
Okay, fam, welcome back to the Sales Email Summit with your host Liz Wilcox, the undisputed queen of never boring emails. In this gem of an episode, we sit down with easy events expert, Michelle Pontvert. Michelle legit breaks down how she turned a...
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A
What up? Liz Wilcox here, the host of Sales Email Summit. Before we get into this interview, I just want to let you know that this summit is sponsored by list gadget. ListGadget.com is how you can turn every email into a growth machine. We've got embeddable polls, leaderboards, referral programs and more. And I know this sounds crazy, but you can do it in about 30 second startup time. Now right now we are offer $10 off the starter plan to make it just $9 a month. So if you're into adding email polls, reactions, subscriber leaderboards and more to your email newsletter, head on over to listgadget.com all right, let's get into this episode. Okay Michelle, so so excited to hear what is the most interesting or most lucrative sales email you've sent in the.
B
Last six to 12 months. Hi, I'm Michelle and I'm an easy events expert and lover of low lift ways to grow your email list. And the most interesting sales email I sent out recently was for a big promotion I was doing in spring for a bunch of products that I was retiring and I use kit for my email marketing software and I decided to showcase a bunch of products in a bit of a different way. So normally I have like a sales email and a link to just go check out the page if I've got a big sale or the roundup but all the products there. What I did in this email specifically was I was highlighting specifically some notion templates I had in this sale and I used kits layout feature to create these little lovely blocks in my emails to almost like on a sales page really show off each individual product. So I had the little layout blocks with a graphic for each of the products, the name in big big bold text linked to the specific product checkout page, a little bit of info about each product and the price with of course the big discount from the promotion. And this email was a really big hit. People really liked the layout. I actually had several people reply just saying they this format for the event of like a sale or something, a way to show off multiple things at once. But it was also a really fun way for me to showcase multiple things at once. Because when we're running a sale for more than one thing it can get a little hard to really juggle how to present all those different offers. And so this is a really fun way to show off multiple things all at once. So I had sent my email with the subject line notion lover because I was highlighting specifically the notion products available in my sale to a segment of my audience, which was about almost 4,000 recipients. And I got a 50% open rate, which is about typical for my sales promotional emails. But I got a 1.5% click rate, which again, for pure promo email, I think was very nice. 73 clicks total. And what I think was particularly successful about this one is I saw those clicks come in not just the day that that email sent out, but I actually saw people dipping back into that email throughout the sale too. And I think it was also just a really nice touch point for people looking at the different offers, comparing them. They had another place to go and look for that information. Not just on the sales page which had products on top of all these notion ones. It had a lot of different products all at once. And so it was a really nice way to kind of spotlight those specific products for people choosing between or choosing a few of the different products in this subcategory. So I've actually ended up using the same layout feature in the sale again and again. Lots of comments from people who really liked that feature, who found it really helpful to visualize the different products and have almost this sales page experience in the email itself without making the email too overly designed. So I really, really liked this layout feature and got a lot of lovely feedback on it. And I think the click rate and sales rate beyond that for the sale really proved to me that this was an effective way to showcase multiple in a sort of broader sale in a way that was interesting but also really helpful for people to actually look at all the different offers on sale rather than just guess what I normally would do, which is a big old list.
A
I love that you described this as a sales page experience within the email. That's exactly what I was thinking as you were talking like, oh, it's like a sales page right there in the email. So that's perfect. I love that. I would love to know if this was just a one off email or was this a first in a series of emails for expiring your products? And if so, like, was it the first, second, third? How many emails did you send out and where was this one in the lineup?
B
Thanks. Yeah, it's. It's something that I really like having that visual representation on the sales page. And I've always felt like emails are a little bland and I think there's a good reason for that. Often it's for deliverability. But it felt really fun to bring some of that logic from a sales page where things are laid out, it's visual, it feels like easy to Understand quickly at a glance. So it's really fun to play with that. Yes. So this email was part of a six email series that I was doing for retirement sale was retiring. I think at the time it was 13, 14 products and a big chunk of them were notion, but they weren't all notion products. So I sent this email was the third in the series. The first two were very boring text emails mostly just like announcing the sale, explaining why I was retiring. Those offers having more of a general you should come and check this out. And this was the first really focused email about a specific category of those products that were being retired. So the other ones were more generic the whole sale. This was my first one really talking about these specific products. I then had three more that were. A few of them were just last minute reminders. I think I had two others that were more specifically about, you know, I think actually one of them was like one or two products. One of the other ones was more how to choose which products. But this one really stood out as here I am breaking down all the products that fall into this specific category and helping you see all of them at a glance but then also seeing what the difference is between them and really why you would choose one versus the other. Funnily enough, I actually am running another retirement sale. I was very prolific in a season of my business, created a whole bunch of products and now I'm in a season of sort of refinement and removing some of those products from my office suite. And so I'm doing something similar again. And because this email was such a hit, had such good open rates, such good click rates and such good response to the email, the structure itself, I decided in this email series for the new sale where I'm retiring some products to use that format again but from pretty much all of the emails. So I'm really excited to see how that's going to go because I think there is just something to an offer beyond just a one product sale where it's an offer of many offers. Like it's a sale with many discounts and many things having a really like clear, easy way to see what's available, what to choose from and at a glance understand quickly what the choices are and why you would choose one versus the other. It feels like such a logical way to present a sale like this. So I really enjoyed it and therefore I'm doing it again.
A
Michelle, so genius. Very excited to see how it goes for you in the future. And yeah, emails. I am the queen of boring looking emails. So I Love this and let people know where they can find you if they want to learn more, get your.
B
Emails all that well. Thank you so much for having me and for knitting out the emails with me too. If you want to find me, I'm the only Michelle Pont vote out there. I'm very easy to find. You can find me on my website website michellepondvert.com and then if you want to check out my emails and see this in action, you can sign up to my email list directly@michelleponfert.com signup one word or I have a fun film themed quiz to help you pick your event format which is michelleponvert.com quiz I'm not the most active on socials but you can come and hang out with me there. I am making a concerted effort to show up on threads so again I'm the only Michelle convert out there. Well thank you so much again for having me. I hope this has been interesting and inspiring people to play with the email layouts too.
A
Ooh a film themed quiz. I am in. Go to the link in the show notes if you think that sounds fun to take as well. Speaking of fun, one of the reasons I asked Michelle to come onto the Summit is because I I really really do love this sales page. Like formatting right? And I want to steal this email. If you want to steal this email too, get the template pack. 35 bucks is a total steal. Get it right. I'm using that word a lot. Steal these sales emails Template Pack A plug and play collection of every single email from the Summit including this amazing sales page format email by Michelle. They are rewritten into simple templates so you can customize in minutes. Don't have to decode, you don't have to guess what this email looks like. We're going to give it to you. Copy, tweak, send, make sales 35 bucks link in the show notes.
Episode: SALES EMAIL SUMMIT — Michelle Pontvert – Using Formatting to Make a Sale Exciting
August 19, 2025
In this episode of The Email Sound Booth, host Liz Wilcox sits down with Michelle Pontvert, an event expert and champion of simple, high-converting email marketing. The conversation zeroes in on how creative email formatting—specifically, creating a “sales page” experience within the body of a sales email—can boost engagement, click rates, and customer satisfaction, especially during multi-product promotions.
[01:04 – 04:44]
Notable Quote:
"It was a really fun way for me to showcase multiple things at once... giving almost this sales page experience in the email itself without making the email too overly designed." — Michelle [03:22]
[04:44 – 08:19]
Notable Quote:
"It was the first really focused email about a specific category... helping you see all of them at a glance but then also the difference between them and really why you would choose one versus the other." — Michelle [06:07]
[05:23 – 05:50]
Notable Quote:
"I've always felt like emails are a little bland, and I think there's a good reason for that. Often it's for deliverability. But it felt really fun to bring some of that logic from a sales page..." — Michelle [05:30]
[Throughout]
Liz’s endorsement:
"I love that you described this as a sales page experience within the email. That's exactly what I was thinking..." — Liz [04:44]
Michelle's recurring strategy:
"Because this email was such a hit... I decided in this email series for the new sale... to use that format again but from pretty much all of the emails." — Michelle [07:31]
On changing seasons in business:
"I was very prolific in a season of my business, created a whole bunch of products, and now I'm in a season of sort of refinement..." — Michelle [07:00]
[08:38 – 09:26]
This episode is a goldmine for any online marketer faced with presenting multiple offers in one campaign. Michelle Pontvert’s practical experience shows that thoughtful formatting—borrowing from sales page design—can make even the most complex promotions approachable and profitable, without losing the personal touch or damaging deliverability. Both Liz and Michelle champion the notion that “boring” can be beautiful, but bold, intuitive layouts have their place—especially when they help your subscribers say “yes.”