I tend to idolize things that happened before I arrived on the scene. So I imagine it must have been great to fly in the “Coffee, Tea, or Me?” heyday of TWA…
It must have been great to do business by the screeching and crackling fax…
And it must have been great to write copy for junk— I mean, direct mail.
I imagine direct mail copywriters to have been like titans, bigger and cooler and more powerful than any of us today.
That’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for Gary Bencivenga. Of course, there are many other, more logical reasons to respect Gary.
Like the fact the man’s been called called “America’s greatest copywriter,” by people who should know. Or that he has an unmatched string of wins, going up against other top pros. Or that he’s a deep thinker in this field, whose ideas have influenced many, myself included.
So here’s one idea of Gary’s. It’s the one that influenced me the most.
This idea was connected to another titan who stomped the Earth before I became aware of direct response. I’m talking about Gary Halbert.
Gary Halbert died in 2007. And when that happened, Gary Bencivenga wrote the following:
In fact, I was thinking about Gary and his newsletter just a few weeks ago. I had noticed something unusual about my reaction to it. I subscribe to numerous marketing ezines. But I noticed that, under the crush of hundreds of emails a week, I found myself deleting almost all of them unopened… except for The Gary Halbert Letter. I would always open his, usually as soon as it hit my inbox.
Whenever I notice an anomaly like that, I ask the most instructive word in the English language: Why?
[…]
Gary shared news. Sometimes he was the news, sometimes it was a dramatic turn of events in his tumultuous life, but often enough, he shared news of a technique or strategy that would make your response and profits soar. You couldn’t afford to miss even one of these gems, so you had to open every issue.
Maybe you think is trivial.
But maybe it says something to you. It did to me. It told me that, if you can get America’s best copywriter to read every email you send, it’s worth doing.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. supposedly said, “Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”
This one observation by Gary B., which I read early in my copy career, really got in my head and stretched it to a new dimension.
And ever since, it’s been key in how I write my own emails. And key to why these emails have gotten in the heads of other people as well. That’s why “Say something new” is the central tenet behind my Influential Emails training, which will happen next month.
Now that you know that, maybe like me, you can go off and spend a few years meditating on Gary’s koan. Try implementing it in your own business. And keep it up until you start to see results.
Or if you’d like a shortcut, both in terms of coming up with new things to say… and of new ways to say ’em… then Top Gun, as Gary might say, take a look at my Influential Emails offer. It’s open now, but it will close this Sunday. Here’s the link: