6 ways to stir up (and blow up) curiosity

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Local business successfully employs curiosity

No time to dilly-dally today. Straight into the meat of this post, which is about how to create and amplify curiosity:

1 Use an open loop

I know of a fantastic way to stir up curiosity. It works particularly well with skeptical prospects, because it can be go completely under the radar.

But before I talk more about that, let me tell you about a guy named Andre Chaperon. Andre is famous in the copywriting world for a course called Autoresponder Madness, which teaches people how to write successful, story-based autoresponder sequences.

Some big Internet publishing companies, such as Mindvalley and Velocity House, have based much of their sales funnels on Andre’s teachings in Autoresponder Madness.

(Andre’s email methodology was the first I was exposed to when I started to learn about email marketing. I thought it was great then, and I think it’s great still — only surpassed, or rather complemented by,  the stuff that Ben Settle teaches.)

Anyways, one clever trick that Andre uses throughout his email copy, and that he teaches people in Autoresponder Madness, is called the “open loop.” You just saw an example of it four paragraphs back. It’s when you announce something intriguing, and then you completely drop it to talk about other things.

In my example above, the effect was probably not great, because you knew the suspense would be relieved after only a few paragraphs. But Andre frequently uses it across emails that will be sent days or even weeks apart.

Of course, the open loop is a standard technique in any story-telling medium. An extreme example is a cliffhanger in old comics or TV shows (more on this at the end of this post).

2 Tease/Intensify

Do you know why teasing is so great? It’s simply this: it will make your readers itch with curiosity, to the point where they’ll do anything to get the answer from you. And the thing about teasing is that it’s simple to do. Many people have used even without knowing anything about persuasion.

I’ll tell you all about how to do it, in just a second. Or maybe two. All right, here goes:

Teasing, by my definition, is simply dragging things out without actually giving anything away. The section above is one example.

You might find my teasing above annoying and transparent. But teasing can and should be part of good copy, both to build up anticipation and to “intensify” whatever is being talked about.

Here’s a less hokey example from my post yesterday:

But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above. My guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.

I’m not really giving anything away here. I’m just restating and intesifying the benefits, and buying a bit of time in the process.

3 Tighten the knowledge gap

Here’s a puzzle for you. Why would a headline such as:

“Battery technology may emerge as a trillion-dollar threat to credit markets”

stir up more curiosity than a headline such as:

“Battery technology may emerge as a huge threat to other sectors”

After all, the second headline actually withholds much more information (Which sectors? How huge?) than the first. Shouldn’t that cause more curiosity as well?

The answer to this lies in the concept of a “knowledge gap,” a term I first read in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. A knowledge gap is what ultimately creates curiosity — it’s the bit of knowledge we don’t have and we want to have so we can complete the picture.

The thing is, if the amount of information that’s withheld is too great, you don’t create curiosity. You create indifference. That’s what’s going on in the second headline above.

The way to create curiosity is to tighten the knowledge gap as much as possible without giving the farm away. Some well-known copywriter (Ben Settle? David Deutsch?) talked about good bullet points as giving away nine-tenths of what you need to know, but keeping that last bit so people have to buy your product to find out. That’s the right attitude to have with the knowledge gap.

Tightening the knowledge gap isn’t just about combatting general disinterest. It can also be used to hook skeptical, jaded prospects. Compare a subject line such as:

“The forbidden food you should be eating”

(which, by the way, is a real subject line from an email I got yesterday, and did not open) to a more specific subject line:

“The forbidden breakfast food you should be eating after workouts”

To me, it seems that the second subject line (which I just made up) might get me to wonder, “which breakfast food” and “why after workouts,” which might be enough to overcome my skepticism of reading yet another sensationalist health blog post.

4 Flaunt the velvet pouch

This blog post has run on longer than expected. And I’m getting sleepy. I’ll pick it all up tomorrow — starting with the secret of the velvet pouch.

“Until tomorrow — same time — same channel!”

The 7th pillar of influence

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Fair warning: the following post contains some sexual, politically incorrect references. It might offend some people.

It’s ok to click away. But if you insist on reading, here goes:

A hairy English man named Yad once shared the story of an out-of-body experience. It wasn’t his experience, actually. Rather, it was the girl he was with who had this strange thing happen to her.

Now in case you don’t know, Yad is one of the world’s great masters of stopping a girl on the street, in broad daylight, completely sober, to chat for a minute and ask for her phone number.

Well, most of the time, Yad asks for the number. Sometimes, he pushes it, and asks the girl on a mini-date right away.

That’s what happened in this case. Except, the mini-date went well, and turned into a maxi-date. In fact, even though they had just met on the street a few hours earlier, Yad and this girl wound up back home in the evening, and found themselves in bed together. And that’s when the out-of-body experience supposedly happened.

You see, the girl was amazed by Yad’s seemingly irresistable confidence at every step of the way, from approaching her on the street, to asking her out, to moving her from bar to bar, and now getting her naked and in bed.

She was wondering how much further this would go, and whether she was really willing to sleep with a guy she had just met on the street only hours earlier.

In the end, she said something like, “We were having sex, but at the same time I felt like I was just having this out-of-body experience, floating around above the bed, watching all this unfold and asking myself, ‘Who is this guy and how is he so relaxed about this whole thing?'”

Well, I’m not here to plug Yad or his pickup skills today. Instead, I want to talk about the 7th pillar of influence.

You might already know something about the first 6 pillars. They were identified and written up by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. These are the 6 golden rules that  persuaders of all stripes supposedly use — stuff like reciprocity, liking, social proof, etc.

But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above. My guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.

Have you got it yet? Here’s a hint. It’s the common thread in all of the following headlines:

“Grains puffed to 8 times normal size”

“Its reputation and its odor precede it”

“The amazing money-making secret of a desperate nerd from Ohio”

“Why whales got so big”

I’m sure by now you have it so I’ll stop teasing. That 7th (and possibly most important) pillar is plain old, tried and true…

Curiosity.

Yep, curiosity. Curiosity can drive clicks. It can sell products. And as you can read in the story above, it can even get a girl to sleep with a hairy English man only hours after he’s met her.

Yad on a good day

Which is all good, but how do you go about creating curiosity? Good question. And it’s something that I plan to answer in detail. But not today. If you want to get my take on it, you might want to sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Stuck on the emotional rollercoaster with nowhere to go

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On May 28 of this year, many visitors to the Cedar Point amusement park, “The Rollercoaster Capital of the World,” got a special thrill.

They boarded the Millennium Force “giga coaster” — the biggest rollercoaster in the world at the time of its debut in 2000 — expecting a fast and gut-wrenching ride. Full of expectation, they started climbing the initial 300-foot ascent, and were preparing themselves to rush down the other side at 93 miles an hour.

Instead, what they got was a long wait. Halfway up the climb, the power went out. A car somewhere hit a utility pole, knocking out one third of the rides at Cedar Point. The folks on the Millennium Force sat up there in the air for two hours, cooking in the 90-degree heat.

Now a few days ago, I made a case against indoctrination emails, meaning emails that aim to build good will without trying to sell anything. My argument in that post was that people don’t read all your emails, so when they do actually read your emails, it makes financial sense to give them a chance to buy from you.

Today, I have a second argument against indoctrination emails (and other emails that don’t sell). This second argument has to do with the situation of being stuck on a rollercoaster, ready to scream and laugh — but not actually going anywhere.

“WOOHOOO!!! A way to resolve emotional tension!!!”

The rollercoaster I’m talking about is an emotional rollercoaster. In my experience, the best emails stir emotion. This emotion can be curiosity, frustration, anger, disgust, fear, greed, outrage, inspired benevolence, whatever.

Why emotion in emails? If you want people to open your emails day after day and to read them, you have to give them an emotional jolt, and do so frequently. I don’t have a much better way of explaining it than saying it’s simply what people want. I guess emotion gives color to an otherwise drab day.

(Interesting and useful information is great once or twice. But without a little emotional color mixed in, useful information quickly becomes a burden rather than a gift.)

Of course, emotion also makes sense from a different perspective. That’s because when people get emotional about something, it’s much easier to get them to take action. Meaning it’s much easier to get them to buy.

And here’s the thing. Getting people to buy when they are emotional isn’t just good for you. It’s good for them. The act of buying resolves the tension that the emotion stirred up. And it replaces it with a sense of purpose, hope, and resolution.

If you don’t believe me, think about the feeling you yourself had the last time you made a sizeable purchase online. I know I’m usually relieved that the indecision of shopping has been resolved, and I’m optimistic about what my new purchase will alow me to do.

So emotion + selling = good. But emotion without selling is like being stuck high up on a rollercoaster, not moving and not being able to finish the ride. At first it might just be puzzling, after that it becomes annoying.

What’s the alternative? Well, one option is to send out bland and boring emails that don’t stir anybody up. A better option, in my opinion, is to get people a little emotional, and to then give them a chance to buy a product or service that allows them to complete their rollercoaster ride.

My checklist for email copywriting

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In 1935, Boeing demonstrated its new plane, nicknamed the Flying Fortress, to military observers.

The demonstration was a mere formality, because the plane, a four-engine behemoth, exceeded the army’s requirements in every way.

Except for one problem. During the demonstration, the plane took off, climbed steeply, stalled, and crashed, killing the two pilots inside.

An examination determined that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash was due to pilot error. It seemed that the Flying Fortress was simply too much plane for one man to fly. Nonetheless, the air corps purchased a few Flying Fortresses and tried to figure out what to do.

Their solution was very low-tech. Instead of changing anything about the plane, or insisting on more training for the pilots, they simply came up with checklists to handle the complex procedures for each operation: takeoff, landing, cruising, bombing…

Thanks in part to these checklists, the Flying Fortress eventually wound up playing a key role in World War II, and became the third most produced bomber of all time.

I thought of this story today, because I came up with my first checklist for email copywriting.

Even though I’ve written hundreds of sales emails by now, I haven’t systematized the process, and sometimes, I find myself crashing and burning for no good reason. Today, I became aware of how the process goes when it goes well, and I want to write it down to make sure I don’t ever forget it ever again.

So here it is, along with an example (one of the emails I was working on today, for a home fermenting kit):

STEP 1. Get an idea for an angle or topic

I normally do a lot of research for the emails I write. This includes going through the sales letter, testimonials, transcripts I did with people from the company, examining the product itself, digging around on forums online, etc. As I do this, I write down possible topics and angles for emails.

For this particular project, I also went through a few hundred customer surveys. A lot of customers mentioned that they were interested in fermenting because they wanted to lose weight.

My first idea was simply to try to connect fermented foods to weight loss. While I had a good testimonial on this topic, the science seemed fairly vague and tenuous (more on this in step 2 below). However, a related and relevant topic — antibiotics and weight gain — seemed very solid, so I decided to go with that.

STEP 2. Search around for more details

If I know a lot about a topic, or I have a personal story I can share, I can skip this step.

However, I can’t simply riff about antibiotics and weight gain. It’s not a topic I know enough about, so I needed to do more research. In particular, I wanted to find some kind of supporting scientific study that actually made the connection. And ideally, I also wanted to find a story to kick off the entire email.

I have a few go-to places for both kinds of resource. For scientific research, ScienceDaily seems to have reliable summaries of recent research. For stories, articles that appear in The Atlantic and The New Yorker tend to be good sources. Beyond this, a bit of googling will usually solve all research problems.

For this particular email, I found a study from Johns Hopkins University that effectively said, “the more antibiotics, the more weight gain.” The story I found was about a woman who went to the doctor to get rid of her hormonal acne, but wound up with an extra 14 pounds, thanks to the antibiotics he prescribed her.

STEP 3. Write up different subject lines

Keeping In mind the topic I want to cover, and the details of the research I want to include, I start to write a bunch of different subject lines.

At this point, I have a fairly large stack of index cards with good headlines that I can use as templates or inspiration. These aren’t “classic” direct response headlines (eg. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano”).

Instead, they are the titles of articles I’ve found myself clicking on over the past sevreal years (eg. “De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds”). Most of these are general-interest articles that originally appeared on the front page of Hacker News, so they are vetted for being curiosity-inducing.

I force myself to write down 10-15 of these subject lines, even if I think they sound stupid. Then I just pick the one that I think sounds the best, ties into the content I want to share, and ideally, gives me a bit of edge I can use in the email (I can’t describe this any better right now).

For this particular email, the subject line I ended up with was “Antibiotics are shockingly good at causing weight gain”.

STEP 4. Write the body of the email

At this point, all that’s left to do is to tie the pieces together. That means starting off with the story, developing this a bit (in the example I’ve been using, that means talking about the supporting science study), and then tying this in with the product I’m promoting.

I won’t include the entire completed email here. But it looks something like this:

Smooth sailing thanks to a checklist

The “Rule of One” applied to email copywriting

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In the 2006 version of Casino Royale, there’s a classic James Bond pickup scene.

Bond is talking to the beautiful wife of one of the bad guys. After a bit of flirty banter, Bond looks her straight in the eye and says, “What about a drink at my place?”

He stares at her. She stares at him. The tension builds.

“Your place,” she says breathlessly, “is it close?”

“Very,” says Bond.

Now imagine if Bond couldn’t play so cool. Instead of throwing out that one proposal, imagine if he threw out three:

“What about a drink at my place? Or maybe some nachos? How about breakfast tomorrow in case you’re busy now?”

Even with his ice-cold stare, odds are he wouldn’t get the same response.

“Bond. James Bond. You can call me Jim. Or James. Whichever is easier.”

A while ago, I was reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is the best book I’ve come across  on how to present ideas clearly and in a way that people will remember. One of the things the Heaths say is, “Say one thing. If you say three things, you end up saying nothing at all.”

Michael Masterson and John Forde’s “Great Leads” emphasizes the same concept, which they call “The Rule of One – One Big Idea.”

In fact, the book opens up with the story of two speeches that were given by two Agora copywriters. One speech focused on one idea, the importance of clarity in writing. The other was something like “12 rules I follow when writing copy.”

The audience thought both speeches were terrific. But at the end of the night, people were only talking about the single idea in the first speech.

I’ve recently been working on some emails for a cool product. The product helps people make their own fermented food. And the emails I’m writing are specifically for people who’ve stated that they want to ferment for health reasons.

I’ve been going around in circles writing these emails. I need to get across a few ideas. One is that fermented foods are important for your health. The second is that fermenting can be a hassle. A third is that store-bought fermented foods aren’t a great choice compared to fermenting food yourself.

The problem is I’ve been trying to do this in the same email. This breaks the “Rule of One.” No wonder I’ve been re-reading the emails and thinking they are somehow weak and unconvincing.

The fix is simple. Pick one idea. Develop it in detail. Present it clearly. And then do the same for the other ideas, but in separate emails.

The parable of the marketing apprentice

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Do you know the parable of the sorceror’s apprentice?

The sorcerer leaves the tower for a bit, and his apprentice uses what magic he’s learned to get the broom to come alive and start fetching pails of water. Except the stupid broom, once it has gotten the command, won’t stop. The apprentice hasn’t learned this magic incantation yet.

So more and more water keeps being sloshed into the tower. The apprentice starts to panic and decides to chop the broom in half. Not smart. His problems are now doubled — two brooms are bringing twice the water.

This is akin to what happens when people start learning about marketing and copywriting. For example, the very first bit of marketing advice you’ll hear is to focus on how your offer benefits the prospect.

“Don’t make it about you, make it about them!”

It’s a solid piece of advice. And it should be used, when and where it’s needed. But is it the only incantation a marketer needs to know?

I thought of this a few months back when I got a promotional email from a health coach named Ari Whitten. Ari runs a very popular online course called the Energy Blueprint, and he was sending an email to his list to promote his new book. The subject line? “My New Book is HERE!”

Who cares, right? Where’s the benefit? What’s in it for me, Ari?

Well, apparently, much of Ari’s list cares. Through motivating his own loyal followers — and probably with a lot of affiliate help — Ari’s book shot up to the #2 spot in the health category on Amazon, and within the top 40 of all books on Amazon.

In a way, this is reminiscent of what Gene Schwartz calls the “most aware” state of customer awareness. From Gene’s Breakthrough Advertising:

The customer knows of your product — knows what it does — knows he wants it. At this point, he just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline — in fact, your entire ad — need state little more except the name of your product and a bargain price.

At the same time, this isn’t really about awareness of the product. Instead, the awareness is about Ari himself. People know him and want what he has to offer, without taking too much care of what his offer actually is.

But let’s tie this back to the sorcerer’s apprentice.

Wouldn’t Ari have been more successful if he had pitched the benefits of his new book right in the subject line? Maybe, at least for selling this one book. That’s like telling your broom to go fetch the water.

However, for the long term, always shouting benefits might not be the best strategy. If you keep writing to the same people, and all you do is talk benefits, without doing other things to build a bond with your readers (like entertaining them, teasing them with curiosity, or relating to them on a personal level), then you eventually lose their attention and you make your job harder — or impossible — for the long term.

That’s when you try chopping the axe in two. In the marketing world, that usually means making more and more extreme promises and claims. When that doesn’t seem to work, you chop again and again, making still more extreme claims.

That is, until the sorcerer comes back from his afternoon walk. He surveys the mess, throws the sleeves of his robe back, and  finally casts the magic spell (called “relationship”) to drive all these marketing problems away.

“My new book is HERE!”

Bejakovic’s hierarchy of email marketing

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What’s the most important thing in email marketing? Ben Settle, in my opinion the top guy teaching this topic, has said that the number one thing he strives to do with email is to build a relationship.

It made sense to me when I first read it. But it seemed to click in my mind in a different way today, when I got an email from somebody in Ben’s sphere of influence.

The email had a Ben-style curiosity-drenched subject line. And yet, I purposefully chose not to open the email, because I know from previous experience that I don’t care too much for what that sender has to say.

That made me think a bit (specifically about the difference between levels 4 and 5 below). And the conclusion is the following hierarchy of email marketing.

The levels are ranked from least sophisticated to most sophisticated. For each level, I’m including a few examples of subject lines that represent that level, which I managed to dig up in my own inbox.

Level 1: Pointless

These tend to be emails from corporations and big organizations that have heard email marketing is important. However, since these organizations have no idea of what to put in their emails, they usually blast out pointless newsletters that are focused on random aspects of their own corporate existance (best case) or nothing at all (worst case). This is the lowest form of email marketing.

Example subject lines:

“New Bestcare website”
“#MakeBaobabFamous”
“What’s new in MailChimp?”

Level 2: Sale

The next level up is when the sender makes an offer. The offer can be a sale, a coupon, or a new product announcement. This works — if your readers are ready to buy and they just need to be nudged with the right kind of carrot. Unfortunately, many companies doing email marketing (especially in ecommerce) only ever send out these kinds of email.

Example subject lines:

“Your favorite mist, on us”
“Save 25% Now + Win a Trip to Maui”
“Get 33% OFF Absolutely EVERYTHING + FREE Shaker”

Level 3: Benefit

Now we’re getting into copywriting territory. “Sell the sizzle, not the steak!” This is where much of the Internet Marketing world lives. This category of emails is all about announcing (and frequently screaming) benefits — though I would also include transparent fear-mongering or urgency-based emails here.

Example subject lines:

“Higher T in 14 days”
“Boost your ranking with these SEO hacks”
“Closing: On-Demand Video Views = Sales”

Level 4: Curiosity

This is still a higher level of email copywriting, which is trying to persuade more skeptical, more sophisticated readers. At first blush, there can be overlap with emails in level 3, but these curiosity emails tend to be less direct and more broadly interesting than the benefit emails. Email courses (think Andre Chaperon) also go in this category.

Example subject lines:

“Do NOT do keto if…”
“The shocking truth about exercise”
“Why drug expiration dates don’t matter”

Level 5: Relationship

Finally, there is the highest level, relationship email marketing. That’s when readers open up your email and read it simply because they’ve grown to like and trust you over time.

This is the only kind of email marketing where you’re not living “email to email” — in other words, you can get away sending all sorts of random and personal stuff, even in the subject line, and people will still read on. In some way, this is coming full circle to the “Pointless” level — except that people actually want to hear what your opinions are and what’s new with you, because you’ve built that relationship.

Example subject lines:

“Bensplaining the importance of daily emails”
“BUSTED!”
“My new project”

“One weird trick for reaching the top of the ziggurat”

Now, there’s an important distinction between levels 1-4 and level 5.

Levels 1-4 are under your control. It’s simply a matter of what you put in the email.

However, you can’t force people to have a relationship with you. All you can really do is write good emails that will hopefully resonate with some of the people on your list.

Technical note: Being at the Relationship level doesn’t mean you only send out personal updates or rants. Quite the opposite. You can and should still frequently mix and match content from the different levels — even within one email. That’s how you get to — and stay at — the top.

The best kind of proof

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I want to give you a demonstration of spooky action at a distance
For this to work, all you have to do is read the instructions below, and then when you get to the part that says “GO” carry them out. Once you’re done, simply keep reading this article.

So here are the instructions of my spooky-action-at-a-distance:
(Read through them once before you try them out)

1. Clasp your hands together with your fingers interlocked, thumb over thumb, index finger over index finger, etc.
2. Now, stick your index fingers out straight, but keep them apart.
3. And then, simply look at the space between your index fingers until something spooky happens. It might take as long as 10-15 seconds, but it might happen sooner as well.

Ready?
GO
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Are you done?
That means my spooky-action-at-a-distance must have come through across time and space and pushed your two index fingers together until they were touching.

At least, that’s the idea
Hopefully it worked. And in any case, the point is not really to convince you of action-at-a-distance, but simply to illustrate the most powerful kind of proof. And that’s demonstration.

Product demonstrations work very well
You can take a car for a test-drive. You can try a shirt on at the store. You can walk around a home before buying it.

Then there are performance demonstrations
In his farewell seminar, Gary Bencivenga told the story of Elisha Otis, who invented the first safe elevator. Otis got in an open elevator in front of a crowd, while his assistant first cut one and then the other cable holding the elevator in place. Otis’s safety mechanism kicked in, saving Otis and the elevator, and finally convincing people that elevators are safe to use (hello skyscrapers).

This still works today
A while back, a video for the Purple mattress company went viral. The core of the video was a clever demonstration — the raw egg test:

Sometimes though, the demonstration doesn’t even have to be of the product
Like in this post that you’re reading. Or in this Bill Jayme add for Smithsonian Magazine:

This clever demonstration seems to be about engagement

So what’s the conclusion?
Always try for a demonstration. There are many creative ways to do this, and it’s worth putting in some thought to come up with one that works for you.

How to get going when you don’t know what to write

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The first part of the Big Con happens on a train. I’m talking about the movie The Sting, where Paul Newman plays Henry Gondorff, an expert con man, who’s looking to fleece a mob boss named Lonnegan. (Lonnegan killed off one of Henry’s old pals.)

So Henry is now on a train, where Lonnegan regularly runs a poker game. Lonnegan cheats. But Henry cheats better.

Of course, there’s a lot of detailed info necessary to out-cheat a cheat. That’s ok. Henry has got a whole team of tricksters and confidence artists on his payroll. One of them, a guy named J.J. Singleton, comes to give Henry the lowdown right before he goes in to join the poker game:

SINGLETON: “He usually plays with a Royal or a Cadenza. [handing him two sealed decks] I got you one of each. He likes to cold deck low, 8’s or 9’s.”

“That’s nice work, J.J.”

Armed with this info, Henry goes into the poker game.  He slaps some gin on his face, acts the fool, and cleans up the table. Lonnegan is furious — and hooked for the rest of the Big Con.

Several times, I’ve written sales emails that started out just like this post. In other words, they referenced a movie, and then tied it into what I was promoting.

Once, this was the X-Men — I talked about Professor X’s ability to read minds, and said how this would help guys who want to please their women better (this was for a “rekindle your romance” course). Another time, I started off talking about the Shawshank Redemption, and then tied this into an ebook on treatments for chronic kidney disease.

The thing is, in both those emails, I was stuck at first. I knew the movie tied into what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to make the link. I made several false starts that were weak or rambled on for too long. The answer in both cases was to pick a specific scene, and lead off with that. And that’s the marketing lesson I want to crystalize in this post:

When it’s hard to figure out what to write, the answer is almost always to look for more info. Sometimes, that means going out and doing more research. Other times, it simply means focusing more on the details that are already at my disposal — like picking a specific scene from a movie.

The case against steak upsells

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“Hell yeah we’ll take five more steaks if you cut the price”

Imagine going into a restaurant. You’re hungry and you’re raring for a steak. So you look over the menu, find your steak, wince a bit at the price, but decide to get it.

“I’ll have the 12-ounce steak,” you say to the waiter. He writes this down patiently in his notebook and then says,

“Would you like 18 more ounces of our fine steak at 50% off? You can always take it home with you if you don’t finish.”

Because you’re hungry and it’s a tempting deal, you order the extra slab of meat at a discount. But of course, when it arrives, you can’t finish it. You take it home, where it becomes more of a responsibility than a joy, sitting there cold and hard in your fridge. A few days later you toss it out.

Next time, you stay away from that restaurant. Somehow, you have a bad feeling. You spent too much money. You were emasculated by not finishing the steak. And you don’t need the temptation a second time.

I’ve recently heard a couple of contrasting positions on upsells. Just yesterday, I listened to an interview with successful copywriter and marketer Justin Goff. He talked about how the best upsells are often more of the same.

“Buying one bottle of supplements? How about 3 more at a discount?”

At the same time, Justin talked about the incessant need most direct response businesses have for new customers. According to Justin, new customers are the ones who buy the product, and even the ones who take up affiliate offers. That’s position one.

Then there’s Sean D’Souza. Along with a copy of his Dartboard Pricing book, I got a copy of a talk Sean did for the Ken McCarthy’s System Club. This talk is on the topic of consumption. And one of the things Sean says explicitly is that you don’t want to overwhelm your customers with product, even if they are willing to buy it.

Sean also talks about treating customers the way you would treat your kids — that is, looking out for them and charting a path for them down the line.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sean’s business seems to rely on a much smaller number of customers, who happily keep coming back year after year and forking over thousands of dollars for Sean’s courses and trainings. It’s what Sean calls a focus on consumption over conversion. That’s position two.

So what’s the conclusion? I guess it depends on what kind of business you’re looking to run. If you want to scale quickly and max out revenue, then aggressive “steak” upsells make sense. If you want to have a long-term business, another strategy might be better.

For example, even in Sean’s way of running a business, the right kinds of upsells can have a place.

Imagine if in that restaurant, the waiter did something different. Imagine if instead of upselling you on more steak, he recommended a special beer on tap, and his favorite salad off the menu. This would still be an upsell, though it wouldn’t make as much money as selling more steak.

Your consumption experience would be much better. You’d be more likely to return. And the restaurant wouldn’t have to constantly worry about digging up new customers.