One of my engineer-background droogies Sanjay Pande who does for real scientific tests (doesn’t just play a scientist on the Internet sharing memes from “I Fucking Love Science” on flakebook all day), drops some knowledge.
First, the context:
He was a charter “Email Players” subscriber.
He read my recent email about how email game trumps sales copy game.
And, he wanted to show a real life example of such. There’s lot of wisdom (handed to your righteous self free) in the following — especially if you read it more than once. I hope you appreciate his taking the time to compile it.
Here goes:
Hi Ben,
Fodder for both skeptics and believers … with proof. You may use this as you like, or toss it. Doesn’t matter. It’s really related to today’s e-mail headline.
Here it is:
We had to revive some 5-year old products we had, as we’re still busy producing new stuff that isn’t ready yet, so we did a sale event (e-mail player style).
[Note: I’ve been a subscriber from the beginning all the way to when I moved away from Canada, but am not anymore because of draconian import measures in my current country of residence. I highly recommend the publication to anyone in business. Besides, I think I may actually have all your products, except for the E-mail Players issues from when I had to discontinue on account of not even having a known address]
The sale ran for a week. Monday to Monday.
# of sales: 21
Revenue: 7K (There’s more, but I’m restricting these figures to the period).
Refund: 1 of a $47 product that we actually bonus, so I personally gave it to the person even though they didn’t ask for it (integrity).# of E-mails Sent: 5 (Could have done more, but really busy. I do have 3 little kids).
E-mail Subject Lines: Mostly Bleh for most people who don’t know their audiences.
#1. What Would You Do?
#2. How to Take Advantage Of …
#3. Think Like a Chef!
#4. [VIDEO] The Ultimate BI Solution!
#5. Natural Farming and The Data VaultSales Letter: Oddly, there was no “real” sales letter. It’s just a description of what they’re getting, i.e., the course curriculum and a buy button. This is it _____ (Would appreciate if you don’t share this url). By the way, the video isn’t even about the course … LOL. Had a placeholder so I had to put something somewhat related. Talk about having ZERO emotions, I doubt you can beat it.
Open rate: 17% to 20% (Meaningless as I have had 80%+ opens with zero sales so I don’t care). Besides, you can’t tie an e-mail to sales. Period. And, if someone wants to argue with me on this, they’ll do well by looking up my credentials. Google analytics is like pre-kindergarten stuff for us (for a frame of reference).
Audience: Geeks in a very specialized niche. Nobody in their right mind would even pick an audience like this to sell to. It’s the hardest thing you can do, when there’s so many much easier targets out there. Definitely NOT a “starving crowd” a la Gary Halbert.
The only thing keeping us going in this is the honesty and integrity of the solution we’re providing. People are throwing money at things that will fail (oddly much like what you dub the Gooroo Casino).
That’s all!!!
By the way, loving the Copy Slacker product. It’s stuff that you’ve taught many times, but I love the new packaging and messaging this time. Could have used a little more editing on the transcript, but then again, you’re living and breathing the fast way to do things. I’m sure, it’s going to help me immensely in formulating e-mails and sales letters quicker.
Warm Regards,
Sanjay
PS: Big thank you for all the knowledge you’ve shared over the years.
Couple thoughts:
One of the biggest disappointments of my business career was when I started doing pay-per-click ads and realized how limited online tracking to a sale can really be — especially using email. Sanjay reminded me of that above. In fact, my AdWords guy Jim Yaghi (another for real computer scientist, who understands the discipline and rigors it takes to do a genuine scientific test, and doesn’t just throw the terms around online to dazzle people) has told me the exact same thing.
It’s also why for the last several years I’ve been far more interested in tracking trends.
Did sales go up, or down last month?
Up?
Good, carry on my wayward son.
Down?
Time to re-examine something (offer, traffic, email approach, current events, etc)
Yes, there are probably more complicated (and maybe better) ways to track.
But, I like simple.
It’s also why I believe consistency rules the roost in email, and why the vast majority of people selling online would be better off focusing on writing an email every day (or, even better, multiple times per day) designed to sell something to their lists, than obsessing over opt outs, open rates, clicks, and statistically irrelevant email split tests to their lists of 234 people or whatever.
To be clear:
(For any marketing fanboys who have heartburn over what I just said)
I’m not saying to not track email metrics if you want/need to.
Track to your heart’s content.
I’m simply saying to focus on writing better emails first.
After all, testing two turds against each other simply gives you a shinier turd…
Speaking of which:
If you want to learn the ins-and-outs of email tracking, delivery, metrics, statistics, etc there are far better options to choose from than simple-minded elBenbo. But, if you want to learn the how-to’s of writing lots of emails that sell (and doing it without struggle, frustration, or “writers block”, etc), check out my “Email Players” newsletter. Specifically, the March issue which goes to the printer in a couple days. One of the goodies inside is a simple content-generating formula I learned from one of the world’s top Twitter gurus (he wouldn’t call himself a Twitter guru, but he sells hundreds of thousands of copies of his books each year via Twitter and his blog content).
Click the shiny, candy-like link below to get it in time:
Happy Sunday night…
Ben Settle
