Last week, I got a notification telling me about a new subscriber to this newsletter.
A familiar name. A familiar email address. A guy named Ian, who is a good friend of a good friend of mine, named Sam.
I guess Sam and Ian were hanging out in real life. My email newsletter came up somehow. And Ian, who is a social worker and has nothing to do with the shady but fraternal underworld that is the direct marketing industry, decided to sign up.
Then yesterday, Sam, who also reads these emails, forwarded me a text message thread between him and Ian:
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Ian: I don’t have $100. What is the Most Valuable Email Trick?
Sam: If you get it for free will it be as valuable?
Ian: Hmmm that’s right. Most valuable to whom? Maybe to John as he is pocketing the $100.
Sam: Quite elitist to charge for this knowledge
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I agree. And here’s another quite elitist practice:
I recently started, or rather restarted, a valuable daily habit. I call it “between the lines.” It goes like this:
1. Look at all the emails I get from readers and customers over the past 24 hours.
2. Paste them into a Google Doc.
3. Go through and ask myself, “What is really going on here? What’s really behind these words this person wrote me?” Then write down the answer in a comment on the side.
I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now.
Lots of interesting stuff pops up.
Other times, I’m just reminded of what is truly fundamental — simple stuff you can’t do without, and vice versa, simple stuff you can build an entire business around.
For example, one “between the lines” comment that I keep writing over and over in my Google Doc is that people really buy because of 1) curiosity and 2) trust.
I guess you can make sales just by doing one of trust or curiosity, by amping up the other. But if you increase both, results multiply.
And so all your marketing, at least all of your email marketing, should really be oriented to building up trust. Or curiosity. Or ideally, both.
Of course, you still have to sell something that people can somehow justify to themselves.
I doubt I will ever sell my Most Valuable Email to Ian and frankly I wouldn’t want to. I’m not sure how he would profit from it aside from satisfying his curiosity.
But perhaps you are a marketer or copywriter. Perhaps you want to write emails like this one, or LinkedIn posts, or whatever. In that case, perhaps I’ve gotten you a bit curious about my MVE trick, and built up trust via these daily emails to make you want to buy.
Yes, if you buy, it will be valuable to me. But it can also be valuable to you, and much more than the $100 you will put into my pocket.
If you want to see what the Most Valuable Trick is all about: