Once upon a time I heard the great sales trainer & speaker Barry Maher say:
“Your business, marketing consulting, or any other business, is kind of like sex. If you’re not enjoying it, you’re probably not doing it right.”
And it reminds me of all the anti-email naysayers popping up.
Over the last 10+ years especially, I have noticed a gaggle of commonalities amongst many of these email doom ’n gloomers. Commonalities I’d bet green money is why they not only have so many troubles using this wonderful 8th wonder of the world media to sell with, but also why they feel the urge to tell their audiences about why email is dying, spam complaints are choking the life out of their sales, low response rates are rampant, there’s blood in the streets for anyone dumb enough to use email…
Yada yada yada.
Below are some of the more obvious commonalities I’ve noticed about these types.
And, I suspect if these doomsayers focused on fixing the problems below, they’d not only fix their email response, but the other holes in their sinking marketing ships that always seem to be under construction.
Anyway, some of these commonalities include:
- They rarely mail their lists or only do it when they have something to launch, which — ironically — is almost certainly resulting in all the spam complaints they get, since their lists never hear from them, and legitimately probably do think their clever little copy is spam
- They don’t do things to get any kind of engagement, which is very likely because…
- They write boring emails full of lame lectures or 100% self-serving content nobody cares about
- They treat emails like static sales letters, when emails are not the same animals as sales letters and are anything but static
- They “sell the click” before selling the relationship
- They inject little or none of their own personalities into their emails, and instead sound like a low IQ clone of whatever goo-roo they are mindlessly copying
- They tend to use lame hacks & tricks to try to “game” people into clicking, engaging, and responding, instead of simply writing emails people want to engage with and respond to
- They care way too much about open rates
- They fear opt outs & pander to non-buyers
- They spend more time building a social media following & seeking the approval of an echo chamber rather than building an email list and writing emails that curate and make people think
Those are just a few of the common “threads” I see amongst the anti-email brigade.
No wonder they never get (figuratively) laid…
Do with this info what you want.
But if you want to posses the skill to write emails people want to read, want to engage with, and want to buy from… then my “Email Players” newsletter may be what Herr Doktor ordered.
Especially the February issue which goes to the printer in less than 48 hours.
It’s all about a tried-and-true “old faithful” way of using email to pump those sales numbers up.
And, do it in record time.
i.e. read issue, apply, watch your sales stats in “real time.”
But, only if you have a for-real business.
With a list (even if a small list).
And the ability to create some content people want to buy.
Of course, if you don’t have the above, there’s not much anyone else can do to help you either.
Whatever the case, here’s the link to subscribe while you still can:
Ben Settle
