Yesterday, I talked to the self-proclaimed dinosaur of direct marketing, Brian Kurtz, about doing a presentation to his Titans XL mastermind.
Brian and I agreed that I’d give a talk to his group some time early next year. The topic will be… email, of course, but more specifically, engagement in email.
(I’ve been told by various people that I should take all the different tricks I use to tease out and engage my readers and put them together into a training. So that’s what I will do in front of Brian’s group.)
This morning, as I was standing in the shower, pretty much the entire presentation came together in my head.
I carefully stepped out of the shower, toweled myself off not very well, and tiptoed to a notebook to write all the ideas down.
I won’t share the whole thing here — you’ll have to be there in Brian’s Titans group when I give it live.
But I will tell you one way I spark and kindle engagement.
It’s something you can do today. It’s something that might not come naturally to you, but that you can force in the interest of creating more interesting content.
And that’s to be wrong.
The more often you are wrong, the more engagement you will get.
For example, yesterday I wrote an email about “The most famous copywriter, real or fictional.”
I did so knowing that, whoever I named, I would be certain to omit others. And I got replies telling me so:
#1: “The world famous rapper Lil Dicky (Dave Burd) was also working as a copywriter before he became a rapper. He even has an episode about it in his HBO show Dave.”
#2: “Elmore Leonard also has copywriting background. His novels are amazing.”
#3: “Salman Rushdie – 8.34 million results :)”
#4: “Did you know that Chandler also becomes a copywriter in season 9 of Friends?”
I did not know. Any of that. But now I know.
You might say these replies aren’t pointing out that I’m wrong. And you might be right.
The replies above are all helpful, playful, looking to complete my incomplete message from yesterday.
But I still say the same underlying psychology of correcting somebody who’s wrong applies.
In fact, I insist on it.
And if you don’t agree with me, then you can always hit reply and tell me so.
Meanwhile, you might like my Most Valuable Email course. Why? Because it’s most valuable.
I know a thing or two thousand about writing daily emails. That’s one of the reasons I can go in front of an experienced group like Brian’s Titans mastermind and still tell them something new.
And one thing I know is that my Most Valuable Email tricks produces emails that I personally find most fun to write. And maybe most fun for readers to read.
If that turns you on, here’s how you can start writing your own Most Fun Emails in an hour from now: