I had a guy write in today and tell me to get my reporting straight.
This was in connection to a daily email I’d sent to the dog ecommerce list I manage. The email was about Lady Gaga’s stolen bulldogs.
Perhaps you know the story. There was a heist. Some guys pulled up on the street, shot Lady Gaga’s dogwalker, and then sped away with the two dogs.
In my email, I wrote the kidnappers arrived in a van, because, well, that’s how kidnappers do, at least in the movies I’ve seen.
But it was not a van. It was a car. And one upset reader rightly wrote in to correct me.
I’ve talked about this before, but often the best way to get a response out of somebody is to say something wrong.
Blood rushes to your prospect’s head, and he has to write in to tell you how wrong you are. Because you’re careless… you’re offensive… maybe even because you’re stupid.
Why would you ever want your prospect thinking that?
Simple. Because hate, irritation, and scorn, are much closer to love, identification, and sales than you might think. They are certainly much closer to each other than they are to indifference.
Sometimes you get lucky, like I did, and stir up a reaction by accident. But you can do it on purpose too. As long as you don’t mind being told you’re wrong, by people who feel strongly enough about the matter to take time out of their day to write and correct you.
Well. I doubt I stirred up any controversy with this email. And so you probably didn’t get any closer to loving me or identifying me. Still, perhaps you’d like to join my email newsletter. If so, here’s where to go.