Came a question earlier this week:<\/p>\n
Dear Ben<\/strong><\/p>\n
Greetings and felicitations!<\/strong><\/p>\n
I’m curious as to why you don’t use a salutation in your (irreverent, often entertaining but, honestly, can be a wee bit misogynistic) email missives?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Surely a little, “Dear Friend” or “Dear Aspiring Email Copywriting Supremo”, or even a casual “Howdy” or “Hey there!” wouldn’t go amiss?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Gosh, you know, it’s even possible these days to <insert first name here>. Amazing!<\/strong><\/p>\n
Personal and engaging is good, no?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Or perhaps, against prevailing wisdom, it makes not one jot of difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Love to hear your views.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Survey says:<\/p>\n
I get more opt ins by not collecting first names.<\/p>\n
And, yes, if you know what you\u2019re doing, including or not including it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.<\/p>\n
But, you know what?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t get surprised by questions like this.<\/p>\n
Most copywriters and marketers live in \u201ctactical\u201d world, and don\u2019t understand (nor have ever been taught, so it\u2019s not their fault) the concept of principle-based marketing and copywriting vs tactic-based. That\u2019s why they focus on things like salutations and open loops (nothing will give a goo-roo fanboy a chubby faster than seeing an open loop in an email) or whatever, instead of just working at being a more engaging, personality-driven writer.<\/p>\n
More:<\/p>\n
As for any precious little snowflake who needs to be greeted with a salutation?<\/p>\n
Or who takes my chick jokes literally and not as entertainment?<\/p>\n
Or who needs political correctness?<\/p>\n
They can go piss off back to their safe place.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t want \u2018em around here.<\/p>\n
Back to tactical vs principle selling\/marketing:<\/p>\n
The January \u201cEmail Players\u201d issue goes into a lot more detail about this, including a real-life example showing what I mean by this and just how much of a difference it will make in anyone\u2019s sales, in any kind of format.<\/p>\n
(Email, video, face to face sales, whatever you do.)<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where to subscribe to get it:<\/p>\n