A few days ago, I got a question from a reader:
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Hi John,
What are the differences between “most valuable email” and simple money emails”? Thanks!
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Now get ready for the big bland takeaway from this email, which will probably be as familiar to you as the taxes you have to pay:
Facts and figures rarely persuade, and often they don’t even inform.
For example, I could have replied to my reader’s question above by telling him the facts and figures of my two courses — the prices, the main promises, the intended audiences.
But that stuff is literally in the half page of deck copy on the sales pages for the two courses. This reader knows about those sales pages and clearly doesn’t want to read them, or maybe has even read them, but the facts and figures failed to mean much.
So what to do? Because this is hardly one reader asking about my specific courses. This is how most of us act and think and feel most of the time about most things.
Certainly, if you have customers or prospects, this is how most of them are. They will not read the well-researched facts and figures you send their way, or maybe they will even read, but those facts and figures won’t mean much.
One powerful strategy when facts and figures fail is to stop being so damn linear, logical, and thorough, and to instead make your point in an associative, intuitive, non-linear way.
In other words, instead of facts and figures, give people a metaphor. Let me give you an example:
I recently rewatched the first Matrix movie. To my mind, that movie is the richest source of powerful metaphors that’s come out in pop culture over the past 30 years (and longer, probably going back to the original Star Wars movie). It’s well worth rewatching from time to time so you have it close at hand when writing your marketing material.
But back to my reader’s question and the difference between Simple Money Emails and Most Valuable Email.
My best answer is that Simple Money Emails is like the kung fu, the use of semiautomatic weapons, the piloting of the fighter helicopter that Neo and Trinity and Morpheus can own in an instant with the push of a button thanks to their loading program.
These are powerful and practical skills, which look incredibly cool to the uninitiated, but which ultimately anybody can do and profit from very quickly — in the Matrix, to fight and destroy; with Simple Money Emails, to write quick and easy messages that make money and keep readers reading.
On the other hand, Most Valuable Email is like the little bald-headed monk-child at the Oracle’s house in the Matrix, the one who tells Neo that there is no spoon.
Really, at the core of MVE is a similarly simple but profound idea.
It’s not an idea that is meant for everyone, but only for a small group of pre-selected people.
However, if you can accept this idea and make it your own, you can start to bend reality — including both your readers’ reality, and your own.
This makes it so you ultimately don’t need to rely on the email copywriting equivalents of kung fu or semiautomatic weapons or even fighter helicopters, because the ultimate results happen simply via “inner work” of a sort, by just absorbing and repeating the mantra that there is no spoon.
Now, if you are interested in either of these two courses, I bet you still have questions even after this metaphor. But I imagine you might have a better sense which of the two courses is really right for you.
If you’re looking for practical, result-oriented, quickly acquired skills, then it will be Simple Money Emails.
If you’re looking for mastery and a long-term practice that will take you to places you cannot imagine yet, then it will be Most Valuable Email.
You can get your remaining questions answered on the sales pages for the two courses. In the slightly pompous words of Morpheus:
“I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.”