👋🏻 Welcome to Newsletter Examples, where I highlight cool sh*t I’m seeing in newsletters that you can borrow for your newsletter.

This week, I’m sharing 5 lessons I learned taking Sam Parr’s copywriting course, CopyThat. Reading time: 3 minutes.

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Lesson 1: Copy the masters

I learned a lot from Sam in the two years I spent working for him at The Hustle.

One thing he’s great at is getting people to click on a landing page or ad copy, and converting them into subscribers or paying customers.

Sam wrote this legendary Hustle ad (inspired by theSkimm), which converted new subscribers at an absurdly high rate:

After Sam sold The Hustle, he and his wife created a pop-up newsletter to teach people the art of sales copywriting. (You should sign up just to see their marketing funnel.)

In the two-week course, which costs $169, they share more than a dozen examples of effective ads, breaking down what makes each one special and what you can learn from it.

But they don’t just teach you about the ads, they have you copy them—writing them by hand on a piece of paper.

Sam personally used this technique, called copywork—which helped Ben Franklin, Jack London, and others improve their writing—to learn how to write irresistible ad copy.

Here’s how Sam puts it, in an email introducing the course:

Lesson 2: Create a slippery slope

Your goal as a copywriter, Sam says, is to get readers to fall down a slippery slope, where the words “suck you right in.”

The longer people read your ad, the more they will agree with you, which will help you convert them into customers.

Sam uses this Wall Street Journal ad as an illustration of a slippery slope:

This ad ran largely unchanged for 28 straight years, resulting in over $2B of subscriptions. (You can see Sam’s full annotated version—which opens best on desktop—by clicking here.)

You may not get billions of dollars in subscription revenue, but you can go to school on the ad that did:

Lesson 3: Keep it simple

In one email, Sam highlights some of the lessons he’s learned from reading the shareholder letters of Warren Buffett.

Buffett runs a complex insurance and investment empire. But in his letters, he boils things down to basics, as Sam shows here:

Lesson 4: Question assumptions

You might assume that people don’t waste time reading long ads, or that a simply designed landing page doesn’t convert. That’s not always the case.

I remember one time Sam making a bet with one of our designers that he could create a better landing page for a $300/yr newsletter we had just launched.

Hers had minimal copy and was full of bright colors and cute (but vague) phrases.

His was longer but minimally designed—black text and a white background.

As a test, we spent $1k on two days of Facebook ads, driving traffic equally to each page.

The designer’s page made $300. Sam’s made $3k.

Here’s some more advice Sam offers on short vs. long sales pages:

Lesson 5: Don’t forget ‘About Us’

When most people think about sales copywriting, they think about landing pages.

But unsubscribe pages, welcome emails, and About Us pages—which often have bland, boilerplate copy—provide opportunities to nurture and convert customers.

Sam uses Groupon’s old unsubscribe page to show how an email opt-out can be turned into an opportunity to entertain (and retain) readers:

He breaks down one of The Hustle’s original welcome emails, showing how to grab people’s attention with humor:

Sam also puts his money where his mouth is. He and his wife Sara created this epic About Us page for CopyThat, which provides them with street cred and makes them relatable. People love pictures, especially pictures of dogs…RIP Sid 🐶 

Hope you enjoyed this week’s examples. I’ll be back next week with more!

☮️ -Brad

P.S. What’s your welcome email look like? Send me a screenshot—I’m highlighting the best ones in an upcoming issue.

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