9 Dumb-Dumb Email Mistakes

Emails, emails, emails.
‘O how I love emails.
They’re short, they’re sweet.
And the smackeroos they make is
‘Oooo such a treat.

Okay, I KNOW that was just about the dorkiest poem ever written.

But it’s 100% true.

I love email, I’m a big fan of email marketing, and today, I’m going to give you some extremely helpful tips on the subject I call:

“9 Dumb-Dumb Email Mistakes”

However, before you read them, just know this:

I call them “dumb” since they have cost me a lot of moolah. In other words, they are dumb for me to use. Maybe they work for you, but they’ve my hurt sales big time.

Remember, what works for me may NOT work for you.

So that said, here are my 9 dumb-dumb email mistakes to avoid:

1. Only mailing when you have something to sell

2. Following the herd (what everyone else is doing)

3. Being a controversy ‘fraidy cat

4. Caring what marketers (especially copywriters) think

5. Doing teasers, instead of full emails

6. Not being yourself — “warts” and all

7. Not having fun

8. Spending too much time writing your emails

9. Swiping other peoples’ emails instead of being original

OK, there’s a LOT more than that.

But if you simply avoided doing those 9 things for 30 days, I can almost promise you will see your sales go up, your traffic spike, and have new opportunities thrust your way you didn’t even know EXISTED before.

That’s been my case.

And I suspect it would happen for you, too.

Ben Settle

P.S. There’s also a 10th mistake I forgot to add:

Trying to get really good at this without guidance.

At least, this has been my experience. I used to sit there and try to “reverse engineer” certain marketers’ emails to see what made them “tick” with little or no success.

In fact, that would backfire on me and hurt my results.

Of course, maybe it’s different with you.

Maybe you’re a natural born email butt-kicker.

But if you want to learn some powerful tips from an email marketing master, check out the interview I did with Terry Dean in The Copywriting Grab Bag.

He’s one of the original email marketing pioneers.

And he really has email marketing down to a **science**.

Naked Super Hero’s Copywriting Tip

Yesterday we saw Rorschach’s “finger snapping” sales secret.

Now I want to tell you about another character from Watchmen.

A character just as COOL as Rorschach… with a copywriting secret just as PROFITABLE.

His name is Dr. Manhattan — a blue, bald naked guy who the ladies find quite studly.

And he’s the only “hero” in the deal with actual “super powers”: The ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and subatomic level.

(Which is “geek-ese” for he can do whatever he wants.)

He can make stuff out of nothing, teleport, reduce a person to ashes with a mere thought, hang out on Mars, change his size, turn wood into glass, and even make duplicate versions of himself.

(You’ll have to see the movie for WHY he would do that…)

You want to know what else?

He is also a walking copywriting METAPHOR.

I kid you not, either.

Think about it:

What is your job as a copywriter if not to give yourself (if even temporarily) unlimited powers to do whatever you want for your prospects?

To grant their every wish.

Fulfill their every dream.

And (to paraphrase the late copywriter Eugene Schwartz) become, “The scriptwriter for your prospect’s fantasies”?

You know, it sounds weird, but often the best ads are written BEFORE the product is made for this exact reason.

In fact, the last ad I wrote was like this.

We had no product, just a market and a list of what that market desperately wants and needs right now.

So I simply created the product as I was writing the ad.

Taking everything we knew about the market and creating the ultimate “super product” in my head.

My point?

Whether you have the product or not… it’s your job as the copywriter to figure out everything your prospect wants, and create a fantasy in their brains as to how your product can grant all those wonderful miracles.

It’s the heart and soul of moolah-making copywriting.

Frankly, you’re not just “writing.”

You’re like the “Doctor Manhattan” of their lives — giving them anything their little hearts desire.

All of which makes selling in print a piece of cake.

As well as a whole lot of fun

Ben Settle

P.S. This creating fantasies thing can REALLY explode your response — even if you are not the best “copywriter” in the game. You can read more about how to become the “Doctor Manhattan” of your niche in chapter one of The Copywriting Grab Bag:

Copywriting Conversations With God

Got this great question about doing copywriting research…

QUESTION: Ben, you talk all the time about the importance of doing research before writing copy. What are some research tips?

BEN: That’s a very good question. Research is everything — the most important activity of all. Get your research right, and your ads practically write themselves.

And there’s something I do that (IMHO) gives me an advantage over other copywriters.

It has nothing to do with being more talented or “smarter” than anyone.
(I’m not, believe me).

This is actually more of a tactical advantage.
A way I discovered years ago when studying the Bible.
A way YOU can use to research your ads, too — regardless of your spiritual (or lack of spiritual) beliefs.

Listen:  About 10 years ago I studied the Bible all the time.
I had this voracious appetite for it that just wouldn’t quit.

One of the reasons why is probably because I spent so much time haunting Bible forums arguing with people, debating and doing all the time-wasting things people do when they learn just enough about a subject to be dangerous to themselves.

Anyway, I found myself getting spanked a lot in debates.
In order to not look like a moron anymore, I decided I better study harder.

And so I followed the lead of what smart Biblical scholars do:

I would read a passage and analyze EVERY single word, metaphor and image associated with it.

For example:
If I saw even an ordinary word (like “touch”) I looked it up in a Strong’s Concordance to see the original Hebrew or Greek meaning.

If I read a metaphor about Jesus washing His disciples’ feet, I investigated what that actually meant back then to better know the significance of it.

And if I ran into an image about locust armies, I looked up facts about how locusts behave, and what they do to their prey to get a better grasp on what that symbology really means.

Anyway, here’s the point:
This extra effort gave me a FAR more detailed understanding of the Bible I never would have had otherwise.

Now, “fast forward” to today, and that’s how I research ads.
I meticulously research every fact about the product, market and author to the tiniest detail.
It’s like digging for gold — hard, sweaty, unpleasant work.

But it results in ads that put LOTS more moolah in your pocket.

Ben Settle

P.S. Just because research is “grunt work” doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to shortcut it. One of the best ways (I use all the time now) to chop your research time in half was taught to me by “A List” copywriter Doug D’Anna.

You can read it in Appendix 7 of The Copywriting Grab Bag.

To jump on the book’s notification list (and have a chance to get it at a discount when it’s ready) go to:

www.CopywritingGrabBag.com