A few weeks ago, I opted in on a website for an ebook on buying a sailboat.
I can’t sail, by the way. The only time I’ve ever been on a sailboat was a one-hour episode on a dinghy in Tel Aviv… which ended with my friend and me running the boat onto a crowded beach.
But back to marketing:
I opted in. I then got an email with the ebook. The content was fun, well-researched, and informative. I was ready for more.
But more never came. Until two weeks later, when a second email arrived.
By that point, my sailboat-buying forest fire had cooled to a well-controlled stovetop flame. I couldn’t even remember the sender’s name any more. I barely skimmed the second email and didn’t click any of the links.
You see my point.
In the strange world of direct response marketing, perhaps the strangest thing is the value of recency.
The more recently somebody expressed interest in something, the better a prospect they make. So far, that might make sense.
But where it gets strange is this holds even when somebody just bought.
So for example, had I bought a book on getting a first sailboat… that would actually be the ideal time to offer me a second book, on pretty much the same topic.
Maybe this seems strange because marketing has been a male-dominated world. On some Freudian level, maybe we men compare it to our own experiences of satisfaction in another field. Because the male orgasm leaves its owner sated, at least for a while.
But it seems to me a completed sale is more like a female orgasm. From what I’ve seen in my limited sexual experience, that event makes its owner immediately eager for more of the same.
Maybe this is something to keep in mind if you’re scheduling your followup campaign. It might require getting out of your own head a bit.
To help you out, here’s a related, somewhat politically incorrect quote from an ancient book I’m reading:
“I have again and again heard ladies, who come to visit us, say that all other delights in the world are but toys in comparison with that which a woman enjoyeth, whenas she hath to do with a man. […] I have heard say that one cock sufficeth unto half a score hens, but that half a score men can ill or hardly satisfy one woman.”
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