Last month I wrote an email telling a story that I’d told multiple times throughout the years, in different formats, medias, forms, and guises.
But the same story all the same.
It’s simply recycling content.
After which one of my Email Players of the Horde told me about a woman he knows who insists readers will start to ignore you if you tell the same stories over and over and over, and that one should not do as such.
My take?
Ignore what she says about that.
She knows not what she does.
There is a reason why the TV networks show the same Christmas shows and movies each year. People happily, eagerly, and excitedly sit through multiple viewings of “A Christmas Story”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, and even multiple iterations of “A Christmas Carol”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, Rudolph, and even (if you’re in the Settle household) “Cobra” and “Gremlins”, and the list goes on.
If ratings showed nobody was watching they wouldn’t run them.
Frankly, most of the time those classics get rerun before “new” content.
Lesson there…
Same with re-runs and movies when they hit streaming.
People love a good story or to consume great content not just once but many times.
And in my experience this goes triple for emails.
I never foolishly even bought into the tired goo-roo trope of not reusing emails if they did not “work” the first time. l have lost count of how many times I reused an email that did not do much — or anything — as far as sales originally, only to clean up later when used as-is or slightly adapted for the exact same (and sometimes even a totally different) offer.
And vice versa.
Sometimes an email that nabbed sales the first time doesn’t the next.
It’s a lot less about the “emails” than people think.
All right so that is that.
If someone wants to work harder than needed that’s their business.
Me?
I will happily reuse the same emails & stories over and over.
And am far more focused on consistency & relentlessness.
For help with that, see the Email Players Newsletter here:
Ben Settle
