls. I had one called 39, question mark, question mark, question mark, 60.1%. I had one called sun something. Oh, the one called Balls.
I had one live. I sent one called Balls. And while it it was almost hit 60, 59.8 open rate. What I loved about this email is a couple weeks later I went to Flavor Media Summit, which was a like bloggers conference. And there were a few people there that were already on my email list. And they came up, they’re like, I loved that subject line Balls. So fun. Funny. Like it was. It was kind of like, you know, through the grapevine. People kept coming up to me. They’re like, oh, you’re the lady that wrote the email called Balls. It’s so funny. So, so funny. Had one called Stupid about the beginning of April that had a 61% open rate. So I’m running this experiment and I’ve been running it for, for. I guess it’s not an experiment anymore. I guess I’m just doing it. It’s been what, six Seven, eight months that I’ve been doing one word subject lines.
And I’m finding that my one word subject lines are doing better than the others. So I also have one in between. Like, I don’t teach that. Where was another one? So I’m still mixing it up. This email is less than a hundred words. Tell me, you know, and those are doing good. Those are still, you know, 58, 59% open rates. But I find if I want to get past 60 or 61%, it’s usually one word that sticks out. So what I’m finding is that just the intrigue is really good. And also I’m finding, and it’s not clickbait, but it is very intriguing. With the one word, I can usually come up with my preview text lot easier. Like for the one that said fetch, you know, that’s for mean girls, right? Quit trying to make fetch happen. It said fetch. And then the preview text was super easy because it was like, I’m still trying to make it happen, right? So it was kind of a play on that. And then the. Tell me. I think the preview text was something like, no, really, please hit reply. You know, so. So I’m just, I’m just loving. Seems like my open rate, despite my email list growing, is staying high. Click rates are up even. And then I’m not really doing anything different with clicks. But I’m finding because the open rate is getting better, even though my email list is growing, my open rate is growing.
The click rate is growing too. I mean, 2.7%, 4.3, 5.8, 2.4, 5.3, 7.8. These are just the ones that I’m looking at just on the front page of my kit account right now. So the click rate is going up too. And I think it’s just so intriguing that the click rate is going up now. That’s going to lead perfectly into the second thing that I’m experimenting with, which is sending more emails. Okay? So I think my open rate, my click rate is actually going up because for about three weeks now, I’ve been sending three emails a week. Okay? And that’s on top of, if you are inside my email marketing membership, you also get a Monday content email, right? Like, here’s your new content of the week, right? So you’re getting three or four emails from me a week. And I’m noticing again, my click rate rate is going up. My open rate is going up. So I’m looking at, you know, this is. Sorry, you can’t see what I’m looking at, but I’m, I’m looking and these are emails from like mid March and I’m recording this mid May. So two months ago, you know, I’m seeing open rates of 56.7. Hang on, I’m going off the fly here. Of course I click on a time when I’m doing a freaking launch, which those open rates are different, you know, 59. But I’m very rarely seeing like above 60. 57.7. 56.7. Oh, here’s one. 63.6. So that was a good one. Oh, but that was the first email that I had sent out in two weeks because that was around Christmas break. But I am noticing the more emails I’m sending, the more opens I’m getting, which is awesome. So you would think the more emails I send, the more people are not opening. But I’m actually seeing way more engagement. My click rates are going way, way up and the open rates are staying the same or going a little higher. So it just goes to show you, the more you email, the more community you’re going to build, the more people are going to have your content just as part of their routine.
Right? You’re not annoying them, you’re becoming part of their routine. So if you’re thinking your email feels a little stagnant lately, if you want to try something new, go ahead, try these one word subject lines or try to increase the frequency of your emails. Now, if you need help writing your emails in the first place, let alone increasing the frequency you already know, I’d love for you to join Email marketing membership. It’s $9 a month. You get an weekly newsletter template delivered straight to your inbox every Monday morning. And you know if you’re trying to increase the frequency, that’s going to help you because you get a whole library of over 100 templates in there to choose from.
All right, I’m Liz Wilcox. As always, you are amazing. I believe in you. I believe that your click rate wants to increase, your people want to open your emails. So go out there, hit send, can’t wait to see what happens.