Allegiance Capital in Email
R3 for Email I guardianmarketing.substack.com I ExperienceR3.com
How to build the most trust with your audience, increase your high value open and click through rates, using just a few words and tricks.
Email is one of the most obvious, and easiest places where you can not only implement Allegiance Capital, but where you'll get some of the greatest return on the concept.
AND
You can implement this while hardly changing anything about your current emails already in place.
(Simplest solution often involves just adding a few clarifying words here and there)
What the heck is Allegiance Capital1 and why should you care?
(Even if you think you know this, I recommend reading through it anyway, because if you've learned, then this likely will hit you a little differently)
First, this is a fundamental aspect of Stealth Influence2, and we've actually discussed it in great detail here. I recommend reading this and watching the videos on this page:
However I'm going to go over a few of the important points here in the context of email.
Let's start with communication.
Specifically, "The Rocky Road" (this is explained best in the article above, go watch the video). "The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions" shows us that when it comes to communication there are a lot of details/information when you are communicating an idea which are known to YOU but not known to the person you are communicating with.
We call this "accompaniments."
In short, we usually think we are communicating effectively, but there are always accompaniments to the idea we're sharing which make sense in our head because WE can hear them, but the person we're communicating with can't.
The way this often ends up looking in email is people not behaving the way you want them, or expect them to.
It makes sense, email is written communication.
AND it's communication which a lot of people tend to skip, skim or ignore outright.
So in order for email to be effective the way we want and need it to be, we must become excellent at communicating clearly and effectively in email, making sure WE are aware of all the invisible accompaniments that our reader might be missing, and either making those are explicit or building bridges for them to take the right action.
This brings us to,
Allegiance Capital.
Allegiance Capital is all about trust. If you want people to read your communication clearly, to read it consistently, and to take the actions you ultimately hope they will take, trust is a huge component of this.
People buy from those they know like and trust. This often quoted concept I first heard from Dean Jackson and Joe Polish on the I Love Marketing Podcast over a decade ago - I don't know from where it originates, but it's one of those truisms every marketer and copywriter accepts.
People also read from those they know like and trust.
People invest their time, their energy, their emotion in those they know like and trust.
People build relationships with those they know like and trust.
Trust is necessary not just to get people to buy, but to even invest their ongoing consistent attention to begin with.
Email is kind of a double edged sword. Because there's so much spam in the email environment, because most other businesses your prospects are engaging with don't respect their time, energy, or relationship, people are naturally jaded and resistant to email in general.
HOWEVER
If you break the mold and show them a reason to trust and like you by email, it's one of the best places (possibly the best digital place) where you can consistently communication with your prospect in a personal and meaningful way.
Trust and Communication.
That's what's going on with email.
The details of how that looks depends on your business and your audience. Yet no matter what you are doing or who you are speaking with, you can implement Allegiance Capital to consistently and actively build that trust.
At the heart of the concept, Allegiance Capital is about demonstrating to people that you are legitimate in your understanding of them and the situation in which you are representing authority.
Consider this,
Let's say you're teaching someone how to sell their coaching service using paid ads on Facebook. You teach the techniques for making videos and putting up the ads, they start to get interaction, but after a months effort they've had no conversations to make sales.
And they come to you wondering what the heck is going on.
And then you say "oh yea, that's natural, that's supposed to happen, you just have to keep going."
Sounds normal (because that's the way most people do this), but can't you just feel the skepticism you'd have in that scenario?
Now what if you did it this way.
You're teaching someone how to sell their coaching service using paid ads on Facebook, and before they even record a video or make an ad you tell them and in fact SHOW them that as they go through this process, it's highly likely they'll get crickets and won't even make a sale during at least the first 90 days.
And you explain, because the first 90 days is about gathering the data you need in order to understand who you're really speaking with and how to speak with them before you start doing the work which will start getting you results.
Now, when they make their first few ads and don't get any response ... they already know they're on the right track. You've told them. They might be *wishing* they had results coming in already, but at least they are headed in the right direction.
Feels better doesn't it?
That's because they know you aren't full of crap when you tell them ahead of time what they are likely to experience and why. They start to trust you.
(By the way, that's what Laurel Portié3 does - she has expertly woven Allegiance Capital into her program)
This is the dynamic we want to bake into everything we do.
Allegiance Capital in Email
You can go to those broader and bigger dynamics of laying out the likely path of experience someone has had with you over the long term, but this idea in general isn't email specific.
What you can do in email,
Is weave in what you might consider micro Allegiance Capital moves.
Its the same concept just applied to the email experience.
Here's the structured approach to apply in email - at every point someone gets an email from us you want the following 3 questions answered in their mind:
Where am I?
Am I in the right place?
What should I do next?
A big part of email is about managing people's expectations.
Are they expecting email from you? Are they expecting MORE email from you? Are they expecting specific email from you?
And then on smaller step level, whenever someone takes an action, we want to ask ourselves - what are they expecting when they take an action? And can we pre-set their expectation for them, so that the outcome experience matches the expectation?
This is far more powerful than you realize.
Because out there in a big wide world people are constantly taken advantage of.
Trust is rare.
It's far more likely that a headline they read isn't going to deliver in the content because it's optimized to get as many suckers to click as possible. It's far more likely the link they click through on is going to take them somewhere they don't want to go. And it's far more likely when they provide their email they aren't actually going to get anything enjoyable, or even useful, but rather their email is going to be sold to spam them with BS they have no desire for.
It's far more likely in general the emails they receive aren't emails they expect or want at all!
That's the stream you have to swim against.
Here's some practical application, starting with the small pieces you can change right now.
Clicks.
The click throughs are one of the easiest small places you can build Allegiance Capital, without changing much of your current setup.
All you need to do is clearly communicate what they are clicking through to, what they can expect on the other side.
For example, let's say I want to share a video with you. I'll say, "Watch this video. Through that link you'll find it on Youtube, it's 23:17 long, but you can skip the intro and start at 1:22 if you like."
That might sound simple.
But what happens is you've said a specific thing is going to happen. They will click through and experience exactly what you said would happen.
This builds trust.
Another example, from my personal email list, I might write an email talking about a concept I recently uncovered and wrote about on TGA, ultimately with the idea that those interested to dig deeper will visit the link.
I'll say something like, "you can read my article here, it's on The Guardian Academy on Substack. It will ask you to subscribe, but you can skip the subscribe and read this one for free."
Or
"You can read my article here, it's on The Guardian Academy Substack. This one is published for TGA+ members. You'll see an intro that leads to a paywall (it's just $10/mo and you get access to all the paid stuff I've written)."
A Caveat:
You'll notice two things when you start doing this.
One, you do build trust. And that's great. The people who connect with you and grow closer and build trust and start becoming fans will click MORE on your stuff, because they know what to expect.
BUT ...
Two, if in the past you have hidden the experience or intent of the click through, shrouded in curiosity, when you start being explicit about what they will experience you may experience a reduction in click throughs.
Understand that though you may be reducing curiosity based click throughs, what's actually happening is the intent of your prospects action is increasing. In other words, the click throughs you get become more valuable, while you shed the ones which were less valuable than you realized.
Subject Lines.
Subject lines are a topic of extensive discussion amongst email marketers.
I don't know how many emails I've sent over the past decade ... too many to count. Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
A quick debunking:
In email marketing and copywriting circles Subject Lines are often spoken about like headlines in a sales page. And in the tiny world of copywriting, Headlines are much touted as the most important part of anything you are doing, because it's the first thing people read and if they don't read past the headline then everything else is worthless.
It's a compelling idea for Email. If they don't read past the subject line, then the content is worthless right?
In other words, the argument is you want your email subject line to produce as many clicks into the email as possible (aka, get as many people opening the email as possible).
But reality says the subject line is not the most important thing for getting people to read your email ...
Here's what I've observed from the actual data.
When you have an established relationship with your audience, the subject line has nearly no impact.
Some of my top subject lines from my personal list include:
The kid is bold
A death stare
The inadvertent confession
Lost in the void
The parking a-hole
$8000 in a red solo cup
A case of ... MURDER
Mr Fancy Pants
Waiting on the chili tasters
Yew caint dew thayt
LOUD NOISES
Zrr8*(kAvv@11s
My "worst" subject lines look no different. And the difference in opens between them is a matter of a few percent - the above range between 48-52% open rates, with the worst (not listed) going down to 43-45% - and no discernible pattern between the variance.
Why is this?
Relationship.
See above. People like to read emails from those they know like and trust, and it doesn't matter what the subject line says.
HOWEVER
There's one unifying truth to all the subject lines I write.
And you can't see it from the subject line itself ...
They all carry a connecting thread into the content of the subject line. I never write a subject line which does NOT deliver in the email.
Because of TRUST.
Because of Allegiance Capital.
Your subject line lets people know what to expect on some level. Even when it's heavily curiosity based and you can't tell in the moment what the subject line is about (see that last one), once you read the email and look back, it all ties together.
The Allegiance Capital application to subject lines is, always deliver in the email on the subject line.
Sometimes that means being VERY clear.
Here are some examples of explicity from other lists:
I'm closing workshop sales tomorrow
Want 20 minutes with me? (expires tonight at midnight)
Here's why Freewriting is the answer
Does drama sell?
You can probably look at each of those subject lines above and surmise just from the subject line exactly what to expect in the email. One is an offer for a workshop that's about to expire. The second is another offer for presumably a 20 minute call with the author. The third is going to explain why freewriting is valuable to you. The fourth is going to give you insight into whether you want to use drama in your selling.
Point is, the emails are about the subject line.
As demonstrated above, you don't have to do it that way. You just want to make sure that people's expectation is met in the email.
(But the easiest way is to make the subject line about the email.)
You don't want someone looking back and thinking "you tricked me into reading this."
Here's an example of what NOT to do:
"Your order details are pending"
An actual subject line I received. The contents had nothing to do with an order I placed, because I didn't place an order. In the contents they quickly flipped it around to "you haven't placed your order yet" and started trying to sell me something.
No idea what the actual email was about, because my instant response was ...
"Excuse me ... f#k you and goodbye" (or more accurately, 'unsubscribe' and 'delete')
It's easier to see the pitfalls of intentional manipulation like that, but this effect happens even when you have the best intentions in mind, if you aren't keeping awareness of people's expectations.
(More often happens when you're making short term decisions to get more clicks, rather than building a better experience for your subscribers)
Here's another example of what NOT to do:
This one is generalized, but I've seen it plenty.
The subject line will say something like:
"Your free thingy is in here"
You'll enter the email, and then the email will attempt to get you to take another action in order to get the free thing.
In other words, email promised free thingy in email - but did not deliver on free thingy in the email.
Again it might sound small,
But this kind of dissonance is exactly what shreds your trust.
Notice how, with Allegiance Capital, we're managing people's expectations around the actions that they take. Deciding to read an email is one of those points. Deciding to click from the email is another.
Managing Expectations
You can manage this from email to email as well in a number of different ways.
Let's start with a broad look at the entrance into your email marketing system, and the first steps people take.
One of the simplest things you can do when someone enters their email in exchange for a download (probably the most common email list lead generation tool), is to tell people at each step where they are, why they are there, and what's happening next.
For example.
Step 1)
Someone enters their name and email to get a free download,
Immediately show them a page that says (effectively):
You're seeing this page because you signed up with your email and you were successfully added to the list.
Next, you're going to receive that free thing in your email.
So now, you want to go to your email and click to download the free thing.
That's it ...
Again, looks simple,
But that's because of the accompaniments in your head.
The above is the easiest way to get 80%+ open rates on your first email.
Just ... tell people to go there and get the thing they just signed up for.
Step 2)
The email they receive is the next point of contact.
Again you want to answer the same questions:
They are receiving the email because they signed up to get a thing, here it is.
Click there to download your free thing.
NOW, next steps ...
Don't leave it at the above, let them know what they can do and expect next.
"Tomorrow I'm going to send you an email and share something unique about the thing you just downloaded."
Set the expectation, give them a reason to look forward to the next email, and then deliver on that in the next email.
The above is one of the most effective bridges you can build for a new lead onto an email list.
It's all Allegiance Capital.
Here's where you are, why you're here, and what you can do and expect next.
Your Homework:
If you have an established email marketing strategy in place, go through all of your communication surrounding the email and ask yourself:
Is it abundantly clear why the person is here?
Why they are receiving an email?
That they are even in the right place?
Is it abundantly clear what they should be doing next?
What they can expect next?
Be explicit.
Just tell them.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to share XYZ."
"In the next email, you'll receive this thing."
"When you click on this link, here's what you'll see"
Etc.
Make sure your subject lines always deliver in the email. If you trick people into reading, you will erode trust.
There ARE more elegant methods to weave in expectation management and trust building than outright stating what’s going to happen, but it also doesn't have to be complicated.
You can be blunt and straightforward.
And it's better to do that, especially when you're setting this up for the first time, because clarity of communication is more important than anything else.
Want an example?
Check out how we implemented Allegiance Capital throughout this email series (including structural decisions made to aggressively build trust and engagement at a very high level):
Want help implementing this into your own email?
Comment below and I’ll be happy to walk through in detail for your specific scenario.
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