The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast

David Deutsch, a Hall-of-Fame copywriter with a vast history of selling client products, shares invaluable insights into marketing. He reveals the power of emotional 'hot buttons' and how understanding these triggers can significantly boost sales. David emphasizes the importance of listening to prospects and highlights effective questioning techniques to uncover these emotional triggers. He also discusses how storytelling and the art of open-ended interviews can strengthen marketing strategies and create genuine connections with customers.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:26 – why you should NEVER worry about writing good copy 00:29 – my unusual background that might surprise you 00:46 – why formal credentials DON’T matter 00:59 – the reason your copy don’t need perfect grammar! 01:07 – why having no “formal writing training” might be an advantage to writing sales copy 01:28 – 2 things you need to know to write good copy 02:11 – the un-sexy answer to “how do I get good at email copy?” Tweetables: Be prepared to be BAD – as long as it takes to get good at it. If you are a trained “writer”, you probably won’t be very good at sales copy. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here again. I’m the Autoresponder Guy. I’m coming to you from themcmethod.com, where we talk all about email marketing. Today in this video I’m going to talk about the question that I get asked by a lot by people, and that is, “What if I’m not a writer, John? If I’m not a writer how am I supposed to write these great emails? How am I supposed to tell stories? How am I supposed to come up with these ideas that sell stuff?” The short answer to this is that you don’t need to be a writer. I dropped out of school. I went to college and I ended up dropping out of that, and I had a series of random jobs after that for a few years, until I eventually sat down and taught myself copywriting. I’m not a writer. I have no formal training in writing, yet I can write an email to get people to buy stuff. That’s why I believe that anyone, whether they think that they’re a good writer or they’re not, can learn to write sales copy, can learn to write emails, can learn to write landing pages. All this sort of stuff. Sales copywriting, none of this stuff needs to be properly grammatically correct, and that’s the best bit. In fact, if you are a trained writer you probably won’t be very good at sales copy emails and all that because you’ll be trying too hard to make the writing proper as opposed to selling the way it needs to sell. If you’re feeling insecure that you can’t write these emails, that you can’t write sales copy because you’re not a writer, you’ve got to forget about that. You should not worry about it because it doesn’t matter. The main thing that you need to do in your emails and your sales copy and these kind of things is communicate on a level that your prospect understands. That requires empathy. That requires understanding. That requires knowing how your product meets their needs and solves their problems. It’s really that simple. You don’t need to be a writer and you need to accept that and you need to believe that in the deepest part of you, and then you’re going to be able to go out there and get good. Just quickly, you might be wondering, how do you get good at email? If you can’t go to school for it, if you can’t be a good writer of it, how do you actually get good at writing emails or writing sales copy? The unsexy answer to that is that you just write more emails. You write more sales copy. Of course you can sign up to say,McMasters and you can learn the step by step things you need to do to get it, but at the end of the day you have to be willing to suck for long enough to get good. That’s the secret to getting good at anything. Be prepared to be bad at it for as long as it takes to get good at it. It’s that simple. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com. The post What If I’m Not A Writer? appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:25 – a surefire way to LOSE profits 00:43 – why RELATIONSHIPS form the foundation of your marketing 00:51 – the coveted answer – how long should your sequence really be? 00:56 – why your prospect must “buy or die.” 01:17 – one habit you NEED to be doing regularly to sell more 01:36 – how to optimally mix up your broadcast and autoresponder emails 02:00 – my secret for truly connecting with a list Tweetables: Either they unsubscribe from your list – or buy. If you stop contacting them, you’re gonna lose out on sales. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy here again with another McMethod video session. Today, I want to talk about how long should your autoresponder sequence be, because I get a lot of people have asked me this via email, podcasts. The answer is that there is no answer. The way I want to frame this up is this: When you have a friend, when you have a relationship, you don’t put an end date to that. You don’t say, “Well, I’m going to be friends with you for the next month and then I’m going to stop contacting you.” You don’t say that with your friends. Business is exactly the same. It’s about relationships. You have a relationship with your prospect, whether you’re selling information, whether you’re selling pills, whether you’re selling anything at all. It’s about a relationship. Why then, when people think about email marketing, do they think about, “Well, how long should it be?” I would say, “As long as it takes.” Either they unsubscribe or they buy. It’s that simple. Buy or die is another way to put that same thing. Buy or die. Either they unsubscribe from your list because they’re not interested or they buy or they just sit on there over an infinite time span, you’d sign up. There’s going to be people who are going to be on your list for a year and then they’re going to sign up, maybe two years. They’re going to have to just keep talking to you, keep hearing from you, on and on and on. There is no ideal length. You want to be doing this regularly. As far as an autoresponder goes, you can’t build out a three-year autoresponder. That would be too much. You could, but it will take a while. What you want to do is … I’d say, one to three month’s worth of autoresponder emails in there as well as have some sort of weekly newsletter that you send out that’s valuable. It could be a pitch or maybe you just write daily emails or write two emails a week and load them into autoresponder and send them out. Do that every single week and then you’ve contacted them regularly. That’s how it should work. You could do a weekly newsletter, a weekly update. I’d say weekly at the very least, depending on what industry you’re in, but never stop them. The key thing I want you to understand here is that you should never ever stop contacting them unless they tell you to, “Stop contacting me.” You have no idea when they’re going to buy from you. If you stop contacting them when you think it’s the right time, you’re going to lost out on sales. There’s no question about it. So that’s it. That’s the answer for today. How long should your autoresponder sequence be? As long as it must be. A broadcast or if you send out a newsletter, that’s not an autoresponder. The idea here I want you to take away is that you should never ever stop mailing these people. Get it. Get this. Don’t forget it. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy and you’re watching McMethod video sessions. The post “How Long Should My Autoresponder Be?” appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:27 – the mind-blowing way most entrepreneurs leave money on the table  01:15 – how often you should email your list (you have a few choices…) 01:33 – the Marketing 101 basics that “social media gurus” WON’T tell you 01:53 – your prospect’s most private, sacred space online – and how you can go there   02:31 – a surprising reason you should email your list like you email your best friend 02:54 – why a focus on HELPING people will make you rich Tweetables: Email marketing is a direct connection to the most private, sacred zone your prospect has online If you want to generate sales, there’s nothing better online than email marketing Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy and I’m here with another McMethod video session. Today, I want to talk about why email. I’ve been asked this question a lot. I’ve been on podcasts; I’ve done a lot interviews where people say, “Why email marketing? Why is it important?” It’s actually incredible. I’ve met people via email and in person, who have massive email lists. Maybe they’ve got a product and they’ve got tens of thousands of customers, but strangely they don’t email them. This is incredible because there is so much money in that list. I know at the end of the day, it’s not all about the money, right? But the money is a great way to measure the impact you’re having. That email list is an incredible way for you to have an impact on your audience and obviously make a lot of money in the process. So many people, even really … I know of smart savvy businessmen, smart marketers, who have all the front stuff worked out, they’ve got a great website, great sales pitch, they’ve got all that stuff done and they’re making a lot of money, they’re happy. They’ve got an email list that’s worth way more than what they’re doing in the front, but they don’t know how to use. So it’s like, “Why email?” Again, a lot of people know that you should be collecting email addresses. I’m not going to address that. If you’re not collecting email addresses, you better start soon because it’s so valuable. Once you’ve done that, the question is, “Why email marketing? Why send the emails? Why send the emails once a month, once a week, once a day,” like I do. Instead of just … Some will do, yeah, I’d say once a month. A couple times a year is what the average person does. Here’s why I think email is so powerful and it’s still … This is 2014. It is still more powerful by that three times, three hundred percent more powerful in terms of ROI generated than social media. You can tell that to the social media gurus that you see online. Social media is good. It’s good for building or branding and all that stuff, but if you want to make money, if you want to generate sales, there’s nothing better online than email marketing. Think about why … Let’s do that real quick. Email marketing is a direct connection to the most private sacred zone that your prospect has on line. Facebook, Twitter, all these sites, they’re so cluttered now with advertisements, all these stuff that we don’t really care about. The email inbox is becoming more sacred. That means if you can get in there, if you can find a way to be valuable enough that your prospect wants to hear from you via email, you’ve got a direct connection into them. As for why you do this regularly, why you email them regularly, well I think it’s crazy that some people ought to have tens of thousands of people on their email lists, but don’t email them often a couple times a year. When you have a good friend, you email them … You don’t email them, you contact them. You keep in touch regularly, every day, every few days, whatever it happens to be. You don’t just stop. You don’t just stop after a couple of days and you go, “All right, well, you haven’t replied. I haven’t heard from you in a little while and so I’m never going to talk to you again.” That’s how people treat their email lists. Why email is that business and helping people is about relationships and email is a great way to do that. When you email someone regularly, once a day, a couple times a week, it gives you that connection to your audience especially when you build in things like: you ask them to reply to your emails; you ask them to click things. You really solve problems as well as you pitch that product. You’re building this incredibly dynamic relationship with your audience. It’s just amazing. That’s it for today. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy and you’re watching McMethod video sessions. The post Why EMAIL Is Your Biggest Opportunity appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:18 – how you can PROFIT from defying this status quo of email marketing 01:02 – the truth about marketing “gurus” and vanity metrics 01:34 – one metric you can bank your business on (HINT: it’s NOT conversion rate) 01:47 – the surprising reason some internet marketers can make $10 million with email – despite LOW open rates 02:22 – essential questions you MUST be able to answer about your prospect 02:46 – how to write parables like Jesus – and the one moral EVERY one of your emails should teach  Tweetables: You have to understand your prospects better than they understand themselves You can have great information – and still NOBODY buying your stuff Transcript: Download PDF transcript. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy and today I want to talk about why open rates don’t matter. This is one of those interesting things that it’s kind of like a misconception about email marketing. Open rates are a vanity metric. Now what that means is a lot of people when they first get into email marketing, they get told that open rates are important, that clicks are important, these kind of things. Open rates aren’t important and here’s why. You could be giving away some great content, really valuable stuff or using things like open loops that get people to open every single email you send. You’re going to have a really high open rate, but you could be very bad at number one is pitching or number two at serving what the market wants when it comes time to make a purchase. You can be having some great information, but no one actually wants to buy a products because you don’t know how to position it, you don’t know how to pitch, you don’t know how to write about it in the right way. What you’re going to find is your open rates might be high and you can go and take screen shots of your Aweber account and certainly this is what gurus will do sometimes. You can take screen shots of your a web account and go, “Wow, look at this open rate, 70%, 80%.” I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this in my own emails. I’ve seen this in other people. It does not matter unless you’re in a competition to see who can get the best open rate. What matters to us as business people, as entrepreneurs is: Are you making money? Are you generating sales? Are you making a profit? At the end of the day, the most important metric when it comes to your email marketing, it’s not open rates, it’s not clicks. These are measures of engagement. The best metric is your sales. It’s not even your conversion rate. It’s going to be your sales. You might have a low open rate. You might be down to 5%, but you could be making an absolute ton of money. I’ve heard of people doing $10 million plus and email marketing is one of the main sales drivers in their business, yet their average open rate is 5-10%. The size of your business or the amount you make from your emails is not directly related to your open rate. Your open rate could be high, it could be low. It’s not what you should be focusing on. You should be focusing on and that’s a real question: If you’re not focusing on open rates and clicks, what should you be focusing on? You should be focusing on … Understanding your market is number one. Understand exactly what they want, the deepest problems in there. What keeps them up at night? What makes the upset? What do they get excited at? All these different things. You got to understand your prospect better than he understands himself or herself. Then you will need to know how to translate that into a pitch. You need to know how to tell a story and good speakers, good presenters do this all the time. Guys like Jesus or we hear about them in the Bible, religious teachers, they tell stories and then they have a moral of the story and you can do this. You get the moral of the stories to buy your product. These are things you should be focusing on is understanding your market and pitching in the right way. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy and I’ll see you next time. The post Why Open Rates Don’t Matter appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

What can a musician-turned-copywriter teach YOU about email marketing? Spencer Shaw is a reformed rock star who writes copy for BIG businesses. Real big. Like, Y-Combinator startups negotiating $500,000,000 exits big. And in this episode, Spencer spills all his copywriting secrets. What’s the “rock star guide” to writing SIZZLE HOT copy – …and getting prospects to NEED your products? Be ENTERTAINING. Spencer shares how to sell like an entertainer and CAPTIVATE your prospects with email.   In this episode, you’ll discover: a weird technique musicians use to keep audiences guessing (put this in your autoresponder) how to manipulate CONTEXT and make people buy why writing VULNERABLE copy can build incredible trust James Altucher’s hack for creating “A– ha!” moments in your copy a simple “mind-read” to make your sequence SCARY relevant how to avoid burning out your prospects Mentioned: Kevin Davis Business Growth Podcast “Ideas have sex” – James Altucher Autoresponder Madness (ARM) Robert Collier Letters Eben Pagan Survey Monkey Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO   Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I am here with Spencer Shaw, who is actually Kevin Davis’ business partner. I did a podcast, episode 29, which is at dropdeadcopy.com/29, a podcast with a guy called Kevin Davis, on how to achieve insane conversions with retargeting segmentation and some advanced email marketing stuff like that. And, after that podcast, Kevin suggested that I talk to his business partner, Spencer, to do a podcast for THEIR podcast, a business growth podcast. So we’ve done that, and then at the end of that, me and Spencer were talking, and I was like, “Well, how about I get you on MY podcast?” And this is what happens with podcasts, you know, you just network your way around from person to person to person, it’s a fantastic way to make connections, and that’s pretty much what happened here. So, today we are going to talk about how, basically, how a reformed rock star entertains people with emails, so comes up with email stuff that really gets people paying attention, and opening those emails, and, you know, ultimately buying the products that they are offering. So, we will get into all of that in just a moment. Spencer, how are you doing today? Spencer Shaw: Doing great, man. It’s nice to be on the other side of the microphone (laughing). John McIntyre: (Laughing) Do you do this often? Spencer Shaw: Not enough, man. And when I do it, I don’t get a connect with someone that’s kind of lighting me up, so this is fun . John McIntyre: (Laughing) Good to hear it. Alright, so, I gave you a really quick intro in there, but tell people a bit more about, you know, who are you, and what do you do, and what are you all about? Spencer Shaw: Okay, so, as you mentioned, I am Kevin Davis’ business partner in the world of Internet marketing superfriends, or in the world of really, high-level geekery of marketing, like funnels, and retargeting, and analytics. Kevin is known in those circles, and so, he is the systems and the analytics and technical brains, and I am the creative brains of our business. So, I write the copy, I oversee a lot of the creativity, and different parts of our funnels in that business. And it was kind of like a happy accident, how it all pulled together. I think that most stories are that way, and you know, it has been pretty cool business marriage ever since. John McIntyre: (Laughing) I like how you call it a “business marriage” there. I have heard a few people talk about business partnerships being the same thing as like a, basically a marriage contract. Spencer Shaw: You know, it is a lot that way. I think some people take it too serious, and you have to understand that, there is give and take, and as long as both people are moving forward. And it’s funny, Kevin and I, when we met, it was, I don’t know, several years ago, and it was actually at a local Meetup, and he was consulting for, you know like, Wall Street Journal bestsellers, Robert Alan and Mark Victor Hansen. And, he was sharing his outsourcing system, and I thought, “Holy crap! This dude’s smart!” And before that, I was actually in the mixed martial arts niche, so I had created a clothing line, and was one of the top affiliates inside of the MMA world, and I was networking with a lot of like, I would network with the most higly decorated MMA fighter; he did videos for me, I had been through his gym. And so, Kevin and I, you know, we would talk about that stuff, and then stumbled into a relationship that’s been going on for a number of years now. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. So it sounds like you, you said that you’re the creative side. So that means, you’re doing the emails, the sales copy, all of this, the marketing and entertaining side of the business. Spencer Shaw: I am, yeah. With that comes, oh man, that double-edged sword of creativity. You know, like, when you have like a really good joke, you think you have in your head, or like a really cool story, and you share it with someone, and then it’s just not as cool. I have had that happen many a time. I remember writing an email out to my MMA subscribers, and you gotta think, like, these guys are dudes that spend three to seven days a week in the gym. Their life is, like, pure adrenaline, and I remember like the subject line was like “The Death of Wussies” and like, dude I got like hate-mail from that. So, like I would test, I would test ideas, and you know, I still test ideas with our business, and luckily I have learned over time to test with smaller segments, but, you know, that’s part of the creative idea. Like, if you don’t test things, if you don’t try throwing that weird creativity stuff out there, you know, you’re eventually just going to silence it. John McIntyre: Okay, so you’re really an advocate of, I guess, getting kind of wild and wacky with some of your emails, and seeing how people respond to it. Because, sometimes, you’re gonna get who respond to something that you’re just blown away. Like, it just might not make any sense at all, but for some reason, they like one of your emails, that’s just weird. Spencer Shaw: Yeah, exactly. But, I have learned over time, like to test it within reason, you know what I mean? Like, if you have a list of 10,000 subscribers, don’t send out an off the wall test to all 10,000. Maybe send it out to a segment of 1,000 people or something like that, you know? That’s where over time I have matured and learned a few more things. John McIntyre: Okay, okay. Spencer Shaw: To be a little bit more methodical with it. John McIntyre: Okay, methodical weirdness. Spencer Shaw: Yeah (laughing), that works. I mean, I think the big thing is, you know kind of going back to the rock star, like, that’s what put me through school, and I grew up. I mean, I cut my first album when I was 16, no actually I was 15 or 16, got a song on the radio, and then went up to Seattle when I was 17 and cut my second album. So I have been playing, I have played clubs, bars, you know, arenas, auditoriums, all kinds of stuff, and you have to test things. And you have to go out and try new things to your acts. However, like, when you’re a band and you’re performing, you always have a set list, and so the audience doesn’t know what your set list is, but you know what it is. And so to them, it’s a surprise; to us, it’s like predicted, and we can throw little weird things in there. So I will throw in, like, you know, how we are gonna do a portion of a jam, or how we’re gonna say a certain joke, or move from one piece of a song to the next, and our audience doesn’t know that. But for the most part, we have it scripted out – we know what’s happening. John McIntyre: Okay, so tell me a but about that. So, you know, we chatted before this call about how we could best put this podcast together, but we want it to be entertaining. So, how did you do, how did you make your songs more entertaining, you know, as a band? And, how have you taken that and applied that to email marketing? Spencer Shaw: You know, I think I realized – you know, nowadays, with the competition – you see things on Youtube, and what blows me away is, like, you’ll see guys that are, you know, juggling something while they’re playing a guitar, and they’re balancing an instrument on their hand, and playing a kickdrum, and crazy entertainment there, with all kinds of things going on, and it really doesn’t get a lot of views, so it’s like this shock and awe doesn’t really work as much on that side of things, it’s like, in a live show, what do you want me to do? Like, stick a sparkler up my ass and do somersaults? That’s only gonna last for like 30 seconds and its gone. And so, what you learn is, connection with the audience. You learn, like, when you come on stage, is to hit them hard, like with an energetic song, and to hook them. And I think, you know, one of the things that you and I talked about before is, you know, as a musician, and one thing I do with my copy is, if I am on a new audience, or I am testing out a new song, I’ll play something that they’re familiar with, so I’ll play a cover song, and – in the music world, when you play a song that someone else wrote, that’s called a cover song – so, I’ll play a cover song, then we’ll play a brand-new song, then we’ll play another cover song. So, it’s kind of doing this little sandwich of material. And the same happens with our copy – we’ll go through, and if we’re taking people down a new path, we’ll take an existing idea that they know, or an existing story, you know, somethat that was open-looped from the past, and we’ll bring in something new. John McIntyre: Give me an example. Spencer Shaw: Let me give you an example: So, we’re runny a bunch of master classes right now. And we’ve done master classes on analytics; we’ve done master classes on retargeting, email marketing, hangouts, and now we’re getting ready to do a master class on podcasts. So, you look at the hangouts, that’s somewhat related to podcasts, and so, what we’ve done is we’ve gone through and we’ve told the stories, the struggles, the pain, and we want to come from the perspective of, like, being as human as possible. I think the days of, like, “I’m the guru and know everything”, I think those days are gone, you know what I mean? John McIntyre: Absolutely. Spencer Shaw: And one of my favorite writers, his name is James Altucher, he is not in the IM space, he is not an email marketer per se, or a direct marketer, he is an author, but the dude has absolutely disrupted the way that bloggers communicate and the way that authors communicate with their audiences. He is, by far, like the most vulnerable writer out there. James Altucher, I can’t give a big enough plug, I’ve got all of his books. And he will just go through, and he will write about how crazy he is, how screwed up his life is, why his kids hate him, like why he got fired from all of his jobs – like, all of the stuff that no one wants to talk about? Dude, he shares it all. So, like, I’d be scared to be his friend (laughing). You know what I mean? But like, so what we’ll do, is we’ll come with that, like, real-life approach, and we will do that, and talking about our hangout master class, and how we totally screwed up, and how we had 800 people on one of our hangouts, and we clicked the wrong button and ended it, like, right at the time of the pitch. So like, when you’re going to be making the most of the revenue, like, we totally screwed the pooch, we messed it up. So, we share those stories, and we mention, we start weaving in, back then, started weaving in podcasting, or becoming a radio celebrity, and then we come back into the hangouts, and now we’re getting ready to start fully diving in with, like, how the importance of the podcast master class, of being the importance of that radio celebrity, that Internet celebrity, and so it’s just weaving ideas. I think Andre from Autoresponse, he talks about the open loop thing? You know, he uses “Lost” as an example, and it’s very similar in a way, but we’re more conceptual, we’re on a bigger basis. Because, you know, it depends on your audience. You know, if you’ve got an audience, at times, they’re stoked to read an email that has that drama, has those open loops, but it can also become really transparent, like, “OK, yeah, I get what’s gonna happen here,” you know what I mean? John McIntyre: Right, right. To me, this seems like it’s a question of context. So let’s say I’m into email marketing needs right now, with the podcast and with the McIntyre method, and so it’s natural for me to send out an email to my list about email marketing, whether it’s my product, or a Webinar that I’m doing, or someone else is doing, or some email marketing service like Aweber or Infusionsoft. But if I want to go to them and talk about a sales letter, a piece of software that helps you write sales letters, that’s only gonna . . . Like, if I just come out and say “This is a great product, all about sales letters, and you should buy it, and here’s why”, that wouldn’t do as well, as another email that set the stage first by talking about email marketing. So, starting with where they’re at right now, and starting with that context, and then putting the sales letter in the context of email marketing, which is that, if you don’t have a good sales letter, you know, you can do all the email marketing in the world, but when they hit that sales page, it’s going to be so bad, that they are not going to know what to do, and they are not going to click that “Buy Now” link. And so that’s why, if you’re doing email marketing, you also need a sales letter. So, what’s happening there is I’m starting with the idea that they already know, to create that familiarity, and then weaving, you know, going over almost, it’s a bit an open loop kind of thing, and then going over into the sales letter. So that, when I introduce that new idea to them in the sales letter, it feels familiar to them. That’s what you mean, right? Spencer Shaw: Yeah, absolutely. You know, a really simplified way of saying it is something that I learned from Eben Pagan – this was years ago. He said, “If you want to create an ‘aha moment’ for someone, what you do is you take two things that people know about, and they’re very familiar with, but are completely unrelated, and then you find a way to connect those two things together, and that creates an ‘aha moment.'” Because creating, or say this, uncovering gold for people, and sharing a completely new concept, psychologically, that’s really tough for people, because they have to accept the change, they have to accept a new paradigm shift, and they have to accept all these other things. That, psychologically, it actually puts some weight on their brain. But if you take something that they already know, and you just connect it with something that they already know, but maybe they hadn’t thought of it from that perspective, then they sell themselves, because they have that “aha.” John McIntyre: This is like metaphors. You know, you create the metaphor, and you relate it to something else, and you’re, “Oh, that’s why! I know what you mean now.” Spencer Shaw: Yeah, it just, I don’t know. I mean, again, James Altucher, I think he stole from Eben, or maybe Eben stole from James, but he said, “Just take two separate ideas, that aren’t connected, and let them have sex with each other.” (Laughing) That’s a good way of putting it! John McIntyre: Absolutely! And another thing we talked about, before we got on the call now, is that, you mentioned something about, where you would send out, say, an email about some sort of news item, maybe it’s a local business. You find, you enter the conversation – this is that old Robert Collier rule from his book – about enter the conversation that’s already going on in their heads. So, they’re thinking about a current news event, and start your email by talking about the news event, and then weave your way into your pitch. Or, have the first email talk about the news event, and then the next email talk about your product. Because, when they open the email that you send them, this is actually a really good point to keep in mind, because I haven’t framed it up this way, but, when someone opens your email, no matter what the subject line is, they are almost definitely not thinking about your product, and their credit card isn’t in their hand when they are reading their email in-box, so you shouldn’t start off by saying off, “Oh, I’ve got this great product.” You gotta think, “well, what are they thinking about right now? How can I enter that conversation going on in their head? Are they thinking about their whining baby upstairs? Are they thinking about some tsunami that’s happened on the news, or some political situation that’s going on, or some sort of politics that’s going on right now? Or maybe they woke up this morning, and looked in the mirror and they’re fat? So, it’s like, how can you start there, and then weave your way to a point where it’s a natural place for you to insert your pitch? Spencer Shaw: Yeah, absolutely, man. That is super key, and I mean, you know, you have to be relevant to something that they would be, that everyone would be interested in. I mean, it’s kind of like the psychic stuff? You know, they’re called false-positives, you know, like, “I sense that you have a lost loved one in your life, is that right?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah”, and then, “And you think about this loved one all the time, is that right?” It’s like crap like that, and if you look at how psychics work, they are asking these leading questions, and you can do the same thing with news, and obviously, I am not saying be unethical, but what I am saying is, you can look at the news, and there’s ways to lead it, so they are like, “Oh yeah, totally!”, like, “oh, that person’s bad” or “that person’s good” or “oh, I never thought of it this way,” and then you lead them down the path, and your product is the solution, or clicking on the link is the solution, and then, it starts to sell them on the next step, or whatever it is, and I kind of want to back into the stepping of it. You know, I see many times, marketers, inexperienced marketers, where they are trying to “sell”, and they are trying to blanket the message to everyone, and they don’t take the time to really segment down their lists, and understand what people are interested in. So, you know, one of the things that we do, and I am really grateful for Kevin for his genius system approach to it – when we are creating a new campaign to sell someone on like a broadcast or a new product, I will write a sequence ahead of time. And the first email will go out, and once the people open that email, so there’s actually, people get segmented into two different lists from there, so when a person clicks on the email, they get put into a bucket, and then the people that click on the link, they get put into a different bucket, and the people that click on the link, they are a better candidate. So, they are going to receive the next email in that sequence, because we’re not selling them on the first one, we’re just warming them up, we’re just taking them on the date, so they receive the next one, and it’s taking our subscribers through that process. Whereas, many times, I see people, like, they will send an email, and then, the next sequence, they send out the email to everyone, and then they send out the email to everyone, and you start to burn out your list, because maybe that first email, they totally weren’t into it. And it’s coming from that perspective of, okay, we’re going to test this segment, we’re going to test the most hyperactive people, and once we have those results, okay, now we can go back and, why did this group of people NOT open the email? Was it the subject line? Okay, let’s just keep the same body, but we’ll change the subject line. OK, cool. So, it’s a lot of testing, and like a methodical process of going through and realizing, like, I don’t need to sell everyone. And if you do it that way, your subscribers absolutely love you, because you’re not selling them stuff that they don’t want. You’re only selling them the stuff, it’s like almost mind-reading – again, it’s like back to the psychic stuff. It’s like, you know, because, they’re like “Holy crap! I am stoked that he’s sending me stuff about podcasts!” You know what I mean? And they don’t realize that, the people that didn’t click on that email, they are not getting that sequence. John McIntyre: Right, okay. So what you’re talking about here is, if you have more of a general list, I suppose, you would send out that first email on, say, podcasting, and if no one reads that, or if no one clicks on that, they don’t get the next email. But then, in a week’s time, or a month’s time, or three months’ time, you might send another email, and this time, it’s on pay-per-click advertising, and they read this one and they click it, because they’re interested in that, so you’re doing, Andre calls this in “Autoresponder Madness”, he has his main SOS, Soap Opera Sequence, which you might think like, you’ve got your main sequence, which is just on, say, Internet marketing, and there’s all these people on that list, who just want to make more money with marketing on the Internet. And then, within that market, you’ve got people who want to know about podcasting, who want pay-per-click, who want to know about SEO, and so you send out these single emails, which are basically like bait, and when you catch a fish, it’s basically when they click the link in that email. You send an email on podcasting, and they click that link, and if they click it, they get automatically added to an autoresponder only for people who are interested in podcasting. Spencer Shaw: Absolutely, yeah. And that’s always worked the best, that gives us the highest EPCs. It makes our audience stoked the most to hear us. Your unsubscribes go down. And, you know, there’s a lot of different things that we’ll do in that, you know, for example, we weight the links, and so, you know, in the past, we used to use things like Survey Monkey, so it would be like, you know, hey, you know, go to the Survey Monkey and fill out this stuff. Well know, it’s just like, “Hey, tells us, what of these three things are you totally into?” And if they click the link inside the email, it weights it from there, like, they don’t even have to go to the surveys. So, it’s like little mini-surveys, our links within the email act like mini-surveys. John McIntyre: Absolutely, because you can know what they want, and what they are thinking about, based on what they click on. Spencer Shaw: Yeah, so it helps out. And again, I think it’s, you know, it’s kind of like, I’ll go back to the music metaphor. You know, when I play in a coffee shop, you’re gonna play a lot different songs, and you’re gonna have a different line of jokes, and way that you’re gonna treat the audience, than whey you’re playing at a bar, and you’re gonna have a different type of lineup and jokes and everything when I’m playing that big auditorium or places like that. So it’s just, it’s really noticing the audience, and playing to that audience, and I guess in a way, it can be bad, because you become somewhat chameleon-like, but at the same time, you know, you got it. Like, for me, whenever I play bars, I realized one thing – my job wasn’t to play the most awesome music and have them love me; my job was to sell liquor. John McIntyre: (Laughing) Spencer Shaw: You know what I mean? And , that’s where most musicians screw up, because they get there, and they’re like, “Oh dud, I’m gonna be a rock star,” and it’s like, “Dude, no, your job is to sell liquor.” You know what I mean? And, actually, I don’t even drink, you know what I mean, like that was my job, I realized, that’s my job. But I can have fun with it. And if I bring them along the path to other things in that process, cool! John McIntyre: Okay. That’s a really, I think that’s a great note to end on, actually. So, we’re trying here, to basically be the musician who goes into bars and clubs and arenas and all these different places, and knows when to do an acoustic set, and knows when to play a cover. He knows when to sell liquor, and knows when to go crazy and wild and do things like at a festival. So it’s all about understanding, the way to be entertaining, or the way to write really, really good emails, is to just, either use surveys and use automatic segmenting software, which you do with InfusionSoft and Office Autopilot, or just take time to really understand what your market’s into, and then write them emails based on that. That’s really the message. Spencer Shaw: And it’s super-effortless. Like, if you do it that way, your emails can be really crappy. I mean, obviously, don’t write crappy emails, but like, if you’re selling people, who want what you are offering, it is a lot easier to sell to them, you don’t have to, you know what I mean? John McIntyre: Yeah, man, this is the core of selling. It’s not going and selling ice to an eskimo, it’s all about finding people who already want what you have. That’s really the key of marketing. So then all you do, you don’t have to sell them, you just have to matter-of-factly state that, “Here’s what I have, and if you want it, here’s where you can get it.” Spencer Shaw: Yeah, and then you’re the coolest dude! Exactly, you’re their resource, and the cool thing is, you get to charge a better price, because you’re like, they’re hotter, you’re solving their problem, they are willing to pay a premium for it, and you know what, they’re gonna be like, “Dude, if you have anything else like this, I’ll buy it.” And, one thing I learned years ago, is that buyers that buy, buy, and what that means is, like, when people have a problem, dude, they want to solve it. They will throw money at it right then, and if you go through, and you write an email sequence, and you go, “Okay, well, the free report reveals . . .” or whatever crap you’re saying, and oh, I’m gonna lead them through this process, and then, on day three, or day seven, I am gonna finally sell them, dude, they might be out of heat by then. People that have an itch, may, they want it scratched, and so, offer it to them right away. John McIntyre: Absolutely. Cool, man. Well, we’re right on time, but before we go, give people a heads-up about where they can learn about you or Kevin or all this segmentation stuff. I know you have a podcast – tell people about that. Spencer Shaw: Yeah, I think you know, the podcast is probably the best. It’s called Business Growth Podcast. You can get it on iTunes. You can find us on Youtube, or on our website, BusinessGrowthPodcast.com, and that’s probably the best place, and then just give us a shout out. John McIntyre: What sort of podcasts do you have on the podcasts, who are you talking to, what’s it about? Spencer Shaw: It’s really geared towards the business growth side of things, and we’ve found, you know, we’ve really connected with a lot of startups, so people in the Y-Combinator, a lot of people in Boston, a lot of accelerators, so these are outside of Internet marketing, these are businesses, like big businesses. I’ve got one right now where they are going to accent for about a half-billion dollars, and I interviewed them, and it’s high-growth business type of stuff, not little pay-per-click campaign companies. John McIntyre: (Laughing) I am hesitating to say “real businesses” . . . Spencer Shaw: Well, you know, I don’t want to say that, but like, there’s also, like you and I talked about email marketing, which is like a core component, and I have talked to people about angel investing, and I have talked with analytics and follow up, but it’s really like, very high-level, high-growth type of stuff. John McIntyre: Absolutely. Alright, Spencer. All of the links to the podcast on dropdeadcopy.com with the show notes. Thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Spencer Shaw: Definitely. Thank you for having me. The post Episode #43 – Spencer Shaw On Entertaining Your Audience Like A Rock Star appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:51 –  how to start the very FIRST email in your autoresponder 01:00 – 3 questions you MUST ask your prospects to gain extreme empathy 01:50 – how to set the stage for what’s coming up – and get readers HOOKED 02:00 – the reason you should tease prospects…and never give away the cake 02:20 – one nifty trick to keep your emails OUT of the Gmail Promotions tab and in their inbox, every time 02:45 – how to “bake” engagement into your sequence Tweetables: You want to cultivate action and response in your email sequence. Marketing is largely a game about frame control. Transcript:  Download the PDF Transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with another McMethod video session and in this video, I want to talk to you about email number one. This is one of the most important emails in your Autoresponder sequence. Here’s why: It sets the stage for everything to come. If you screw this up, if you mess this up, the other emails are going to be far less effective. If you said the wrong things or you don’t say the right things, people aren’t going to be opening your emails in the future. They’re not going to see you in the right light. This email number one is your chance to set the frame for everything else to come. Marketing is again largely about frame control. The person with the strongest frame wins. That’s the topic that we get to talk about in hours and absolute hours. Email number one: Let’s talk about what you should be doing with this email. Here’s what I do. Email number one, first I say, “All right. You’re in. Welcome to the family. It’s great to have you. First thing before we do anything else is I want to talk to you a little bit. I want to ask you three things, two things.” It could be anything. “If you have a minute, hit reply and tell me, number one: What is the biggest, most painful problem you’re going through right now in relation to email marketing, in relation to weight loss, in relation to getting fit.” You get the idea. Question number two, “Up until now, how hard has it been to get an answer to this problem, to this question?” Question number three is, “How would it make a difference in your life if you had an answer to this today? How would it feel?” What you’re really trying to tap into is you want to understand them, what’s bothering them right now in regards to whatever market you’re in; how hard has it been for them to solve a problem and then what would it look like. You’re going to use these insights and you’re going to build those insights into the rest of your marketing. You’re going to get insights on what products you can create; what emails you can write in the future; what sales copy you need to write to make them buy stuff. After that, I say, “In these emails, you’ll discover …” So I’m setting a stage for what’s coming up. I’m going to tell them, “All right, you’re going to hear about this, this and this,” and I’m teasing them. Instead of saying, “You’re going to head about AIDA, an old advertising formula,” I’m going to say, “You’re going to hear about an old advertising formula that all the gurus use.” I don’t give away the cake. I tease them and I force them to open my future emails. You want to do stuff like this. Another thing you do and this is really important as well is you want to tell them to add your address to the address book. Most people aren’t going to do it, but some people will. This is very helpful for the Gmail promotion step. Once you get dragged across from the promotion step into the inbox, you’re going to hit the inbox all the time. Also, if you can get someone to reply to your email twice, you’re going to start going into the inbox. All these things in that email, when I’m asking them to reply, that reply is telling Gmail and telling the ISPs that they want to receive, that the subscriber wants to receive my email, therefore Gmail is more likely to put my email in the inbox instead of the promotion step. That reminds me of email number two. In email number two, get them to click a link. Find some way to put it in there a link to your page; it could be a sales page. It could also be an article about something, something helpful that they’re going to want to click on. You’re building this engagement into your sequence so that you’re more likely to end up in the inbox and then later on, at a later date, the more emails you get in there, they’re going to get more open to it. But you do want to cultivate action and cultivate response in your email marketing. So that’s email number one and a little bit about email number two. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder guy and this is the McMethod video sessions. The post The Most Important Email in Your Autoresponder appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Michael Silk, a freelance copywriter with nearly a decade of email marketing expertise, shares secrets to crafting engaging emails that drive sales for high-value products. He emphasizes the F.U.N. method, which makes readers excited to open each email. Discover how quirky stories, like an arrested goat, enhance your messaging. Michael also reveals a simple Google trick to overcome writer's block and underscores the importance of creating anticipation with each email send. Plus, learn why the last click is actually the most crucial!

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:24 – the FIRST step to writing killer email copy 00:36 – one pitfall where beginner copywriters screw everything up 02:10 – the question in a prospect’s mind that you MUST answer to make sales 02:23 – an example of a bad pitch (Does YOUR copy sound like this?) 02:40 – what to do instead 03:15 –  a framework you can use to “pitch without pitching” EVERY time Tweetables: Answer this question: what’s in it for ME?  You have to learn to pitch without pitching. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder guy here again with another McMethod video session. Today in this video, I want to talk about a common mistake that I’m seeing a lot with otherwise good copywriters, people who’ve learned how to write an email. That means email should be conversational. You’re looking at one to two sentences per paragraph. Some paragraphs are going to have one sentence, one line or even one word. I’ve done this. Once people get that, that’s just the first step. They’re doing well, but they often make a mistake. This surprised me when I first started seeing it. I’ve been seeing this with coaching clients recently. This is where they’ve got the conversational part down pat. They can tell stories. They can have fun with it. They can write a good email, but then when it comes to pitch, when it comes time to say, ” I have a product, here’s why you should buy,” is they fumble it. I’ve seen this with … I’ve just done some work with a client who has a huge sales following. They’re driving a ton of traffic at it. They have this problem. Some of the emails are great, right, usually when they’re not pitching, but when it comes time to pitch, they focus all on the pitch, on the offer. “Here’s why we’re so amazing. Here’s why this product is so great. Here’s why this offer is just incredible.” They forget. They really drop the ball. They forget to address the “what’s in it for me.” This mistake, if you want to boil it down, it’s failing to answer this question of: What’s in it for me? When you write an email, especially when you write a pitch, and this is what I’m talking about in here, is the mistake really shows up when it comes time to pitch. If you’re going to pitch before you can say, “We have a promo,” or “Here’s the product, it’s four DVDs,” or whatever it happens to be, you have to explain why your prospects should even care. The product doesn’t matter; the offer doesn’t matter. The $1 trial, the frequently asked questions, whatever the way you frame me up, none of that matters unless the person already believes that you can help him. All of that only matters in the context that you can solve their problem. Until you sell them on the idea, until you convince your prospects, your subscriber, that you can solve their problem, they’re not going to give a damn about some $1 trial or about the product or any of that sort of stuff. When it comes to the pitch, if you want to avoid this mistake, you have to learn to pitch. I hate to say this, but it’s like pitching without pitching or it’s just that most people pitch, but I have no idea how to pitch so they are really pitching without pitching. The way I do it and the way you should do it is you should pitch the right way, which is instead of saying, “Hey, John, I’ve got this great offer today. It’s a $1 trial, you’re going to love it. Here’s a link. Go buy it right now.” Instead, I say something like, “Hey, John, do you really hate writing emails?” “It’s really hard. It’s difficult. You’ve got to learn how to do it, then you doubt yourself, you sit staring at the cursor and bla bla bla.” “Well, how would you like this? One tiny little magic button you could press and it churns out emails that generate millions of dollars in revenue just like that. If you’re interested in something like that, if that sounds good to you, here’s a link and guess what, it’s actually available today for $1. I’ll let you in. I’ll give you access for just $1. It’s just a really cool deal.” Then you click over there like that. The difference is before I did the pitch, before I told them, “Here’s the product. Go buy,” I had a few sentences just about the benefit. Try to tap into the subscriber like, “Hey, John, do you really hate writing emails?” That’s a fictitious product. I don’t sell that. No one ever would. There is no such thing as a magic button solution. That was just an example. That’s it for now. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder guy and you’re watching the McMethod video sessions. The post How to Pitch Without Being Pushy appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.