A few days ago, I got an email with the subject line:
“Intro – John / Matt”
I’ve gotten emails like this before, and I always open them eagerly. They normally come from one person, who I know, and introduce me to a second person, who I don’t know.
Not so in this case.
This email was from a guy named Matthias, who I don’t know, introducing me to himself (Matthias aka Matt), who I still don’t know.
That was a little subject line trick I wanted to share with you.
It reminded me of how Gary Bencivenga used to get get a great “endorsement” for his offer by having the offer owner say something about his own product, and then having that formatted like a testimonial.
I don’t know if I would use this “Intro You / Me” trick myself, but there’s no doubt it put me into a different, more favorable state of mind, at least right when opening the email, than I would have been in otherwise.
The bigger point is is that it matters immensely how you first position yourself when you try to open up 1-1 conversations with people.
One option is the above approach, to position yourself as a helpful and disinterested bystander, connecting the person you are reaching out to with a valuable new contact.
That’s not bad, but it’s not great either.
What’s much better is to adopt the positioning I talked about during a live workshop I put on a few years ago, called Water Into Wine.
On that workshop, I talked about positioning I had used to open up conversations (and eventually do deals) with business owners who wouldn’t have even opened my email had I come in presenting myself as a copywriter or a service provider.
I charged $197 for Water into Wine when I ran it. I haven’t made it available since. I am making it available now, and as part of my “Hogwarts of Influence” event, specifically in the “Dumbledore” tier. For more info on that: