Direct Marketing

Basic tip for doing live webinars/workshops

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A few days ago, copywriter GC Tsalamagkakis posted the following question in my Daily Email House community:

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I have a retainer for whom I’m writing paywalled articles about coding with AI, creating custom agents, etc.

Starting next week, we’re going to start doing live webinars/workshops based on those very articles.

This will be my first time presenting–except for one time for a hackathon in 2019 where we secured a podium spot because our presentation was full of memes and our app had the right amount of buzzwords like ‘blockchain’–so I was wondering if you have any basic tips or good-to-knows.

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My basic tip or good-to-know is illustrated by the fact that I’ve forbidden myself to eat chocolate, because I’m much like a dog.

I can eat chocolate until I get sick from it, and even then, I’ll keep eating.

Logic says there would be some off-switch, some kind of negative feedback loop, some mechanism to say, “No, now is enough.” But logic is wrong.

That’s really an illustration of the fundamental marketing truth, that there’s great value in selling people more of what they have already proven to buy and consume.

I think of this a little differently from the way you may have already heard the idea.

For example, and this is in answer to GC’s question above, I sell the same kind of paid content as I do free content, which people already consumed to buy the paid content.

In other words, the books I’ve written, the courses I’ve created, the live trainings I’ve put on, and charged anywhere from $10 to $1,000, are all as stuffed as I can make them with personal stories, analogies, case studies, pop culture references, jokes, profiles of interesting and influential people, and occasionally completely irrelevant but fun asides — just like my daily emails are.

Problem:

At least in my experience, it’s hard to come up with a bunch of really good stories, analogies, case studies, jokes, pop culture references in one sitting, or even two, or even 10.

Much more effective, and much faster and easier long term, at least when it comes to creating new offers, is already to have a bunch of good stories, analogies, case studies, jokes, pop culture references lying around, which you can repurpose.

The way I personally get there is writing daily emails, which have the rather magical Triforce of:

1. Converting new prospects into customers…

2. Continuing the relationship with existing customers and helping them get more value out of what they already bought, and…

3. Creating, or helping create, high quality new offers one email at a time.

That’s to say, if you want to start putting on live webinars or workshops in the near future, or if you want to create a course, or write a book, or create a pinup calendar, then start writing a daily email today.

You will have instant fodder, usually of a very high quality, when it’s time to sit down and create that other thing.

That’s my basic tip or good-to-know for today, along with the fact that, if you haven’t yet started writing daily emails, or have started but haven’t been able to stick to it, then I can help, or rather, my Daily Email Habit service can help. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

What it’s like to finally sell Guinness

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My friend Biff recently texted me to say he had been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast, which I’ve written about often in these emails.

That podcast features interviews with people in different professions, with the goal of finding out what it’s like to do their job.

(As is often true of these kinds of podcasts, the host is somebody famous or influential, who has decided to do a pet project. In this case the influential person is Dan Heath, author of the book Made To Stick, which I’ve also written about many times in this newsletter.)

Anyways, I had not been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast for a while – there’s too much damn stuff to listen to.

I felt guilty after Biff wrote me to say he had heard some good episodes lately.

So at the gym two days ago, I put on the latest episode, to find out what it’s like to be… a barman.

A barman is apparently what in Ireland they call a bar tender. Except not really, because a barman also acts as a kind of standup comedian as well as a therapist or self-esteem coach, which U.S. bar tenders are typically not certified for.

But let me get to the point of today’s email, the valuable message that can maybe make you millions of cents or even dollars:

The barman — name, Brian Wynne – said that his pub has been around for 30 years. But in spite of it being an Irish pub, in Dublin, they didn’t sell Guinness until three weeks ago. He explained:

“We’ve been open since ’96 and we put our first Guinness tap in three weeks ago. We make an equivalent porter. When I say equivalent, I mean it’s vastly superior, of course, but I can’t say that. I’m sure your lawyers will have a go at you for allowing me to say that kinda thing.”

Dan Heath then asked Wynne how Guinness is doing after the first three weeks. Wynne replied:

“Oh, it’s outselling everything else we have. You spend 20 years explaining to people why we don’t sell Guinness ’cause our products are superior and more Irish. You make jokes about it. I have so many anecdotes and lines all built up about the sale of Guinness, which we don’t have, and then we do have it in…”

… and it outsells everything else, without even trying.

I wanted to share this with you because it’s a truth that goes far beyond the Irish pub.

I thought to myself, as I listened to Wynne while doing my fire hydrant exercises, how many online business owners find themselves in same position?

They work to create a “vastly superior” product… they turn themselves into the equivalent of a barman who educates and jokes and soft-sells… they show up day after day in front of their prospects… and yet, sales still a fraction of what they could be, if they only sold what people already really wanted, ie. a Guinness instead of their no-name vastly superior equivalent.

Do with that what seems meet.

As for me, I’ll take me to do some market research. I’ll even offer you a trade:

Hit reply to this email and tell me the last digital info purchase you made. It could be a course… some live training or coaching… a new newsletter or membership you subscribed to… or an ebook (except Amazon kindle ebooks, that’s too broad for my purposes).

I’m curious to find out what you’ve already spent money on, and maybe I will start selling the same.

And in return?

I’ll reply to you and tell you my own latest digital info purchase. (It’s not Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, I promise that.) I will tell you that it’s an ebook, that I paid $209 for it (yes, there are no missing decimal points in there), and that I have so far taken 9 pages of notes from it.

I’m not sure it will be as useful for you as it has been to me, but if you’re curious to find out what it is, you know what to do.

Last call for Ronin bonus offer

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The past two weeks, I’ve been promoting a free trial of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership, and I’ve been giving people who took me up on that a bundle of bonuses I’ve created.

I’m ending this promotion tonight at 12 midnight PST.

I will promote Ronin again in the future because…

– I myself am a member or Ronin (paid in full for the next year)

– Considering all the stuff inside (Travis offers $12k worth of real-world bonuses) I think it’s a honestly a great deal, probably the best deal out there right in any direct marketing-adjacent space

– I believe Ronin can be immensely valuable for many people in my audience, whether coaches, copywriters, or course creators, if they were to join and implement just an idea or two that are shared inside

So why stop the promotion?

Well, expose human beings to anything constant — even incontestably good things like compliments, security, or free money — and people soon stop responding. Our strange neurology means we need constant contrast to see, hear, feel, think, and pay attention. Otherwise things become literally invisible.

And so I’m ending my current promotion of Travis’s Royalty Ronin. After tonight, the bonuses I’m offering just for giving it a free trial will disappear, only to be found behind the paywall.

If you have already signed up for a trial of Ronin, forward me your confirmation email from Travis, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

And if you have not yet taken Ronin for a week’s free spin, you can do so before tonight at 12 midnight PST and get the following 4 bonuses:

1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.

2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.

3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.

4. A single tip on writing how-to emails in the age of ChatGPT. I’ve been thinking to develop this idea into a Most Valuable Postcard #3, because it’s valuable way beyond just how-to emails. For now, if you’re curious, you can read the core of it in this bonus.

If you’d like to give Ronin a week’s free try, and get four bonuses above, which have your name on them, as my way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

The death of infotainment

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A few days ago, an interesting comment popped up in my Daily Email House community. Gasper Crepinsek, who helps entrepreneurs adopt AI, wrote about his current content strategy:

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“So for now… whenever I feel like sharing value, I just share it with my audience directly (despite the current thinking on X that VALUE is bad, INSIGHT is king). I have actually found that people are converting even when I do make a “value / tutorial” sequence paired with soft selling approach. But that is the topic of another post.”

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This caught my owlish eye. It made me think back to the old Dan Kennedy chestnut — whatever becomes a norm leads to normal, average results… and normal, average results put you right at the poverty line.

There’s no denying that infotainment — stories, analogies, insight — has become the norm. Maybe not in every niche just yet, but among course creators, coaches, Internet marketers most definitely yes.

Curious fact:

Gasper is not the only one defying the infotainment norm with success.

As another example, take marketer Derek Johanson, the creator of the CopyHour course.

Derek has been at the Internet marketing thing for a long while, 12+ years.

I know for a fact Derek can write typical infotaining emails because he has done it in the past.

But a while back, he moved to writing very how-to, practical, almost tutorial-like daily emails, which run in series that cover different topics from week to week. I’m guessing it’s because it’s working better for him.

My own consumption of newsletters and marketing advice bears out this move from infotainment.

I’ve noticed I practically never read the infotainment part in the newsletters subscribe to any more. Instead, I just scroll down to see the practical takeaway, and maybe the offer.

Granted, I’m a rather “sophisticated” consumer of email newsletters (meaning, I’ve been exposed to a ton of them, particularly in the copywriting and marketing space, over the past 10+ years of working in this field). Still, that just makes me a kind of owl-eyed canary in a coalmine, and maybe points to a bigger trend that will be obvious to others soon.

But I hear you say, “A craving for fun and entertainment is a fundamental of human psychology! It can’t ever die, you silly canary!”

No doubt. Just because infotainment is dead, or at least dying at the moment, doesn’t mean it won’t come back, like a feathery fiend out of its own ashes.

From what I’ve seen, the mass mind moves in a pendulum, a swing between two poles, in this case infotaining and how-to content. Right now, I think we’re on a down-swing away from the infotainment pole.

That said, I realize I have been violating the very point I’m trying to share with you, by telling you this observation in the context of a story and my own predictions, instead of telling you how to to write how-to content yourself.

Old habits die hard.

I will fix that tomorrow. For real. I’ll tell you how to write a how-to email in an age where ChatGPT can adequately answer any how-to question.

Meanwhile, I would like to remind you of my ongoing, but not for long, promotion of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership.

It’s finally time to bring this promotion to a close. I will end it this Sunday, April 6, at 12 midnight PST.

I will certainly promote Royalty Ronin again in the future, maybe even every month. So you might wonder what exactly this Sunday deadline means.

I have been giving a bonus bundle to people who signed up for a week’s free trial of Ronin. After Sunday, this bonus bundle will go away, or rather, it will go behind the paywall. I will no longer give it to people who do the free trial, but who end up signing up and paying for Ronin.

If you’d like to kick off a week’s free trial to Ronin before the the trial bonuses disappear, you can do that at the following link:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. My bonus bundle, which I have decided to call the “Lone Wolf and Cub” bonus bundle, to go with the “ronin” theme, currently includes the following:

1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.

2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.

3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.

I say “currently includes” because I will probably add more bonuses to this bundle, once I remove it as a bonus for the Ronin free trial and make it a bonus for actual Ronin subscription.

But if you sign up for trial now and decide to stick with Ronin (or you’ve already joined based on my recommendation), I’ll get you the extra bonuses automatically in the course area.

Why I ignore a great way of selling more monthly memberships

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A long-time reader writes in with a great marketing suggestion, which I won’t be applying any time soon:

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Yesterday, on my lunch break, I watched this great YouTube video: “Storytelling & Marketing for Musicians & Teachers w/ Master Copywriter John Bejakovic.”

I found it very interesting.

Then, a suggestion occurred to me: you could add a monthly bonus (such as a 30-minute video, a written lesson in the form of an article or a podcast episode, etc.) to all Daily Email Habit subscribers.

The subscription could be even more attractive.

It’s just an idea and I wanted to tell you about it because in the company where I work – every time we add an exclusive bonus to the monthly memberships – the number of subscribers grows.

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Like I said, adding bonuses to a recurring offer is a great marketing suggestion. If I were working with clients, which I’m not, I would advise them the same.

That said, I have no plans and even less interest in committing to creating more content on a schedule.

I like writing this free daily email. That’s about where it stops.

I don’t want to promise prospects a regular paid newsletter, podcast, weekly call, monthly article, video, or really anything else, even if gets me more subscribers and pays me more money.

(I’ve done it before — a paid monthly newsletter, a group coaching offer with a weekly call — and I quickly ran away.)

Does that mean I’ve renounced creating new content?

Clearly no, as I happen to be writing a book, and I have plans to start writing a new one as soon as this one is finished.

Does it mean I’ve given up on selling recurring offers?

Again no. My Daily Email House community, small as it is, doesn’t make any promises beyond being a meeting place for business owners who write more or less daily emails. (More generally, there are ways to make recurring offers that aren’t built on content of the person selling them.)

I’m not sure whether this email can be useful to you in any way, except maybe to validate how you yourself might be feeling.

And about that:

Over the past week, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership. One of the reasons I’m personally inside Ronin, and willing to 100% endorse it to others, is that I feel validated by the underlying philosophy of Ronin. As Travis wrote inside the Royalty Ronin community a few days ago:

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Ronin have one focus:

Stop selling our life.

We have many tools to do it, but don’t forget what we are building.

A life that is our OWN.

Not one owned by a banker, clients, expectations of others, or even the squeals of the lil dipshit that sits on our shoulders:-)

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Incidentally, you might be interested to know that Travis makes most of his money via his “back-end agency,” and not by teaching others how to do Internet marketing.

He teaches inside the Ronin community, without a schedule and without obligations, because he enjoys it (that’s the reason for the chatty, three-hour Zoom calls he puts on from time to time).

If you resonate with the philosophy above, you might get value from the many tools inside Royalty Ronin to help you live life on your own terms. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses, including my Heart of Hearts and my Inspiration & Engagement trainings, which are waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

If you’re struggling to sell continuity…

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This morning, I got a DM on Skool from a business owner in Australia, who wrote:

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Hey John, I saw you promoting Ronin, how’s the signups going on your side? I’ve sent a couple of emails but only 50 odd clicks which is pretty low. I’m finding it a challenge to convey the real value of what Travis teaches without sounding like a scammy hypester!

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The background is that the past few days, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership program. It’s a membership I’m personally signed up to, as is the business owner from Australia above who wrote me this morning.

So far, I’ve sent 4 emails to promote Ronin. I’ve had a few hundred people click through, but I have only had a handful of people sign up for the free trial.

I’m not bothered by that result.

Travis’s community is after all built around Travis, and selling my audience into a paid community built around a person they don’t really know is a tough ask.

Plus, Royalty Ronin is very expensive, and I figure people are wary of signing up for a $300/month subscription, even if they get a week’s free trial to make up their minds.

I keep cheerfully promoting the free trial of Royalty Ronin because 1) every day, I’m still getting more people to opt in, and 2) even if a few folks decide to stay signed up past the trial, it’s going to be long-term good for me and good for them.

That said, I thought it was actually a curious choice from Travis Sago to start selling Royalty Ronin as a per-month subscription (something he only started now, as far as I know).

That’s because I remember one training of his, and the question of continuity programs came up. Travis explicitly shared his philosophy, which was “Don’t sell continuity.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t get paid recurring month-to-month. It simply means how you price and position your existing offer (yes, the one you’re selling via continuity) in the audience’s mind.

Travis had a small, counterintuitive twist for making recurring sales, which gets you a bunch of money up front as well as more people to pay you month-to-month than if you just offer a monthly subscription.

If you yourself have a continuity program that’s not making as many sales as you like, this info could be gold for you. Or it might be something you choose to ignore, the way Travis seems to be doing now, for reasons of his own.

In any case, if you’re already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin, you can find this recurring-income-without-continuity tweak inside the “$1k a Day in 1 Hour a Day” training in the Ronin course area.

And in case you haven’t already signed up for trial of Ronin, but you would like to see what it’s about, and whether it’s worth your time and attention, then here’s more info on the membership from Travis himself:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line. I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses that’s waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

Why discounting fails to drive sales, even when it’s by a lot

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A while back, I talked to a business coach, somebody who has a lot of experience with online marketing.

She told me about how she launched a new membership… how she offered a launch discount… how she even ended up increasing the discount over what she had initially planned.

Result:

One person ended up signing up.

Does this mean this new membership offer clearly sucks, since only one person bought even at a double-discounted launch price?

I told this business coach something that took me too long to internalize:

Discounting only works if people already value the thing you’re selling at the full price you’re selling it for.

In short, 20% off nothing is still nothing. So is 50% off.

The long term fix for this is your ongoing presence in your audience’s minds… trust and credibility built up by days and weeks and months of advertising yourself… sharing case studies of people who bought your offers and got value from them… and repeatedly driving home the fact that your offers sell for the price you are claiming for them, and that they’re worth every penny and in fact much more.

That’s how you convince people that, say, your membership is actually worth $300, and is even a steal at that price.

Good news:

There’s also a short-term fix. You can sell your offer at full price, and have people buy it, even if they don’t yet value the thing you’re selling at the price you’re selling it for.

This short-term fix is an obvious idea, but again, it took me too long to really internalize.

It finally clicked for me last year, via a little-known resource I was turned onto by marketer Travis Sago.

Travis is a very clever and very creative guy when it comes to Internet marketing… but he’s also a very thorough student of marketing and copywriting classics.

One of the things I have gotten via first stalking Travis online, and eventually paying him a lot of money for his marketing education and ideas, is simply exposure to really great, simple, often very old marketing ideas, which have made me much more money than the large sums I have paid Travis.

Speaking of which:

Yesterday, I started promoting Travis’s Royalty Ronin community as an affiliate.

I paid Travis $3k over the past year for access to Royalty Ronin and for a suite of his courses, which he makes available for members of Royalty Ronin.

I also recently renewed my membership to Royalty Ronin, ahead of schedule, for another year, in one lump sum payment of $1k.

Good news, part 2:

If you like, you can now get inside Royalty Ronin for a little less than the $3k I paid over the past year… and less even than the $1k I paid in a lump sum a few weeks ago to renew.

Specifically, you can get inside Royalty Ronin for free, because Travis has started offering a 7-day free trial.

Like I wrote/said yesterday, there aren’t many affiliate offers I’m wiling to promote. That’s because most are simply not good enough… because most aren’t a good fit for my audience… because I’m simply not enthusiastic about most of them.

On the other hand, I’m 110% enthusiastic to promote Travis’s Royalty Ronin, and all the multi-thousand dollar courses that come as bonuses, because I’ve so thoroughly benefited from them, and because I continue to benefit from them.

If you’d like to test out, look around, and even profit from Royalty Ronin, for free, for a week, you can do so here:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my affiliate link above, send me an email to let me know. Skool doesn’t let me see who has signed up, so the only way I know is if you write me.

And if you do write me to let me know, I’ll send you a recording of my Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what the people in your market really want, so you can better know what to offer them and how to present it.

I previously planned to sell Heart of Hearts for $300, along with a few bonuses. I even had a few people pay me $300 for it, before I changed my mind, pulled the offer, and refunded their money. (I simply didn’t have time or desire to create the promised bonuses.)

Good news, part 3, is that Heart of Hearts is yours free, because you’ve taken me up on this trial of Royalty Ronin.

Plus, as an extra bonus when you write me, I’ll tie up this email, and I’ll tell you the short-term fix I mentioned above, for getting people to buy your offer at the full price even if they don’t value it yet. I’ll even tell you the little known resource, which I was clued into via Travis Sago, that finally made this click in my own head.

Magic Cave of Money-Making Opportunities

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I have a new offer for you today.

It’s an affiliate offer, which I’m calling the Magic Cave of Money-Making Opportunities, because it’s been that for me over the past year.

I’ll have more to say about this offer over the coming days.

For now, I’ve recorded a video to try to tempt you into giving it a whirl.

If you’re curious, take a look here:

Magic Cave of Money-Making Opportunities

The future of Internet marketing

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In my email yesterday, I asked for questions. Well, I got questions. For starters, reader Victoria Gordon writes in to ask:

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I have a question: where do you see internet marketing going in the next few years? This has been a volatile period—TikTok ban threats, boycotts of various platforms, and even this iOS inbox sorter that led to me missing a bunch of emails for a few days. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the future.

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Just today, while pumping some iron (ie. I was at the gym), I was listening to a podcast by two very successful, very influential, but relatively low-profile Internet marketers.

One of them brought up a business model by a company I will only call Mystery Business.

Mystery Business is not doing Internet marketing or really anything related. But they are in an industry in turmoil, much like Internet marketing. I’ll call this other industry Turmoil Industry.

I looked up some facts just now. Overall returns in Turmoil Industry are about 20% on average over a two-year period. In other words, put in a dollar today into Turmoil Industry, and you get back $1.20 in two years’ time.

On the other hand, Mystery Business, with its unique business model, outperforms the average of Turmoil Industry. And how.

Mystery Business has a return on investment of 820%. In other words, put in a dollar today, and you get back $8.20 when all is said and done. And for the record, Mystery Business has been doing this for 25 years now.

I bring all this up because I believe what Mystery Business is doing is a great answer to Victoria’s question above. Not only in Turmoil Industry… but in Internet marketing as well.

In fact, one of my former clients, a highly successful but relatively low-profile Internet marketing company, has been thriving over the past several years, using pretty much the same playbook as Mystery Business.

This business model isn’t very obvious. It’s not something you will spot by reading sales emails or watching VSLs. But it is something many other people could be successful with, if they only knew about it.

After I listened to that podcast, I had the idea to share what I learned, and the connections I made to Internet marketing, as an answer to Victoria’s question in my email today.

But then, I remembered marketing etiquette.

It’s not polite to jump out of nowhere and hit people over the nose with useful and interesting and novel information. Rather, you gotta tease and taunt people with said information, over a long period of time, and get them to gradually build up their own desire and appreciation for this information when it does arrive.

And since I’m a polite person, I decided to mind my manners. I obfuscated the details above. But I will promise you the following:

I’ll reveal the details of Mystery Business and Turmoil industry, plus how they foreshadow the future of the Internet marketing industry, inside one of the bonuses will be releasing with my new book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

So far, some 340 people have expressed interest in this book, which makes me hopeful that the launch will be a success.

At the same time, it just puts extra pressure on me. I still have to complete the book, and a lot to write. And I have to do a good enough job that readers feel their money and time and attention were well-spent. Not much sense in having a list of past buyers if it’s a bunch of disappointed or burned buyers.

In any case, if you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​ ​​

Why I collect personalization data I never use

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Bridget Holland, a marketer out of Sydney, Australia, who runs a content marketing agency called NoBull Marketing, writes in with a question:

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I did a presentation for a business networking group yesterday about email marketing, and I used one of your emails as an example. (Frequency, formatting and results more than content. I was comparing it to a nicely formatted monthly email with stacks of articles, and arguing that either could work but you have to find out what was right for you and your market.)

For the first time ever – oops, embarrassing – I realised that you don’t use those first names you collect when people subscribed. (I had to go check that you collected them!) That you have no opening greeting at all.

So the question is:

* Why don’t you use greetings? Did you ever? If you did and you’ve stopped, has it made a difference? Either for the entire list, or for new subscriber behaviour?

* Why don’t you use personalisation? And since you don’t, why do you collect first names?

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I never used personalization in my emails because, like I wrote a few days ago in the context of calibration, it feels fake to me.

I don’t like it when people do it in emails I read, particularly in the body of the email. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

In the words of David Ogilvy, “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Or your mom, or your college roommate from UC Santa Cruz, or your ex-flatmate from Budapest, or an ex-girlfriend.

(The only person I’ve seen using personalization well is Daniel Throssell, who gets creative with it. However, in order to make that work, you have to police new subscribers to make sure they put in their real name when they sign up, which I don’t feel like doing.)

So like Bridget asks, why still ask for a name, if I’m never going to use it in an email?

Two reasons:

1. Most people do fill it out, and honestly. I make an occasional habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers, and this bit of info can be helpful.

2. Filling in a first name is a commitment and give for those who choose to make it. It’s a tiny commitment, but I figure it’s important. The work of training strangers of the internet to become dedicated readers and customers starts early, with such baby steps.

With all that said:

I remember the early days of my own marketing education. I put a lot of time and thought into topics like “First name on optin form, or no first name???” I now largely feel it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. Really, it’s just personal preference, and then inertia.

I’m not sure if anybody will profit from this in-depth discussion. But Bridget wrote in to ask, and I figured others might be wondering the same. In any case, I’m grateful to Bridget for sending in her question, and I wanted to highlight it here.

And since I’m busy writing my upcoming and new and still highly unfinished book, and since my self-imposed March 24 deadline is nearing, I would like to invite further reader questions.

Because answering reader questions makes for particularly easy and yet engaging emails.

So if you got small questions, big questions, questions about influence, copywriting, or how to style your hair, then I invite you to hit reply and let me know.

There’s a fair a chance I will answer your question in one of these emails over the next week or so, and will be grateful to you in any case.