Last Friday we sent an email about glutamine.
Not a launch. Not a promotion. Not a sale.
Just an email about a product we have sold for years.
76% open rate.
3x sales on the day it went out.
2x average sales for the three days after.
I want to tell you exactly why that happened. Because it was not the copywriting. And it was not AI. And it was not a clever subject line trick.
It was eight questions we answered before anyone touched a keyboard. the ultimate email marketing strategy begins here.
The Old Message
For years the glutamine messaging at dotFIT looked like most glutamine messaging in the supplement industry.
Muscle recovery. Less soreness. Performance. Build more. Recover faster.
It was not wrong. That messaging works inside the gym. Our partner gym brands still use it on the floor and it absolutely belongs there. When someone is in the gym that message meets them exactly where they are.
But we were sending emails to people who are not in the gym anymore.
They are living their lives. Managing their days. Trying to keep up with everything on their plate. And an email about muscle recovery and less soreness lands in their inbox like a message from a world they used to live in.
We were talking to the wrong person. In the wrong place. About the wrong thing.
Not because the copywriting was bad. Because we had not done the work that makes copywriting matter.
The 9 Questions Nobody Skips in a Solid Email Marketing Strategy
I built a marketing framework that has two phases and ten steps.
First you need to define:
Who specifically are you serving? What problem do they actually have? What does their life look like before and after your solution? What are they already doing about it? What do they value beyond the product itself?
Most businesses skip all eight and go straight to the messaging.
I did not skip them for this email.
When I worked through the first eight steps for this campaign the answers looked completely different from what the old messaging assumed.
The segment was not the dedicated gym athlete. It was the adult living a full life who wants to feel good keeping up with it. Moving most days. Eating reasonably well. Sleeping when they can. Not training for a competition — just trying to show up for their life.
The problem was not muscle soreness. It was feeling worn down. Gut issues. Getting sick more than they wanted to. Energy that did not match their ambition.
The value was not performance. It was wellness. Resilience. The quiet confidence of knowing you are giving your body what it needs.
And the current solution — every other glutamine product on the market — was talking about the gym floor. Nobody was talking to this person about their actual life.
That gap was the whole opportunity.
The Email That Came From Those Eight Answers
Subject line: A foundation for your gut, immunity, and recovery.
Not: Build muscle faster. Not: Recover like an athlete. Not: The gym bro subject line that every other supplement brand would have written.
A foundation. For your gut. Your immunity. Your recovery.
Three elements of value in seven words. Functional — reduces risk, informs. Emotional — wellness, reduces anxiety. Life changing — the sense of being someone who takes care of themselves.
The body copy did not talk about the product. It talked about the life.
Healthy is a lot of small things done well. Moving most days. Eating real food. Sleep when you can get it. And giving your body what it needs to keep up with the life you are building.
Glutamine belongs in that conversation.
That is not copywriting. That is Steps 1 through 8 expressed in plain language.
The Thing Nobody Wants to Say About AI and Copywriters
Here is the uncomfortable truth that the AI industry does not want you to hear.
You can give Claude the best prompt in the world. You can hire the best copywriter on the planet. And if you skip Steps 1 through 8 you will get beautifully written marketing aimed at the wrong person saying the wrong thing.
Fast. Polished. Wrong.
AI makes Step 9 faster. It does not do Steps 1 through 8 for you. Those require honest answers about your customer that most businesses have never actually sat down and found.
The old glutamine email — the muscle recovery version — could have been written by AI in thirty seconds. It probably would have been competent. It would have sounded like every other supplement email in every other inbox.
The new email came from six weeks of thinking about who was actually on the other end of that send button and what they actually needed to hear.
That is not something you can prompt your way to.
Meeting People Where They Are
One more thing worth naming because it is the insight that made everything else possible.
Our gym partner brands still use the old glutamine messaging inside their facilities. And that is exactly right. When someone is standing in a gym the muscle recovery message meets them where they are. The context validates the message.
We were reaching people outside the gym. People who may have been gym goers once and are now living differently. People who care about their health but are not training for anything. People who open an email about muscle recovery and think — that is not me anymore.
Same product. Same brand. Completely different message. Because completely different context.
Step 1 of the framework is define your segment. Not just who they are. Where they are. What they are thinking about in that moment. What world they are living in when your message arrives.
The gym partner brands got that right for their context. We got it right for ours.
Both messages are correct. For completely different people in completely different places.
What Step 9 Actually Is
The email is Step 9. Expression. The moment the marketing finally touches the customer.
But Step 9 is only as good as the eight steps that came before it.
76% open rate. 3x sales on day one. 2x average for three days after.
That result did not come from a clever subject line. It did not come from better copywriting. It did not come from AI writing faster.
It came from answering eight honest questions about a real customer before anyone touched a keyboard.
Most brands skip straight to Step 9. They wonder why the email did not work. They hire a better copywriter. They try a different AI prompt. They test a new subject line.
The problem is almost never Step 9.
It is the eight steps nobody did before it.
Learn more here: https://rickwenner.co/the-framework/