I’m good at email marketing. I’m not Neo from the Matrix good but I’ve gotten really skilled at pressing the right buttons over the years.
Several years ago I wanted to sign-on as a vendor at a few trade shows and I needed thousands of dollars for all the upfront fees. I debated on how I should pay for the shows (credit, cash, etc.). Suddenly my inner Dan Kennedy kicked in. I thought, why not create a few sales emails and raise the money from scratch.
That’s what all my direct response marketing gurus would do. Cause after all… “the money is in the list”. “There’s no problem a good sales letter can’t fix”. “If you haven’t offended someone by 9 am you’re not doing your job”. These are in quotes because this is the soundtrack that was playing in my mind.
I wrote a three email series to create my cash surge. The plan was to send them over the course of about four days to a cold list of brides to be. I was so excited. My open rates were off the charts. The open rate of the first email was in the mid 40% range and the second email had nearly a 70% open rate.
Did I mention I was good at email?
Well, it turns out that I’m not as good at email as I thought I was. In my first two emails I got every bridal fear that I could get my grubby little hands on and exploited it. I wasn’t being a good marketer I was being an asshole. And my list let me hear about it…
Surely my wife would back me up and everyone is overreacting. I printed email #2 and showed it to her. After she finished reading it she handed it back to me holding it with two fingers passively with her nose scrunched up. She looked as though she just smelled something foul or accidentally stepped in chewing gum. All while saying, “yeah…”
I thought I was so cool, so creative, so cunning. But all I really was was a bully who only thought about himself. Afterwards I felt like I was on an episode of Dirty Jobs.
In Darren Hardy’s book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster he has a section on ‘not killing your customers’. When he was starting out in real estate he went to a mentor to learn how to sell more. He showed him his ambitious “Hit List” of prospects. The mentor wasn’t impressed.
He said, “no one wants to be your next hit, Darren. They don’t want to be your next victim.” I’m glad Hardy included this experience in his book. He was right. You shouldn’t maim or kill your customers and you shouldn’t insult them either.
The weekend of that email campaign I grew up. I learned that I make a better Adam than a bad version of Dan Kennedy or any other marketer that I adore.
Adam