Email Framework #2: The Justin Michael Method

Sales outreach isn’t easy. With inboxes overflowing and attention spans shrinking, getting noticed can be tough.

That’s where the Justin Michael Method comes in. 

As a unique email framework designed to cut through the noise and grab attention quickly, the Justin Michael Method (JMM) uses short, direct emails to pull the right triggers, hit the right button, and engage prospects.

Here’s a closer look at the JMM framework and how you can use it in sales outreach.

What is the Justin Michael Method?

The Justin Michael Method is a framework developed and refined by Justin Michael, a sales expert who spent over 20 years working with early-stage startups and large companies like Salesforce and LinkedIn.

Although he coined the framework in 2020, he’s used the strategies and tactics of JMM during his 20+ years in sales to great success. At one point, he even received an award for generating 6 years’ worth of sales pipeline in 6 months. 

Core elements of the Justin Michael Method

The end goal of the JMM framework is to increase efficiency and sales velocity through minimal text and straightforward communication. 

Emails that follow the JMM framework must have:

• Hyper-shortness – Emails are short, typically 1-3 sentences long. Some sentences might even be just one word. The shortness grabs the prospect’s attention, gets to the point (no weaseling), and avoids overwhelming them.
• Trigger – Content must spark the prospect’s curiosity. Ideally, the trigger is a pain, fear, or job to be done, but you can cover a recent event, interest, or an intent signal if you have the data.
• No fluff – All filler and intros have to be purged. Skip questions like “How are you?” or “My name is X.” Again, just get to the point.
• Call to action – CTAs need to be clear, simple, and structured in a way that you just want a quick confirmation or reply of ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Because emails using the JMM framework are simple and direct, they’re ideal candidates for sales automation tools and AI SDRs. The AI has almost no chance of making an unforced error if emails are short.

How to use the Justin Michael Method in sales outreach

The Justin Michael Method has several moving parts:

• JM Spears
• Email characteristics
• Questions to ask yourself
• Email clusters

The goal of these parts is identical – pattern interrupt. By simply being different from what prospects usually see and interact with, you stand out more and enjoy a higher level of engagement.

JM Spears

A JM Spear is a compact email that’s as short as possible. Each spear does three things:

• Focuses on a prospect’s fear or pain
• Presents a solution
• Shows relevance

… in just 3 sentences.

But that’s okay. The goal is to pattern interrupt against emails with 3 paragraphs anyway.

For best results, you’ll want to A/B test multiple spears to see which gain traction.

Email characteristics

Every JMM spear is:

• Hyper-short with hyper-short subject lines
  • Examples of hyper-short subject lines
    • growth
    • growth + [company]
    • revenue growth
    • [specific person]
    • [mutual connection] + lift
• Ugly
  • Skip typical line breaks or omit white space
  • Let grammar mistakes and variations pepper emails
• Specific
  • Specificity is a huge copywriting hack. “We earn 1.42M in revenue” is always more believable than “We earn 1M in revenue”.
  • Round numbers aren’t your friend. For example, customers trust products with 4.2 stars more than 5 stars

In the end, each email should feature a pattern interrupt. Other examples of pattern interrupts include self-deprecation, zero CTA, and even no greeting.

Questions you need to ask yourself

After you write but before you send an email, you need to ask:

• Is the email painfully short?
• Is the email assertive?
• Does every email highlight a pain or fear?
• Can every email individually represent what you’re aiming for?
• Did you spend no more than 30-60 seconds on personalization?

The answer to all of these questions should be a confident yes.

Why? Here’s a closer look at each question.

Is the email painfully short?

Most people don’t have the time to stick around and read long emails. They want to get straight to the point.

You’ll know your email is painfully short if it practically hurts to look at since it flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

Is the email assertive? 

You want to be assertive. Your email should read assertively. That’s because showing deference to your prospect’s leadership puts you in a weaker position. That’s something you don’t want that.

Does every email highlight a pain or fear?

Leads buy on emotion. They have a problem, it’s making them unhappy, and they want it gone. Yesterday.

Use their emotion to unlock the opportunity. Pivot to logic to close.

Can every email individually represent what you’re aiming for?

Prospects won’t read or see every email you send. After all, emails regularly go missing in inboxes.

That’s why using a fractal approach where every email represents the whole is critical. Think Russian nesting dolls or snowflakes. All you need to see is one part to understand everything.

Did you spend no more than 30-60 seconds on personalization? 

Personalization generates diminishing returns the more you use it. Too much quickly comes off as creepy, if not desperate.

When personalizing, go through these steps:

• Search for a customer or first-degree connection who knows the prospect.
• If you can’t find a connection, switch to industry or persona-level personalization.

Industry and persona-level personalization are specific (which is essential) but general enough to increase sales velocity.

Besides, your JMM emails are supposed to be short. Two reasons why: 

• The more space you use up on personalization, the less real estate you have for your business.
• The more time you spend on personalizing, the less time you have to reach out to contacts and prospects.

Email clusters

Email clusters are sets of emails within a large email cadence. Typically, every email cluster consists of a JMM Spear and two reply bumps (i.e. responses to the original spear to ‘bump up’ the email in a person’s inbox, such as “Thoughts?”).

As for cadences themselves, they often cover 3 clusters.

A standard email cadence with 3 clusters might look something like this:

• Cluster 1 (Day 1)
  • JMM Spear – specific narrative with social proof
  • Reply bump
  • Reply bump
• Cluster 2 (Day 5)
  • JMM Spear – case study or testimonial
  • Reply bump
  • Reply bump
• Cluster 3 (Day 9) – Venn diagram or other graphic
  • JMM spear
  • Reply bump
  • Reply bump

AiSDR was even trained to create and run JMM clusters within your campaigns. All you need to do is let AiSDR know you want to use JMM in the Persona Builder and it takes care of the rest.

Benefits of the Justin Michael Method

The Justin Michael Method email framework unlocks several benefits for sales teams and sales outreach:

• Increased response rates – Concise, to-the-point emails catch the attention of prospects and make them more likely to engage.
• Time efficiency – Shorter emails mean less text. Less text means faster drafting and sending. And – most importantly – faster drafting and sending means more time spend on calls and relationship-building.
• Easier personalization at scale – Industry and persona-level personalization is general enough to do in large numbers while specific enough to be meaningful. Since you’re not digging deep in personal info, you don’t need lengthy tailoring for each prospect.
• Easier automation – JMM’s framework is well-structured and clear about what information goes in which section. This makes it simple to automate and tell generative AI to handle. 

Justin Michael Method example

Here’s an example of a possible JMM cluster you might use to kick off a cadence.

General framework

Instead of relying on cold email templates, the JMM framework lets you approach emails in a more general structure.

Spear

Again spears should be ugly and imperfect.

Reply bump #1

The first reply bump is always short, if not one or two words.

Reply bump #2 or ghost call

The final message of the first cluster can be either another reply bump or a phone call.