The legend goes like this:
The year was 1910. And a French perfumery chemist, named René-Maurice Gattefossé, was working in his laboratory as per uzh.
Except this day, the lab experiment went bad. There was an explosion, and Gattefossé’s hand got badly burned.
In a moment of fright and shock, Gattefossé dipped his burned hand into the nearest vat of liquid, which just happened to be…
Lavender essential oil. (He was a perfumery chemist, remember?)
Over the coming days, Gattefossé observed the disgusting pulp of his hand. It was healing well. Scarring was minimal. He recovered wonderfully.
Impressed by these results, he went on to dedicate his life to studying the health benefits of essential oils. And, the legend concludes, that’s how the modern field of aromatherapy was born.
The end. Only one problem:
This is not exactly how it happened.
Gattefossé tells the actual story himself in his book Aromatherapie.
Yes, his hand got burned (in fact, both his hands), and yes, he used lavender oil to help the healing. But the most dramatic element of the story — the accidental dipping into the vat of lavender oil — seems to be made up. Instead, Gattefossé already knew of the healing benefits of lavender oil, and he used lavender oil in a methodical process to treat his hand once the fire was already out.
Somehow though, the true story doesn’t sell.
Which brings up an important point if you ever want to persuade people. Just because a story is true, doesn’t automatically make it good sales copy fodder.
For example, the “accidental discovery” plot will almost always beat out the “slow and methodical progress” plot.
My gut feeling is that this comes down to that old Jim Camp favorite, vision.
It’s easy and dramatic to imagine Gattefossé screaming out in pain and dunking his hand into the nearest vat of liquid. It’s not so easy to imagine him, at some uncertain time later on, using lavender oil to perform a precise and tedious intervention on his burn.
Of course, this applies to emails as well.
And no, you don’t have to make anything up to have successful sales emails. But you do have to choose your stories well.
If you want to see some of the stories I’ve successfully used to promote health products (supplements, info courses), then take a look inside my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. You can get a free copy when it comes out by signing up below: