A few days ago, email marketer Josh Earl went on a rant against “consistency and commitment.”
As you might know, this is one of the principles from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence. According to Cialdini, people will act in ways that are consistent with their previous actions and beliefs.
Many marketers get an involuntary hardon as soon as Cialdini’s name is mentioned.
So it’s no surprise that “consistency and commitment” have been used to sell lots of marketing gimmicks. And that’s what Josh is complaining about:
“Marketers have glommed onto this idea big time. So you’ll hear them geeking out about how you can double your optin rate by hiding your signup form behind a faux survey question, or improve your sales by getting people to reply to an email, because ‘consistency and commitment, man!'”
Josh goes on to say that consistency and commitment mostly don’t work. What’s worse, they can even lead you astray. “Time to kick ‘consistency and commitment’ to the curb,” he concludes.
This argument made me think of a video I’d seen a few weeks back.
A young, skinny guy challenges the Russian slap champion.
(You haven’t seen this sport? Basically, two guys take turns slapping each other until one of them breaks down and goes crying to his mom.)
The young challenger is super confident and cocky, because he’s injected synthol into his biceps to make them look huge.
He thinks his Popeye arms will somehow let him slap harder. So he takes a swing and slaps the champion right on the ear. The champion just shakes it off.
And then it’s the slap champion’s turn.
He carefully measures his swing… pulls his giant arm back… and slaps the synthol challeger clean under the table, so three guys have to help him up.
To my mind, synthol guy is the two-step optin form that Josh is complaining about.
Consistency and commitment are more like the slap champion.
They really are powerful, just like Cialdini says. And they have made many direct marketers rich.
In other words, I don’t agree with Josh. But if you want to read his entire post, so you can make up your own mind, here’s where you can find it: