Some time ago, I sent an email with the nonsense subject line:
“The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way”
That was in response to a message I got from a mysterious reader. He sent me an email with no body, with just a file attached. The file had seven “tested and proven” subject line templates, which I mashed together to produce that monster above.
A bit of fun to prove a point. I thought that would be the end of it.
Except, a few days ago, my mysterious “won’t even say hello” correspondent popped up again. Another empty-bodied email. Another file attached.
This file promised to teach me “How to Make Your Reader Salivate Over Your Offer.”
The file described a sales technique. I won’t repeat it here. While it’s solid sales advice, it really won’t make anyone anywhere salivate.
I mean, really.
Have you ever found yourself literally salivating at a bit of sales copy? Staring at the screen, your lips parted, your tongue lolling around your mouth, having to swallow hard every few seconds?
Of course not. That kind of physical reaction is impossible to produce with words alone. Right?
Right. Or maybe not right. Because here’s a passage that this “make your reader salivate” stuff brought to my mind:
For instance, just think of the word lemon, or get a quick image of a lemon and notice your response.
Now see a richly yellow 3-D image of the same lemon, and imagine slicing it in half with a sharp knife. Listen to the sound the knife makes as it slices through, and watch some of the juice squirt out, and small the lemon scent released.
Now reach out to pick up one of the lemon halves and bring it slowly to your mouth to taste it. Listen to the sound that your teeth make as hey bite into the juicy pulp, and feel the sour juice run into your mouth. Again, notice your response. Are you salivating a bit more than you did when you just had a word or a brief image of a lemon?
This passage comes from a self-help book. It’s in a chapter on getting motivated. It describes a technique that’s supposed to make you want an outcome more. Because as Seth Godin wrote a while ago:
Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset.
But only when we want to.
The hard part, then, isn’t the changing it.
It’s the wanting it.
I don’t know if the lemon technique above works in making you want to change. At least for the long term. But it doesn’t matter much.
My point is not how to achieve real change in yourself… but how to achieve the feeling of possible change in other people.
Because if you are in the business of direct response marketing… then much of your work consists of spiking up people’s feelings just long enough that they step out of the warm bathtub of their usual inactivity.
And that’s why popular self-help books might have a lot to offer you.
Which brings me to an offer that will almost certainly not make you salivate. In fact, this offer will probably not interest you or tempt you in the least.
Because my offer to you is the book from which I took that lemon passage above.
I already promoted that book extensively in this newsletter. It’s called NLP, and it was written by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.
I promoted this book previously as a self-help book.
The value of this book as such is dubious, as is the value of all self-help books.
But the value of this book as a guide on how to stimulate the feeling of change and progress… of motivation and inspiration… in yourself and other people — that value is certain.
And for any marketer or copywriter who is willing and able to read the book as such, the book will be delicious. Maybe even mouthwatering. Figuratively speaking of course. In case you want it: