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Better email opt-in rates (2 quick tips), trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week
Kimberly Houston
June 30, 2024
Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #20 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.
In today’s edition:
✨ This week in freelancing
✨ 2 quick tips for better email opt-in rates
✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: The Gist & Its 3 Co-Founders
✨ Copy Resource of the Week: The Complete Guide to Email Copywriting
✨ Just for Fun
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This week in freelancing …
On the writing front, I wrote about identity and access management in healthcare, otherwise known as IAM, and separately about audit trails in healthcare.
And, as a nice little palate cleanser after those rather complex articles, I also wrote about key customer satisfaction metrics, or KPIs, to track, and why you should measure them.
And on the pitching front?
In all transparency, almost nothing. I updated my list of / did some research on dream clients to reach out to over the coming few weeks, sent a couple of pitches out, and that’s about it.
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2 quick tips for better email opt-in rates
If you want to optimize your website or landing page for better email opt-in rates, there are many things you can do …
… so very many.
But one of the simplest & quickest is to improve the copy on the opt-in form itself, using language that:
👉 Conveys the benefit to signing up for your list
👉 Demonstrates personality
I recently wrote something on LinkedIn about how to do this. In that post, I shared four examples of opt-in copy that incorporates a clear benefit to signing up, while using non-generic, personality-centric language.
Check it out here if you feel called to:
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Trailblazing Women in Media: The Gist & Its 3 Co-Founders
The GIST is a women-led, fan-first sports media brand shaking up the male-dominated sports industry by providing equal coverage of both women’s and men’s sports.
I first heard about The GIST on Nathan Barry’s podcast in February 2022, and have been following their journey ever since.
Launched by college friends Roslyn McLarty, Jacie deHoop, and Ellen Hyslop in 2019, The GIST is about “changing the game in the male-dominated sports industry where less than 15% of journalists are women and less than 5% of coverage is on female athletes and non-binary folks.”
In a March 2023 interview, co-founder McLarty said, “… our mission for the whole company is to level the playing field in sports, which means three things. One is equal coverage of men's and women's sports, two is bringing long outstanding female and non-binary voices to the forefront in sports and the third is making sports more accessible and inclusive to all sports fans.”
The media brand includes three newsletters, a podcast, a job board, daily social media content across several channels, and more.
And to think, just a few short years ago, they didn’t even exist!
What a successful media brand they’ve built – doing this important, necessary work – in such a short time. It’s wildly inspiring to see.
Learn more about The GIST and its’ co-founders at the inline links above, and / or check out these articles and podcast episodes:
Read this TechCrunch article to learn more about the inspiration for The GIST, the brand’s seed funding, how focusing on a valuable untapped niche spurred growth, and more.
Inside a women-owned media startup where sports fans of all genders thrive.
What could sports coverage look like if it weren’t always from a male perspective?
Listen to this podcast (or read the accompanying transcript) to hear deHoop chat about launching The GIST, creating content for women-identifying sports fans, and how The GIST has grown from a weekly newsletter to a multi-platform brand in just three years.
On this episode of the A Media Operator podcast, Hyslop talks about the early days of the media brand, the growth tactics they used when first starting, and their plans for the business going forward.
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Copy Resource of the Week: The Complete Guide to Email Copywriting
Way back in Issue #2 of this here newsletter, I shared Jacob McMillen’s Complete Guide to Website Copywriting, which I think is one of the best completely freeeee resources out there for learning how to write web copy that converts – especially if you’re just getting started and going the DIY route.
Today I bring you Jacob’s The Complete Guide to Email Copywriting (2024 Edition).
As it says on the tin (AKA, the signup page), this guide will “teach you everything you need to know to consistently write high-converting email copy.”
You’ll learn how to:
· Grab attention with great headlines
· Increase open and click-through rates
· Create wildly effective sequences
· And gain a stronger understanding of email marketing
Check it out here:
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Just for Fun
I recently discovered this utterly fascinating website called Shady Characters, through a mention in Austin Kleon’s delightful weekly newsletter.
Shady Characters is run by a guy named Keith Houston (no relation), who writes about punctuation, emoji, and calculators, among other things.
It’s more fascinating than it sounds. At least to this big ol’ nerd.
For example, did you know that this symbol – # – is called an “octothorpe?” I had no idea!
I always think of it as the pound sign, for all those times I conduct some kind of business using my iPhone, and the robot tells me to enter my credit card number, “followed by the pound sign.” 😊
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Alrighty then.
That’s all for this week, my friend.
Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on July 14.
Warmly,
Kimberly