Below is my latest article in the newspaper I have ownership in (the Oregon Eagle) where I write a column for local businesses.
The title:
“How to (legally) get people chemically addicted to buying from you”
Here goes…
For the last 14 years I’ve had the following tagline on my website:
“Your Daily Email Addiction”
Which is literally true.
And the reason it’s literally true is because, if you write emails the way I’ll show you in this article, you really can get people legally (and ethically) chemically addicted to reading emails selling your products or services. I’ve done this across multiple niches/industries/product categories for nearly 25 years. And I have taught thousands of others how to do the same in over 50 countries. I say that because most everyone thinks “their business” is different.
No.
The way human beings make buying decisions is identical across all countries, cultures, and industries. And I’m going to show you how to prove it to yourself now.
Just realize this isn’t an exhaustive email marketing training.
I just want to get you to the first “horizon line” from where you’ll see further. For instance, I’m staring at the ocean as I write this. And if I started walking towards the horizon line, I’d eventually reach Japan which I cannot see from here. I can only see the horizon line. But when I reach that horizon, I’ll see further. And from there I’d see another horizon line from which I’d again see further, and then another, and another, until, eventually, I’d hit the Land of the Rising Sun.
So it is learning email marketing in depth.
All right, enough build up. Here’s what to do:
1. Start collecting email addresses from leads (if you aren’t already)
2. Send those leads an email every day (yes, seven days a week)
3. Do NOT blatantly pitch in those emails
4. Instead, tell interesting & relevant stories, give valuable tips, dispense useful advice, create checklists of things to do (or not do), answer FAQ’s you get from customers/clients, and share customer testimonials — all related to problems your product or service solves.
In other words, don’t sell “drills”… sell “holes”
For example:
If you sell drills, the last thing you should do is pitch how wonderful your drills are. Instead, write about better ways to drill holes. Then, at the end of the email, after you’ve demonstrated your hole-drilling genius to gain peoples’ confidence in wanting to buy your drills, you show them where to learn more about your drills.
So it is with your business:
Ask “how can people better use/apply/benefit from what I sell?” Then make a master list of every way you can think of. Then write an email every day about one of those ways, with a “commercial” at the end telling people where to go (website, store, phone call, text, whatever it is…) to learn more about your offer. Do it correctly and leads become literally addicted to reading your emails, as a pleasant dopamine drip hits their brain whenever they see an email from you talking about them and their problems. This work so reliably well it’s even possible to see results in your bank account the first time you do it!
Wait… what?
You don’t have an email list?
All you have is maybe a list of addresses in your Outlook? (Which could be illegal to send commercial emails to, incidentally.)
We’ll have to fix that first then, won’t we?
And so we shall, next time.
As far as email goes:
You can read more in the paid Email Players Newsletter here:
Ben Settle
