Ben Settle

A few months ago, a would-be BerserkerMail client said he decided not to use our platform because his marketing manager insisted they use something more “mainstream.”

That sounded like a guy asking his wife before making a business decision.

And it’s doubtful we can help guys like that either way, so was for the best.

But it got me thinking, if BerserkerMail was “mainstream” it would almost certainly…

* have managers who care more about getting your pronouns right than building a stable platform that helps make your business more sales

* be more proud to feature podcast episodes about DEI, with guests who look like they should not be allowed within 1000 feet of a public school, instead of episodes about how to make more sales with email

* keep raising prices even while taking on $100s of millions in loans, investors, series C funding

* charge for a laundry list of pointless features you’ll never use, and then brag about them with a list comparing ourselves to all the other mainstream platforms

* encourage you not to mail often because it’s expensive and takes away from the owner’s piggy banks

* cater to mommy bloggers who think they need to plaster their emails with graphics, pretty borders, and a dozen different links in each email

* create features around what’s more convenient for the development team instead of what’s most convenient for the clients

* have a ‘free’ option that gets shyt deliverability to turn on the email marketing proles who don’t know any better

* have support run by people who have never sent commercial emails to their own lists selling their own offers in their entire lives… and just stack & reply to tickets with copy & paste answers

* give nonsensical advice about “gaming” Gmail for more engagement instead of encouraging businesses to write better emails people want to engage with

* tell you to focus on open rates instead of sales

* chase and appease price shoppers instead of value shoppers

And so it goes.

We’re definitely not mainstream.

And, in fact, will just continue to do the exact opposite of mainstream.

The same can be said for the paid Email Players newsletter. I’ve been publishing it for almost 15 years, and the reason for its longevity ain’t my sparkling personality. It’s because the info goes so much against mainstream email, copywriting, and direct response marketing nonsense that all just majors in the minors about things that don’t matter, celebrates goofy tricks, and gives milk but no real meat.

To learn more about Email Players go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Since it’s election day here in the US, below’s my most recent Oregon Eagle article titled:

“Persuasion Secrets of America’s Most Revered & Reviled Presidents”

If you own a business and want to have more influence over your customers, then these extraordinarily persuasive Presidents can show you how:

GEORGE WASHINGTON — Nothing attracts customers like having a Mission. And Washington pursued his against all odds and at great risk to his life. I doubt one in a million Americans understands the hair-raising odds stacked against him living to even see the Revolutionary War much less surviving it and then keeping the Republic together. I’d argue it was because he believed in his Mission so strongly he considered it divine providence. And a businessman with a Mission like that automatically inspires people to take action — including wanting to buy.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT — His “Bruce Wayne”-like backstory is universally persuasive. He started as a weak, sick man, moved to the wilderness, then came back a superhero. It’s the essence of a lot of great advertising and worthy of study.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT — FDR knew if you don’t have what you need to make the sale, you manufacture it. Take, for example, packing the courts to pass his unpopular agenda. Businesses can do the same thing. Product boring? Make it exciting. Offer weak? Create incentives to make it more appealing. Pack your offers like FDR packed the courts and you can’t lose.

JOHN F. KENNEDY — He’d have cleaned up on social media with his charisma. In fact, many experts say he’d have lost his debate with Nixon had it not been televised. He also oozed inspiration with big ideas and vision. These are attributes that can make any businessman more persuasive.

RONALD REAGAN — Called “The Great Communicator” despite his infamous gaffes due to his entertaining way of selling his ideas to the public. He also projected strength which inspired loyalty, and was the master of what great negotiators refer to as “un-okay.” People are comfortable with humanity. And nothing demonstrates humanity more than being imperfect.

BILL CLINTON — Friends and foes alike say he comes off as the most empathetic guy in the room. Real or fake (i.e., sociopaths), empathy is a nuclear bomb-like weapon of influence. In fact, his powers of influence were so potent he sailed right past #metoo unscathed despite his guilt.

BARACK OBAMA — He had tight message-to-market match game, which means having the right message, to the ideal prospect, at the exact time they want to buy. Women fainted at his rallies without him saying anything substantive, and his email fundraising team alone raked in over $600,000,000 in donations.

DONALD TRUMP — He also had incredible message-to-market match game, plus he’s almost supernaturally polarizing. He is hated and loved, mocked and revered… but never ignored. He doesn’t just make the news, he IS the news, with the media giving him all the free air time (i.e., free advertising) he wants. He is what I refer to as a “platform unto himself” — who cannot really be “cancelled”, and only grows stronger the more he’s attacked, vilified, or prosecuted. His powers of persuasion go beyond mean tweets and sound bytes and are something else entirely.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. And no… “likes” got nothing to do with it. I despise half of these presidents myself. But that doesn’t stop me from profiting from them. And unless you hate money, it won’t stop you either.

An inquiring affiliate marketing mind wants to know:

“If you’re willing to indulge me, why DON’T you have affiliate offers… considering you regularly sell them yourself? I imagine plenty of people would love to promote you if they could get a cut.”

The list of reasons is long but distinguished.

And while my other companies (Learnistic/BerserkerMail & Low Stress Trading) do have offers affiliates can sell… it is true I do not allow affiliates to sell my books or newsletter and very likely never will. And the reason I probably never will has to do with all kinds of reasons, like, for instance:

* Physical products are an absolute pain in the arse to sell via affiliates.

* FTC rules mean me having to “police” what affiliates say, and I don’t have the time or inclination to do that.

* Nexus rules about sales tax that might come into play — at the very least I would forbid anyone living in the Socialist Republics of California, New York, Illinois, or New Jersey from having anything to do with selling any of my offers.

* I am an awful money manager and don’t want to deal with paying affiliates.

* Most important of all…

I preach to the already-initiated, and not the uninitiated in my advertising. And because of that, my sales letters do not appeal to. and my offers are not-at-all suitable for, anyone not already on my list, sold “on” me, and who does not know me or is at least somewhat familiar with how I operate, think, and do things.

For those and many other reasons it has zero appeal to me.

And no, I don’t care about the money left on the table.

Not everything is about money.

I value my time, energy, and emotional bandwidth a helluva lot more than I value money, because without those precious assets, money would mean very little to me. And, ironically, I would have much less of it anyway as a result. Something a lot of businesses who do the solo thing find out the hard way, as they spin wheels and burn out thinking everything is about “response.”

I have, however, been toying with the idea of licensing for years.

I even wrote about my plan for it in my elBenbo Press book.

And eventually I will probably do that sort of thing.

In fact, if/when I decide to semi retire by writing fiction by morning and trade options in the afternoon… I will probably only sell the Email Players newsletter anymore, and then just license my books to some businesses with gigantic lists and deep pockets who can better exploit them than I can, and let them do their thing with them.

Admittedly, I have no idea if/when I will ever do that.

I am simply typing my thoughts out loud here.

As for the offers I am associated with you can sell as an affiliate, they include:

* BerserkerMail

* Learnistic

* Low Stress Trading

Contact me personally if you want to sell them.

Although with Low Stress Trading you’ll have to be a client to sell it.

That’s all for today.

Ben Settle

I’m going to miss this election season.

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

For example:

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

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

But here is the transcript:

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

That ad is a beautiful example of what I call:

“Upstairs Trolling”

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

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

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

And the reason it works:

It’s a demonstration.

And a dramatic demonstration at that.

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

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

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

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another example:

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

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

Related to this:

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

And when that happens?

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

Instead, turn it into an email to sell something.

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

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

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

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

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

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

Trolling.

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

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

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

But nothing motivates like revenge.

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

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

Revenge is not a dish best served cold.

It’s a dish best served SOLD.

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

Just one of many benefits of email marketing.

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

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

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

Hi Ben,

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

Would you have any advice or recommendations for me?

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

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

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

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

My advice:

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

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

Many will come back void.

But sometimes one of those tentacles brings something back.

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

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

Now?

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

And you know what?

It’s much better that way..

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

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

More about the Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I recently finished reading a book called:

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

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

“Sociological Marketing”

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

If anything it is the exact, polar opposite.

In my case:

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

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

But I have never particularly cared what they think anyway.

So it is all good…

Back to Jobs:

The iPhone was purely Sociological Marketing.

In other words, zero formal market research.

No looking at any financial spreadsheets.

And avoiding data analysis, testing for demand, etc.

Instead, it was all created out of pure…

Frustration.

Specifically, Jobs said:

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

What was most ironic about this is:

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

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

Nor did we do any kind of market analysis.

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

So anyway, helluva book about Steve Jobs.

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

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

Something to keep in mind.

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

More info on that here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other words:

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

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

Well, guess what?

Same cycle is about to repeat.

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

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

The best time to build your list is yesterday.

The second best time is today.

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

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

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle