Ben Settle

A while back, I was informed about yet another gaggle of goo-roo chasers on social media proclaiming email is…

“DEAD!!!”

Now, I don’t know if they are doing this for shock effect. Or because they are simply devoid of ideas and see everyone else using a “death of” theme in their headlines and subject lines and titles. Or because they can’t get off the social media crack pipe and need to believe email is dead to stop the maddening cognitive dissonance haunting their dreams of being Flakebook millionaires. My favorite boogyman like this I heard about was a year or so ago, and something about Google and Apple changing the way people can opt in using a “ghost” email address or something.

“Ghost email.”

How Halloween…

And how ironic, too.

Especially since I hear tell major email platforms like aweber, for example, are prepping to make it even harder to opt in to lists by banning role email addresses (i.e., “lists@…”, or “admin@…”, or “help@…”, etc email addresses).

Something I’m happily looking forward to.

In fact, I’ll be even more aggressively than that blocking fake and “throw away” email addresses to my own opt-in process soon, to coincide with the launch of my new & improved free Ben Settle mobile app.

More on that in the very near future.

Whatever the case:

Email ain’t dead yet.

And I doubt it’s going anywhere any time soon, either.

But, even if it did, so what?

Writing emails will sharpen (like a stake!) your other communication skills (speaking, writing, editing, etc). Every email you write, makes you better, even if incrementally, until, over time, your abilities compound on themselves and your competition is still running around playing with the newest bright shiny object they saw in a flakebook ad.

So you win either way, Count Chokula.

But, I would not fret about it.

Email supposedly “dies” all the time.

Been hearing about its impending demise since the early 2000’s. But until it’s been staked, beheaded, its mouth stuffed with garlic, and the ground around it heavily salted, it’ll just keep coming back anyway…

So go forth and profit from email.

It’s free to use (basically).

Works FAST.

And, you can learn how it’s done at:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

P.S. Another thing that is supposedly dead is print books & print newsletters. Something I prove nearly every day is a silly assertion, and a complete & utter lie.

And to prove it, I am launching my newest book later this month to the public:

“elBenbo Press”

It is my entire high-end book & newsletter publishing model on a plate. And naturally, I’ll be sending a lot of emails about it when it happens.

All of which will further prove the reports about the death of this great marketing media are greatly exaggerated.

Last year I got a question that comes in many sizes, shapes, and guises:

I write for marketers + have my SEO, consulting, and copywriting clients…

…and then I write a lot about spiritual growth stuff and Christianity.

I even go the lengths of keeping my discuss + gravatar stuff generic so people can’t track back to either one.

I’m not feeling great about this. But I take some controversial stands and I worry about alienating people from one audience to the next.

Thoughts?

Read & apply the following at your own risk.

Especially with all the cancel culture cowards afoot.

But I’ll just say this:

I once heard the great Dan Kennedy talking about his friend, the late Zig Ziglar, and how Zig did a very “bad” thing (according to conventional wisdom) as a speaker.

Something Zig did in every speech.

In fact, as Dan put it, “you couldn’t get him not to do it.”

What did Zig do?

He gave his Biblical testimony.

According to Dan Kennedy, he lost count of how many people told Zig when he started speaking that took him aside and said, “Zig you can’t be doing that. You’re going to offend a lot of people. You’re not going to get a lot of corporate gigs.”

Well, guess what?

For four decades Zig was the single most successful motivational speaker in history.

Does this mean go out there and let it all hang out as a cheap tactic?

No.

People see right through that.

The point is, Zig only cared about what the people who responded to him thought, and not what the easily-offended Facebook proles, internet trolls, or some wound-up heathen who gets acid reflux when wished a Merry Christmas at Walmart thought.

Do with this info what you want.

But, I will say this:

This goes double for emails.

My Email Players methodology not only allows for you being “you”, without apology, pause, or excuse, but tends to work more the less you’re worried about what the wagging tongues of the world think.

It’s a funny thing about the internet:

It gives everyone a chance to speak their mind.

Yet, most minds never speak.

Bah!

What a boring way to live.

If you want to both make a living being *you*, and also have a blast doing it, check out my “Email Players” newsletter.

The October 2020 issue is especially useful for this, in my biased opinion.

More on that soon.

In the meantime, here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Mark in Texas chimes in:

Hi Ben.

I want to thank you for turning me on to Ken McCarthy. I mean your stuff is good, but that guy is absolutely brilliant! Sorry, I shouldn’t have written that like that.

As tempted as I am to ask people like you and Ray [Edwards] and Ken for help, I know the most important part of me becoming a great copywriter/marketer – or whatever the hell it is I’m dying to be – is the part of me you can’t help with. The seat-in-chair-pen-on-paper part.

Nevertheless, I’m glad people like you are so willing to help with the other stuff. It’s generous and it really matters. I’m sure there are many more like me that appreciate it too.

Thanks for that…

You are most welcome, Mark in Texas.

Speaking of Texas:

When looking at the “Email Players” list last month, I noticed there is an unusually large number of Email Players of the Horde in Texas.

Shout out to my Texas customers…

All right, on to the business.

If you want to hear an interview the aforementioned Ken McCarthy & I did recently, it’s the first audio at the top, titled “Greatest Copy Never Told”, in the Ben Settle mobile app in the “Acoustic Settle” channel.

If you don’t have the app, that’s not against the law even in Texas.

All you have to is opt in to the free email list on this site.

Then, follow the instructions in the welcome email you will get on how to get the app.

Ben Settle

A reader “Sam” asks why I don’t publicly count my money:

Ben,

i really like your candor.

You are one of tne ONLY people that actually acknowledge gross and not net earnings but what does it matter if you gross 1 million but net 10K for the year or even negative 10K.

So why don’t you be open and share your net because essentially that’s all that matters.

The main reason I haven’t yet subscribed to your newsletter is I’m not a copywriter and don’t know if I am skilled or motivated to be one and

2. I travel a bit (sometimes for months at a time) and would like to read something so valuable in a timely manner, meaning online

Irony:

For tax purposes, I am told by people much more savvy about things as I am that ideally my net would be zero or even show a loss.

Do you think that would impress him?

Somehow, I doubt it would.

Nor would it be very impressive to the plaintive hordes of biz-opp minded goo-roo fanboys who require a photoshopped screenshot of a bank account to make a buying decision.

As for his other two points:

1. “Email Players” is not exclusively for “copywriters.” It’s not billed that way, described that way, or marketed/advertised that way. The deck copy in the sales letter spells out who it is for.

2. As far as him being a world traveler:

It’s a non-issue to anyone who wants it bad enough.

We get the newsletter to people wherever they may roam, as long as USPS or FedEx can get it there, and as long as the country in question allows it.

The internet truly has made a lot of people intellectually lazy.

As well as taking away their imagination.

Awright, enough of this.

More info on the newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Some months back, I got this email from a good old boy:

(Replying to an email when I launched Brand Barbarian)

Ben, you may be correct! You make several interesting points.

I’m not from Missouri – I don’t believe everything I hear and half of what I see. And I was born, but not yesterday!

So, why should I purchase your book and your program? Anyone, including me can put anything on the internet.

Are you a “sheep in wolves’ clothing?” Why should I trust you and believe you?

Credibility, integrity, and honesty are at a premium everywhere from everyone including the politicans on both sides of the isle. I see the lack of these attributes present in almost all occupations, not just politicans.

I can postulate many reasons, in my opinion, as to why the United States is in this situation. One of which is the fault of parents not practicing these attributes and teaching their children to learn these traits from the actions of the parents!

Have a great day!

I think a better question is:

Why would I want to sell anything to him?

He has demonstrated he’d be a complete and utter pain in the arse. I can just imagine this guy’s stupid questions rolling in each day crouched in some kind of rhetoric he thinks is clever, not bothering to read anything he’s even asking about, telling me irrelevant stories about his Great Aunt Martha making soap in the grove back in 1734 to make some kind of point that has nothing to do with what he’s even asking about, and wanting me to constantly prove myself to him to be worthy of getting his business, etc.

I’ve sold to enough of these types to know how they behave.

Their profile almost always looks like this:

Broken, defeated man whose wife sometimes lets him hold the remote control just long enough to feel like he has some control in his life before she seizes it back to watch the Lifetime movie she’s interested in.

He probably tells kids he walked to school in 6 feet of snow, too.

It’s all rather exhausting dealing with these types.

Thus, I not only never sell to them, I kick them off the list.

Yes, there is a lesson here.

And that lesson is this:

When someone like this asks you to give them their own special sales presentation, just for them, so they can finally have some control over something, refuse to sell to them.

Or, even better:

Tell ‘em, “Yes, you are right. You should buy from ___ instead.”

Then send them to a known con artist in your market.

To learn more about my sheep in wolves’ clothing email ways, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A newbie chick once asked Yours Gracious a question as a perk of being an “Email Players” subscriber, I told her what to do, then she replied with:

“A little disappointed in your answers to my questions. One of my primary reasons for subscribing.”

I have no doubt about her being sincerely disappointed, too.

Why?

She was looking for some kind of checklist or instructions of things to do that only learning & applying the fundamentals of marketing would give her. Fundamentals which took all of one or two sentences for me to deliver.

Think your humble narrator here is being too harsh?

Here were her questions:

“What is your best recommendation for someone marketing more than one product or program of which one is a network marketing opportunity without using paid ads?”

and…

“When do you know you can add other niches as you have done?”

Not “bad” questions, necessarily.

But they showed zero grasp of the basics of marketing.

Thus, my answers were essentially telling her to do some very basic things.

The point:

People like this disappointed in & eschewing the fundamentals really should stay far away from me.

I have little or nothing to offer them.

Nor do I pander to them.

Like dealing with them.

Or even want them subscribing at all.

If someone isn’t educated on the basics of direct response marketing, and especially if they don’t realize there is no “check list” of tips that will ever replace getting out there, mailing your list each day, receiving & interpreting the information you get back, and gaining experience… they will be a lot happier chasing “hacks” than paying me to basically tell them to learn how to properly punch before even thinking about how to do the 5 point palm exploding heart technique.

New product junkies & goo-roo fanboys probably bristled reading this.

Hopefully it exploded their newbie hopes & dreams of making learning all the advanced info without putting in the time and grind of learning the basics.

But if I reached one or two grownups, then my job here is done.

More about the newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Once upon a time, an “Email Players” subscriber replied to one of my shopping cart auto-generated emails saying he needed to update his credit card and be quick about it or would miss out on the next issue..

“This doesn’t make you look good,” he said.

His reasoning?

He subscribed on December 31, 2017 the prior year. And here he was, being billed on December 26th the next year, and assumed I was billing him 5 days earlier than when it was supposed to.

What’s going on here?

It’s like I told him:

When you subscribe to “Email Players” it bills you every 30 days, not the exact same day each month. That means just as it says: it does not bill you on the exact same day each month. If every month was a 30-day month, maybe that’d be different. But, some months are 31 days, some are 30 days, once per year there are two 31 day months in a row, and we even have a 28 day month. That naturally shifts billing dates around so things won’t fall on the exact same date a year later.

I always assumed this was common sense.

But it is also true common sense ain’t common.

Here’s something else I should add while I am at it:

Every single month, I manually cancel subscriptions with credit cards that have not been updated. Yes, I could chase these people down and tell them to update them. But I don’t have time for so-called “business” people who have the decision-making ability of small children where they can’t even figure their credit cards out, or keep me in the loop ahead of time if something gets hacked, and just switch it out with a card that does work (like they no doubt do with their cell phone bill, cable bill, internet bill, and all their entertainment-related bills), and then switch it to the new card when it arrives later, etc.

We’re not talking rocket science here.

But to these boys & ghouls, I might as well be.

And, because I don’t chase people down with this, and because it is a huge pain in the gluteus assimus to keep track of who is up to date and who isn’t after I send the list to the printer, I cancel those who haven’t heeded the shopping cart-generated reminder emails by the first of the month, and don’t allow them back.

This probably doesn’t apply to but a scant few people reading this.

But, since I was on the subject, I figured what the hay.

All right, on to business:

If you are a responsible grownup who takes business more seriously than an 8-year old child running a lemonade stand, and are interested in learning more about the Email Players newsletter, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“She’s no longer a 10.”

So said your favorite President Trump while running for office back in 2015.

He was talking about former Supermodel Heidi Klum. And at the time he said it, Heidi was out of the Supermodel business, and was a mother of 4, and simply not a Supermodel anymore.

Her response?

She had quite a bit to say, it turned out.

Including:

“…[women] do so many things, so in my book, every woman is a 10.”

Clearly she has never read the description of the character Granny in my Enoch Wars books.

Whatever the case, here’s why I bring it up:

Heidi kept bringing it back up afterwards to the media.

Each time, she was visibly more angry, and more rattled than the time before.

All because he simply said she was “no longer a 10.”

The result was a lot of free press for Trump at the time, and his polling numbers shot up even while the mush cookies, white knights, and sob sisters declared his candidacy was dead now, there’s no way he would be elected saying things like that, blah blah blah.

Point of this is not to glorify Trump’s comment.

It’s to highlight the fact how, with 5 words he was able to generate massive amounts of press, attention, and, yes, engagement. And he did it in a very sneaky way he’s used probably hundreds of times — whether when haunting Rosie O’Donnell, fighting with the media, or mocking his enemies.

I call it “sneaky” because nobody in marketing ever does it.

And the reason they never do it is probably because they don’t understand it.

In fact, I would guess probably less than 1 in 1,000 marketers (not including many “Email Players” subscribers, as I have talked about it before in the newsletter), with all their super persuasion books and social media chest pounding about how great they are, even know what he’s doing. And lest you think this is some kind of inherently evil tactic because “TRUMP!” think again. This tactic he uses and has mastered to the point he probably doesn’t even think about it anymore, it’s just something he does… is also something the late, great Gene Schwartz talked about in his magnificent “Breakthrough Advertising” book.

I used it quite a bit in the weight loss niche especially.

And, when I had the opportunity to be a guest on a podcast with the late, great master of negotiation Jim Camp that David Garfinkel & Brian McLeod invited me on shortly before Mr. Camp’s death, I asked him about it.

After I described it, I asked Jim Camp what he thought of it.

His answer:

“You’re solving a real problem and you’re creating vision for that person of a solution to a problem they see clearly coming because you’ve helped them discover it. So all you’ve done is provide a solution to a real problem for her.”

There you have it.

Trump uses it.

Schwartz used it.

And Jim Camp used it.

I also use it, a lot, in my emails & sales copy, and explain it in detail on pages 17 & 18 in the July “Email Players” issue, along with an example of it from an email I used in the prostate niche.

And now you can start using it too, to potentially get people obsessively reading and buying from your emails

To subscribe in time to get this special issue, go here before tomorrow’s deadline:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A reader is troubled about my “Why elBenbo is slowly turning the planet into Mordor” email last month.

Let’s see if we can’t help this fellow out:

I subscribed after seeing your list touted as brilliant copywriting, only to find that you actually write unpleasant snark. Snark I kept reading, admittedly. I guess I was trying to figure out your talent for making me want to open your emails, even though they’re horrid. Then I realised there was no magic and no secret skill. I was just bored, and garbage is just garbage. All told, the experience of trying to learn from your emails is like eating rotten steak to figure out how it makes you shit yourself. So long, and thanks for all the ruined carpet.

I must be better than I thought at this email & engagement thing.

Apparently, I have the power to bore people into engaging with me!

Besides that, he’s confused about something else.

Following may not be “dictionary accurate.”

But, there was no “snark” in my email that so clearly rattled him. Snark is something trolls, haters, and cancel culture weaklings who cannot handle differing opinions do — and is neither entertaining or persuasive. It is pointless drive-by insults, abusive ad hominem attacks, and desperate shyt talking that pretends to be clever to disguise how whatever makes the snarker feel insulted, angry, shamed, or butt-hurt really affects them – often peppered with “LOL!” for further fake defensive posturing.

It’s all based on feels, bitterness, and dishonesty.

Thus, a lengthy bitter reply to my email dedicated to hamster-spinning about how bored he was, etc.

Which was, ironically, snarky in and of itself.

My Mordor email that gave him acid reflux, on the other hand?

It was simply lighthearted mockery about some blatant hypocritical virtue signaling embedded in a yahoo article about the environment.

It was funny to anyone not drinking the “green” kool-aid, and is the exact opposite of snark.

That’s why it made a lot of sales, why it got lots of engagement, and why it bothered him.

More:

Mockery is inherently funny & persuasive to everyone – except to those being mocked, of course. While snark is inherently nasty and not-at-all persuasive, not even very often to the people who do agree with it, I have noticed. That’s why nobody except maybe other bitter & snarky people likes or buys from snark, while mockery has been used for centuries by all the most influential & talented orators, prophets, politicians, evangelists, and gifted teachers to persuade and influence. Whether it’s the prophet Elijah mocking the 450 priests of Baal by asking if Baal is pinching a loaf somewhere when he doesn’t show up to light a fire… or Earl Nightingale mocking the proles watching TV all day by saying, “This is not an indictment of television. I have a couple television sets at home myself. I have a couple cars, too, but I don’t drive them around the block for 8 hours each night.”

Which brings me to the punchline:

Mockery is extremely powerful in marketing.

It’s also something I teach on page 19 in the July “Email Players” issue.

In one short paragraph I show you 5 tried-and-true ways to use mockery — not snark — to get all kinds of engagement and sales, should you choose to use this device to sell with.

The deadline to get this issue is tomorrow (6/30/20).

To subscribe in time to get it, hurry over to:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle