This is a great email

Happy Friday afternoon to you.

Hope you have nice weekend plans coming up.

Because I’m an email fan, I subscribe to a lot of emails from newsletters, brands, and services. I like seeing what people send. The downside of this is that my inboxes are flooded with emails daily. So most of the time I breeze through the promotional emails to skim them.

Rarely does an email stop me in my tracks and make me feel compelled to reply to the sender when they didn’t ask for it.

Today I saw one.

It’s from a SaaS product called Groove, which is help desk software like ZenDesk (a brutally competitive SaaS category).

Full disclosure, I’m a customer of this product for my e-commerce business. I recommend it (not an ad!).

The founder frequently sends emails tracking his experience starting the business. It’s always interesting.

But today, this email was beyond good, it was great.

Here it is below. I took screenshots so the images aren’t perfect. It’ll only take you a couple mins to read it.

After I read this email, I replied to it. I wanted to congratulate him.

Why is it so good?

He’s connecting with the exact hopes, dreams, and fears of his customers - small business owners.

In describing his own improbable small business story, the reader says to himself, “wow, this guy is just like me.”

This message is, “I get you, I understand you, I know it’s hard, but keep going and you’ll make it.”

This email is also incredibly aspirational at the end.

If he can do it, then so can I!

All small business owners have stories of fear, catastrophe, triumph, and resilience.

Who in their right mind would have the guts to risk $300,000 on a brand new software idea?

It’s crazy! It’s reckless. But it’s also commendable and admirable.

He shares his story, and we like him better for it. You can’t help but naturally feel closer to him after reading this. I like the founder? Oh, then I also like the product too.

The new term for this is “founder led marketing” but it’s just another twist on influencer marketing, where the founder is the influencer. It works!

Also, notice how there’s no call to action (CTA) from this email.

No ask to buy anything. It’s just pure relationship building.

Got any extra thoughts on this?

Reply to this email and let me know what you think.

Have a nice weekend!

Bryan & The Email Update Team