One of the tag lines I’ve given myself — that some dork will probably copy/swipe for their dopey little Linkedin or Facebook profile to try to sound “cool” now — is:
“Email Supremacist”
I do it for several reasons.
One of which is it is literally true:
Email is — at this time, and likely for many more years to come — a superior marketing medium above all others for my business. Yes, I know this contradicts certain direct mail supremacists who like to talk about low email delivery rates, and all the gazillions of dollars they make for their clients, etc. I don’t doubt their sincerity, by the way. There are some markets where a sharp business with tight marketing game can make direct mail far superior. But unless you have their mastery of direct mail, money to invest to test, and the patience to wait, find/test the right lists to rent, and crunch all the demographics, psychographics, costs, percentages, response rates, profit margins needed, and probably over a dozen other metrics, email is where it’s at for speed, convenience, simplicity, and bigger ROI for the vast majority of business people in my particular corner of the business world.
If you want to fight me on that because a guru said different, you’ll have to argue with me in your mind.
I’m not here to attack direct mail.
I use direct mail all the time myself on the backend, as it’s built-in to my main offer. Not to mention some aggressive postcard ideas I am keen on testing to certain segments of my buyers list, as well.
I am simply saying why I think email is superior for my business.
Case in point:
I’ve talked to two of the planet’s foremost experts on direct mail – including the great Craig Simpson. And both of them told me the same thing – there are no lists you can rent to get the kind of customers I want and prefer dealing with.
Thus, my Email Supremacist attitude.
Others’ experiences will obviously vary, depending on their product, industry, preferences.
But for Yours Crotchety’s front end operation, email has always blown direct mail away in terms of ROI, speed, and off-the-wall response. And the amusingly ironic thing is, I have yet to get a direct mail letter about how email is dying, how opens & engagement & sales are down with email, and all the other typical sky is falling doomsaying about email from anyone. I only get *emails* telling me about these things. And make no mistake, I keep checking my mail each day looking for such a direct mail letter. I also keep asking the long-suffering counter workers at the post office if they’ve seen it, have been complaining to my local Postmaster about it, and even cosidered burglarizing the mail boxes around mine to see if they got the letter by mistake.
But so far, no such direct mail letter.
I have only heard about the death of email via *email*… just like the first time I ever heard about the so called death of text sales letters was in a text sales letter selling a video sales letter (VSL) info product, with a “death of sales letters!” headline.
The irony is nothing if not entertaining.
And this goes quadruple with social media supremacists.
Take, for example, when one of my daily email readers told me how Gary Vee was teaching people to push out 100+ pieces of content on social media daily.
It’s insane.
Especially knowing they are building another company’s platform & revenues & content library first, before their own, doing so.
But, it’s a prime example of email’s supremacy over social media, too.
I’d bet green money someone who knows what they are doing with email can make more sales sending a handful of emails they quickly write and load in an autoresponder, dripped out over 4 or 5 days to a list of 1,000 people… than a chest-pounding social media rockstar can make sending 100+ posts per day to 100,000 so-called followers during that same time frame.
Enter the February “Email Players” issue.
It shows how you can potentially make far more of the green stuff using a handful of emails, you’ve already written in most cases, to quickly – with the push of a few buttons – blow away any results you’d get using direct mail, social media, or any other media that is supposedly “best” now.
You can spend hours pushing out 100 social media posts per day if you want.
Or weeks writing, sending, and tracking direct mail, renting lists, babysitting letter shops, calculating your ROI and margins, etc.
Or, you can use my ridiculously simple recipe in the February issue, spending mere minutes loading up your autoresponder with a handful of emails you’ve already written, to a sales page you’ve probably mostly already created, selling content you’ve already created or could create very quickly.
The key part of this is, if you have a list and some content you’ve already created.
And, if you have the character & ambition to follow my commands.
Whatever the case, the deadline to get this issue looms.
Hit the jump below to get it while you still can:
Ben Settle
