An exhausted guy on my list recently told me in broken English I write too long of emails.
He said he was tired & bored.
And he asked me to write shorter emails.
No.
If anything, he got me to thinking about one of the most profitable emails I ever done wrote that clocks in a fat 14 pages long. But instead of boring a bunch of people, it’s keeps them engaged, interested, and going by sales… buying.
The reason?
I believe because it’s based on pure, unadulterated, and uncircumcised…
Folk horror!
Yes my pet, Folk Horror tales are some of the best email “templates” you can ever use. If you want to get a power lesson on how to do this in your own emails I suggest you not only read lots of folk horror (my favorite kind of story growing up, very fun), but watch, and then re-watch a documentary about it on Amazon called:
“Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched: A History Of Folk Horror”
Listen up, listen good, and remember ye for the rest of your days:
The very same powers that make folklore endure and last the test of time are the exact same powers that make great emails and other advertising last the test of time. You could even say a great ad IS folklore of a copywriter’s own creation. And, in many cases depending on the market (like my 14 pager), Folk HORROR.
And, of course, it’s all infotainment.
In this case, that infotainment was in the form what the documentary described as:
“When the prozaic meets the uncanny.”
i.e., when the ordinary meets the extraordinary.
This is the best and most enduring kind of storytelling.
* Think Spider-Man: bullied nerd gets bit by radioactive spider.
* Or The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe: little girl walks into wardrobe and finds herself in a magical land with talking animals.
* Or Charles Atlas’ “The Insult That Made A Man Out Of Mac” ad that ran for decades nearly unchanged: deathly skinny, “girl repellant” teen gets humiliated at beach, orders book that lets him kick the bully’s ass, and gets the girl.
* Or nearly every Gary Halbert or John Carlton ad in weight loss, golf, self defense, finance, niches: fat woman goes literally insane with worry and doubt about husband leaving her then gets report and is skinny, happy, has her man back… or “old, out-of-shape, pain-ridden golfer hobbles up to the tee and whacks it 500 yards straight down the middle winning bets and having all his friends beg him for how he does it.”
And so on, and so forth.
These are not merely “ads”, they’re solid examples of…Folklore.
And, I’d argue, Folk Horror, depending on the market/niche/story.
Like, for instance, John Carlton’s infamous headline:
[Your Name] And Family Seriously Injured In Vicious Attack By Gang Members!
Imagine getting that in the mail.
With YOUR full name in the headline which is the way they mailed it. The Vision, the emotional impact upon seeing it in your head, the anger, and perhaps desire to call up the advertiser and tell him to:
“Go to hell!”
But you keep reading, because you just can’t resist.
And you start to read about a “chat” the guy writing you had with someone in the FBI about all the reports suddenly popping up about ultra violent street criminals attacking women and children in the Denny’s parking lot for no reason… or, like I read in another similar kind of as: a grinning sex-crazed psychopath breaking into your home and shitting on your bedroom floor, bypassing your security alarm, then hovering over your kids’ beds, drooling, while they sleep watching them, then snatching one of them… etc.
In other words:
Stories of ordinary people overcoming extraordinary setbacks and problems to achieve whatever it is they want. Only difference between this kind of folklore and ancient tales of yore is we sell stuff in ours.
And there’s no need to complicate it.
Of course, people will and do complicate the simple.
But that is another topic for another time.
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Ben Settle
