One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.
For context:
During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.
Gary was an A-list copywriter.
Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)
In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…
Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.
But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?
Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.
Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.
But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.
For example:
One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.
The Big Black Book was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.
And yet, get this:
Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.
Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.
So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?
That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.
Get it?
Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.
Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.
Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.
This brings me to my offer to you for today:
It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.
This is how you play:
Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.
I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.
And then:
1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”
2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.
3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.
And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.
This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.
In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.