The myth vs fact email, for categories where the internet is wrong

It has to be a belief your readers actually hold

Here's the test: would somebody on your list have nodded along to this myth over breakfast? If not, you haven't got a myth, you've got a straw man, and readers spot the difference in a second.

Find them where people talk without you in the room. Search autocomplete, forum threads, the comments under a competitor's ads, and the questions your support team calls annoying. Those four will give you a year of material.

Do not correct a myth that flatters you

The version that fails is the one where every myth happens to be an objection to buying and every fact happens to be a product feature. It reads as an advert with a quiz bolted on, and the reader writes off the whole email.

• At least one myth per campaign should be one that costs you something to correct
• If the honest answer is it depends, say it depends and explain what it depends on
• Where the myth is half true, concede the true half before you touch the rest
• Never correct a competitor's claim by name. That turns an explanation into an argument

A brand that debunks a myth in its own favour has told you nothing. A brand that says the popular belief about our own category is only half right, us included, has told you something worth reading.

Somebody other than you has to be the authority

That send explains a term the category throws around loosely, in a friendlier register. It works because the explanation does the persuading and the product is present without being insistent about it.

Where the correction touches health, safety, efficacy or anything regulated, cite a named source and link straight to it. Your own summary of a study is a claim you now own. The study itself, quoted and linked, is a fact the reader can go and check. That difference matters legally, and it persuades harder too.

Two columns is the obvious layout and rarely the best one

Whichever shape you use, put the myth in the subject line as a question and leave the correction out of it. Announce the answer up front and you've removed the reason to open.

Subscribers who have not bought, and lapsed customers

This one is aimed at people whose reason for not buying is a wrong belief, not a price or a preference. That's your engaged non buyer. It's also the lapsed customer who stopped for a reason they never told you about.

In supplements the myth is very often about dosage or absorption, and the pack itself carries the correction. The GenePro programme leans on that hard, because a comparison printed on the label is evidence the reader is holding in their hand.

Type your category into search and read the suggestions

Open a search box, type your product category followed by is, and read what comes back. Those are the beliefs your customers arrive with, ranked by how many people share them. They cost you nothing.

Pick the one that's wrong and that costs you sales, then write the correction. Put the same answer on the product page too, because the search that produced the myth will keep sending you people who need it.