Daniel Throssell vs. Derek Johanson

I just changed my mind about a long-held belief about email marketing.

The long-held belief is that email content should be entertaining. That you need to give people a dopamine spike, so they’ll want to read your next email.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I changed my mind after many long walks through the forest, joining a caravan through the Sahara Desert, various experiments with psychedelics, and undergoing a month-long session in a cave with a meditation guru.

Finally, the meditation guru snapped and said, “Theo, why is this so hard for you to understand? Email content should be about teaching people, not entertaining them!”

Just kidding. The real thing that changed my mind was a guy called Derek Johanson, who sends emails every day that are just tutorials for how to do business stuff.

A Derek Johanson email is basically a step-by-step guide to something business-y. Sometimes it’s how to build an email list. Sometimes it’s how to do a course launch. Sometimes it’s how to build your authority by sending emails. Et cetera.

Now, compare Derek Johanson to Daniel Throssell, who writes daily emails where he tells hyper-exaggerated stories from his life.

Every now and then they contain a useful marketing tip. But for the most part, Throssell’s emails are pure entertainment. They’re designed to spike your emotions, not teach you anything.

Daniel Throssell was the first copywriting “guru” I discovered, and I loved his emails when I was a beginner.

But I didn’t really buy courses when I was a beginner. (Generally speaking, intermediate to advanced people buy more stuff in just about every niche.) And now that I’m more advanced, I don’t want entertainment — I want learnings.

Throssell’s strategy works for Throssell. The dude gets insanely good open rates, because his emails are fun to read. And clearly, he’s making money.

But I wonder if the “give people a dopamine spike” strategy might work better on beginners than advanced people. Because these days, I find myself reading Daniel Throssell’s emails less and less.

Meanwhile, I’m reading Derek Johanson’s emails more and more. Whenever they pop up in my inbox, I open them — because I know I’m gonna get something useful.

To sum up this email in 2 sentences:

• Sending entertaining emails gets you opens, but it appeals more to beginners than advanced people. It doesn’t build your authority, it just turns you into Perez Hilton.

• Sending tutorial emails builds your authority. It appeals to advanced people and serious learners… i.e. the people who actually spend money to learn stuff.

So should you send entertaining “personality” emails or tutorials? It depends on your business and your audience.

Do you write about business topics for an advanced audience? Then go for heavier learning, lighter entertainment.

Do you write about fun, non-business topics? Or do you write for a beginner audience? Then go for heavier entertainment, lighter learning.

(Either way, you probably want a mix of both.)

Short-form content is overrated.

Neil Patel — the SEO guy with big ears — ran a study that every content creator should know about.

Patel locked a bunch of people in a room, gave them all smartphones, and told them they could look at whatever content they wanted to.

The next day, he asked them what content they actually remembered.

They spent the most time looking at short-form content — but they didn’t remember any of it. All the Instagram reels and TikTok dances and Tweets went in one ear and out the other.

But they remembered the long-form content. They remembered the blog posts. They remembered the YouTube videos. Et cetera.

The lesson that Neil Patel took away from this — and the lesson that I took away from this — is that short-form content is overrated.

Short-form content is great for getting people in the door…

But if you want to make SALES, you need long-form content.

If you want people to remember you, and if you want to build authority with them, you need to be on their radar for more than just a few seconds.

Even the people who make short-form content know this.

Last year I worked with a business owner who posts daily minute-long reels on Instagram. He told me that when people actually book a call with him, they do so after binging a bunch of those minute-long reels.

In other words, they’re not watching one 1-minute video and then booking a call. They’re watching 10 1-minute videos and then booking a call.

So the lesson from this email is:

• Short-form content can get you follows, profile visits, email subscribers, etc…

•  But if you want to make MONEY, you need to get people to spend more than a minute with you. And how do you do that? With long-form content.

Deliverability

I’ve been reading up about email deliverability.

Very interesting subject, I know. But it’s really important. When you figure this out you can make way more from your email list.

After all, you can write the best email in the world — but it doesn’t matter if nobody reads it.

Here’s 4 things I’ve learned that you can steal:

1. There’s a bunch of technical stuff you have to do called SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

If you don’t do it, it can mess up your deliverability.

Most email softwares won’t do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

2. Be careful who you email

Most really good email people only email people who have opened one of their emails in the past 90 days.

If you don’t open for 90 days, you get kicked off the list.

Why? Because when people don’t open and click your emails, it makes you look more suspicious to Google. So if people aren’t opening and clicking your emails, it’s best to just get rid of them.

Also, a lot of those email addresses are probably “spam traps”. A spam trap is an old email that the owner abandoned. Google monitors these. They assume anyone who emails them is a spammer. If you email them, they will act accordingly.

I know it hurts — you work so hard to get email subscribers, and not emailing them feels like throwing money away.

But you’ll throw way more money away if you go to Spam!

3. You can test whether your emails are going to promotions.

How? Set up a few test inboxes — these can be free Gmail accounts that you open.

Then, before you send out any marketing email, send that email as a “test” to these inboxes.

If you go to Promotions, change a few words in the email and then send another test. Keep doing this until you stop landing in Promotions.

4. At the end of the day, deliverability is mostly just about sending good emails.

If people like your emails, they’ll open them, click on them, and respond to them.

If they open them, click on them, and respond to them, Google will see that and send you to the inbox.

If they ignore your emails and report them Spam, Google will see that and send you to Spam/the promo tab.

You don’t have to do everything right to hit the inbox. If you mess up every now and then, you’ll be fine. But if you mess up a lot, Google will punish you for it.

-Theo

P.S. If you liked this email, feel free to send me a reply and say so. If you do then maybe I will give more deliverability tips!