Yesterday, I wrote an email about a magical, far-off place called Affiliate World. I even invited you to meet me there.
To which, I got a reply from James “Get Paid Write” Carran, whose newsletter I am a reader of. James wrote:
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I’m obviously not in the right crowd because I spent this entire email thinking affiliate world was a thing you were making up for the email until I got to the end and realised it was a conference 😂
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James is right — i didn’t explain Affiliate World at all.
I didn’t mention it was a conference, or that it was in Budapest until halfway through the email, or anything about the dates. I figured there was no point — either people are already going and they know, or there’s no way I will persuade them to go with this one email.
Lazy?
Maybe.
Self-defeating?
Maybe.
But I remember hearing something about this a long time ago in an interview with marketer Travis Sago.
Travis a kind of nice-guy Ben Settle. Like Ben, Travis is an expert email copywriter and direct marketer. Like Ben, he has a cult-like following. And like Ben, he has made millions with his own online businesses and has helped others make millions too. One curious thing:
Travis says he writes his email subject lines like he has to pay for each open.
Rather than trying to get everyone to open, and hoping to somehow persuade or convince or explain to them why it’s in their interest to take the next step before they click away… Travis uses each email to select from the audience a tiny pocket of highly qualified people.
There’s a broader approach here – efficiency as a business principle. It’s how Travis has been able to build up a multimillion business selling little $39 ebooks… and how he was later able to build up a second multi million business, selling $5k and $10k and $25k programs and masterminds.
I don’t practice Travis’s subject line approach with this newsletter, not every day. But maybe it’s something for you to think about on this Sunday, particularly if your open rates are excellent but your sales suck.
And in case you’d like to know what to write once people open your emails, so your emails not only get opened, not only get read, but also make sales, you might like: