A long time ago in a galaxy pretty, pretty nearby, a marketing yokel subscribed to Ben Settle’s email list.
Now if you are reading this, odds are good you know who Ben Settle is.
No, he didn’t invent daily emails.
But he did do the most to popularize this marketing format… to develop it… and to teach it… so I and hundreds of other copywriters like me could get paid writing emails much like what you’re reading.
But let me get back to my story of the marketing yokel.
The very next day, our hero opened up his first Ben Settle email. The email had a big promise in the subject line, something like:
“How to have power & influence even if you don’t deserve it”
The yokel tore through the email. He was disappointed to find no step-by-step instructions there. Instead, he hit upon a link at the end, which led to a pitch for a paid newsletter.
“You got me once,” our marketing yokel muttered. “Never again.”
But the day after, a new email arrived from Ben Settle. The exact subject line is lost in the mists of history, but it might have been:
“What never to write in an email subject line”
Seeing this, our marketing yokel forgot his resolution from the day before. He opened this second email… chuckled a bit at the writing… and again hit a paywall.
“Ya sonova—”
Never again, right? Of course. The third day, another Ben Settle email arrived, with a colorful wrapper like:
“A secret way of using an ordinary pocket watch to get booked solid with paying clients”
Our hero hung his head, admitted defeat, and opened up the email to start reading.
Now here’s a Darth Vader-level reveal, which you might have seen coming. Cue James Earl Jones’s voice:
I AM that marketing yokel. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Fact is, I kept getting sucked into Ben’s emails until I eventually broke down. One day, I became a subscriber to his email newsletter. I stayed subscribed for over 3 years. Plus as of today, I’ve ponied up an extra few thousand dollars to buy his other books and promoted offers.
There’s more to Ben’s email system than great subject lines. But subject lines are a big part of it, especially in the early days.
Great subject lines take people who haven’t yet bonded with you… who aren’t familiar with your inside jokes… who don’t yet care about your personality and your unique views… they take those people and suck them in. Just like they sucked me in until I was ready to start buying.
But now I’ve graduated from marketing yokel to somewhat of an email marketing authority. So I’d like to share a subject line tip with you.
It’s something I learned from Ben, though he doesn’t explicitly teach it, not as far as I know. It’s a ready-made way to come up with great subject lines like the ones above. Take a look at the following:
“How to have ‘killer sex’ at any age even if you don’t deserve it”
“What never to eat on an airplane”
“How to stop smoking using an ordinary hairbrush”
These are all bullets from classic promos. Compare them to Ben’s subject lines above. You will see that Ben adapted these classic bullets, either in form or in intent, to create his own subject lines.
So that’s my tip for you for today.
If you have your own list and you want to start mailing it daily… then classic bullets offer great templates for your subject lines.
And if you have no list, but you’re hoping to work with clients…
Then to me it seems like email is it. For every successful VSL and sales letter copywriter I come across, I meet three others who focus only on email.
By the way, I mentioned yesterday I’d make a prediction.
It has to do with a stubborn belief, popular in copywriting circles, that long copy will never die.
Well, my prediction is it will.
My reasoning is that, in an age when most of us feel our sense of control is under growing threat, we become more sensitized to outside manipulation.
Anything that looks and smells like advertising will be the first victim of this new sensitivity. And 45-page sales letters will be the first to go.
I think there are signs of this already. Or maybe I’m just biased, because I myself have a hard time reading a long-form sales letter for products I’m personally buying.
In any case, email marketing is still holding on, and likely will for a while.
And if your client wants email, the first thing he (and his customers) will care about is subject lines.
So my tip for you (again) is classic bullets.
And speaking of classic bullets, my Copy Riddles program is open for enrollment for the next few days. It’s all about teaching you sales copy, using the mechanism of bullets.
No, Copy Riddles is not just for learning bullets.
It’s also not just for email subject lines.
But even if that’s all this program gets you to do… then I reckon it can easily pay for itself.
So in more words of Darth Vader, “You’ve only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training.” If you want to find out more about the power of bullets: