Ben Settle

There is a trope that goes back many decades and well before the internet.

And it is the “But ‘MY business’ is different” crowd.

Just about anyone who’s been in the game has heard it, and many of us dismiss it for the assumptive-based reasoning it is that is 99% of the time completely untrue and only holding back those who buy into it hook, line, and sinker – which many online do, unfortunately.

Whatever your business is, it is probably not different.

And prancing around telling everyone it is basically makes you the business equivalent of the chick dressed as Harley Quinn at the Halloween party, surrounded by 100+ other chicks also in the exact same costume, telling the guys she talks to, “I’m not like those other girls.”

And so it goes with the “my business is different” crowd.

Take images in emails, for instance.

I got this question not long ago:

“What if you absolutely need to add images as a form of social proof? Since I write financial and sports betting-related copy, adding member wins and proof of profits is necessary.”

Admittedly I am not familiar with his exact niche.

So maybe I am missing something.

But I daresay 100 years of direct response says otherwise.

The way I see it, if you “needed” pictures in a niche/market/industry like that — or any adjacent industries — then all those broadcast radio ads and shows on flat sounding a.m. bandwidths selling financial advice, or narrating live sporting events, etc would never have made any money, never had lasted for decades in some cases, never had 10s of millions of listeners happily getting their info driving to and from work, totally engaged, and ready to buy from the other audio-only financial direct response ads during the commercials.

I am the last to prescribe any kind of one-size-fits all solution to any business.

But here is what I suggest this person try out just to see:

Write 30 days of daily emails ranting about the sport, exposing dirt and/or gossip about the players, critiquing what’s wrong about the industry that pisses you and your audience off, hot breaking news that affects everyone in the niche, your most radical opinions and predictions that you know half your list will disagree with, etc.

Then, if you must show visual aids?

If they HAVE to see a visual for so-called “social proof”?

Send ‘em to a website which you can control the end-to-end user experience (as opposed to emails especially if you use images — as different devices/user settings/ISPs, browsers, clients, screen sizes, etc show emails different, and, worse, if they have images turned off they are looking at blank squares) that also sells your offer, right there, while they are in “heat” to buy.

I can’t make you any promises.

But I highly suspect inbox deliverability will be a lot higher.

And, also, sales too.

Only one way to find out though, and that is to try it out.

Far too many “But Ben my business is different, I have to use images!” boys & ghouls don’t even bother learning and trying even really basic copywriting 101-level skills to use words to create far more engaging Vision than some graphics/images (which, by their nature, create scrolling not reading), or how to think beyond the typical binary-thinking online goo-roos and “agency” crowd who can’t write themselves out of a paper bag.

Anyway, that’s my opinion on it.

Do what you want with it.

For those who can think beyond amateur online goo-roo dogma, you might enjoy the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately.

And, in fact, I back-and-forthed with my pal Doberman Dan over the Marco Polo app for some 3 hours about it yesterday, as it’s such a fascinating topic. Anyway, this month’s Dan Kennedy newsletter (the one he does with Pete the Printer… do not bother asking me where to find it, they make it hard to find, seek ye Google) was extremely good.

Specfically:

A bit he did on how business is different and way less fun today than years past due to changes in character and mindset of customers/consumers. And he explained in half a page what I’ve spent the last year unsuccessfully trying to describe verbally to Stefania over many long hours of conversation.

The gist of it?

His observation in the lack of excitement about being successful compared to times past when the country was awash in opportunity & success and business magazines, hotel meetings always booked by businesses, seminars all over the place, and a US President even declaring US is in the business of being in business.

Anyone in the game back in early 2000s, 90s, 80s knows.

What changed?

Many things but I will just focus on something I noticed after leaving ALL social media at the end of 2018. I left everything in one swoop and focused all my energies on reading actual books (mostly biographies) and hunkering down to write lots of books and grow my business outside of the noise and stupidity I was seeing all around me on social.

Then, in early 2023 (after Elon bought Twitter) I returned there.

And it was a totally different planet than late 2018.

It was nothing like the Twitter from 4 years prior.

I suspect most people who had been there during those 4 years didn’t even notice the change. Clicks & algorithms were obviously already a thing before that. But upon returning everything was almost entirely click & algorithm-driven to the point where it was dominated by absolute talentless hacks and blatant grifters without a single ounce of marketing skill or having spent any time grinding to build and grow or produce anything have platforms of millions of followers (a lot of them bots, most likely, though) due to the phenomenon.

They get paid not on producing or selling anything, but shock and rage bait.

Or, in some cases, being one of Elon’s baby mamas.

It’s almost become like a giant Jerry Springer episode in some ways.

Nothing is produced.

Success is not so much earned as granted, and then measured as metrics/numbers.

No sales of anything required or even mentioned.

It’s even affected the entertainment industry where now casting decisions are being based not on talent but social media following numbers. A producer lamenting this last year I quoted at the time put it perfectly when he said what everyone is thinking:

“Everyone’s a celebrity but nobody’s got talent”

So that is one of many reasons behind today’s change, imo.

It’s all fleeting, though, as all illusions are.

And the ending is predictable.

Stefania sees me talk about this and says I sound giddy and am banking on it all crashing.

And, admittedly, she’s right.

Then we can get back to the business of selling instead of clicks.

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Ben Settle

Over the last few years I’ve gotten some “flack” from the troll sewing circle crowd about why I rarely ever appear on video or prefer not to be on video unless absolutely necessary.

For example:

One particularly self-loathing troll recently said it’s because I’m “scared” to be on video. He used my Client-less Copywriter program (which is audio-based) as an example, even though there is video (of me giving a live presentation) I constantly refer students to inside.

I was also on video with AWAI (a Facebook live) to promote it last year.

Not to mention the probably hundreds of collective hours of video content of me circulating around between my free mobile app, YouTube, others’ podcasts, etc. Just last week, for example, I made a live video appearance on Kia Arian’s podcast along with the great Dan Kennedy and my business partner Troy Broussard.

If troll boi is right, then I must be doing this scared thing wrong.

Another example is guy who said I don’t do video because I’m trying to be a “rebel.” Yet another guy said it’s because I’m a boomer (I’m not, I’m on the younger side of GenX) and should join the 21st century. And so on, and so forth, yada yada yada.

Anyway, like all trolls & reply guys they are all wrong.

And if they’d but asked instead of assuming they’d realize the real reason is:

I prefer to walk & talk.

It is no more complicated than that.

I don’t find it particularly comfortable being tethered to a desk, looking at a screen for an hour straight, and would much rather walk around.

Frankly, I already sit atmy desk for several hours writing every morning.

And the last thing I want to is have to talk into a screen from my chair, too. I also think better and give better teaching/interplay/ideas/and an overall teaching experience when walking around.

More:

I have a personal goal to walk at least 15,000 steps per day, minimum.

Often times it is much more than that but 15k is mandatory.

And whenever I can find a way to walk while doing work, I’m on it like white on rice. This includes when walking around talking on the phone with my parents. Or walking around the yard with Willis listening to audio books or info products about options trading, copywriting, or doing market research for Low Stress Trading (listening to interviews, etc with people in the market).

I even walk around the den as Willis watches TV when Stefania makes our meals each day.

If I can merge walking with an activity I breeze right through my minimum 15k steps goal.

There are obvious health and fitness reasons for all this walking.

But it also is an extremely good content creation activity (I created Client-less Copywriter while walking around in my office for example) and I am going to record my next audio-based course while walking around, too — not to mention when I do Twitter Spaces calls, Zoom calls, or any other kind of call/interview/training where I can use my phone and a headset, without having to sit in one spot staring at a screen for an hour or longer.

This does not mean I refuse to do video interviews or content.

Just that I prefer audio for the reasons above.

And if it ain’t necessary, I don’t do the screen-on thing.

Instead, I walk around with the audience in my pocket.

(i.e., my phone in my pocket as I walk and think to & fro)

One reason why I get so much more work done, more research done, more ideas generated, etc, than a lot of other people I know up in this business is because I combine as much high payout activity as I can with walking like this.

Anyway, for the trolls who bleat about me not being on video:

I hope that helps.

For everyone else:

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Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber asks about guarantees:

“What is your opinion on guarantees? Also, instead of a guarantee, what can I do to provide that level of confidence besides testimonials? Thanks for all you do Ben!  Feel free to use this information and your answer if you think it will help someone else.”

Don’t mind if I do…

Here’s my opinion on it:

Instead of diddling around with guarantees I focus instead on the relationship via daily emails, building trust, using valuable premiums, giving outstanding service, encouraging referrals, repelling cheap skates, using lots of proof, targeting players with money vs miserly & self sabotaging price shoppers, and remembering that probably every single man or woman in the history of direct marketing who has ever asked about a guarantee or complains you don’t offer a guarantee… was intending to refund before even buying. Even if just subconsciously – with rationalization hamster spinning like crazy to justify it without feeling like frauds.

I have noticed this is especially true at Christmas time.

(When it’s time to buy little Tommy his Playstation)

Anyway, I haven’t used guarantees in almost 16 years.

It’s never really been a problem and, in fact, it’s helped me dodge several bullets.

Does that mean everyone should do the same?

No.

There is context with everything and sometimes one definitely should use them. That is where experience, discernment, history, skill level, positioning, and agendas come in.

So that’s my opinion, do what you want with it.

If you want more of my more obnoxious takes on all-things business, marketing, copywriting, and, frankly, humanity… see the paid Email Players newsletter.

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Ben Settle

Let me tell you a story every marketer should hear and probably memorize.

Recently I saw a post about the comicbook Uncanny X-Men #211 from 1986.

This single comicbook issue was, in some ways, responsible for the downfall of a publishing empire, sending Marvel Comics into bankruptcy and not being given more life until the movies came out to pick up the slack… only for the studio to start repeating a similar mistake, with the actual publishing wing of Marvel not even making a profit anymore, from what I can tell, although I cannot say for sure either way.

Probably just depends how creative Shifty the Accountant in the back room gets.

Here’s what happened:

Writer Chris Claremont had been writing Uncanny X-Men for about 11 years. He took it from a tier 3 title nobody read to the #1 selling comicbook on the planet each month, paying him so much in royalties that he owned a plane, if that tells you something. And then one day in 1986 he woke up and decided:

“There are just too many mutants.”

And so he told his editor his plan to kill a bunch of the characters off.

That turned into what became known as the Mutant Massacre storyline. And Louise Simonson, who was writing the X-Men’s sister title X-Factor at the time, asked if she could play as it sounded like a lot of fun. So did a couple of other writers.

And so they ran this multi-part crossover.

And it was just a gigantic success — all from Chris’ brain fart. In fact, it was such a success the stock holders and powers that be at Marvel demanded a crossover event every year after that. That meant writers and editors now having to fit storylines and character development into these pre-determined crossovers.

Claremont hated it, so did other creatives, as you can imagine.

But the money guys loved it, and they made lots and lots and lots of sales each year doing it. Then Marvel was bought by another investor who didn’t give a shyte about comicbooks. He was the quintessential what I call “Psychological Marketer” — letting the numbers and metrics dictate everything, no matter what.

He wanted to squeeze every last penny he could out of it.

Customer experience & respect be daymed.

The “metrics” lead the way.

So not only did they do the forced crossover each year, but he would, for example, look at titles that had Wolverine in it, who usually boosted sales by his mere appearance. Thus, he declared Wolverine had to be in nearly every main comicbook title throughout the year as often as possible, whether it made sense or not. As Claremont put it after he left and they started giving the artists all the creative power over HIS storylines he’d been developing for over a decade:

(Paraphrased)

“For a guy [Wolverine] who is supposed to be a loner, he sure gets around…”

He was astonished how in just a year and a half after he left, how much they gutted his 10+ years of stories and build-up and ruined the context and mystery, and just merchandised everything to the point where there were now multiple variant covers, trading cards, 3D covers, poly bagged titles… all to get speculating investors to spend all their money each month to get them all.

Again, all due to the “metrics” leading the way.

Not customer experience or satisfaction or serving the true fans.

(Who made the company possible in the first place)

Eventually Marvel collapsed.

And it was brutal — there was literally at least one suicide and, from what I read, some others dropping dead or getting sick from the stress. There was also bankruptcy, and the company was so broke the owner who screwed it up started mandating employees use the bathroom in the restaurant in the building Marvel’s offices were in so the restaurant would get the bigger water bill. He would also punish people for not using both sides of copy paper and even collected staples off the floor so they could be reused, etc.

All this is in Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

Admittedly, I may have gotten a fact or two wrong (going on memory).

But basically that is what happened.

But back to Uncanny X-Men 211:

I started collecting around the time of this particular issue, and I remember watching it all unfold over the next 10 years. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. You could see the deterioration in the stories and the outright trying to squeeze as much as they could from the fans to the point of outright disrespect and, I would argue, contempt — with everything ruthlessly bent towards the bottom line. i.e., Psychological Marketing vs the what I call “Sociological Marketing” approach Stan Lee mostly used to build out the Marvel Universe 25 years earlier.

There are a lot of cautionary lessons in that story.

Like, for example, that Chinese proverb I have heard the great Matt Furey quote about how a strength overextended becomes a weakness. And, also, I’d add not letting spreadsheets and greed drive every nook and cranny of your business, and certainly not at the expense and lowered experience of your best and most loyal customers/clients.

A book I recently revisited is related to this topic called:

“The Tyranny of Metrics”

It’s not that metrics and tracking are bad. It’s just that they are often used to make incredibly bad — even deadly — decisions. Especially at hospitals (leading to deaths and suffering), with law enforcement, etc. When it all becomes about metrics it’s stop being about people.

All right, so that’s that.

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Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber (who I don’t know wants me naming him) asks:

“…I’ve been dealing with a lot of self-doubt and overthinking. I know it’s not your topic and you don’t have this problem, but maybe you could suggest something to read on this—or offer some quick advice? (Besides your Villains books, which are great and I’m already rereading.) Thanks in advance!”

The good news:

There are very few self doubt and confidence problems that cannot be defeated by:

1. Focusing on the work and NOT the outcome/result

Using fitness as an example:

Focusing on eating right, getting sleep, gym, being circadian synced – the things you have 100% control over vs what the scale says, which you have zero control over unless you tinker with the scale’s computer or something. Now apply that approach to business – only focusing on the activity (writing each day, getting a little better today than you were yesterday, creating more offers, doing something to grow your list each day, etc) not the result and adapt to the areas of your life needing work.

2. Always outworking the other guy

You have 100% control over that, too.

And control = confidence in what you’re doing.

Easy?

Absolutely not.

And you’ll still have setbacks.

That is life.

But doing the above means you’ll always at least be in the game, making progress, be able to lift your head up with pride whatever the outcome. It also helps to think in terms of not success or failure — but results. Win or lose it’s just a result. Learn what you can, regroup, go after it again. Nobody learns anything from their successes, so might as well fook up as much as you’re going to and embrace it.

Who knows?

You might even catch yourself having some fun in the process…

Also:

Every time you’re under pressure, frustrated, emotional, prone to bad decisions… remind yourself, “it’s just a test, and I’m going to pass it. ” then proceed accordingly. I literally do this every time my 4 yr old has a dietary-caused (we have found there are some foods that set him off, where he’s almost like a different kid altogether) tantrum and it is surprisingly effective in getting your priorities straight, focus on point, and staying calm, cool, collected.

Anyway, I don’t know who needed to hear this.

But if you like my approach to business and marketing then you might enjoy the paid Email Players newsletter.

To find out, you can read more about it here:

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Ben Settle

This may seem a tad morbid.

But one tip I can trace a whole lot more profitable content written, created, sold in my business to is simply reading lots and lots and lots (using Audible 2-3x speed on long walks and in the shower, while shaving, driving, whatever it is) biographies from people who accomplished a lot in their lives.

I started doing this in 2019.

And I don’t think the sheer output of writing dwarfing everything I did the 17 years prior to that is a coincidence.

The reason for bios ain’t so much instructional as it is practical:

You realize lickety split how little time you have in this world.

If you’re a young turk full of piss & vinegar this won’t be as easy to grasp than if you’re an old fart in his 40’s, 50’s, and beyond. But when you read lots of biographies of people who got a lot of things accomplished in their lives, and see them from birth (or before birth — most bios start with their parents’ lives) all the way to the moment they wheezed out their last breath… it can’t help but give you a better sense of your own mortality.

It’s no different than when you hear about anyone dying.

Funerals and death remind the living that we’re all mortal and gonna die.

My Enoch Wars and Villains books publisher Greg Perry likes to talk about how old school preachers in churches used to get people’s heads on straight and to stop sinning by simply pointing out the window at the graveyard and reminding them they’re all gonna end up there sooner rather than later.

No other lecturing required.

The grave has always been the “great equalizer” — once you’re there, that’s it. And while this may or may not apply to anyone else, I can say after reading more biographies than I can even count or remember at this point, it definitely has given me more of a sense not just or urgency… but emergency.

I don’t have to coax or force or trick myself to get up and write.

It’s the exact opposite:

If anything — and Stefania can attest, she jokes about how I don’t know how to just coast — I’m up an hour or two earlier than I have to, in my office, banging away at whatever project. I have way too much work to do to do anything else but either write or think about writing whenever I’m not writing, in order to better prep for the next time I sit down to do some more writing.

The money is obviously one motivation.

As is legacy.

Something I never cared much about BW (Before Willis).

But now I think about it all the time.

And all this adds up to a sort of impending specter of doom constantly hovering behind my shoulder, letting me know I better hurry up because I only got so much time left… thanks to reading all these biographies of people that accomplished all kinds of things but ultimately died, and many of them with unfinished work.

Another thing about biographies:

If you read ones about people who died young it’s even more motivating.

Steve Jobs and Napoleon come to mind.

And if you have things you want to get done, and if you’re like me where the more you get done the more ideas you’ll get for other things you want to do… reading bios of long dead people (I rarely read bios of people still living), seeing their entire lives from sperm to grave can be a tremendous motivation for doing a lot of writing, creating a lot of content, growing your business a lot bigger and faster than you would have otherwise.

This all could admittedly be just a morbid quirk of my personality though.

As I’m the kinda guy who watches a Hitchcock movie, and constantly pauses it throughout just to Google how the actors in the movie ultimately died. And I thought the first Faces of Death (not the sequels) movie was especially fascinating, in its own gruesome way.

So I really have no idea how many people will find this useful much less do it.

But it’s not something I’ve seen anyone talk about.

Anyway, I regret to say I don’t have a $497.00 course about this.

But what I do have is the paid Email Players newsletter.

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Ben Settle

A Twitter anon declares:

“Gen X hate is finally happening and I’m here for it. Everything you hate about Millennials and Zoomers? It all came from Gen X — Millennials grew up with media made by Xers, and Zoomers were raised by Gen X. This reckoning is long overdue.”

Not to burst the Zoomer’s bubble, but Gen X is not likely to care.

In fact, most of us find it amusing, and even comfortable, as our natural state has been to be hated literally from the womb. The boomers genocided nearly 30% of us at the peak of their abortion blood lust worship. And the government actually had to remind the rest of the boomers we even existed at all, by running a PSA every single night that said:

“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?”

You know how you can tell who the latchkey kids were?

A lot of us helicopter parent.

In my case, I was farmed off to babysitters almost every night until 6th or 7th grade, after which I became the proverbial latchkey kid throughout middle school and high school. So when Willis was born, I told Stefania the only people allowed to babysit the boy are his grandparents. And, in fact, the only way the boy will ever so much as step foot in either a daycare facility or a public school is when he’s an adult, to buy the building, condemn it, then set fire to it, and then douse the ground around the ashes with salt and holy water just to be sure.

Related:

A few weeks ago I saw another bit on Twitter about generational hostility.

In this case, it was a headline that said:

“Gen Z are over having their work ethic questioned: ‘Most boomers don’t know what it’s like to work 40+ hours a week and still not be able to afford a house.”

Obviously, I’m far from being a boomer apologist, but that’s simply not true.

Zoomers thinking boomers didn’t work their asses off well over 40 hours per week, while making crap pay, with far less opportunity to start businesses than everyone has today (i.e., no internet, no social media, you had to actually create a business plan and beg banks and friends for a loan) while stuck in dead end careers, and living in cramped 2 room apartments surviving off TV dinners, are out of their minds.

For example:

My boomer dad didn’t own his first home until he was 40 while working full time as a cop and driving semi trucks on his days off. My boomer mom didn’t own her first house until around 40 either, which then took 2 years to fix up to be habitable (while my brother and I lived in our grandparents’ already cramped house), while working full time as a waitress and juggling going to nursing school.

And that ain’t anecdotal.

It was far more the rule rather than the exception where I grew up.

Every generation has their form of trauma bragging.

But I think what makes Gen Z’s stand out is how silly it sounds.

Which, if we’re all being honest, is their parents faults for not raising them right, giving them participation trophies and safe places, outsourcing their education to hippie burnout Gamsci/Frankfurt School disciples shoving cultural Marxism down their throats while teaching them to worship the false gods of feminism/multiculturalism/environmentalism/pronouns/tolerance/inclusiveness/magic dirt theory… instead of Jesus like their forefathers did.

Sprinkle in a fake pandemic further screwing ‘em up, and we are…

Now, a caveat:

Whenever I talk about this I always hear from people who struggle with context.

Obviously, not every Gen Z kid still prances around with a mask on nattering on about being the resistance with pronouns and foreign flags in their bios any more than every Boomer forgot their kids existed or every Gen X is as apathetic as Bender from The Breakfast Club pre-buying marsh mellows to roast in the fires of societal collapse.

These things are always fractal.

And, in fact, I believe my list has very few of the “crud” from each generation on it.

So if anything, this entire email is probably preaching to the choir.

Okay, I will end with one more funny story about this:

In the twitter thread I began this email with (about hating Gen X) there was some younger guy also hiding behind a cartoon picture who sounded like he was literally in tears over this finger wagging at me about how “Gen X never cared…” I mean the little schlub was legitimately upset by it. And so, to further trigger him, I joked about how my attitude towards Gen Z is like the insane Irishman Stephen from the movie Braveheart — when arrows are raining down upon them, puncturing their flimsy wooden shields, arrowheads sinking into skulls and bodies and even butts… with blood and despair everywhere.

During this, Stephen tells William Wallace:

“The Lord says He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re fooked!”

Anyway:

Boomer or Gen Z, there is hope for your business at least.

And that is the paid Email Players newsletter.

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Ben Settle

A couple months ago I was grilled by Brian Kurtz in his Titans Xcelerator group, along with my biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard, about…

Pictures/graphics/images in emails.

Brian was keen to hear why we ban them from our BerserkerMail platform.

And there are many reasons besides just potential inbox deliverability problems.

For example:

It helps keep pricing down since it’s less load on the servers. It also means not having to waste resources policing the platform for explicit images, complicit viruses, or illicit tracking code evil people like to embed inside graphics. Plus, there no having to waste development resources – us and our clients – trying to keep up with all the various ISP-specific, device-specific, or email reader-specific spam filter rules with images (like text-to-image ratios, etc).

Then there’s writing-side of things.

Specifically, creating Vision that leads to buying from your business.

Images in emails are presumably designed to create vision.

But all they mostly create is scrolling (the weakest form of engagement you can get when selling something) and/or creating objections depending on the image. In my own business it has always been far more profitable to let the reader’s imagination create that vision – based on their needs and wants, not mine – that inspires them to want to buy, and not me trying to shoehorn it unto them.

That is how I use “images” in emails.

And with no worrying about spam filters, rules, image sizing, etc necessary.

This is literally copywriting 101 we’re talking about here.

Following was shared on Twitter by a fellow named Ed Reay.

I don’t know how old the ad is he pulled it from.

But it’s a perfect example of what I am referring to:

“Did you ever notice that when you’re fat, men don’t look you in the eye? They look across your shoulder. There’s no eye contact. My name is Leslie McClennahan I’m a real person. I live near Goose Creek, South Carolina. Up until two years ago, I was never looked in the eye. By anyone.”

Helluva start to an ad.

And the above words conjure a different image, depending on who is reading it, totally “custom designed” just to that specific person’s needs/wants/desires/situation/insecurities/pains/frustrations/life experiences. And because it’s their own imagination, that image is going to be a whole lot more engaging, emotional, dramatic, relevant, and horrifying than anything some wannabe edgelord can fap out of Midjourney.

It can often go beyond just email media, too.

Like, for example, one of my customers told me:

“I won the small prize of being best speaker at Toastmasters the other night. The headline was ‘How many billions did Figure 2 cost?’. (I’ll spare you the details). Because I listen to elBenbo, I didn’t put any images in my speech. Instead I used the power of my words to describe Figure 2! Much cleaner, less clunky, more engagement – would never had done that before! (Literally the whole speech was on a diagram and they never saw it lol).”

You can obviously do whatever you want and works for your business.

But in my opinion and experience, if you know know what you’re doing you won’t need ‘em. And I daresay you’ll also do a far better job of using images with words than you will with slick graphics and pretty pictures and edgelord AI-generated memes.

Which reminds me of another point made on the call with Brian’s people:

The importance of controlling the end-to-end user experience.

All the great merchandisers focused first and foremost on the end-to-end user experience. Walt Disney and Steve Jobs were especially obsessed with that. They did not want to leave that experience to chance. And no matter what your favorite goo-roo prancing around the seminar stage says, emails all look different, show different, and simply are different across various devices — phone (Android vs iPhone), iPad, desktops, laptops, including on how new or old said devices are and how up-to-date the software is.

For example:

I see marketers using HTML tables in their emails, instead of letting text wrap naturally.

Why?

I don’t know.

Probably some goo-roo told them they tested it and it gets “more response!”

And while having a pretty HTML table in your emails is not bad in and of itself, there are many times when people read them on a smart phone and have to use their fingers to scroll to the end of each line to read it, and then finger scroll back to the beginning of the next line, to read that one. They can be unreadable even though they are often professionally designed.

You can never 100% get rid of this sort of thing, admittedly.

Sometimes boomers will complain to me about how they can’t read my emails across their 40-inch computer monitor — instead of just using their mouse to shrink the email reader window, where everything will naturally wrap nicely, at whatever is most comfortable for their eyes.

What can I say?

Nobody is perfect…

Point is, the more you can control the end-to-end user experience the better. Not to mention how inane emails with pictures can look to the rising number of people who turn off images altogether. They aren’t looking at anything but a blank square or, worse, multiple blank squares. Or, even worse than that: ALL blank squares.

I doubt anyone reading this would have image-only emails.

But a large number of ecommerce businesses do and it looks stupid.

I can already hear the goo-roo fanboys rapidly typing a reply:

“But I tEsTEd it!11”

Very few people are willing to engage in the long-suffering rigorous discipline and number of actions to a big enough number of leads a legitimate test entails. Yes, this includes me. I am a “write it and send it” and move on with my day and life kinda guy, and so I am probably the last person anyone should listen to about this. So instead, I listen to those who are able to do it, and who do the work, and who understand testing emails beyond shallow A/B split tests.

Take, for example, my business partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard:

* Was a nuclear submarine engineer for the Navy (where he had to do “for real” science, not the fake Fauci-like internet marking goo-roo science, or something could potentially blow up 3 miles out to sea).

* Was also the Executive Director of Technology for Encyclopædia Brittanica (running a $12 million department of developers and so knows how platform creators think).

* He also owned a multi-million SEO company (where he had to know what Google actually wants vs what some goo-roo guesses it wants).

* After that he was a world renown email automation specialist who routinely did the testing/tracking/automating for as many as 50 million emails per month (seeing all kinds of data, patterns, and buying behavior 99.9% of us will never see).

* He also wrote what at the time was considered the “bible” for a lot of Infusionsoft users using automation, which the great Perry Marshall even wrote the introduction to, if that tells you something.

And I can tell you this:

Listening to how a guy like Troy – an actual scientist, trained in using the scientific method, who practices what he preaches with it – approaches and conducts testing with email vs what these chuckleheads haunting social media all day say and do about the subject is a night & day difference.

All right that’s all I got to say about this today.

If you want more info on the paid Email Players issue go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle