Ben Settle

During last year’s brief gov shut-down, I got this from a desperate MBA:

(I know he’s an MBA because it’s stated in his name attached to the email he sent me)

Please know that I absolutely adore your stuff. So much so, that it took me a couple of weeks to actually accept the fact that I needed to do this. But with the government shutdown, my business has tanked and I need to conserve every dollar I have right now until it’s over.

So I need to cancel my newsletter subscription before it renews on Sunday. It pisses me off beyond belief that I have to do this, but business is down 60% since December and I have to cut every cost I can. I realize this means I probably can’t come back. I’m not okay with that, but I have to feed my family first. I’ll keep reading your stuff and buying your books.

Thank you, but please cancel my membership.

I remembering finding this fascinating on multiple levels.

In fact, my first thought was:

“All that MBA education and he can’t use the info he admittedly adores to write an email each day that recoups his whopping $3.23 per day investment (which was preventing him from feeding his family?), and have the wisdom to sell something on the backend that makes him many more sales to boot?”

Instead, he retreated directly into play-not-to-lose victim-mode.

Did absolutely nothing with his investment.

And, I would bet someone else’s kidney… probably kept his bloated cable/satellite bill, kept his starving kids cell phone bills, and kept stepping over $100 bills to pick up dimes.

Anyway, so that was my first thought.

My second thought?

Before curling up into a fetal position and despairing, it’s too bad he didn’t take advantage of the perk I give “Email Players” subscribers where they can ask me questions (not copy critiques, I don’t do critiques) via email about anything I’m qualified to talk about.

He didn’t even bother to ask, before quitting:

“Mr. elBenbo, I am in this pickle… yada yada yada… any ideas?”

To which I would have rattled off some quick-to-implement ideas he easily could have used to wipe that slack, bovine-like look on his face away.

More:

People are always looking for a boogeyman to hide behind (government shut-downs, the economy, Trump, Obama, the weather, the stock market, whatever it is) to justify their inaction, self-sabotage, and easily-overcome failures.

And this MBA’s particular boogyman is easily staked & beheaded.

Enter the upcoming October “Email Players” issue.

I walk you through the exact plan I would have given him, that’s so simple, even an utter and complete newbie (or MBA) can follow it and potentially be up and making cash-in-the-piggy-bank sales in a few days.

Still more:

This plan can work even if you have no product or list now.

Although you will need *some* kind of network. Even if it’s just a small social media following. Plus, even though I created this game plan for someone who’s back is to the wall, or someone who fears that could happen to them, it’s just as useful for someone already successful, too.

And, this is especially true for those of the freelancing persuasion.

This is just one of many business-changing lessons in the October issue.

But the deadline to get this issue is in 6 short days.

After that, it’ll be too late.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Following is for people who either prefer using video over email, or want to know if my wily ways work when applied to email.

The short answer is, yes.

Of course it works.

The longer, better answer comes from Danish “Email Players” subscriber Morten Spindler, whose cousin owns a physical & web shop selling expensive stuff for kitchen enthusiasts.

He says:

I had her hop on the train of daily emails this december, and she and her husband started doing daily video’s on fb for a month… and ever since they’ve done 3 weekly short storytelling fb-videos, with humor and ALWAYS plugging a product in their physical shop + webshop.

Result?

Cirka 45% better sale in december than ANY previous month in 4 years. Ever since their sales have increased by 85-90% per month.

Not so many emails, but same principle.

Shit works.

Thank you for the inspiration.

If you understand how the Email Players methodology works, you can apply it to virtually any marketing media: video, social, content, audio, public talks, webinars, whatever it is you prefer.

More info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

One of the ways you’ll know your emails are not only being read, but having some sort effect on the psyches of your audience is, certain wannabe overachievers will start giving you unsolicited advice.

It’s always annoying getting it.

And, the advice is also always not only 99% wrong, given without context or bothering to gather facts, but massively wrong.

Thus, should be ignored.

Or, even better, defiled.

Howard Stern once addressed this topic perfectly on his show.

Some dork called in giving him unsolicited advice.

And, when Stern told him it wasn’t necessary, the guy started getting offended.

Stern’s reply?

“I’m telling you your feedback is irrelevant. For my entire career I didn’t ask people their opinion on my show. I don’t care what you think. I care what I think…The way I became an innovator was to IGNOOOOORE the feedback.”

There’s decades of business wisdom in that one million-dollar paragraph.

I hope you use and profit from it until the end of your days…

In the meantime, my “Email Players” methodology goes perfectly in line with this attitude of ignoring feedback, ignoring what everyone else is doing, and especially ignoring the opinions of people who don’t have what you want giving you unsolicited opinions on how to get it.

The October issue is going to the printer soon.

And, it talks a lot about a certain kind of troll that loves giving unsolicited advice.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A self described “NLP guy” once made elBenbo an offer he could easily refuse:

“What I’d like to propose to you is a case study that can be very beneficial to both of us. Teach me your stuff, show me how to develop a saleable package, and how to market it with email and use my success in your own marketing as proof of your pudding. 🙂 I think you can easily see how this could be a boon for you and myself, can you not?”

Not really, Chuckles.

Wait, was that last question NLP he was running on me?

I’m always amused at offers like this from various ex-spurts.

I remember waaaaay back when I first published “Email Players” this guy subscribed and cancelled, wrote a lame review about it (admitting he never implemented a single thing he learned) then made me an offer where I would “get” to write a bunch of his emails, and if they made more money than his current emails, he’d pay me a percentage of the increase in sales.

Mighty generous of him!

But here’s the point:

I often get asked for critiques and to review emails from paying “Email Players” subscribers, which I don’t do either of. There are both logistical and practical reasons why – plus, I hate doing critiques anyway, and 99% of the time people don’t have a “copy” problem, but an offer or list problem that can’t be solved by a copy critique anyway. Whatever the case, those paid Email Players of the Horde members are my priority. And yet, if I won’t even give their copy so much as a cursory glance… what makes these special little internet snowflakes think I’m going to write copy for them or teach them something free?

It takes a lot more than NLP, I’m afraid.

OK, enough of this clacking, on to the business.

To get your hands on my non-NLP ways, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Came a comment from across the pond many suns ago:

“Hey haven’t you got spell check?? There really should be NO excuses for typos nowadays if you have a modicum of education. If you were brought up in the UK – typos are a BIG no no in business! It shows unprofessionalism and sloppiness especially in the age of the spell check.”

I don’t normally reply to muppets.

But, in that case I made an exception.

My answer?

“Let’s make a deal: You keep drama queening about typos, and I’ll keep making money with them”

More:

This comment came in that same day:

(From reader Bruce Lilly)

“Grammar, syntax–I’ve taken all the university courses on them, from an English degree with a nod towards Linguistics. And because they know the Traditional English Manner of Spelling and Grammar, some people think these rules apply everywhere….What these people don’t understand about language and grammar and even spelling could fill our world’s atmosphere. Do they know that grammar is subjective, and that as long as one is understood then the sentence has performed its task? A sentence is a boat. It carries a meaning. If that meaning gets across to the other side–congratulations–your boat floats.”

Anyway, bottom line?

There is a reason proofreaders make peanuts compared to language-butchering email writers.

Details on my “Email Players” newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

One of my guilty-pleasure movies is the first Deadpool.

I won’t say it’s the greatest movie ever made, or that it won’t lower your IQ a point or two if you aren’t careful. But, there is a powerful email lesson embedded within its reel that can potentially be quite a boon to your squealing piggy bank.

Specifically, I am talking about how it breaks the 4th wall.

This means, Deadpool directly talks to you — the audience.

i.e. breaking the 4th wall.

And this, my loyal plebe, is what great emails do, too.

As one of my pals Sean Kaye once told some of my customers, when you tell a story with a specific kind of narrative, while also giving a reader a behind-the-scenes look at at your life, your business, etc, you are breaking the 4th wall.

Most emails never do this.

And, even if they do, they do it in a way that is dorky.

Like, for example:

• Complaining about their problems (nobody cares about your problems, some of us are even *glad* you have them…)
• Mushing on about irrelevant tangents they don’t tie into what their list wants
• Lecturing via doling out boring philosophy or dry tips
• Giving lots of free hard info away their list will safely ignore
• And the goo-roo band marches on…

Anyway, if you want to learn how to do it right, never fear.

That’s why my entire Email Players methodology is all about in some ways.

Subscription info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Back in June, I wrote this ditty about email open rates:

“I care less and less about open rates the more I realize and learn – from computer scientist types over the years – how inaccurate they are, unless something has changed I am unaware of.”

To which “Email Players” subscriber Fabien Delorme chimed in:

“As a computer scientist I can confirm this won’t ever change…It’s the same with websites and google analytics btw. There’s no way around it. That’s the way the internet is built.”

More:

My pal Jim Yaghi (another computer scientist) says Android phones have HTML turned of by default, meaning they aren’t tracking opens anyway. And he used to joke about how online marketers claiming to “scientifically” test emails have clearly never been introduced to the scientific method, with no clue about the rigorous discipline it takes to pull a real test off.

Engineer Sanjay Pande once broke it down like this:

As you know I’m the geek who has designed and built many of these so called tests, I can tell you your scientist friend is 100% correct.

There are way too many variables in e-mails.

1. E-mail volume is relatively small. The larger the volume the margin for error goes up anyway.

2. Split testing subject lines is useless because you may have different delivery or open rates.

3. It’s hard (if not impossible) to tie an e-mail to sales unless the offer is in the e-mail. Even then you don’t know what “really” caused the sale. Sometimes it’s the sequence. Sometimes it’s people’s mood. There are a number of causal effects before the sale. The prior e-mail could have been more of an influencer of the sale.

4. A price change (even an increase) can put your sales up or down. The e-mail in this case was not the cause of the sale and all the split tests in the world wouldn’t work (Ted Nicholas book flopped at 20 bucks and was a best-seller at 70 bucks to the same lists).

5. Even the average marketer knows that 80% of sales are made after the 5th contact. So, what’s the real point of your split test on an e-mail with an offer? This is a problem that even plagues direct mail marketers.

6. Most tests are done in smaller numbers with the premise that rolling up will replicate the results. This is flawed from a scientific perspective again. The sample size changed dramatically which will affect the results and you’ll never know why you had such a big hit or a flop – even though it’s helpful to have indicators to go on.

All these folks who spout their expertise on testing should really talk to a few scientific people (and perhaps geeks) on how tests are done and how they still mean squat.

People who think they’re marketers are the worst offenders followed by the folks who call themselves “real” business people – very few who even understand how these things even work.

Tests will only give you “indicators” and as you said, you really do not know when the same e-mail will work or bomb when re-used (with your evidence).

Thanks for covering this topic. People really should wake up and get it.

Another kicker:

Was when my pal Jon McCulloch showed me how Gmail now does something to grab images once and isolate them from the server hosting them — making open rate measuring completely out of whack.

I don’t know if this is still the case or not with Gmail.

But, it would not be surprising at all if it was.

Anyway, if you want to worship the open rate fairy and call it science that is your business.

I won’t say tracking opens is 100% useless.

But, I will say it is 99% overrated. What matters is ROI, not some undependable stat with as much relevance to sales as your last Space Invaders score.

All of which is why I care about open rate data about as far as I can throw a piano.

Bottom line:

I focus on tracking sales trends over time, expanding my world of offers, building my list with higher quality names, keeping my fingers on the beating pulse of my list, and continually making myself better today than I was yesterday at the things I can control (writing better emails and subject lines, curating my list, thinking up attractive offers, etc) vs focusing on things I cannot control (soft metrics like opens).

All of which requires no HTML.

No tracking software or analytics.

And, no having to go blind staring at percentages.

Whatever the case, “Email Players” newsletter subscription info is here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

P.S. My all-time favorite open rate fairy story:

Was when one of my “Email Players” subscribers gave me a testimonial about how using my non-caring about opens ways nabbed his client the most sales in a particular month than ever before…but the client was still worried why his open rate was only 9%.

The irony wrote itself…

Over the past few months a few eagle-eyed readers have noticed I no longer send my email each day at 6:30 am PDT like I used to, with such exact precision you could set your watch to it.

And recently I was asked why?

Why not send it at 6:30 am anymore?

Is that no longer the BEST time to do it?

Answer:

It was never the “best” time to do it.

There are some times that are better than others, depending on your market and what your competition is doing, and I know of some people who have found a time that gets them more response than others overall. But even if there was a best universal time that worked for everyone, it wouldn’t be best for long.

Example:

Many moons ago it was declared 2:00 PM EDT was best.

So what happened?

A bunch of goo-roo fanboys blindly started sending their emails at that time.

And, what happened then was, everyone’s inboxes were getting an email from the same vulture-like cadre of small-thinking marketers at that exact same time, ruining it as being the “best” time, even if it had been. The amusing thing is, it wasn’t really the best time anyway — it only was best for the marketer who supposedly tested it. I say “supposedly” because I believe practically all email tests should be taken with a huge grain of margarita salt at best, and most likely should be defied.

Especially when it comes to open rates.

But that is a story for another time…

Back to the mythical best time to send emails:

After discovering there were dozens, if not more, marketers in a niche similar to mine — i.e. we had some of the same people on our lists — blindly copying the time I sent emails, I decided to make it completely random.

No rhyme or reason.

No strategy or master plan.

Not the way I usually operate at all.

And no, I didn’t notice any less response because it’s not really the time of the day doing the selling anyway. The best time for me is whenever I feel like sending it.

Yes, ideally, I would email at the same time each day.

If for no other reason than that’s the kind of ordered way I like to live my life.

But, the copycats have ruined that. However, instead of rueing the fact, I simply go with it and use it to my advantage best I can.

All of which brings me to another important & related point:

This is yet another reason why I say the business world is overrun with “S’s.”

And recently, I’ve been shown how most people on the planet are “S’s”

“S” is a Myers-Briggs term that describes people who don’t think future-wise.

According to Stefania Arroyo, who in my completely biased (but correct) opinion is the foremost expert on using Myers-Briggs to sell & market with — i.e. she is not one of these bat shyt life coaches on facebook who treat Myers-Briggs like astrology — S’s are almost like gold fish. They can merely react to what’s in front of them, and have a hard time thinking forward, or about the consequences of their actions or decisions. There are many advantages to being an S, though. Like, for example, in one-on-one selling. But when it comes to long-term marketing and planning and thinking forward, S’s are the ones that can only react… swipe, imitate, copy, clone, and steal, with no ability to think forward about even the obvious consequences of doing such things — like everyone sending their emails at the same time.

This is also why S’s have a hard time with my Email Players methods, too.

In fact, I will let you in on a little secret:

Despite how it appears on the surface, I don’t teach email.

I teach long-term marketing and sales strategies, with email being the main vehicle driving those strategies. You could just as easily apply what I natter on about with email to social media, video, audio/podcasting, content marketing, or anything else. People who have been subscribed to “Email Players” since this last April’s issue especially — when I consciously decided to start teaching this almost exclusively — know what I babble about with this.

In fact, many S’s have wisely thrown in the towel and quit since then.

And they were smart to do so.

It’s too mentally uncomfortable for them to think forward or have the patience to lay the groundwork and implement long-term thinking-inspired strategies, rather than just swipe subject lines or calls to action or whatever.

That doesn’t mean S’s can’t do what I do.

There are still quite a few who have stuck around and use it.

And, they wisely use the newsletter for accountability, and to keep them on track, and to learn how to think differently, and not as something they can just swipe.

Anyway, top line:

The best time to send an email?

For me, it’s whenever I push send.

Because it’s not the time doing the selling, it’s the principles, strategies, and, yes, tactics (a naughty word to S’s who heard someone else say something they heard someone else say on flakebook about what the late, great Jim Camp taught on the subject, all out of context) doing the work.

If you want more instruction on this way of using email, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Today I’m reaching into my righteous mail sack for a bit of the ol’ Q&A:

QUESTION: I am new to the email marketing game and I am having “writers block”… trying to email my list every day New and exciting content that they actually will open. Any suggestions to never run out of things to talk about?

BEN SETTLE: If you have writers block with sales copy, you haven’t studied your market deeply or thoroughly enough. Do that, and any blocks will disappear.

QUESTION: How serious are you about [your “no coming back after leaving Email Players”] policy? I like Email Players, but I’m poor. What’s my risk of receiving the ban-hammer for canceling due to finances? Thanks for your time.

BEN SETTLE: It’s $3.23 per day. It’s not the price, it’s you and your priorities. A lot of so-called “business people” would be better served replacing “can’t” with “won’t” when their rationalization hamster starts spinning about these things. At the very least, they should stop pretending to be an “entrepreneur!” on Facebook and get a second job somewhere, to get their financial house in order. Either way, once you leave, there is no coming back.

QUESTION: Do you EVER give away any information without my having to enroll!

BEN SETTLE: Other than the collective 250+ free podcast episodes, media interviews, videos and other free trainings – not even counting the 2,000 or so blog posts – I give away on my site, can’t say as I do…

QUESTION: Do you have a daily reading routine? If so, what kind of material do you typically read and how many pages a day?

BEN SETTLE: Depending on the day, most of my reading is an hour or so before bed. As far as what kind of material — I tend to like to read biographies of the great men in history and about successful publishers/publishing companies. I’m going to be publishing a list of all my favorite biographies and books like these in an upcoming “Email Players” issue sometime this year.

One more, to wrap this Q&A up — this one’s a comment not a question from a marketing incel:

QUESTION: You’re an unbelievably funny, hilarious sociopathic asswipe lol. We love to watch you make a fool out of yourself, to see what depths such a scumbag will go. It’s amusing. It’s human nature. You are an entertainer whose hobby is studying emails and your career is selling bullshit.

BEN SETTLE: Thank you Good Sir, nobody has ever called me hilarious before…

All right, that’ll do it for today.

Fun fact:

The upcoming October “Email Players” issue will go in-depth about the marketing incels like the magnificent troll above, and dig deep into their psychosis and the ways to benefit from them in business (beyond just profiting from trollery like I usually teach about them), including examining the adventures of an extremely successful author and blogger who has far more experience dealing with them than I probably ever will.

Until then?

Here is the link to learn more about the newsletter:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle