Ben Settle

Following is a bit from Kamala being interviewed by Oprah.

And it’s like a masterclass in how to sell to wine aunts:

KAMALA: We are an optimistic people. We are an optimistic people. Americans, by character, are people who have dreams and ambitions and aspirations. We believe in what is possible. We believe in what can be. And we believe in fighting for that. That’s how we came into being because the people before us understood that one of the greatest expressions for the love of our country, one of the greatest expressions of patriotism, is to fight for the ideals of who we are.

Delicious word salad.

It’s even more useful to watch the video and her tipsy mannerisms and tonality — as if she’s sitting on the floor Indian style in her living room on a Friday night after scrolling the dating apps, talking to her cat, 2 or 3 glasses deep into that first bottle of red, slice of pizza in hand.

That is why if you sell to a market with lots of wine aunts:

Study Kamala.

They are all voting for her and she sells them magnificently.

A swipe file handed to you on a silver platter every time she speaks.

There are those who probably think I’m being a smart ass here. And I won’t deny it is fun watching this election cycle whenever they let Kamala talk. But I am 100% serious about studying her if you sell to a market full of wine aunts. It’s like anything else where if you want to sell more with email, sales copy, marketing… look at who is doing a great job of selling them.

The words they use.

The phrases they choose.

The methods they use to try to emote or project or rationalize.

Then bottle that up and pour into your copy.

And when you’re ready to turn all that lovin’ into emails?

That’s where my paid Email Players newsletter comes in.

More on that here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Here we go again, with another attempt to gank Trump yesterday.

I’ve been hearing all kinds of conflicting stories about it, and the government lapdog media lies pile so high these days you need a space shuttle to stay above it. So I don’t pretend to know any more details than anyone else does. What I do know is, just like last time someone tried to whack him, Trump did what not 1 in 1,000 online marketers arguing with strangers on social media and doom scrolling their phones all day seem to ever be able to get around to:

Write an email to his list asking for money.

Personally, I suspect he does it himself in a lot of cases, or maybe dictates it for someone to send out for him, during times when he gets especially fired up. Not everyone needs a team or fapGPT to write an email, after all. But the point here isn’t who wrote it. The point is it got done, the opportunity was seized, and revenue was generated.

What about you, Hoss?

Did you write your list promoting something today?

No?

I’d ask why, but really, it’s none of my business either way. I am writing this merely to shame those reading this who know you should be writing an email to your list each day promoting something, but don’t. And also to remind you that while you’re too lazy to mail your list, someone else is mailing his list, and as a result that someone else is now, as I type this even, getting the sales you should be getting to people who are on both your lists who are only hearing from him and not you… because you’re too lazy to mail something.

All right, ‘nuff said.

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Ben Settle

And in just 3 steps:

1. Watch the Trump v Kamala debate tonight and take notes

2. Listen closely to the candidate you want to LOSE

3. After the debate, write a 500 word email selling someone who also wants that candidate to lose on why they should vote for that candidate i.e., sell them on the candidate you both hate.

And do it sincerely, not in a snarky or sarcastic way.

Really go to bat for Kamala if you like Trump, or Trump if you like Kamala. If it makes you a bit sick to think of it that is good. Think hard, and pull out the benefits, proof, claims, stories, all of it. i.e., if you think Kamala is going to ship 20,000 3rd worlders to your plush safe town, what would you do to sell the people of that town it’s good for them? Or, if you think Trump is going to turn America into Handmaid’s Tale, what would you do to sell women who hate him on why he would be good for them?

Truly (temporarily) “become” a copywriter for the other side.

Why put yourself through this exercise?

Because doing so can do more for not only your sales but also your powers of persuasion, copywriting, email, influence than reading any book or going to yet another mastermind or scrolling through some dorklord’s Facebook feed about copywriting ever will. It will force you to use all the tools at your disposal, force you to see another point of view, and force you to apply all the knowledge you’ve been accumulating about marketing.

After that?

If you want to learn the ins’ and outs’ of my way of doing email go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A while back, I wrote an email with the subject line:

“A love letter to people fapping themselves blind to AI”

It was about my opinion of, if it is not obvious, AI.

And a long time Email Players subscriber (who I did not get permission to use his name, so am keeping him anon) who is also an engineer agreed with my basic premise. Especially at AI’s dismal ability to generate content. But at the same time, he successfully uses AI as a tool for other tasks. Like, for example, he said he used it to have a list of tons of stories he listened to in Sean D Souza’s podcast, tons of metaphors he thought about, and tons of adjectives and synonyms for when naming courses. And he said a simple prompt can win tons of time there; especially when spending hours with online thesauruses.

My opinion:

I won’t say he is wrong, or that it can’t be a useful tool like that.

But, in my way of thinking and in my experience… when it comes to content creation sometimes time, money, emotion, and energy are better invested than saved. And in his case, I strongly suspect he is very likely not getting the full benefits of “Sean” he would by doing the manual labor he is avoiding by using AI — whether neurological, creative, experiential, or anything else.

Sean didn’t teach him what he learned by prompting AI.

He learned whatever it was he was teaching via hard, grinding, daily, consistent work.

At the end of the day AI is just swiping 2.0 at best.

I know, I know — “Give it two years Ben!”

You can give AI 2,000 years, it won’t change anything.

Nor will it change the fact it has no real “intelligence” in the first place.

Even the term “artificial intelligence” is inaccurate for it.

Anyway, you do whatever is right for your business. But nothing will substitute doing the work. I wish it was not this way myself. But prompting will always be inferior to the long, slogging, grinding, and often boring work to fill your brain and mind with the info you need the hard way, where you “own” it. Like for example, I recently got done doing probably 100 hours of such grinding work to research a direct mail project we’re doing at Low Stress Trading. I could have “prompted” all kinds of info with the 300+ pages of transcripts and content I combed through and took notes on probably.

But I did it the hard way:

1. Listening to the dozen or so hours of content multiple times while on long walks

2. Printing out, at home, 100’s of pages of transcripts and data

3. Reading through every word, making notes, writing down ideas (directly connected or not to the offer), and then tediously typing those notes on my computer

4. Arranging all those notes, removing, sifting, sorting, combining it

5. Pulling out the notes, reviewing them, playing with them, fitting them into an A/B split test while doing even more manual sifting sorting, thinking, wondering, experimenting, then discussing, arguing, explaining, going back and re-editing, etc. Anyone who does a lot of writing (non-fiction and fiction alike) knows the real gold comes from the editing anyway, the unrelated ideas suddenly fusing, stray thoughts and experiences (you cannot prompt experience either) long forgotten slipping in, layers of depth added to ideas that never would have happened otherwise, etc.

The result?

I don’t know yet.

We will see, they should be dropping in the mail soon. But I do know that whatever results we get — good, bad, or fugly — would have been a helluva lot worse if I had NOT done the work.

It reminds me of Arnold Schwarzlkdjljshjgger’s “Be Useful” book.

Specifically, when he talks about James Cameron’s attention to detail when making his Titanic movie. Everything was authentic on the ship — real antiques, everything built exactly to scale, and how it would have looked down to teacups and work staff uniform gloves probably less than 1% of people noticed watching the movie. Every extra, even if on camera for but a brief second, was given their own detailed back story. No expense was spared, and nothing was held back or half assed even if, by rights, they could have gotten away with creating cheap plastic knock-offs, “good enough” sets, no back stories for everyone on the ship, whatever it was.

It all comes down to investing vs saving.

And that’s a wrap.

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Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber (not sure he wants me naming him) asked me about “unengaged contacts.”

Like, for example, people who haven’t opened or clicked an email in 3 years.

The question is what do I do, delete them?

My advice to him:

“No, I don’t do any of that. People don’t even know who is really engaging or not, as tracking is extremely unreliable — not just open stats but even clicks. Bots literally scan emails and register as clicks these days in some cases. What I do is, I keep them all on, and do periodic list scrubs. A good list scrub finds the problem emails a lot better in my opinion, without getting rid of people, customers, buyers, on your list, throwing them out with the bathwater. For example: I just bought $300 or so in product from a company, in bulk, that has sent me emails saying I never engage and they are taking me off the list. I just didn’t buy anything from their links, and I have images turned off, so I am not tracked as opens. But I’m a buyer and I guarantee I’m not the only one. We live in crazy times.”

To which my subscriber responded:

That makes sense. My Stoopid CRM recommends not sending to anyone who hasn’t opened in 60 days and counts them as “unengaged contacts”. 

That’s like HALF the flipping list. 

I had the toggle turned off for this “feature” but was toying with the idea of not sending to people unengaged for 3+ years. 

But then, I know from experience sometimes people buy from me after ignoring emails and not engaging for years. 

Crazy times indeed. 

This is why I ignore what ESP employees say about email.

The only exception is if the guy giving advice uses email every day in their own business, to sell their own offers, to their own lists — not their clients lists, or parroting data from someone else’s list, but their own lists.

i.e., Post Bizeek.

Otherwise you very well might be doing the equivalent of taking health advice from a fat, wheezing doctor who has to hold his breath to tie his own shoes.

All right, so that is that.

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Ben Settle

Here you go, in 7 simple steps:

1. Drive your social media followers to opt-in page

2. Send useful & engaging emails each day, building an asset (your list) you own, unlike your social following which you don’t own

3. Call to action in emails to your social when their algorithms ignore you

4. Algorithms see engagement as your list starts engaging with you on there

5. Algorithms more likely to make you more visible, which is more likely to get you new followers..

6. Shamelessly bribe those new social followers you get to opt-in to your list

7. Rinse & repeat over and over and over

Even on a very small scale you can do this to start making big tech algorithms chase you, instead of you chasing them like everyone is always doing, running to and fro, freaking out when their favorite platform tweaks something and they suddenly get less engagement. But beyond that, this is a way you can build an asset for your business that you own (emails list), can grow, & of course monetize forever no matter what algorithms do.

As for learning the mysteries of email?

See the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

Many years ago, I first had one of my sales letters reviewed for legal compliance.

It was quite the education, too.

In fact, while I am certainly no expert on the subject, and I very well may be wrong… going by what he told me, it’s rather astounding how many sales letters — even by so-called world class copywriters with legal departments reviewing their copy — look like gigantic “fed bait” targets to me now.

Anyway, I quickly went to work fixing the compliance “holes” in that ad.

And, soon after that, I ran it. Then something interesting happened. Even though I thought for sure the changes I made to my sales letter to make it more compliant with its claims would have made its response significantly weaker… just the opposite happened.

Response, engagement, and sales were way higher than expected.

The quality of customer was also way higher than expected.

And my knowledge of copywriting soared higher than expected, too.

The reason?

My theory is three fold:

1. The more compliant my sales copy, the more believable it is.

2. The more believable it is, the more likely it’ll sell the skeptics.

3. And the more it sells the skeptics, the more sales from the higher quality customers I tend to get — probably because skeptics are often a 2-5 x’s bigger market segment than the hyper buyers sitting around in their moo-moos drawing welfare each month that are attracted to the screaming claim & exclamation mark-ridden copy are. In fact, it was such a valuable experience I invested a pretty penny in having a bunch of my other various companies’ sales letter analyzed a few months ago, and am having even more done today. I probably have invested nearly $20k in these reviews over the last 6 years or so, and it’s always worth every penny.

It could be that one the greatest copywriting “hacks” is having it legally compliant…

Something to think about.

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Ben Settle

Not long ago one of my customers was speculating about why it is someone like me has but a pittance of a social media follower count vs many who learn from me, maybe even bow at my righteous email altar, and yet have 10x the size audience I do.

There are obvious and not-so-obvious reasons for this.

The obvious is, I’m not a social guy as it is.

I had my fun on social about 8 years ago in my old elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group, got burned out on the attention and chaos and drama, and realized that is not my game at all. Nor do I play today’s game of chasing clout or trend-of-the-day topics. Social media algorithms tend not to like those such as me.

But there is another reason that is maybe not so obvious.

And that is this:

In a day and age where everyone’s a celebrity but nobody’s got talent, I’m more of a 4 quarters vs 100 pennies kinda guy than ever before. I also have simple tastes and who enjoy my privacy above all else while writing emails and books and newsletters (and the occasional pulp horror novel) from my oceanside lair, while investing my profits in companies I think are cool.

No lifestyle pics or selfies.

No world traveler exploits.

No rockstar lifestyle full of booze, drugs, and indiscriminate hookups.

I’m too crotchety for that shyt.

Instead, I prefer my day be to wake up, write, play with Willis rest of the day, and refuse to travel at all. That’s probably the polar opposite life of what probably 99% of these guys on social media want, and that the algorithms reward due to their inherent engagement from the proles who are impressed with it. I neither sell to or cater to the proles, the clout-chasers, or the people pursuing the lifestyle instead of pursuing the excellence first which, ironically, is required to get the lifestyle.

The result is much fewer, but far-and-away better, customers.

As for these people who learn from me with 10x sized audiences?

Some of them are extremely good at building audiences. Or so it seems, at least. Although I suspect there are quite a few bots amongst those followers, but be that as it may. And a scant few (I can probably count them on one hand) of those guys are also wise enough to put as many of those people in their audiences on an email list, which is the way to go.

That way they own their business, not Elon or Zuck or Google.

That is what I want for all my boys & ghouls at the end of the day:

To stand on their own two feet, no matter what happens, with an asset (email list) they own.

But alas…

An awful lot of them are hopelessly 100% reliant on social media and don’t have a business as much as they merely have an audience on a platform they have zero control over and that could boot them at any time, taking their audiences from them. That is why it works only until it doesn’t. It’s especially bad for the ones I know of who are completely financially overextended, terrified their audiences will find out they aren’t what they say they, and will be revealed as buck naked when the tide goes out in the coming months and years.

A lot of the things people are impressed by on social media are a fugazi.

As elusive and as much a facade as the algorithms they rely upon.

And it’s all a big bubble that’s already hissing air.

All of which is why I wouldn’t give a trough of horse pucky for the futures of most of these guys who have to constantly churn out content, chase algorithms, and 100% depend on platforms they have zero control over, while refusing to grow and write daily emails to and develop a relationship with an email list like I tell them to do.

Most won’t though.

And even when they do, it’ll be too late.

Not unlike March 2020 when the lockdowns hit.

Suddenly everyone was asking me how to grow an email list at that time.

No.

The time to do that is BEFORE you need it, not when.

And so it is now.

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Ben Settle

Comedian Owen Benjamin (ooh) tweets:

“Yeah. Being ahead of the curve will always be attacked. But in 4 years I’ll get letters and stories of triumph and trust and respect. And that’s how a strong community is propagated.”

A lot of people despise Owen and/or think he’s practically the devil.

But he’s absolutely right about being ahead of the curve getting you hated. This is nothing new of course. People have literally been executed — probably even beheaded — for being ahead of the curve, accused of heresy, etc simply for putting out differing theories/ideas/solutions about whatever, right, wrong, didn’t matter. A lot of people I know up in this business who are reading this right now can probably relate even on a small level today. We have seen a bunch of blue flame specials on social media spazzing out, for example, even with something as non-controversial as BerserkerMail since the day it launched.

How have we been ahead of the curve?

1. Talking about the low importance of tracking open rates — those bots sure love to open your emails, but they ain’t buying. Ditto with a lot of clicks now, too. Not to mention more and more inbox clients across the board bragging about their ability to block tracking.

2. Not caring about soft metrics over ROI — only people online brag about their soft metrics, because there are admittedly still sufficient numbers of make muney online guys and would-be clients who are easily dazzled by bull shyt. But soft metrics are just vanity metrics akin to valuing yards run over points scored in football.

3. Teaching the realities of online sales attribution — copywriters love pounding their chests about how much money their copy or emails made. But attribution online is a lot more complicated than that, with many more moving parts, and much of the credit belonging elsewhere. Goo-roos running around claiming their copy or their emails made all the sales from a launch or whatever are simply full of shyt.

4. Focusing more on building the email list rather than the social media audience — all roads should lead to the list first that you can export and backup, not to the 3rd party platform owned by someone else, in our way of thinking. That is literally direct response marketing 101. But in 2024 it might as well be an advanced direct response marketing 400-level concept.

5. Images in emails hurting deliverability — which more and more marketers are coming around to finding out for themselves. We barely even have to waste time talking about it anymore, and even other ESPs are begrudgingly (since they cater to people who think they need pretty templates, etc) admitting it.

6. Daily email — I have yet to see even one other major ESP advocate daily emails probably for two reasons: 1. They don’t mail their own lists their own offers, and are run by managers, bankers, and social activists, and simply don’t know the relationship building, lower spam complaint potential, and upside sales daily can grant a business. 2. Their clients sending daily emails costs their platform more money. Email ain’t free, and you get what you pay for, but instead of working their economics around it, they would almost prefer you send no email at all while paying them each month like a good little soldier.

7. Mobile apps — we’re still a few years ahead of the curve on this, and admittedly nobody really gives us any flack over it. But most online marketers are still waiting for a guru to grant them permission to use mobile app tech. And even those who do use mobile apps are foolishly using big tech they have little control over and that does not integrate with their back end email, marketing, or offers like Learnistic does. But something like 90%+ of customers are on their phones most of the time, and are in an app when on that phone nearly all the time they are on the phone.

i.e., go where you customers are — which is in an app.

Anyway, those are a few examples.

All right so enough of that today.

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Ben Settle