Ben Settle

I’m going to miss this election season.

The ads alone make me wish it’d go on for at least another few months.

For example:

One of the more effective political ads over the past several months especially was the one editing and juxtaposing various clips of Kamala in a way where she is basically debating with herself… saying how terrible the economy has been under her and Creepy Joe, while simultaneously insisting how great Bidenomics is and how proud she is of it.

You can probably find the video on YouTube which I highly recommend.

But here is the transcript:

KAMALA: Every day prices are too high. Food, rent, gas, back to school clothes … That is called Bidenomics. A loaf of bread costs 50% more today. Ground beef is up almost 50%. There’s not much left at the end of the month. Bidenomics is working. The price of housing has gone up. It feels so hard to just be able to get ahead. We are very proud of Bidenomics.

That ad is a beautiful example of what I call:

“Upstairs Trolling”

Or, maybe a better term is “Troll-o-nomics”…?

Whatever the case, downstairs trolling is just what it sounds like — the fat loser sitting in his mom’s basement watching pournos and eating cheetos, pulling his mask down between bites so he doesn’t catch covid, yelling at the screen about whatever person more successful than him just wrote or said. But Upstairs trolling is quite different. In this ad’s case, it does not attack or devolve into carpet-drooling angry pushup trollery like the dorklords do on Reddit. Nor does it try to fight Kamala or argue with her, nor need to, as she does both to herself in the ad.

The result is influence, persuasion, and chipping away at closed minds.

And the reason it works:

It’s a demonstration.

And a dramatic demonstration at that.

And one dramatic demonstration can do all the heavy lifting in your advertising.

Something email the way I teach can let you play like a fiddle.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

The late copywriter Jim Rutz once told a story about how something he wrote accidentally went viral.

He said  he’d write a financial promo and put one of his own opinions in almost as a throw-away thought… and suddenly it sails through the process of approval from the client, the legal department, and the editors and is being quoted as fact in the financial news, even though it was an opinion from a copywriter who is admittedly not an expert at all on the subject.

Christopher Nolan said the same happened when Batman Begins came out.

There is a scene where Bruce Wayne falls through some ice.

Next he’s in front of fire freezing being told:

“Rub your chest, your arms will take care of themselves”

Sounds legit? Maybe it is, maybe not. But Nolan said it was a bit hair-raising when he noticed suddenly it was being taught to boy scouts or whatever as some kind of survival tip even though he basically pulled the line out of his arse.

Another example:

Many years ago I decided to probe around in the prostate problem niche.

I wrote an eBook with a backend offer in place, started generating traffic via a particularly aggressive kind of SEO (that briefly worked in the early 2010’s, does not work anymore) that was getting me sales and things were looking pretty good. So good, something I said as a throwaway opinion was suddenly popping up in a bunch of forums, etc, that while was not something that would hurt anyone (it was not a health tip, just a tip about an obscure kind of doctor people might want to get an opinion from that had nothing to do with urology)… it was being quoted as some kind of breakthrough for a couple days before petering out.

Related to this:

I have lost count how many times I’ve been given credit (or blame) for things I did not say by people on social media by both friend and foe alike. But eventually, at some point when you are enough of a threat to certain competitors or annoying enough to jealous losers who follow you… you will have people writing emails and posts about you, with or without mentioning you, lying through their teeth for clout or sympathy or God-only-knows.

And when that happens?

The last thing you should do is get defensive or attack whoever it is.

Instead, turn it into an email to sell something.

You will not only do your own business a favor, but probably the people on your email list who know, like, and trust you will find it amusing and good sport, too. And if you are selling something they want, then many of them will probably even buy from you, of course.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

This won’t win me any points with the “body positivity” crowd.

But I’ve been keeping up on a lot of celebrity drama over the years. And I’ve been especially doing so this year for reasons I will write about next month. And I am convinced it was NOT sending Lizzo “good thoughts” or “positive vibes” that prompted her to recently start trying to get healthy and showing everyone her progress along the way.

No, I argue it was good, old fashioned, life-saving…

Trolling.

Yes, a lot of it was no doubt very nasty, mean, even cruel trolling.

But I would bet the biggest peanut buster parfait in the Land of Dairy Queen from those 1980’s commercials that it was that trolling that pissed her off enough to change. And, yes, I would also argue it was trolling that could end up being something that not only prolongs her life, but also prolongs her career, her time with her family & friends, and her health, happiness, and future successes. Not to mention inspiring others in her fanbase to make changes too.

Fight this all you want, argue with it all you want, hamster-spin it all you want.

But nothing motivates like revenge.

And while only she knows for sure… if I had to bet:

I’d say Lizzo did it to get revenge on her trolls first and foremost and/or just shut them up. It’s not the most honorable or society-approved or Facebook like-worthy of motivations. But it is one of the best, most reliable, and most likely to succeed motivations you can tap into. Some very profitable ad campaigns for weight loss have had strong revenge angles.

Revenge is not a dish best served cold.

It’s a dish best served SOLD.

And when you start using email marketing in a way that can do it in a way that is tasteful, and in a way people like to read, you can monetize your trolls from now until the zombie apocalypse if you want.

Just one of many benefits of email marketing.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A Sci-fi author asks a timely question many can benefit from:

Hi Ben,

I’ve been reading your emails for years. Just recently I read your email regarding the Mum trying to look after her disabled son.

Would you have any advice or recommendations for me?

I was hoping you’d be able to help me please? I was also wondering if you’d like to hear my story? My story is unbelievable! but it is all true. I am a severely disabled individual, but I’m trying to achieve my dreams. by severely disabled I mean that I am completely blind, partially deaf, have 10 spinal fractures, I am a partially recovered paraplegic and I have many other conditions as well on top of this.

The result is that I spent 80% of my day bedbound and the rest confined to a wheelchair. I have been saved, burnt, and abandoned by the NHS. I am on benefits but wish to be off them despite many others trying to get on them. I believe that if you have the capability to do something, you have the responsibility to do it. I am also a published author and am in the process of trying to achieve my dreams.

I hope I can prove to be an example for others. I hope I can prove that if you want something enough you can achieve it. I hope this will help others to achieve their own goals and dreams as well.

Would you be interested in my story and trying to get it out there into the world for others?

My advice:

The best way for a guy who has been learning my ways for years to get his story out there ain’t through me or anyone else. It’s to continue to build an email list, mail it interesting content his list wants to read each day, and then let his fans tell, spread, and pass on his story over time.

Every email is like a tentacle that goes out into the marketplace.

Many will come back void.

But sometimes one of those tentacles brings something back.

Or even several somethings’ back: new sales, new fans, new contacts…

And you never know what those will lead to over time. There was a time (pre internet) when everyone almost had no choice but to seek out and gain admittance from a gatekeeper.

Now?

Everyone looking for a gatekeeper to let them in can simply be their own gatekeeper instead.

And you know what?

It’s much better that way..

It’s also something email can cheaply and efficiently allow nearly anyone to do.

So that is my advice, for what it is worth.

More about the Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

I recently finished reading a book called:

“Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words”

Dan Kennedy recommended it in his newsletter last month. And I found it to be quite a fascinating book that is a bunch of Steve Jobs internal memos & emails, interviews, talks, etc. I found it especially interesting, though, that the main reason they created the iPhone was purely what I describe in my elBenbo Press book as:

“Sociological Marketing”

This is a term I invented some years ago to describe the way I built my own newsletter & book publishing company… that was heavily influenced by guys like Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, etc. It’s the opposite, in some ways, of what most direct response marketers do (what I call “Psychological Marketing”) in as much as Sociological Marketing’s not first about metrics, numbers, stats, tests, tracking or any of that.

If anything it is the exact, polar opposite.

In my case:

I couldn’t care less about any metrics, spreadsheets, stats, etc.

They do not dictate anything I do except under very rare circumstances — and even then it’s all done within the Sociological framework I do business inside of. This has always gotten me a bunch of flack from the internet marketing fluffer community who spend all their time prancing around Facebook and social media trying to sound cool and savvy with their statistically irrelevant tests or parasitizing off their clients’ tests & successes, or posting an endless string of selfies with goo-roos to create social proof because they haven’t really built anything on their own.

But I have never particularly cared what they think anyway.

So it is all good…

Back to Jobs:

The iPhone was purely Sociological Marketing.

In other words, zero formal market research.

No looking at any financial spreadsheets.

And avoiding data analysis, testing for demand, etc.

Instead, it was all created out of pure…

Frustration.

Specifically, Jobs said:

“It was driven by the fact that we all hated our phones. We talked to all of our friends and all the people we knew, and they all hated their phones. And we thought, ‘This is a really important device, and everybody hates it. They don’t know how to use even 10 percent of the features that are on these phones!’ . . . You know, almost every phone let’s you set up a conference call. Nobody knows it! They’ll never figure it out! It’s on page 93 of the manual they didn’t read, and it’s seven, eight cryptic keys! And you can do it, and nobody ever does it – because they don’t know it’s there. And that’s true of feature after feature after feature.”

What was most ironic about this is:

It’s what was basically the first conversation my biz partner Troy Broussard and I had at the Napa, California wine bar described in detail on the BerserkerMail sales page about email, that got us talking about what would eventually, two years later, become the BerserkerMail platform.

Neither of us ran any polls or surveys to our lists.

Nor did we do any kind of market analysis.

We both had been in the email game a long time, were frustrated with the options available, and figured we would create our own platform created by email marketers for email marketers… who actually use email every single day in our own businesses, selling our own offers, to our own lists.

So anyway, helluva book about Steve Jobs.

It ain’t cheap or easy to find, though.

I nabbed mine for almost $400 a few weeks ago. And today I see it selling on Amazon for as high as $650. Some people reading this email will think that’s reprehensible and crazy. People voting for Kamala probably even think it should be considered illegal price gouging. And should she seize the cherry blossom throne it probably will be since she’s a communist. But then again, if you’ve been on my list for any length of time, you’ll know my opinion on high priced books, and how low my opinion is – i.e., I think they are idiots – of anyone in “business” who judges info products by volume, weight, and format over the information inside.

Something to keep in mind.

Especially if you are ever interested in subscribing to the paid Email Players newsletter.

More info on that here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber who wishes to be anonymous recent wrote:

There’s a calisthenics fitness guru that I follow on YouTube and Instagram. 

He has 2.1M subs on YouTube and 500k+ followers on Instagram.

He made a post yesterday saying that he still has to work at his full time job as an electrician… apparently, 12-15 hour shifts. And after work he creates content around fitness.

Nothing wrong with being an electrician or having a job, but it just shocked me that a guy with over 2.5 million followers/subs didn’t know how to build a list and mail them offers.

If I was still doing client work I’d probably reach out to him and offer to help. I’m just sick and tired of working with clients, I seriously have no patience.

In other words:

These influencers don’t have a business, they merely have an audience.

This is one of many ways social media has done addled peoples’ brains. Even those who should know better in many cases. I know a lot of these guys. And I’ve spent years telling my audiences, nagging at my audiences, outright pleading with my audiences… to build, grow, engage with an email list. But it wasn’t until the 2020 lockdowns when some started to finally take it seriously. Then, not long after that, many of them got complacent again.

Well, guess what?

Same cycle is about to repeat.

Frankly, I did not even bother selling my List Swell book this year for this very reason. Everyone thinks they’re fat and happy on social, so I saw no reason to bother. But I very likely will sell it again next year when, as I anticipate, the demand for wanting to build an email list goes up again and people realize the game they are really in vs the fake social media facade.

Of course, like with the lockdowns, it will mostly be too late.

The best time to build your list is yesterday.

The second best time is today.

Build email list, mail it, sell those buyers something else.

Not exactly the most complicated advice you will ever hear. And that, ironically, is why so few will take it to heart, follow it, and do it. But, if you’re the exception, and treat your list like the beating heart of your business it is (or should be), then you can read more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A scoffer & unbeliever in my ways asks:

“What is the strategy and purpose behind sending daily emails? It’s often said you dont want to “overwhelm” your audience or you’ll lose subscribers. How can you grow an email list this way while keeping your subscribers from hitting the unsubscribe button?”

To answer that I have no choice but to tell you about the late ad man:

Bruce Barton.

The man who is why I got into the copywriting business originally.

(Joe Vitale’s book The 7 Lost Secrets of Success about Bruce is what got me in the game.)

Anyway, I once saw a flock of social activists online screaming “rACiSs!11” about Bruce Barton due to a sales letter he wrote in 1925 – asking for the equivalent of $18,000 from each recipient in today’s money – that got a fat 100% response to 24 prospects.

The reason they hated on him so much?

Because that sales letter talked about the young, impoverished, white (ooh!) teenagers living in the Kentucky mountains he wanted to help raise money for, so they could go to college. And in the letter he differentiated these young men and women – whose ancestors, he noted in the letter, had helped win the Revolutionary and Civil Wars – from what he called the “imported stuff” coming into New York from foreign countries.

No doubt that sentence would’ve gotten him cancelled on Facebook today.

But whaddya gonna do?

Anyway, back to Bruce Barton and daily emails:

He was the second B in today’s BBDO ad agency, a peer and colleague of John Caples, and was an advisor to Presidents. He was also the son of a preacher man, too, who liked using Biblical analogies. Like, for example, way back in the 1920s or 1930’s he did a radio broadcast about the Biblical patriarch Joseph who was considered almost like a god in Egypt in his day. Everyone knew and loved him, and he was second only to Pharaoh himself.

Then he died.

After which arose up a new king over Egypt… which knew Joseph not.

In other words:

All that prestige, influence, “clout”… up and vanished like a fart in the wind.

Why?

Because he wasn’t there anymore. Nobody saw him, heard from him, or interacted with him after he died. And Barton’s lesson was that, every day, in markets and niches and in stores all over the world, new “kings” (i.e., customers, prospects, leads, clients, etc) are rising up. And unless you are there, in front of them, every day, they will forget you and… yes… eventually…

Know you not.

Which is half my answer to the “why email daily?” question.

I say “half” because there is much more to its power.

But if that’s not enough to get you at least thinking about doing daily emails, then nothing else I tell you is going to get you off your lazy gluteus assimus to do them, so no reason to waste any more of your time or mine.

But if you do want to learn my ways of doing it see the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber asks:

“Here’s a thought that popped into my mind. You seem to have an uncanny ability to link a story/metaphor/comment anything that comes to you, with the offer you sell daily. And it doesn’t even get repetitive. Every email is unique. Every email delights in a new way.So, my question today is… how do you do it? Connect two different concepts into a cohesive narrative – i don’t even know what to call it.”

Survey says:

Writing an email every single day moves mountains and answers all questions.

I preach this, as it was preached to me by the great Matt Furey (High King of email, without whose teachings God-only-knows what lowly kind of existence I’d be eeking out online…), even as I do my part to preach to others as often as possible, and demonstrate each and every day of the week, and sometimes multiple times per day in some weeks.

That is it.

That is the entire secret.

Without writing daily emails for the past 16 years I probably never would have written the nine novels in my Enoch Wars series with it’s many World-Building complexities, interconnections, and storylines spanning thousands of years… with two other series of novels cooking up in my psyche as I type this. Without writing daily emails I’d never have written all the non-fiction books I’ve done. Without daily emails I never would be able to pump out sales copy as quickly as I am able to. Without daily emails I would not have gotten even 5% probably of the ideas generated as a result of writing each day for the 100’s of affiliate and other campaigns I’ve done over the years.

Without writing daily emails I’d go mad at this point.

I have to do it, or my brain feels like my belly would going a day without eating:

Emptiness.

My trolls would argue my head is already empty, but be that as it may.

So writing is the answer. Writing begets writing, which begets ideas, which begets money. Do enough of it and turning chaotic thoughts into a cohesive narrative is routine. Nothing you even have think about, much less worry about, in my experience.

It’s just… automatic.

So that is my answer.

More about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Came a question:

“Most email service providers recommend emails with lots of graphics.  Why is that and why do you prefer straight text emails?”

I could go on about my usual shtick with this.

But instead, let’s put it this way:

We are currently testing out paid ads for BerserkerMail as I type this. And during one of the calls we had, we were discussing themes and ideas for ads they could test. And one of the ideas I had to test was to:

1. Show a screenshot of an email with images all prettied up and slick in an inbox.

2. Show that exact same email, in the exact same inbox, but with images turned off – like some 30%+ (last I checked, at least) of email clients have set by default due to protect their customers from viruses, malicious code, porno, tracking, etc. Not to mention the growing number of people using emails worried about privacy who manually make sure they are turned off.

The reason for testing this?

Because my pal Shane Hunter is spearheading these tests. And one of the angles he wants to take is to demonstrate how BerserkerMail’s No Images policy protects our clients, increases their deliverability, and gives a better end-user experience. And with images turned off, an email with pictures will almost always look completely nonsensical, with even the text parts being tainted by empty squares where the pictures are supposed to be. And oftentimes even the alt text put in place that people will see in case images don’t load also look just as nonsensical.

There are some goo-roos whoo drool on the carpet doing angry pushups when we write about this.

But nobody cares what those burnouts thinks anyway.

Especially as more and more are coming around to this on their own lately.

Besides the above, as far as why I personally prefer plain looking text emails?

It is the same reason I don’t put pretty little HTML formatted tables in emails hoping mobile phone’s screens don’t force readers to have to finger scroll to read each sentence in an email (makes emails not even worth bothering to read), and instead let text wrap naturally:

I am all about controlling the user experience as much as I can.

Guys like Steve Jobs with Apple and Walt Disney with his animation knew the power of doing this, and were often ridiculed for wasting time & money on such details… only to blow right past their lazy, boring competition valuing flash & dash and completely unreliable & inconsistent metrics over substance and starting with the market first vs the marketing first. I prefer to start with them, then work backwards to the marketing. Do that and you probably will never go wrong.

I can already hear some dorklord IM goo-roo parrot the typical:

“NO! You have to test it!”

Sure, Spanky.

Tell that to the guy with a 1,600 person list with only a handful of sales each blast.

Very few email marketers have a big enough list, much less the discipline required, to get anywhere close to a legitimately useful test. My biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard – a trained scientist who was a Nuclear Engineer and former Executive Director of Technology for Encyclopedia Brittanica – spent a lot of time as one of our industry’s “go to” email automation guys. He also wrote what was considered to be the “bible” for marketers using Infusionsoft especially. And he did the tracking/testing/automating for as many as 50 million emails per month in some cases. He can (and has) go on for hours about all the dumb info that marketing goo-roos trawling social media spread about this topic to impress the make money online mopes who believe anything they are told.

All right so that’s that.

If you want to learn more about my way of doing email see the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle