The day in the life email, and the two versions worth sending
One version shows a customer's routine with your product in it. The other shows yours. They persuade different people and should not be mixed.
Routine content sits between the behind the scenes send and the use case send, and it's the format most likely to get made without a purpose. Decide whose day you're showing, and why a reader would care. That's the whole job.
Whose day, and why it matters which
The two versions answer different questions for different readers. Confuse them and you get the vague lifestyle email that shows a tidy kitchen and sells nothing.
- The customer's day shows where your product fits into a routine somebody already has, and it answers when would I actually use this
- The brand's day shows what happens between an order going in and a parcel arriving, and it answers what am I paying for
Pick one per send. An email that tries to do both ends up a montage, and montages are what subscribers scroll past fastest.
Show the routine, and put the product where it really goes
The useful version is specific to a time and a person. Not a day in the life of our customer. The first two hours of a shift, or the school run, or the walk somebody does every morning whatever the weather is doing.
Put the product where it honestly turns up, which is usually for about ninety seconds of that routine. Over-representing it is the tell that turns the whole thing into an advert.
That send is the same idea sorted by routine instead of told as a story. Each way of drinking is a different day and the reader picks their own, which is quicker to read and far easier to produce than a full account of somebody's morning.
The version that answers what the money buys
The brand's day is a behind the scenes send with a clock on it. What happens at seven, at ten, at two, on an ordinary Tuesday. The structure does the work: a timeline makes small operational details feel consequential instead of dull.
| Time | What is happening | What it tells the reader |
|---|---|---|
| Early | Orders picked from the previous evening | The cut off time is real |
| Mid morning | A batch rejected at a quality check | Standards cost you money |
| Afternoon | Support answering the same question again | There is a person on the other end |
Use the real times, unglamorous early ones included. That specificity is the entire persuasive content of the email.
Photograph a real day, not a scheduled one
Both versions fall apart the moment they look arranged. Hand a phone to the person whose day it is, ask for a picture every hour, then use eight of them. It costs nothing. And it gets you images no photographer would have taken.
For the customer version, ask a real customer instead of casting a model. The messy kitchen, the dog in the background and the wrong mug are what make it readable.
The customer's day converts, the brand's day retains
Send the customer's day to people who've browsed and not bought, because their unanswered question is usually about occasion, not quality. Send the brand's day to existing customers, where it protects the price instead of arguing for a first order.
In homeware and outdoor categories the occasion is most of the buying decision, so the programmes we run for those brands put routine content in front of the range guide instead of after it.
Ask a customer what time of day they use it
Put the question in your next review request. The answers will cluster around two or three moments you hadn't planned for, and every cluster is a campaign with its own audience waiting for it.
If nobody can name a moment, the product has no routine attached to it yet and this is the wrong format. Run a use case send instead, which suggests occasions instead of documenting them.
Alex Gregoriades
Operations director at Engage Commerce, where he runs the accounts the writing comes out of.
FAQs
Do we need a real customer for the customer's day version?
It works far better with one. A model in a styled kitchen gives you images that look like every other brand's, while a real customer's routine comes with specific, slightly awkward details that make the whole thing believable.
How many photographs should this email carry?
Six to eight, laid out in time order, with a line of text under each. Fewer and the routine doesn't read as a day. More and the email becomes a scroll nobody finishes on a phone.
Can this format work for a service rather than a product?
Yes, and the brand's day is usually the stronger one, because a service is invisible by nature. Showing the hours behind something intangible is the clearest way to explain what the fee covers.
How often should we send routine content?
Every couple of months, alternating the two versions. It's a supporting format, not a staple, and it wears out quickly once the days all start looking like each other.
Pick whose day it is before you photograph anything
The day in the life email works when it's specific enough to be somebody's actual day. Choose the customer's version to answer when would I use this, and the brand's version to answer what am I paying for, then photograph the real thing instead of a staged one. Sent to the right segment, it does a job neither a product email nor a process email can do on its own.
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