A reader named Tom (not sure he wants me to share his last name) replied to my email yesterday with a thoughtful comment that could make somebody good money:
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I was reading today’s email about the customer who wanted the refund, and I started wondering if maybe there was a simple fix that could have saved you, him, and the people you were promoting for a lot of hassle.
Direct response teaches all these ways to build trust, harness momentum, overcome objections, frame value, reverse risk, etc, but I don’t see anywhere near as much focus on post-purchase persuasion – the buyer’s remorse mitigation bit where you tell them “you made a good decision – you weren’t duped.”
This is especially important for anything relatively high-ticket that needs a lot of persuasive leverage to get to over the line, and I think for those guys the hand holding and reassurance is not only more necessary, but probably has a lot of surplus value.
I think of it as “warming down” from a very emotionally charged, high-energy conversion ramp. As a copywriter you get so used to pushing the buttons and architecting the momentum that it’s easy to lose sight of what an emotionally and cognitively demanding experience the conversion process can be for the prospect (as in it uses emotional and cognitive resources, not that it’s high friction).
For me at least the takeaway is that the post-purchase excitation window is one of the most vulnerable and high-intensity moments of the entire arc, and that stepping in at that point (in the right way) can be one of the most valuable forms of nurture out there. By properly architecting a post-purchase nurture/wind down sequence, even for affiliate sales, you can 1. avoid refunds/months of avoidable back-and-forths 2) feel better about the sale (happy customers etc), 3. build trust, rapport and good will in a way that increases engagement, sales, and LTV of your list.
Anyway, I’m not sure I’m not stating the painfully obvious, but as I read today’s email that jumped out, and I thought I’d try and articulate it.
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As you might or might not know, since I’ve only mentioned the fact about 14 million times, I’m about to publish a book about the commonalities between con men, pickup artists, copywriters, etc.
I bring this up 1) to build a bit more buzz about the book and 2) because Tom’s use of the term “warming down” to describe a process for avoiding a post-purchase blowup.
Con men, who have more skin in the game than most copywriters, particularly more than freelance copywriters who work on one-off projects, call this process “cooling out a mark.”
Con men know that when you get somebody’s money, there’s still work to be done, so that the mark doesn’t go to the police. Crazy thing is it can be done. A mark in a good con doesn’t go to the police because he doesn’t even realize he’s been conned.
I’m not advising you to fleece, scam, or con people. I am advising you to take common human psychology seriously.
Like Tom writes above, we — marketers, copywriters, online business owners — have all learned how to amp and rile people up emotionally, up to the point where a sale is made.
We might think that, since we sell good products, ones as advertised, a sale is really all we need to do. Once people are faced with the good product — ta da!
Except what you sell, good or bad, is secondary, while what your customer feels and perceives is primary.
Tom gives some good ideas for how to “cool out” your course buyers so they don’t end up regretting the emotional spike that led them to a purchase.
I’ll give you one more idea, which is simpler and more universal.
It’s simply to keep writing daily emails, in which you inevitably keep promoting the same offer in new ways.
Ongoing daily emails resell people on what they bought, encourage them to actually dip in and consume it and benefit from it, and show you’re not a con man who is simply presenting a sexy front so you can swipe people’s money and then run to the horse track to gamble it all away.
So this entire email is really for the people who already subscribe to my Daily Email Habit service. If you needed one more reason to write daily emails, or to benefit from Daily Email Habit, or to believe in me as somebody who is looking to help you, then you’ve got it.
And if you’re not a Daily Email Habit subscriber, but you can see the value of sending daily emails, then here’s how to do it more quickly and easily: