Many years ago (2016) The esteemed Email Players subscriber and man I have deemed as the âUmpire Of Direct Marketingâ himself Brian Kurtz sent the folks at AWAI the following bit when they were promoting that yearâs bootcamp we both spoke at: === When anyone asks me who is the one person to learn how to write e-mails that get opened and responded to, itâs Ben Settle. Ben is the gold standardâ¦a superb copywriter with an exceptional giftâ¦and he is both a wonderful teacher and implementer. In a world of self-promoters and people who constantly tell you how good they are at whatever they seem to be good at, Ben is the antitheses of thatâ¦he mostly stays home and simply produces e-mail that consistently delivers as both content and promotionâ¦and frankly, heâs so skilled at it, you rarely know which he is doing since he is always doing both. === I'm pretty good at combining content and promotion. But alas, I am not at-all the âKingâ of this skill. Itâs something I learned over many years from someone I write about in great detail inside the May Email Players issue who is, hands down, the King of this skill - and of creating all kinds of content and selling it from books, courses, & bootcamp trainings⦠to sales letters, ads, & promos (I study his precisely for this skill)⦠to lead gen, content marketing, public speaking, and just about every other kind of marketing you can imagine. Combing content with promotion is everything. When someone is both being educated and sold thatâs an irresistible combo. Most only do one or the other, or too much of one or the other. But the King of this skill has a pitch-perfect feel for just the right amount. And at just the right time. In just the right way. Who is this King of combining content with promotion? Well, I suspect many reading this can guess. Although, many who think they know who I am talking about will guess wrong. But guess right or guess wrong: I include a long, detailed bit inside the May Email Players issue showing you a very detailed case study of exactly what this master of combining content with promotion does, and specifically how he did it in one of his best selling books many years ago that one of his students examined, extracted, and then put in writing â and then gave your humble daily email horror host permission to share with my righteous Horde (which I do, right inside the issue). This is a skill Iâve been learning since getting in this game. And I am still a student of it like anyone else. And the better I get at it, and the more I do it, and the more aggressive I get with doing it in all my content (emails to ads to newsletters to books to podcasts to video to even my fiction and everything else I use in my marketing endeavors) the more sales my business makes, the more happy customers I acquire, and the more my business grows as a result. In some ways itâs the single most valuable content creation lesson I ever read. And I canât wait to see how my boys & ghouls start applying it. The caveat: You have to be subscribed by tonightâs deadline to partake. When I send the list in, thatâll be it. Too late. So if you want in, I donât recommend procrastinating. Not on this: [httpsâ¶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle P.S. Hereâs a âsneak previewâ of whatâs waiting for you inside the May issue: * An âoff the cuffâ comment the great Matt Furey made on a Zoom call (while we showed him BerserkerMail) that is probably the single most valuable content monetization lesson Iâve heard (and used) in the past 10 years. (He talked about everything from publishing, email, & health⦠to Bigfoot, aliens, &, yes⦠flat earth⦠but this âthrowawayâ comment he made about jump ropes was something I wrote down, have been thinking about, and have since doubled down on using to move probably even more offers than I normally would have.) * How the worldâs greatest living copywriter used ordinary steak knives to sell a small fortune in subscription offers. (He wasnât selling âcontentâ necessarily â but I have been using this ditty for nearly 20 years since hearing him teach it to sell all kinds of content-related offers. I suspect nearly anyone else in business can, too.) * The Marvel Cinematic Universe secret to selling people on wanting to buy your content literally months (possibly even years) in advance â including before youâve even created or talked about it! (I noticed Marvel started doing this with its first Thor movie, and itâs been a free education in content offer launches since. Their movies may not be great, but their way of selling irrefutably is.) * A skeevy trick used by the crooked Chicago Democratic Machine for the past 60+ years that legit businesses can use to help make more profits that you can (legally & ethically â no corruption necessary) when monetizing your own content. * One of the âmost publishedâ writers on the planetâs bonafide creativity hack for tricking your brain into coming up with ridiculously profitable ideas for all kinds of content (books, courses, videos, audio, anything, really) you want to create. (Iâm not usually a big fan of hacks â but even I admit this is one of the most cunning ways Iâve ever seen to create everything from subject lines and headlines to stories to lessons, newsletter issues, courses, and everything in between.) * The exact best time to create content to sell, use as premiums or teachings, for coaching, or probably anything else. (I learned this clever trick from my uncle â a very successful Amway distributor back in the day â and itâs made the content-creation & monetization side of my business both a whole lot more profitable and also a whole lot less stressful.) * A âhail Mary passâ way of using content youâve created to potentially make more sales in a week than most businesses do in a year. (The downside is you can only break the glass and use this probably one time, so make sure you do it when it counts.) * A little known (inspired by something an old school Marvel Comics editor in chiefâs once did) secret for creating bonuses & premiums that can help sell lots more of your other offers â and often without doing any hard pitching in your content or pissing anyone off. (Bonus: doing this can also help make it more likely your customers will be more successful with those offers, use those offers, refer others to those offers, give testimonials for those offers, want more of those offers, and the list goes on. A powerful tip indeed.) * A non-cringey way for using name-dropping in your content to help make it more likely to be consumed, taken seriously, and even back end sell your other offers. (This goes way beyond content creation and delves into what I teach about World & Marketing Universe-building as well⦠to help make it more likely customers want to enter your domain and not want to leave. Iâve been using this trick for years, and am finally now teaching it in Email Players.) * Clever ways to use âLoreâ to help give your business top-of-mind Status amongst your market, customers, & clients. (This also delves into World & Marketing Universe-building as I teach it. And it can also help add depth to the info you teach, create a âmystiqueâ about your content, and potentially make that content inherently more valuable as a result.) * How one of the most prolific writers in history shrewdly used âdangling plot linesâ to keep people reading, engaging with, and, yes⦠buying his content for literally decades⦠and how to adapt what he did to your own content. * Why the value you create in your content is bull shyt and what is far more useful and beneficial to your customers & clients. (The âgive valueâ shtick was always an illusion used and pushed mostly by people who canât sell⦠and has done far more harm than good. Inside I show you what can work far better while helping make you look like a hero to your audience instead.) * The psychology behind how to combine content with promotion in such a way where customers & clients will probably have no idea they are even being pitched and might even thank you for selling to them after. (Combining content with promotion is like a lost art in 2024 â and hardly anyone does it much less can teach it. But the May issue shows you in great detail how this can work and what it can look like straight from one of the most prolific and profitable content creators who ever lived.) * 18 ways for creating content that can give you such a rush of ideas you might even have to quite your brain just for some peace! (These 18 ways are basically like a âsequelâ to my best-selling Breakneck Content book âdelivered in rapid-fire style inside, and that I use myself to pound out more content in a month than most content creators probably do in a year.) Thereâs more. It is, after all, a King-Sized issue (32 pages vs the usual 20). But that should give you an idea of what to expect. To subscribe by the looming deadline go here: [httpsâ¶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 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