I’m on the Amtrak from New York to Baltimore, sitting the wrong way, away from the direction of travel, bouncing up and down as trees and warehouses zoom by me. It’s not a great time to write a daily email.
Fortunately, a long-time reader fed me a good email prompt a few days ago. He wrote:
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For a while now, I’ve been feeling like I’m inundated with emails from copywriters, marketers and direct marketing companies.
Until a few months ago, I took pleasure in reading everything.
Now I don’t anymore.
[…]
Lately, I enjoy reading newsletters about what is happening in the world, novels, history books, detective stories, and business history textbooks.
I hope this metamorphosis of mine is normal.
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My reader’s message sums up the concept of the sophistication of the marketplace, as described by legendary marketer Gene Schwartz, in the experiences of one person.
A man will enter a specific marketplace. He will be new, interested, and engaged by just about everything there.
In time, he will become more selective, more skeptical, or even leave that specific marketplace altogether.
Is this a problem?
Is it a vote against ever starting a business in general?
Or is it a vote against starting a daily email newsletter right now?
Of course not.
The fact is, there are uncountably many humans alive on the planet right now. You only need a tiny number of them to be interested in what you are writing or selling right now to do very well for yourself and your business.
It’s much like a direct mail sales letter, which will typically only get a 2% response rate, even when mailed to a highly qualified list of prospects.
98 out of 100 targeted, pre-selected prospects won’t get the sales letter… or won’t bother to read it all the way to the order form… or won’t be persuaded to buy.
Only 2 out of 100 will actually respond and send in any money.
And yet many big fortunes over the past century have been built on those 2%.
The same applies to you today, with even more extreme numbers.
That said, it is undeniable that different formats – email newsletters as opposed to video courses as opposed to books — will attract different kinds of people, and in different mindsets and stages of sophistication.
In my experience, he more serious and successful people are, the more likely it is that they read books.
So if you do write a regular newsletter, it makes sense to adapt your best content, and turn it into a book. You will often reach great prospects who might be among the 98 out of 100 who would never read your newsletter, at least not today, before they really know you and trust you to have something worthwhile to say.
That was one of the motivations for my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book.
That book was quick to write. And yet it’s one of the best thing I’ve ever done for my standing in the industry and for attracting quality readers to my newsletter — readers who might never have read otherwise.
For more info on this quick and yet worthwhile book: