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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Email & Lifecycle
All projects·From: Email Copywriting
MiniTeardown· 20 minutes

Four Defects, One Draft: Tearing Down a Broken Promo Email

Zendesk

Objective: Given four separate pieces of a synthetic-but-realistic promotional email (subject line, preview text, opening line, and body/CTA block), find the specific copywriting defect in each one using the lesson's own rules, not a general impression that 'this feels off.'

You're the newest hire on Zendesk's lifecycle email team. Your manager hands you a draft of a promotional email for a new support-ticket automation feature, already scheduled to send tomorrow, and asks you to red-pen it before it goes out.

Each piece below has exactly one primary defect the lesson already named. Diagnose it, then say what the fixed version should do instead.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets
FreeLog each defect found against its lesson rule as you work through the four specimens

Free, no account friction, easy to hand back to a manager as a review doc

The process

Specimens to review

This subject line is scheduled to send to 40,000 support-team subscribers. What's wrong with it, and what would the lesson's rules have you write instead?

Sample output
Subject line: "You NEED to see this NOW!!! Don't miss out"

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

The preview text field was left empty. What defect does that create, and what should go there instead?

Sample output
Preview text field: left blank (auto-fills as "View this email in your browser")

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

What's wrong with this opening line specifically?

Sample output
Opening line: "Hi there, we hope this email finds you well. We wanted to reach out to share some exciting news about our latest platform update."

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Name both defects in this block, they're different problems.

Sample output
Body: a single 6-sentence paragraph describing the feature, followed by two buttons: "Learn More" and "Get Started Today"

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Final deliverable

A four-row defect log (one row per specimen) naming the defect, its severity, and the one-sentence fix.

See a reference example
Sample output
Mailchimp internal review log (excerpt)

SUBJECT LINE - critical
  Defect: clickbait + spam-trigger punctuation
  Fix: 'Automate your first 10 support tickets in 5 minutes'

BODY/CTA - critical
  Defect: two competing buttons
  Fix: keep 'Start my free trial', cut 'Learn More' entirely

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Correctly names the primary defect in all four specimens
  • Does not select a distractor as a real defect
  • Ties each defect back to the specific lesson rule it violates