A few days ago, I sent out an email trying to sell you the idea that much of the sale happens after the transaction is over. And I asked, how can you keep a customer selling himself on your offer, even after he’s bought it?
I got lots of interesting responses. One business owner, who asked to remain unnamed, wrote in with the following:
We plant a tree for each subscriber every month.
Each week we remind the subscriber of how many trees they’ve planted via their subscription.
The idea being that their subscription is making an ongoing difference by employing locals in areas affected by deforestation.
If they unsubscribe now there will be consequences for others.
This actually sounds kinda awful…
I don’t know about awful… I just thought it was wonderfully guilt-trippy. It also happens to be the exact flip-side of one way I’ve used to inspire people to buy, which is to say that their self-interested drive for success will have beneficial wider consequences.
That idea, about beneficial wider consequences, is one of 7 ways to inspire that I wrote up in an email long ago.
This was in the early days of my newsletter, when I stupidly and shamelessly whole-hogged how-to advice in my emails. The only thing I can say in my defense is that with this particular inspiration email, I at least camouflaged the how-to in with some infotainment (I matched up each how-to-motivate strategy with a pop song).
Anyways, I bring all this up for two reasons:
1. I realized that each of my 7 ways to motivate people to buy can be flipped to motivate people to stay sold. I just gave you one example above of how that works. But with the smallest bit of thought, all the other 6 ways can be flipped in such a way as well.
2. If I were a little smarter, like Ben Settle for example, I would take my “7 ways to inspire” email off my site, flesh it out a bit, and sell it for $97 as part of a paid newsletter.
It turns out I’m not very smart. But maybe I will get smarter one day, maybe one day soon.
As it is, you can still read that inspiration email for free, on my site, at the link below. And who knows. Maybe you can even take one of those ideas, use it to inspire some customers to take action today, and benefit them while also making money for yourself. Or flip that idea, and keep those wayward sheep from making a big mistake and straying from your flock.
In any case, here’s the link:
https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/