Recency

When I was a freshman in college, I and all the guys I knew were in love with a girl named Leila.

Leila lived in the campus apartment next to mine. She had big brown hair and big brown eyes and was all-around pretty. On top of which, she had a bubbly and yet moody personality. I guess this was catnip to incompetent, inexperienced, unassertive 19-year-old boys like myself.

One day, it turned out Leila had finally chosen somebody from the herd.

​​The winner was a meek, clean-cut, marathon-running physics major from the next building over. I saw him and Leila around campus a few days in a row, talking intimately, walking by themselves, whispering in the dark.

Leila enthused to her friends how smart this guy was, and how serious, and how she liked his self-respect.

And then, a week later, it was all over. Through the college grapevine, I heard why Leila cut the guy off.

“He just never made a move,” she said.

Yesterday, I kicked off my bullets course. More people signed up for it than I expected. Enough that I could look for patterns and trends, both to make the course better and more interesting for the people who joined… and just for my own curiosity.

So it turns out the members of the trial run of my bullets course are:

1. Geographically spread out, with a predictably big focus on the U.S.

2. Almost exclusively men

3. About an even split between business owners and freelance copywriters

None of this is particularly surprising or interesting. But the following is:

Two out of three people who signed up for my course joined my email list in just the past three months.

For reference, I’ve been writing these emails for the past two and a half years. During that time, I’ve had a steady trickle of new signups.

Many people who signed up for this newsletter in 2019 and 2020 still read these emails. Some regularly. And yet, there’s that stat above. Two out of three people who signed up for the course only joined my email list in the past three months.

I guess there might be complex reasons for this. But I want to give you a simple explanation, which is probably good enough. And that is:

Recency matters.

In sex and in sales, it takes some time to build a basic relationship, demonstrate competence, and excite desire.

But this time is often less than you might think. And after somebody expresses interest… and once you’re past this giving-you-a-shot period… more is not better.

People cool off. They might still like you… but they put you in the friend zone. The way to avoid this is simple. Just make a move.

And now the big question:

Would you like to go on a date with me? If you want to give me a shot, you can join my email newsletter. But be warned. I will make a move and try to sell you something in the first few months.

Perhaps that scares you or turns you off. No problem. But if it makes your heart beat a little faster… then here’s where you can sign up.

A few weeks ago, I opted in on a website for an ebook on buying a sailboat.

I can’t sail, by the way. The only time I’ve ever been on a sailboat was a one-hour episode on a dinghy in Tel Aviv… which ended with my friend and me running the boat onto a crowded beach.

But back to marketing:

I opted in. I then got an email with the ebook. The content was fun, well-researched, and informative. I was ready for more.

But more never came. Until two weeks later, when a second email arrived.

By that point, my sailboat-buying forest fire had cooled to a well-controlled stovetop flame. I couldn’t even remember the sender’s name any more. I barely skimmed the second email and didn’t click any of the links.

You see my point.

In the strange world of direct response marketing, perhaps the strangest thing is the value of recency.

​​The more recently somebody expressed interest in something, the better a prospect they make. So far, that might make sense.

But where it gets strange is this holds even when somebody just bought.

So for example, had I bought a book on getting a first sailboat… that would actually be the ideal time to offer me a second book, on pretty much the same topic.

Maybe this seems strange because marketing has been a male-dominated world. On some Freudian level, maybe we men compare it to our own experiences of satisfaction in another field. Because the male orgasm leaves its owner sated, at least for a while.

But it seems to me a completed sale is more like a female orgasm. From what I’ve seen in my limited sexual experience, that event makes its owner immediately eager for more of the same.

Maybe this is something to keep in mind if you’re scheduling your followup campaign. It might require getting out of your own head a bit.

To help you out, here’s a related, somewhat politically incorrect quote from an ancient book I’m reading:

“I have again and again heard ladies, who come to visit us, say that all other delights in the world are but toys in comparison with that which a woman enjoyeth, whenas she hath to do with a man. […] I have heard say that one cock sufficeth unto half a score hens, but that half a score men can ill or hardly satisfy one woman.”

If you like sexual analogies, you won’t like my daily email newsletter. Otherwise, you can try it out here.