Over the past two days, I got on my white lab coat, protective goggles, and elbow-high rubber gloves and ran a little experiment.
I wanted to see which mix of persuasive elements could create the most explosive reaction.
Except, I really have no scientific training. And so my experiment was poorly designed and very possibly dangerous. It went like this:
I sent out two emails with a link promoting the same book on Amazon.
But the link was not an affiliate link, so sales were not tracked.
To make things worse, the emails went out on two consecutive days, to my entire list, instead of at the same time, to different segments of my list.
Maybe the first day’s emails would eat up all the easy sales. Or maybe the second day’s emails would seem to sell all the people who were won over by the first email, but just didn’t buy immediately.
But let’s ignore all that for just a sec. And let me tell you my dramatic results.
Again, while I don’t have actual sales numbers for these emails, I do have personal replies people sent me. Among the replies to the first email, only one referenced the book I was promoting:
“I definitely didn’t buy it and I’m not excited to read it at all”
In case you missed it, the key words seem to be, “I definitely didn’t buy it.” For whatever reason, there seemed to be zero explosive reaction to my first email.
“What could be missing?” I asked myself as I paced up and down my lab late into the night.
Fortunately, just as I was about to give up and admit defeat, my lab mouse, Gulliver, who is allowed to run free around the lab after 9pm, knocked a book off the lab’s three-foot “Persuasive Classics” bookshelf.
The book fell off the shelf, hit me on the head, and landed right at my feet. I picked it up. It was opened to just the following passage:
“This raises the worrisome possibility that especially clever individuals holding a weak or unpopular position can get us to agree with that position by arranging to have their message restricted. The irony is that for such people — authors of daily email newsletters for example — the most effective strategy may not be to publicize their unpopular views, but to get those views officially censored and then to publicize their censorship.”
I stared at the page for a few moments. “Too bad,” I said. “I had hoped I would at least get a good idea when this book hit me on the head. But I got nothing. Maybe next time.”
Suddenly I heard Gulliver squeaking up on the shelf. He was gesticulating wildly and trying to tell me something in his mouse-like way.
A light bulb went off in my head. I knew what was missing!
I ran to my work desk, and furiously wrote up a second email, featuring the missing catalyst – the fact that the book I was promoting was restricted from the Amazon affiliate program.
Result?
A +infinity% increase in explosive power! That is to say, I got three (3) people writing in to tell me they bought the book.
Look, I know three is not a lot. But who knows how many bought the book and didn’t write in to tell me so? Probably millions. In any case 3/0 is still technically infinity, and infinity sounds way better than saying I made three sales.
But maybe you dismiss these findings, or the validity of my experiment.
If so, that’s your loss.
Because there are other hungry marketers on my list who will take this info and use it to create sales explosions.
Many of them probably have that same classic of persuasion sitting up on their bookshelves. And they can just open it up to chapter 7 to find out the specific conditions in which the above persuasive catalyst works best, and which extra catalysts make it even more powerful.
And others hungry marketers on my list, who don’t have this book yet, will be sure to click below and get a copy of their own.
As for you you? Well, if you don’t click on the link below, then write in and let me know what you decide to do.