A website subscriber asks:<\/p>\n
(About the John Caples email last week)<\/p>\n
“How do you know the Caples ad was unethical? Do you know, for a fact, that the course didn’t produce the promised results?”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Why, yes, I do.<\/p>\n
It breaks down like this:<\/p>\n
How could the ad’s narrator have gotten the promised results if he didn’t actually exist in the first place?<\/p>\n
And how do I know he didn’t exist?<\/p>\n
Simple:<\/p>\n
Because any copywriter with half a brain (and Caples was a genius copywriter) would have signed<\/span> the narrator’s name as a testimonial showing it was a real person.<\/p>\n
Even the noobest of noobs would.<\/p>\n
But, he didn’t.<\/p>\n
Because it was a fake person.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, lots of ads did that back in day.<\/p>\n
Like the 1919 classic ad:<\/p>\n
“Here’s an Extra $50, Grace — I’m making real money now!”<\/strong><\/p>\n
So I ain’t picking on Caples.<\/p>\n
I’m simply saying don’t write your sales letters using fictional people saying they used your product to get specific results. (Especially if you’re in the health or financial markets — I’m no law dawg, but I’d bet green money the FTC would be on you like white on rice…)<\/p>\n
But let not this discourage you.<\/p>\n
There are many other ways to use stories.<\/p>\n
More ethical ways.<\/p>\n
And, yes, more profitable ways.<\/p>\n
The next “Email Players” issue touches on the power of honest writing (not specifically about storytelling, in another way) with a lesson from a blogger whose audience regularly grows by tens of thousands of monthly readers simply by writing honestly and bluntly and not screwing around with the truth.<\/p>\n
It’s a short teaching.<\/p>\n
And it takes balls to do.<\/p>\n
But, it’s one helluva a powerful email principle.<\/p>\n
Subscription info here:<\/p>\n