Positive thinking marketers have skinny kids

An Email Players subscriber working for a start up app (a dating app) asks: (name left out because I am not sure he wants me identifying him) === ...it’s a faceless brand. So can’t tell personal stories. I have three questions: 1) I notice the majority of your emails are centered around personal experiences. In my case, would you simply write the majority of emails using stories from others as email fodder (ie. current events, Reddit stories, significant past events)? And what theme would you use the most? 2) I think an important detail is that the voice of the brand is always positive, uncontroversial, and inoffensive. And considering that most news that is “top of mind” these days is the opposite, how would you go about using them as email fodder? 3) For email themes like “checklist” and “baiting the hook”, what would you use for content when selling something like an app which is not an info product? What I’m currently doing is talking about what makes a good friend, a list of things to do around town, socializing tips, etc. === A timely question. Especially since everyone and their mother thinks they are a startup founder that will be have a multi-million dollar exit, or else (like my subscriber above) works for a client like that. My advice? First, rethink the whole positive thing. To shamelessly paraphrase Zig Ziglar: Positive thinking marketers have skinny kids. Nobody is going to buy positive, feel-good marketing for this. You’re new, unknown, and there’s literally no reason to use you other than you exist. People get hung up about being negative, but negative is what sells. If it didn’t social media review-based platforms, and any other platform that thrives on conflict would collapse tomorrow. Why? Because negative is dramatic and often inherently entertaining. You also can’t accentuate a problem without wrenching on the negative. That does not mean being Eeyore about it or become a black pilled doom saying troll. But you gotta at least talk about the problem, and rub salt in that wound on a preferably daily basis so they can’t “un-see” it, and start associating your client as the business that will solve that problem if you want someone to connect with you and look to you for a solution. This is why “giving value!” in form of just free tips or whatever doesn’t work as well as selling. Selling is more about being as specific and graphic about the problem as you can, and then intentionally ambiguous about the solution — and thus drawing the buyer in, not trying to “white knight” them in. So that’s the first bit of advice I gave him. The second two things I told him I reprinted and blew up (much more detail) inside the January Email Players issues. Including: How even a brand spanking new startup can stand out like a MAGA hat at Burning Man… especially when competing against competitors (and there are many in all industries) that already have a presence, user base, happy testimonials rolling in, and are well-known, safer to buy from, and far more likely to be trusted than some lowly startup. I also give advice on what to do if someone is scared to be controversial. I get most don’t want to engage in that (my biz partner in BerserkerMail doesn’t like it either — so he leaves it to me). And I fully realize why nobody wants to be offensive in today’s mush cookie & sob sister-dominated marketplace, where everyone is offended when literally anything happens in the world. But I got advice for how to get around that and still have impact and get engagement. I also go into the fallacy of thinking one’s business is “different.” I can assure you, whatever you sell ain’t different. Finally: I talk about the approach and attitude to have towards clients to help them, help you, help both of yourselves. The customer (or client) is NEVER right, and is always wrong. That is why they are hiring you or buying your solution. If they were right, they wouldn’t need to and just figure things out for themselves. But we live in a time where every customer and client is used to having their butt smooched. But my advice is to go the opposite way. And I explain one way to go about that too. That’s just one tiny part of what I got cooking up in the January issue which is triple+ sized to celebrate the newsletter’s 150th issue BENanza event. Another thing I am doing to celebrate it is I am including a copy of my new: “Email Players Annual #2: Mad Men Copywriting Secrets” You can read more about this puppy in the P.S. below. To subscribe today, while there’s still a little time left, go here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle P.S. About the Email Players Annual #2 bonus: This oversized (literally — in both size and page count) Annual issue I am including with January’s issue exists outside the normal continuity of the newsletter. And it teaches some cool stuff I’ve learned studying the old masters that have practically be all but forgotten about today. (NOTE: it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the TV show “Mad Men”, which I found extremely boring and overrated — it’s about advertising methods used by the actual Mad Men of the 60’s.) * The sneaky headline trick old school copywriters used to pre-test ads without spending a single dime. * Cunning advice (straight from a private, internal memo at the Leo Burnett agency back in the day) about how to trick egotistical clients (for their own good, of course) into running your sales copy “as-is.” (Old school screenwriters basically did the same thing to get scripts approved, today it’s practically a forgotten trick of the writing trade.) * A powerful Mad Men secret to making your business mysteriously attractive that can be like “catnip” to high-paying clients and others you wish to sell to or influence. * The World-Building technique all the Mad Men agency owners (the ones whose names are still on their companies today long after their deaths) used to position themselves as “the” agency to hire — with certain clients practically magnetically attracted to them, and probably even only them, and likely wanting nothing to do with anyone else. * How to exploit a dangling piece of psychological “wiring” in every human being’s brain to help make your emails and other marketing extremely hard to ignore and a whole lot more engaging. * A sneaky way to adapt Ogilvy’s enormously successful “Man In The Hathaway Shirt” ad from the 1950s into a high converting opt-in pages for your business today. * How the late Mad Man Leo Burnett would address a room of stuck up and snobby vice presidents of giant corporations to keep their egos in check and “prep” them for what he expected of them as clients. * How an old school phone salesman and high school dropout was able to ethically & legally out-negotiate & out-maneuver a room full of high-falutin’, and super educated and wealthy lawyers hired by a bank to get what he wanted. (Nothing directly to do with Mad Men — but what this phone salesman did is something that was quite common for people in the know to do back in the day to get what they wanted in contracts and deals.) * A clever way that certain bashful Mad Men copywriters used their shyness to help create far more powerful advertising. * A (admittedly bizarre sounding to most marketers today) advertising sales trick that David Ogilvy learned from a furniture salesman for turning a product’s flaws into reasons to buy. (Including tips for exactly how to turn high fees, bad reviews, and even slow service into reasons to buy.) * How David Ogilvy used good, old fashioned trolling (he was a world-class troll) to help get compliance and engagement from everyone from heads of corporations during high-pressure negotiations to his own wife in the kitchen. * A ridiculously effective door-to-door salesman technique (that, believe it or not, works even better on Facebook today, I have found) that can help you create headlines, offers, emails, and other marketing that can just seep right into the psychology and souls of your leads and customers, giving them almost no choice but to want to buy what you’re selling! (Does that sound almost like hype? Maybe so. But realize this: it was not uncommon for this technique to works so well it’d sometimes set record for product recalls for weak products.) * Just how brutal and soul-crushing old school Man Men were in their advertising campaign critiques. (One of the most respected copywriters of the day and creator of the famous Pillsbury Doughboy — Rudy Perz — said they’d make him feel like a “martyr”, and the creative director and original Marlboro Man model — Andy Armstrong — once literally suffered a nervous breakdown over one of these brutal critiques, if that tells you something.) * The little-known way the Leo Burnett Agency created such memorable and influential cartoon characters that helped sell truckloads of the products they promoted * The 7-word advertising principle that helped build one of the biggest and most respected ad agencies in human history. (And that is still around today almost 100 years later, while most have long-since floundered.) * Why fire-breathing atheist David Ogilvy was such a big fan of the Catholic Church. (Nothing really to do with copywriting or marketing, but his reasoning could be useful to anyone who runs teams or has lots of employees.) * The Mad Men attitude (almost non-existent today) that can help freelancers, coaches, consultants, and other businesses go from begging to business to having so many new leads practically begging to hire you you might even need a waiting list. (Best part: you don’t even have to be that great at what you do or, for that matter, “do” anything different — this is just a make a simple mindset shift in the way you approach your business.) * David Ogilvy’s bizarre email list-building secret (created back in the 1950’s — long before the invention of commercial email) that can also make your business stand out in an overcrowded marketplace and increase your sales. * A shrewd insurance selling method (that smart radio and magazine advertisers forced their customers to do since it worked so well) that can help drive your email response through the roof. * How an “honorary” Mad Man copywriter (who was a NYC public employee and not an ad man at all) used ANTI-direct response slogans to help create some of the most profitable and memorable advertising every penned by the hand of mortal man. (And yes, what he did can be used to write all kinds of profitable headlines, subject lines, bullets, and any other kind of direct response sales copy.) * A one-on-one interview with a “for real” Mad Man! In fact, the TV show producers even consulted this guy due to him being in the thick of the agency business back then, and who was involved with campaigns like The Marlboro Man, Fly the Friendly Skies, & industry-famous campaigns for Gallo Winery, Proctor & Gamble, Colgate, Vicks, Chanel, Max Factor, Philip Morris, and the list goes on. This interview is a rare look into the psychology behind how these guys worked. How they thought. And, yes, how they made lots of money for their clients and themselves. Here’s the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 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