Your email templates are only as good as what’s in them

Automation fires the email. The template decides whether it converts.

Bonjour à tous,

Ever set up an email automation, felt great about checking it off your list, and then realized a week later that the template itself kind of sucks?

Yeah. Same.

Goodshuffle Pro keeps rolling out more places you can automate emails — quote follow-ups, pre-delivery confirmations, post-event check-ins, the works. But automation is only half the job. The template you’re sending is the other half, and it’s the half that actually lands (or doesn’t) in your client’s inbox.

Here are the rules I give to our teams when drafting emails, especially templated ones:

Lead with them, not you. The worst opener in the world is “I wanted to reach out to tell you about…” Rewrite it so the first sentence is about their world. “Chasing deposits eats up hours you could spend with clients” beats “I’d love to tell you about Goodshuffle Pro” every single time.

One ask per email. Three options isn’t generous, it’s confusing. Pick the single next step you want them to take — confirm a delivery address, sign a quote, leave a review — and write the whole email toward that.

Write for a phone screen. Assume only the first two or three sentences get read. Make the opening and the CTA strong enough to stand alone. Short paragraphs, three lines max. Bullets for anything list-able.

Prove it instead of claiming it. “We’ll confirm your delivery address” is a claim. Showing that you caught the client’s address typo 48 hours out — before the truck left the warehouse — is what actually earns the Google review.

And so before you launch your next automation, read the template out loud. If it sounds like a brochure, rewrite it. Your clients can tell.

A lundi prochain,

Mallory Mullen

Le remue-ménage