Today, I found myself watching a YouTube underwater livestream from the bottom of a murky river. 993 other viewers were watching along with me.
The YouTube livestream showed impenetrable green water, with the only change being the digital clock in the upper right corner, which counted away:
2024-03-26 12:52:28… 12:52:29… 12:52:30…
I was on the fish doorbell site.
Apparently, every spring, fish migrate upstream through the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
But there’s a river lock in the city. The fish cannot swim past it.
For reasons of their own, the Utrecht city government created this YouTube livestream, and allowed people to press a digital button once they see a fish on the livestream. This I suppose will somehow cause the river lock to open and will let the fish through.
Like I said, I and another 993 bipedal simians were intently watching this unchanging livestream of murky river water, hoping to be the one to press the stupid fish doorbell and the let fish through on its way.
I thought my willingness to sit and stare at nothing was notable because I am currently in the middle of preparing my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL mastermind this Thursday.
I’m scheduled to talk about writing emails that elicit engagement — that get people to hit reply and write you something in return to your daily emails.
Eliciting engagement might seem like a foolish endeavor — “sales emails are there to make sales, bro.” But in my experience, writing for engagement does in time boost sales, plus it has lots of other good knock-on effects.
So how do you write for engagement?
The fish doorbell gives a clue. One big reason that people will engage with you is simply to feel helpful.
Just ask people for help. Give them the opportunity to feel smart and useful. More often than not, you will get engagement.
This can be taken to extremes or exploited to make people do foolish things, such as, for example, getting them to watch a livestream of nothing, in order to press a button that does nothing, with the ultimate goal being something completely absurd or intangible — “swim on little fish, godspeed.”
Of course, this is a newsletter about influence and persuasion.
And so you can bet that my conclusion is that appealing to people’s better sides, their desire to feel helpful or useful, is not the only way to go, or the most effective way to create engagement.
Maybe I will one day turn this Titans XL presentation into some kind of training on how to write for engagement, and make this info available more broadly.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Whatever may happen, if you would like more ideas here and now about how to write for engagement, plus see specific examples of it in action, you can find that in my Most Valuable Email Swipes #8, #9, #11, #23, #24, #27, #31, #42, and #48.
MVE Swipes is a swipe file I include with my Most Valuable Email training. This training shows you how to help your readers understand and experience abstract ideas in first-hand, intuitive ways, which stick with them for years to come. For more info on that: