Yesterday, I reached out to a biotech company that’s doing some exciting work, which I’d written up in my health newsletter.
I wrote them an email to say I want to help them publicize their work. I said I have a newsletter in the space, and I’d like to be put on the list to get their press releases in the future.
All of which is 100% true and was said entirely in earnest.
I sent this email to the communications officer at the biotech company.
I didn’t hear back from the communications officer. But a couple hours later, I did hear back from the CEO.
He thanked me for covering their research in my newsletter… said my newsletter is great… and that he would keep me up to date with the newest results of his company’s research.
That reply came from his official company email address. A bit later, I saw that he also signed up to my newsletter with his private Gmail address.
I’m not telling you this as an effective but entirely unscalable newsletter growth strategy, though it certainly is that.
Instead, I’m sharing it as an example of “flipping the script.”
I in fact did reach out to this biotech company with the thought of getting my newsletter better known, and even with the idea of growing my list.
I wasn’t sure my email would get the CEO to sign up for my newsletter, but I had certainly hoped for something similar.
The thing is, I went about it entirely indirectly. There was no ask in my email except to be notified of the company’s future work.
In my email, I did mention the lead researcher’s name… I mentioned my own newsletter… I included a link to it.
It so happened that if anybody from the company clicked that link, they would see my post about the company’s latest research front and center at the top of my newsletter archive.
Maybe you think that by telling you this, I’m trying to make myself out into some kind of would-be Professor Moriarty, a scheming keyboard puppetmaster, always two steps ahead.
That’s hardly it. And to prove it, let me admit that I myself am susceptible to the same form of influence.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email about 7 Twitter content strategies, which I was sharing even though I had never successfully grown a Twitter following.
Then earlier this week, I got a reply to that email from a guy named James Carran. James wrote:
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From someone who HAS done it, more than once, these are pretty much on the money.
The biggest thing is when you can combine more than one in a personal story. “How I built a million dollar newsletter using these 7 tips” tends to work better just now than “7 tips to build a newsletter” etc.
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Hmmm… a compliment about my content, plus a meaningful extension, and all from somebody who’s grown multiple Twitter accounts to some number?
I was curious. I asked James what his story is. He replied:
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I’m @getpaidwrite on Twitter, 105k there.
And at one point I was ghostwriting for 4 others. It’s definitely gotten more difficult to grow though.
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At this point, I naturally checked on Twitter to see if James’s claims are true.
Sure enough. I saw he has 106.1K followers on Twitter… along with a link to his newsletter.
Still curious, I signed up for his daily emails.
Now, I can’t imagine what kind of direct, head-on appeal, bribe, bonus, begging, or threatening could get me to sign up for daily emails from somebody who had just replied to one of my own emails.
And yet, there I was, signed up, after a total of 80 words of influence from James.
Now, maybe James set me up in this way intentionally. Probably not though. But you can still learn from it.
And you can start to think about how to create the conditions where people themselves hit upon the idea of doing just what you want them to do.
Last point:
I wrote to James to say I had signed up for his newsletter, and to ask if I could include his message in an email. He wrote:
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Of course, go ahead!
And thank you for joining my list, that’s an honour. I’m trying to get into the swing of daily emails and improving my email marketing game. Reduce my reliance on “X”.
MVE was a huge help, bending my brain to think of how to apply it effectively from a more general writing perspective…
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You probably know what James is referring to by MVE. But in case you don’t know yet, and you would like to know, then you can find out here: