two surprising story-driven email insights

Greetings :)

As you may know, I just wrapped up a launch for my new 15-Minute Emails That Sell Crash Course.

And as with any launch or promotion…

I took a few insights away from it that I want to share with you.

So here goes:

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1) I wrote the best-performing email in 14 mins and 5 seconds

With a name like “15-Minute Emails That Sell”...

I knew I had to put my money where my mouth was.

So as part of the Crash Course…

I recorded myself writing an email from scratch in 15 minutes to prove it can be done.

Then sent that email out to promote the offer.

Surprisingly, that email (with the subject line “newsletter fantasy”) drove the most sales of any email I sent out.

Just goes to show:

More time spent working on something does not always equal better results.

To wit:

Some of the emails I sent out last week took over an hour to write.

And yet, the most profitable one was the one I rushed.

Go figure.

(If you purchased the Crash Course, you can watch me write the email in the 15-Minute Emails Speed Writing Challenge section).

2) The 2nd best-performing email was written by AI

This one pains me a little bit.

But the second best-performing email (subject line: “newsletter failure”) was written by Claude AI.

Not only did it drive almost as many sales…

It also had more opens & clicks than any other email I sent.

Now, I did feed it some examples of my writing beforehand…

Plus gave it an outline based on the 4-step methodology I teach inside the course…

And did a spot of light polishing afterward…

Yet the fact remains:

I didn’t write the email.

(I recorded the entire process as an additional bonus for buyers as well, including prompts, examples, outline, editing, etc.)

Anyway, if it wasn’t abundantly clear already…

Becoming AI-literate is no longer optional.

I’m still planning to write every edition of my newsletter going forward…

But it’s cool to know AI can step in and pinch hit for me if needed.

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That about wraps it up.

Hopefully you find this interesting.

I always love reading takeaways from other people’s launches & marketing experiments.

For what it’s worth, I am still dissecting the results…

So if any other eye-catching notes come up, I’ll pass them along.

Jim Hamilton