"Superbowl is off brand for us"

This email is inspired by this design.

The Super Bowl will get over 130 million viewers this year—over a third of the U.S. population.

And I can guarantee nearly every American knows it's coming. You can't avoid it even if you try.

Yet most ecom brands will still ignore it completely in their marketing.

I’ve heard brands come up with lots of excuses:

• “It’s off brand”

• “We don’t have enough lead time from when the teams are selected”

• “We don’t have any licensed products”

I strongly disagree.

You shouldn't bench yourself from an event your entire customer base is experiencing.

So I put together six simple email concepts that let your brand show up without pretending to care about football.

Team A vs. Team B

Match your products to team colors once the matchup is set. Or go beyond football entirely. Something like team crewneck vs. team hoodie. Pick two opposing things your brand already has and frame it as a matchup.

Game-day essentials

Show your products in a watch-party context. Loungewear, drinkware, snacks, candles, throws, etc.

Play with puns

Example: Bowl → Super (Dog) Bowl Sale or The Salad Bowl. Other examples: Halftime snacks, Field-tested gear, Kickoff your morning, etc.

Customization

Highlight the products in your store that can be customized and visualize them with each team's name. Superfans love having everything custom. Do it for this guy 👇

Unique special events

There are so many ways to do this:

• Launch a sale that ends at kickoff, with progressively increasing discounts but limited stock

• Run a giveaway for free tickets

• Send an SMS during the halftime show that says, "Not watching? Shop this insane deal instead."

• Pick a side: "If our team wins, everyone gets 20% off tomorrow."

I love how Original Grain tied this all together below. They had a special offer that didn’t put pressure on an immediate purchase. Depending on your product price, some people might not be ready to make an impulse buy in the short halftime period. BUT if their team wins, a follow-up message could crush.

Play on culture

Tap into what’s trending the week of and tailor your content with memes, jokes, references, etc.

Think about your customer for a sec

This is the most-watched sporting event of the year. Your customers are aware of it whether they care about football or not.

Figure out how they're observing it: watching, avoiding, hosting, etc. Lean into that with relevant content. Just like I did with this email 😉 

p.s. sorry for all the football puns.

Where were you Paperboy?

Sorry for the radio silence over the past two months! Thanks to everyone who emailed and asked when I’m coming back.

Our agency has been growing over the past year, so a lot of my focus shifted toward training our team & continuing to deliver amazing results for clients. BFCM was a super busy period for us, but I plan to be much more consistent with sends now that it’s passed!

I have a huge backlog of ideas, but if you have any topics or questions you want me to write about, reply to this email. And as always, enjoy the meme!

Meme of the Week

That’s all for now,
Paperboy 🗞

If you need help with email, click here to learn about my agency. My team and I help scaling ecom brands grow.