The secret is there are no secrets

A true story for the email marketing archives: One of my all-time favorite wineries is in The Burgle (Roseburg, OR — the bung hole of the universe, imo) called Hillcrest. Stefania & I were just there a couple weeks ago. It’s owned by an extremely talented winemaker named Dyson Paul who makes the best wine in the state. And once, he explained to me why his wines are so good compared to many others. Like, for example: + How he does everything old school still (doesn’t stray from the fundamentals). + How he’s a student not just of wine, but of grapes (knows the history of his industry). + How he often still travels to Europe to study the old masters (always learning, looking for one idea, insight, tip, strategy that can make him better each day). + He also said something I have never forgotten: “The trick is there are no tricks” Yes, he was talking about making wine. But, it’s just as true for writing sales copy & marketing. Case in point: Back in the 1960’s a brilliant marketing teacher named Ed Mayer talked about the 40/40/20 formula. This simply means 40% of the “battle” in direct marketing is your list, 40% of the battle is your offer, and only 20% of the battle is the copywriting/creative (sales letters, VSL, emails, whatever it is). Personally, I would say it's more 50/30/20 nowadays. Maybe even more like 70/20/10 with today’s community-building/status-creation potential. But that’s just my opinion and takes nothing away from his point. What’s important is the list. List is the equivalent of soil when making wine. I’ve talked to many, many winemakers. Some of the best in Oregon and California especially. And they ALL say the same thing: The soil is what makes or breaks the wine. Yes, skill, knowledge, passion, grapes, climate, etc are all important. But the soil is absolutely key. Way it's been explained to me is, without good soil you can be the best, most talented, highest regarded wine maker on the planet and still not produce very good wine. Or, you could have exceptional soil, and still do a decent job even if you’re still somewhat amateur at the craft. So it goes in marketing: The list is like soil and is key. If you have a responsive list of people who like you, want to buy from you, look forward to reading, clicking, & buying from your emails/offers, etc, you don’t have to be the best copywriter. You can, frankly, be a sucky writer who can barely string sentences together, and still probably do pretty well. A strong list forgives a lot of marketing & copywriting sins. The reason: Such a list gets you strong engagement. Strong engagement gets you strong response & sales. And, yes, strong engagement can absolutely get you lots more emails delivered to inboxes at Gmail, Yahoo, HotMail, and all the various inbox services & ISP’s… even if you’re not the world’s greatest writer, with the greatest copy, with even that great of a track record or “brand” or whatever. I’m not saying those things aren’t important. But they pale in comparison to the quality of your list. Enter our new Email Down ’n Delivery course. It’s primarily about how to get more of your emails into Gmail’s primary tab, and the primary inboxes of all the other big email services. But in order to do that, you gotta know how to get engagement. And in order to get engagement you gotta help give those services and your list what they want. That’s where I believe our course shines. As I’ve said: Neither my biz partner (who co-created the course with me) Troy Broussard or I call ourselves “email deliverability experts.” And we sure as hells don’t claim to get 100% inbox or primary tab delivery. I end up in spam and promotions sometimes like everyone else. Just not as much from what I have seen. And, as I teach in the course, even when I do, I still can get engagement. But, our track records at getting superior inbox deliverability speak for themselves. For example: * Our BerserkerMail platform helps get our clients superior inbox deliverability and it is heavily created around some of the info inside the course. (One reason we are launching the course so cheaply— when we could easily charge $100’s for it this week, is because we believe the more businesses who buy, consume, use, see the results of what we teach inside will be far more likely to want to use BerserkerMail…) * Troy back in his email automation specialist days used to split test 10’s of millions of emails per MONTH and saw what works, and what doesn’t, in real time, black & white, using the actual Scientific Method (from his training to be a Navy Nuclear Engineer) — unlike the wannabe Walter Whites nattering on about the subject who come to their conclusions (as Troy says in the course): “from purely unscientific observations, based on very short time frames & statistically irrelevant data.” * I send the most volume of emails on our BerserkerMail platform and still, according to our Chief Architect Pedro, get the highest overall delivery (may or may not mean inbox, to be clear, just talking delivery) — which, according to some of our contacts at the Enterprise sender we use (that many other EPS’s also use) just does not happen. * I have gotten many testimonials over the years about how I am constantly in the inbox vs promotions or junk including from a guy (we put his testimonial on the sales letter for proof of this) who said I kept showing in his primary tab even though he was manually dragging me to the promotions. * Not to mention Troy’s experience as the Executive Director of Technology for Encyclopedia Britannica, where he ran a $12 million department of IT developers & engineers (knowing firsthand how platform builders and those who write algorithms “think”)… and then used that knowledge to help build a multi-million dollar SEO company to learn what really (not theoretically) makes Google happy to send traffic (i.e., help him get engagement, which then begets more engagement…) * And the list goes on. Whatever the case: You either want to learn more about this from us or you don’t. If you do, and if you want this course for a mere $20 you can do so for a little longer. The deadline to get it is Friday, 9/8 at midnight EDT. Here’s the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/deliver]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA