Direct Marketing

Shock and delight at a celebrity funeral

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On December 3 1989, a memorial service was held at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at the University of Cambridge. The deceased was one Graham Chapman, aged 48, who had died two months earlier from tonsil cancer.

At various times during his life, Chapman was a homosexual, an alcoholic, a member of the Dangerous Sports Club, and one of the six members of the sketch comedy troupe Monty Python.

All the other members of Monty Python were there at the service. Several of them got up to give eulogies. One of eulogizers was John Cleese, the guy behind my favorite comedy of all time, A Fish Called Wanda.

“I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is,” Cleese started, “that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence should now be spirited away at the age of only 48, before he had achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.”

The camera zoomed around the large hall. It settled on the other Pythons — Michael Palin, Eric Idle — looking serious and proper.

“Well I feel that I should say… nonsense,” Cleese said. “Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard. I hope he fries.”

Yep, this really happened. During a eulogy, John Cleese said about the deceased, “I hope he fries.”

Last night, I had the second call of the Influential Emails training. Throughout this training, I’ve been talking about the similarities between comedy and email copy.

Not because you want to make your emails funny necessarily.

But because you want to surprise, shock, and even outrage people at the start. And then, pay it off in a credible and pleasing way, where the only people who leave are the ones who are either slaves to mindless good taste… or who genuinely disagree with you.

In my life, I’ve never seen a better illustration of this “surprise and delight” combination than John Cleese’s eulogy.

I won’t tell you how Cleese got out of the shocking hole he had dug for himself. But he did it, and he did it in a sweet, credible, thoughtful way.

You can see it all in the short two-minute clip below. It might prove very instructive if you want to write emails that people will 1) read day after day… 2) look forward to… 3) feel a bond with… and 4) allow themselves to be influenced by.

But be warned. This clip contains two profanities, one of which had never been spoken on television before. If that doesn’t shock you too badly, then prepare to be delighted here:

Still here? Maybe you’d like to be surprised and delighted tomorrow as well. In that case, sign up for my email newsletter.

The opportunity of the lucrative lead gen business

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Today I’d like to suggest you are not really in the business you think you are in. Or at least you shouldn’t be. Here’s what I mean:

A few days ago, I flew Turkish Airlines. I was pleased to see they offer free WiFi on board. Well, free in exchange for signing up for their frequent flyer program, Miles&Smiles.

Miles&Smiles. No doubt.

Because I found out today that frequent flyer programs are really the heart of how airlines make money.

For example, Delta’s frequent flyer program is worth $26 billion, according to an estimate last year by the Financial Times. At the time of that estimate, all of Delta as a company was worth $19 billion.

Did you catch that math? Let me break it down, step by step.

Delta is not really in the business of getting you from Tulsa to Truth or Consequences. That part of Delta — planes, stewardesses, Bloody Mary’s — was worth -$7 billion last year. Yes, negative seven billion dollars.

Delta’s real business is doing lead gen for banks. Delta manufactures points. It sells these points to banks. The banks then use the points as incentives to get you to use their credit cards. That business is worth $26 billion.

Of course, Delta is not unique in this. Other large airlines work the same way. And it’s not just airlines either.

AAA and AARP offer low-cost membership programs in exchange for some nice perks and services. But how they really make money is lead gen for other industries. AARP was even started by an insurance company.

You could make the case that magazine and newspaper subscriptions are more of the same.

My point for you — well, I told you my point right at the start. So instead of beating a dead horse to water, let me just announce my new frequent reader loyalty program.

It’s called Insights&More.

Insights&More will offer rare behind-the-scenes footage of me, sitting in a cavernous Airbnb in Istanbul and writing this email.

It will also offer points, which you can trade in for mentorship, coaching, or sales funnel optimizations.

And finally, Insights&More will include free access to our suite of virtual lounges. Eat all the virtual croissants you like, and mingle with other classy and influential people who read these emails regularly.

Applications to become an inaugural member of Insights&More are being accepted now. Simply follow the instructions here and then let our customer service team know why you think you’d be a good candidate.

Oh. One last thing.

If you happen to own a bank or other large institution that profits from the hope and movement of human beings, get in touch. I have a business proposal I’d like to run by you. It could be beneficial for us both.

The Dan Kennedy box from hell

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I opened the box. A look of disgust must have washed over my face because my dad’s wife, who was in the room, started laughing at me.

“Not happy with what you bought?” she asked.

Months earlier, I’d gone on eBay and ordered a big box of Dan Kennedy stuff. I finally got to opening the box this past weekend. My face dropped when I saw the reality of what I’d ordered.

Dozen of old newsletters. 30-40 CDs and DVDs. Brochures, binders, and booklets, totaling hundreds of thousands of words of content.

What was I thinking when I bought this? How many years would it take me to give this even a cursory run-through?

I closed up the box and moved it aside. I tried to ignore it as it sat in the corner for a day. Then I put it in the closet, so I don’t have to look at it any more.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you about marketer Sean D’Souza’s fringe view of marketing.

The mainstream view says marketing is made up of two equally important parts:

1. Traffic

2. Conversion

Sean says that leaves out a third, equally important piece:

1. Traffic

2. Conversion

3. Consumption

Sean likes using restaurant analogies. He explains:

Your business tends to be like a buffet. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re selling products, or services, or are a trainer. You’re going to want to run a buffet.

You’re going to want to dump all your information; all your skills; all your blah-blah Powerpoint slides on your customer at one go.

And like a buffet the customer is going to eat hungrily. Then go from hunger to greed.

From greed to indigestion.

Forty five burps later, your customer is now sick of your ‘buffet’.

“That’s nonsense,” I hear you say. “I see people all the time buying stuff they never use. It doesn’t stop them from buying more stuff they will never use.”

Maybe so. Like Sean likes to say, I’m not trying to prove anything to you. If you find this consumption idea works for you, use it. If it doesn’t work for you, no problem.

Personally, the way I look at it is:

I can’t make sure people will profit from what I sell. I can’t even make sure they will consume it.

But I can make pretty sure they won’t consume it. And my personal philosophy is to avoid selling in a way that causes my customers to reflexively bring up their hand to their mouth, because their stomach starts churning each time they think of the last time I sold them something.

That’s why I only provide one serving of marketing and copywriting nutrition each day. Light, tasty fare. Zero buffet. If you’d like to sample it, here’s where to go.

New startling sensations and illusions eclipsing anything ever attempted in the world of copywriting

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Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and behold the mighty A-list copywriters!

See how they persuade with the written word!

Marvel at their subtle tricks in these three bullets by Daring David Deutsch… Powerful Parris Lampropoulos… and Jesting Jim Rutz! Behold, ladies and gentlemen, behold:

* Cure your back pain. Inside on page 3. [David Deutsch]

* Study finds this herb works for three-quarters of men who take it. Page 16 [Parris Lampropoulos]

* Aging parents? A nursing home might be OK. [Jim Rutz]

Yes, boys and girls, friends and enemies! These A-list copywriters know secrets and mysteries that you do not! And now, for the low, low admission price of…

All right, that’s enough. Let me stop the circus barker act. And let me tell you the story behind the three deformed and monstrous bullets above.

The story is that yesterday I got a question from a feller named Nathan. Nathan signed up for my upcoming Influential Emails training. And he’s confused about how to plan out a welcome sequence.

How many emails to spend on telling the brand story? How many about benefits? When to handle objections? What order should the emails go in?

It’s a question I also used to ponder, many Octobers ago. But it’s not something I ponder any more, or that I’ll talk about inside Influential Emails. Because here’s what I told Nathan, and it might be valuable to you too:

Most people will not read all your emails. And even if they do read them all, they won’t remember them.

Does that sting? Bear with me for a second.

When we as copywriters or marketers put together a sequence of emails, we can trick ourselves into thinking it’s a sales letter. After all, that’s how it looks in a Google Doc, if you put one of your emails after another.

But that’s not how it looks to your prospects.

Your prospects might give one of your emails a thorough reading… skim a second one… skip a third. And all this separated by a day or more… and in between dealing with two dozen other emails in their inbox… plus all the other stuff that’s sucked away their attention in the meantime.

I’ve previously compared emails to sales bullets. The analogy applies here as well.

Because when you assume your prospects have followed your sequence faithfully… or that they will keep following it faithfully… your emails become armless and legless, like those hideous bullets above.

But free yourself of this wicked assumption, and behold the magic and the wonder that emerges. Each of your emails is forced to become fascinating and convincing, like these real, unamputed, A-list bullets:

* How a pickpocket can cure your back pain. Inside on page 3. [David Deutsch]

* What to take for an enlarged prostate if you’re not getting results from saw palmetto or pygeum. Study finds this herb works for three-quarters of men who take it. Page 16 [Parris Lampropoulos]

* Aging parents? A nursing home might be OK, but see four better options on page 89. [Jim Rutz]

But perhaps you’d like to know how to make each of your emails fascinating and convincing — the equivalent of the A-list bullets above. In that case, hold on a second. Let me put on my top hat and cape. And let me clamber back onto my soapbox.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, all my many mysteries and email secrets will be revealed. So step right up, and prepare to be shocked and amazed by my Influential Emails, the marvel of the copywriting world. Low, low admission price — a special offer, good only till this Sunday. Show’s inside, folks, right this way, the door to the tent is here:

https://influentialemails.com​​

Bad news for my AIDA School

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“If I would’ve known their real job-placement rate — not to mention how hard it was to actually learn at the school — I never would have signed up.”
— Jonathan Stickrod, one of the students involved in arbitration with Lambda School

Almost exactly a year ago, I proposed something I later called AIDA School. A new way of teaching people copywriting… for free… modeled on Lambda School.

As you might know, Lambda School is a startup. It provides an education to folks, like the young Stickrod above. And it then places them into paying jobs as programmers and designers.

And Lambda School does it all for free. Well, at least upfront.

Because Lambda School gives you the free education. Then it finds you the job. And once you have the job, it takes a cut of your salary, for a few years, up to $30k in total.

Interesting. At least I thought so.

Only, it doesn’t seem to be working. I read about it today in a Business Insider article.

The article makes it sounds like Austen Allred, the CEO and co-founder of Lambda School, is a conman. Cutting back on instructors to make money… defending a crappy, inadequate curriculum… lying about the percentage of students Lambda School places in paying jobs.

But knowing what I know, I doubt Allred is a conman. I think he’s probably just a dolt.

I’m not saying that from any kind of smarter-than-thou place. After all, I also thought the Lambda School model smelled interesting.

But with a bit more sniffing… it now reeks to me of a flawed setup. Regardless of how good or bad the management or the education might be. Because check it:

From direct marketing, we know two fundamental appeals sell.

The first is FREE.

The second is done-for-you.

These appeals tap into some monkey brain, lizard brain, whatever. Not a brain that’s likely to be successful in the 21st-century economy.

And yet, these appeals still stick around inside of us, in spite of being unhelpful. That just shows how powerful they are. Which is why direct marketers use these two appeals so much.

The thing is, direct marketers know not to put those two appeals together.

Not just because it’s unnecessary. But because when you combine FREE and done-for-you, who exactly are you selecting as a market?

I’ll leave that question hanging. And I’ll just say that, seen from the powerful lens of direct response psychology… it’s clear to me that Lambda School, and by extension, my AIDA school, are doomed to failure. Allred, I’ll meet you at the bar for a drink.

Maybe you find all this depressing. So let me give you the good news.

Direct response fundamentals like FREE and done-for-you still continue to work.

You can use them, starting today, to make money for yourself. Just don’t combine them in one offer. Because you’ll attract the wrong kind of business.

Buuut…

What if you don’t want to just cautiously avoid bad business? What if you want to actively attract the best business?

In that case, you might want to go beyond direct response fundamentals… and to my Influential Emails training.

Influential Emails is not about abolishing direct response law. Rather, it’s about fulfilling it with new ideas that transform how you make sales and how your market sees you.

I won’t give you the full pitch here. All I’ll say is that Influential Emails is neither free… nor done-for-you. If that doesn’t trigger your lizard brain too badly, then take a look here for more information:

https://influentialemails.com/

The End of Marketing and the Last Mail

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If you want to get influence and become famous in the near future, I have a strategy you can start using today.

Let me set it up by telling you about Francis Fukuyama. He was the 90s version of Jordan Peterson. A sober academic… who somehow exploded into the high heavens and became an international celebrity.

But unlike Peterson, Fukuyama did it without the help of YouTube. Instead, he did it with a book called The End of History and The Last Man.

In that book, Fukuyama prophesied that there be some standing here (meaning 1992, when the book was published)… who will not taste death before they see liberal democracy ruling the world.

That seems a bit naive today. We got empires like China and Russia on the ascendant… we got huge corporations, controlling more power than most elected bodies… we got the Taliban flag, hoisted over Kabul once again.

But whatever. That’s how it goes with predictions. Most predictions, even by experts or otherwise smart people, end up ridiculously off the mark. In fact, a reliable way to get a laugh is to bring up stupid past predictions:

“The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” — Charlie Chaplin, 1916

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

“Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.'” — David Pogue, The New York Times, 2006

No matter. Francis Fukuyama became a star by making a bold prediction. And so can you.

Because like kicking the cat, predictions give us a feeling of control in an out-of-control world. And as the singularity nears… and as the fog over the horizon continues to get thicker, limiting our field of view with each passing month… we as a society feel more and more need for dramatic, outlandish, and yet believable predictions.

That’s why I keep making my ongoing prediction about the end of marketing. Or at least the end of classic-style DR marketing, with its flashing neon signs and blaring warning sirens.

My personal bet for the future is on influence instead of persuasion… insight instead of desire… and breakthroughs in print instead of salesmanship in print.

So make a prediction. Even if it ends up being proven wrong. That’s my free idea for you to start building influence today.

I have more such ideas inside Influential Emails, the training I’m offering right now. In fact, I got got to thinking about this prediction stuff because of my “12+4 Most Influential Emails.” This is one of the free bonuses inside my current offer.

This free bonus contains 12+4 emails, including one which influenced me more than any other email I’ve ever gotten from a marketer. The email was all about a prediction. And the crazy thing is, the prediction didn’t even come from the marketer who wrote the email.

Instead, it came from somebody else… writing in another format, years earlier.

That’s the power of influence, and of influential writing.

The initial idea stuck around… lived on in somebody else’s head… made its way into my head… and I will now be passing it on to people who join my Influential Emails program.

Perhaps that will be you. Or perhaps not. But if you’d like more info to help you make that decision, I predict you’ll soon find it here:

https://influentialemails.com/

You never get a second chance to make a last impression

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FBI negotiator Chris Voss has a tip for you:

If you ever have to call the family of somebody who’s been taken hostage by machete-wielding drug traffickers in the Philippines… then save your “how are you” for the end.

In other words, call up the mom of your hostage on the phone. Say, “Hey Mrs. Robinson. It’s Agent John Bejakovic here with the FBI. About your son… I’m afraid I got nothing new to report.”

Give the mom a second to process the info.

And then say, “Mrs. Robinson… how are you and your family coping with this whole situation?” Because…

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

So says Chris Voss. But it’s not just him. We know today, from decades of experiments on human guinea pigs, that our brains evaluate experiences based on two brief moments only.

The first is the emotional highlight. That can be impossible to control.

But the second is the ending. That’s easy to control.

So it’s your choice. You can first ask Mrs. Robinson how she’s doing… then give her the underwhelming update. “Nothing new!” She will think you’re useless, like all those other FBI idiots.

Or you can switch up the order. Give the update first and end with, “How are you, really?” And Mrs. Robinson will leave off feeling human, like maybe you really care about her welfare and the welfare of her son.

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

Now about marketing:

A lot of clients I’ve worked with like the idea of warming up a list.

“Let’s not sell anything for a while! Let’s just build a relationship! Let’s give ’em value! They will love us for it!”

I gotta tell you, from personal experience:

You better make your relationship-building material something miraculously good and new. And you better end each email real strong.

Otherwise, you will just leave a dry and chalky taste in your prospects’ mouths. And the next time they get an email from you… they will think twice about biting down on your value-laden content.

But here’s an easy trick, in line with Chris Voss above.

Instead of leaving your prospects with your attempt at value… leave them with an offer.

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

Make an underwhelming stab at value… and you’ll leave your prospects feeling let down as they walk away.

But make an offer… and your prospects will leave with some tension, mystery, and the feeling of an unexploited opportunity. They might not be ready to buy then and there. But you will make them engaged and ready to listen to you the next time.

And like I said, this all comes from personal experience.

I usually don’t sell in these emails. It’s a moral failing. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Sure, not selling has forced me to get real good at writing emails. How good exactly?

Good enough that I had an Agora publisher find my email archive, and then contact me out of the blue and offer me work.

Good enough that I’ve had a genuine guru in the industry, somebody who’s made tens of millions of dollars for himself and hundreds of millions of dollars for others, reach out to say he loves what I’m doing and that we should connect.

Good enough that, on the rare occasion that I have something coherent to sell, like my last month’s Copy Riddles run, I do fantastic.

But even with all that, my emails are still not good enough to keep up a sustainable relationship with my audience. Not long term. Not without selling all the time.

Because sooner or later I slip up. The “value” I deliver ends up a little dry and chalky. And I can see the effect. Over time, I lose people, their attention, and their engagement.

Selling something all the time would fix that. It would give folks who read my stuff a certain excitement and juice that a regular content email simply cannot replicate. Not every day.

Maybe you don’t believe me. So let me give you a demonstration. See if it convinces you.

I’m putting on a new training. It’s called Invisible Email Manipulation. It features me, in a top hat, pulling back the curtain on some of the main tricks I use to write these emails.

Like I said, I’ve been forced to get very good at writing these emails to keep people engaged… in spite of having nothing to sell most days.

I find I keep going back to the same few tricks, over and over. That’s because my tricks are powerful, and because they are different from the tricks other copywriters are using.

Maybe you’d like to learn my tricks, so you can apply them to what you or your clients are selling. If so, here’s what to do:

1. Write me an email and…

1. Let me know that yes, you are interested in Invisible Email Manipulation and…

2. Let me know one thing you did NOT like in the last copywriting training, course, or program you bought. I’m trying to position myself as being different. And no better way to do it then to be different from crap people don’t like.

So if you are interested, write me and let me know.

In return, I’ll send you the what/when/where/how/how much of this training. Plus, if you write me in the next 24 hours… as a reward, I’ll give you a discount code for 40% off the price everyone else will have to pay.

Skipper trump card test

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“I was walking on the dock. Alan was walking towards me. There was a girl in between us, maybe around 15, walking towards him and away from me.

“All of a sudden, the girl seemed to lie down. She hit the stern line, rolled around it, and fell into the water.

“I didn’t understand what was going on. But I saw Alan take off his shirt and throw his cell phone on the ground and dive in after her.

“The girl was sinking. He pulled her up to the surface and I pulled her back out on the dock.

“The girl had had an epileptic seizure. Since she was walking towards Alan, he saw her and realized what was going on in time. She would have drowned in a few moments more.”

A few nights ago, I found myself in the company of a bunch of sailboat skippers.

At first, it was like they were speaking a different language. But after a while, in between the industry jargon and the inside jokes and the unfamiliar names, I slowly began to grasp what was going on.

They were playing a game. Like a card game, but with stories.

One skipper would tell a story — for example, a terrible experience working for a charter company. Then somebody would tell another story on the same topic.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” was the implied criterion.

Eventually, one of the skippers would pull out the trump card — a story so good that nobody else could top it.

There would be a few moments of quiet appreciation. That skipper had won the round, and his standing in the group seemed to rise a bit.

Then a new round would start, with another topic. (The story above of the girl and the seizure was part of the “near-death experiences” round. It wasn’t the trump card, it turned out.)

Of course, skippers are not unique in playing this game. I was an outsider in this group, so it was easy to see what was going on. But we all do this, all the time.

Stories, jokes, explanations… they are social currency.

They help you play the game. Maybe even win a round. Get a few moments of appreciation… and have your standing rise a bit.

So in case you’re wondering where this is all going, let me give you some industry jargon and maybe a familiar name.

If you want free traffic, then this same process can work in your favor.

From what I can tell, all you have to do is put something new out there… and make sure it’s big enough to beat the cards that came before it.

As an example, take Rich Schefren in the Internet marketing space. That space is full of outsized claims — “How an Oklahoma farm boy cracked the online code to earn $1,123,234.23 in 0.1221 minutes.”

Eventually, no such claim becomes any bigger than any of the others.

So Rich created a new story, which could beat all the cards that had been thrown down on the table till then. “You are an opportunity seeker,” Rich said, “and you will never get where you want to go by continuing on that path.”

Result?

Millions of downloads of Rich’s Internet Business Manifesto. Not through ad spend. Not through SEO. Not through the manual labor of going on stage to speak the gospel. But entirely through the efforts of other people, playing a game like I described above.

This is not how-to advice. You can’t take this and use it to come up with an idea that will get shared.

But it is a test you can apply to an idea you’ve already got.

Maybe your idea doesn’t pass the skipper trump card test. It can still be successful. You’ll just have to push it out into the world, and you might have to spend money on ads.

But if you don’t like pushing, or you got no money for ads, then you can come up with more ideas. And more. Until you find one that does pass the skipper trump card test. Because…

You want to give your market value?

This is value. Not how-to advice. But social currency they can use to benefit themselves… and indirectly, to benefit you also. After all, you’re the house. And the house always wins.

By the way, I’ve got casino. Wonderful games, free to play. Bring your friends Would you like to join for a few rounds? Here’s the secret door in.

My need is your opportunity

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I was originally planning on taking the idea in this email and packaging it up as a paid product, maybe a short video course.

I could use the money. But the idea is still too rough to sell.

Perhaps with your help I can polish it. And then sell it, for a fair price, which reflects its true worth. And maybe we can even split the profits.

So here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Parris Lampropoulos fundraiser. A few years ago, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos was raising money for his cousin’s cancer treatment. Back then, I wrote an email about why I finally broke down and bought the webinar series that Parris was offering. And one part of what made me do it was this:

People rush to a fire sale because they feel they must be getting a steal. Because they think they are taking advantage of somebody else’s time of need.

I’m not proud of it, but I realize that, somewhere not very deep down, there was an element of this in my motivation to seize this opportunity.

2. The Robert Collier kicking story. Collier once wrote about how his colleagues at the publishing company spent time each day kicking holes in the boxes of books they were selling. Because lightly damaged sets of books, advertised as such and sold at a discount, sold more easily and made more money than sets in perfect condition.

3. The continuing problems with the Green Valley supply chain. Not long ago, I wrote about the overstock at the Green Valley warehouse. It’s the second time it happened in under a year. Both times, they had to run a sale to get rid of the extra bottles of pills. This twice-in-a-year overstock was either extremely unlucky or transparently false.

So that’s what I’ve got so far.

You can see the common thread. If you wanna sell something, it’s often very powerful to run a sale and give a reason for the sale.

And not just any reason.

But a reason that allows your prospects to think they are taking advantage of your need. Just don’t be transparent about it, or you lose credibility.

I think this is a super valuable idea at its core. Everything tells me it can move mountains of stuff, if it’s only used wisely.

But how exactly? That’s where I’m stuck. I don’t have any good examples of this strategy being used consciously and yet credibly in today’s market.

So you got any ideas for me? How to apply this today? How can I take this “fire sale” insight, and wrap it up as a little course I can sell?

If you do, get on my email newsletter so we can stay in touch. And then write me and let me know your ideas. If I ever end up putting this product out with your help, I won’t just give you a free copy. I want to show my gratitude. So I’ll also give you a royalty, a share of the earnings as well.

A critical look at Daniel Throssell

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A few questions for you:

How would you like to triple the size of your email list… while doubling (yes, doubling) your open rates?

How would you like new prospects who are so grateful for your non-stop marketing… that they write in daily to thank you?

How would you like to have people buying your products in unseen numbers… even before you make any effort to advertise those products?

You might this is a pipe dream. But this dream is real. And attainable. In fact, here’s one way to do it:

Get Daniel Throssell to promote you.

Before you throw up your hands in frustration, hear me out. There might be some profit in it for you.

As you might know, Daniel Throssell is a copywriter with a popular email newsletter. A few weeks ago, he and I did an “email swap.”

I wrote an email in this newsletter to promote Daniel’s list. I said Daniel’s writing is funny and entertaining. That’s what I could see on the surface.

But then a wave of people hit my site, following the email Daniel sent to his own audience about me. And I realized something deeper is going on, under the surface. It’s best summed up by a new reader who wrote me to say:

“I’m here because Daniel Throssell recommended you in his emails, and I’m about 50 emails deep into his list and will pretty much do anything he tells me to do at this point 😂”

When Daniel and I first discussed the email swap, he said he could get 10% of his entire email list to click through to my site.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I thought that was nonsense. I know how my own smaller list responds. Even if I’m selling free money, 10% won’t click through reliably. Plus I’ve managed much bigger lists for clients, and I know response only goes down with size.

And yet, I was wrong. Daniel did what he said he would do. Even more than that, in fact.

It wasn’t just idle clicks either.

Like I mentioned above, Daniel’s readers rooted through my site. They found an offer I hadn’t even made public (my Copy Riddles September launch). Some bought it right then and there. Many others bought it over the coming days — many more, in fact, than people who had been reading my newsletter for months or years.

By the end, I got literally hundreds of messages from new and engaged readers and customers. They told me how Daniel sent them and how they are sure they will like my stuff also. And my open rates, if those mean anything any more, are now double what they were before.

You might think I’m writing this as a way of saying thanks to Daniel. That’s not what this is about.

I’m writing this because I want to share something valuable with you. Because I’ve seen first hand the engagement that Daniel’s emails command.

You probably haven’t had a chance to experience that first hand. Instead, you’ve probably only seen Daniel’s online persona. Like a friend of mine who wrote me a few days ag to say, “I just unsubscribed from Throssell’s list. He was starting to annoy me.”

That’s a shame. Because this past Sunday, I promised you a resource. One that shows you how to create a responsive list beyond anything I’ve ever seen.

Well, I was talking about Daniel Throssell and his emails.

Whether you like Daniel’s online persona or not… my advice is to think twice, and look beyond the surface. It’s what I’m doing.

I’m reading each of Daniel’s emails and looking at them critically. Beyond the entertainment. I’m trying to read between the lines, and see what he’s doing. And I’m thinking about ways I could apply it to my own marketing. It’s already bearing fruit.

I suggest the same to you.
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Because odds are, you won’t get Daniel Throssell to write an email promoting you.

But if you do what I’m suggesting, and you look critically at what he’s doing… and you model it yourself… then the pipe dream I described above — including engagement and sales — is still attainable to you.

​​And if by chance you’re reading this… but you’re not signed up to Daniel’s list… then here’s where to go:

https://persuasivepage.com/