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Ben Settle Interview On Why You Should Be Sending Out Emails Every Single Day
Speaker 1: You’re not doing anyone any favors by hiding your product if you
can truly help them. In fact I’ve said this a lot, it is your moral and ethical
obligation to tell people that your product at least exists everywhere.
John: Hey, Podcast listener. You’re about to discover insider tips, tricks, and
secrets to making more sales and converting more prospects into customers
with email marketing.
For more information about the email marketing Podcast or the Auto
Responding Guy go to themcmethod.com/podcast.
Hey everybody, it’s John McIntyre here, the Auto Responder guy and it’s
time for Episode 3 of the email marketing podcast; where we talk about the
top tips, tricks and secrets for making more sales and growing your revenue
with email marketing. It’s Episode 3 and today I’ll be talking to Ben Settle.
A guy who believes daily email is the only way to do email marketing.
We’re going to get to that in just a moment. To get the show notes for this
episode of the email marketing podcast go to themcmethod.com/ep3. Before
we get started I need a favor. First thing I want you to do is listen to this
episode, hear from Ben Settle and find out why he preaches daily emails and
why he believes it is the best way that you or I can increase our sales in our
business.
After you’ve listened to the episode; go to themcmethod.com/podcast. Click
on the review link. It will take you to the email marketing podcast page in
iTunes automatically like magic where you can leave a review. If you leave a
review I’ll make you famous. I’ll read your review in this over enthusiastic
radio voice and I’ll turn you into a rock star. Who knows? You might even
get some groupies from it. Let’s go talk to Ben Settle.
It’s John McIntyre here, the Auto Responder Guy. I’m here with Ben Settle
who calls himself an email specialist. He’s another email marketing guy. He
has a newsletter over at bensettle.com, which I’m on and you should be on
too. Ben how are you doing today?
Ben: Doing great John. It’s good to talk to you again.
John: Yes, I’ve always loved this kind of stuff. Let’s start. Tell people a little
about who are you and what do you do?
Ben: I primarily sell things online with email. I do this in a few different
sites, niches, that sort of thing. I also teach email. My main thing these days
is a newsletter, a print newsletter that shows people how to sell with email.
That’s mostly what I’m focusing on these days. I used to do direct response
copywriting for clients. I don’t do that anymore. I find that it’s far more
profitable to be your own client.
John: I totally agree man. Clients are great and you make some money.
There’s always a new headache when you turn them to Skype calls, follow up
and manage the relationship and all these different things like that. Versus
just send a few emails.
Ben: You don’t have to get anything approved. You’re your own client. You
don’t have to convince them. When I was doing client work it seemed like I
wrote more emails persuading clients to do something than actual emails to
sell their product. There you go.
John: I can see that happening. Let’s talk about what’s the Ben Settle way of
doing email?
Ben: The way I; that’s hard to pin down in one thing. I guess if I had to sum
it up the Ben Settle way of doing email is to go out there every day and have
fun with your email; whatever you’re selling. Now Matt, when I say fun that
doesn’t mean necessarily slapstick happy. I mean some people sell products
that are serious, that’s fine. What I mean is you’re enjoying yourself. They’re
enjoying reading your emails. You’re selling something people really want,
something they need. They’re happy to pay you for it because you’re selling
it to them in a way where they like to buy. That is really the basics of my
system when you do it. That’s what happens.
John: I’ve been on your list for a month or two now since we spoke last time.
I’ve been loving the emails. They’re very different to what I’m used to from
a lot of other guys in that the first thing; let’s talk about that.
You send daily emails, Monday to Friday I think. Every single day there is
an email. What’s the deal with that? Do people get pissed off? How do you
get away with sending people daily emails when I think you’re the only
person aside from John who’s another I’ve spoken to who sends daily. No
one else does it.
Ben: Actually, I’m lazy. I should be sending one seven days a week and not
just five. In fact, what I really, technically if I was more motivated; I would
send two emails a day seven days a week. I’m not that motivated. No one
ever gets mad. In fact, I cannot remember the last time somebody
complained. Because, and this is the key; because I bring them into my list in
a way that’s its very clear that I’m sending daily tips.
They see it at the optin. They see in when they optin. They get a welcome
email, it says it there. They’re seeing it in the daily emails itself I’ll often
say these are daily emails. They’re seeing it, only someone who is
completely illiterate could not know they’re daily. If they complain, they
have no one blame but themselves.
I’m being completely up front. I think that’s a big thing for people to do. Be
completely up front with your readers. Let them know exactly how often. If
you’re not doing daily, if you’re doing three a week, one a week, two a day,
whatever; let them know up front. You’re not going to scare … the good
people you want are not going to be scared of that. People who are in to
whatever you sell who have that problem that need a solution; chances are
they’re on 20 other lists too. They want to hear from you.
John: To give you a little bit of motivation, why, obviously it’s going to
increase sales. Why do you think that daily emails are so great? Why put the
time in to actually create, write daily emails? What’s the big benefit?
Ben: There are a lot of reasons. One big reason is; I’ll give you two big
reasons. One is procrastination. People will procrastinate. People will have
decided to buy it three weeks ago. Today’s email finally pushed them over
the edge and they buy it. People will tell me this. This isn’t like this is my
theory or anything. I hear this all the time. Ben, you bastard, you got me. I
hear stuff like that. You got me today. I had to buy. I get that a lot or
variations of that a lot. That’s one reason.
Another reason is they build on each other. If people are hearing from you
every day or five days a week; all those emails start building on each other.
You become the leader in that niche whatever you’re in or you become a
leader at it. You’re someone who is demonstrating your competency and your
knowledge and your skill level in whatever it is you sell. You’re the one they
know, like and trust after awhile. You become their trusted friend.
If you do it right you’re not sitting there blatantly pitching every day. Again,
you’re making it valuable, you’re making it worth their time to read it and
you’re making yourself stand out from everyone else. You can only do that if
it’s daily. You really can’t do that on a weekly or monthly or whatever
email.
John: I think everyone is hearing that and going, “Well, I need to do daily.”
The argument and biggest objection is they’re going to be like I’m way too
lazy. It takes way too much time. How the hell, I’m already busy enough.
How can I send a daily email? What’s the solution there?
Ben; Here’s the solution to that. How’s that saying go? Is it time expands to
fit work or something. Whatever it is, you don’t have to put three hours in to
every email. I would say set a timer for 20 minutes and give yourself 20
minutes to write an email. It’s oh God, I can’t do that. Yes you can because
it doesn’t have to be long. It can be a paragraph. It really doesn’t matter. You
don’t want to write regularly. The more you do it, the faster and easier it gets
anyway. The first several times, I’m not going to lie to you. It can be hard,
especially if you don’t like writing.
This is what I always give my customers. This thing I call a 30day
challenge. I lay out; write this kind of email Monday. Write this one on
Tuesday. I do that for that very reason so they get used to it. By the end of it
they see their sales going up and that will motivate them. Let’s face it, if
you’re going … if your sales dramatically go up or double or something;
that’s pretty good motivation to write an email every day.
John: Absolutely. What I’ve been finding because I’ve been doing this lately
for my stuff is that once you get into the swing of things you can do an email
in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. If you start with an idea, it’s really, really fast.
Ben: It really is. Everybody wants to make it … you don’t have to spell
everything perfectly. I not saying you can butcher every word. It’s doesn’t
have to be perfect. It should sound like you’re writing an email to a family
member or friend with something interesting they want to hear. It may not be
perfectly formatted. It may not have perfect, whatever language you’re
speaking, English. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can just get it out there and
commute it. It’s better to be a good communicator than a good writer when it
comes to email.
John: Ok, I know that you do many info product business stuff. Is this worse
sending daily emails? Is that applicable to any business like software
businesses, brick and mortar service type businesses? Is it for everyone?
Ben: I have yet to see a business where writing daily emails would not work.
I will give you an example. There’s this guy I know, a very good guy I’ve
known for a couple years. He wrote this article about emailing frequency;
frequency of email. It was a great article right up until the point where he
said, seasonal businesses obviously don’t need to do this very often or
frequently; the pool guy or whatever.
I wrote an email about that; a rebuttal. I said no, he’s wrong about that. The
pool guy can write emails during the winter when everybody’s not even
using their pool. He could be making deals with other local businesses.
Writing a community email telling people about other things related to their
homes or what other businesses are up too and things like that. Then when it
comes time to hire a pool guy he’s the only one they’re going to hire. He
could have his own little ad coop if he wanted where he could charge other
businesses money to advertise in his daily email. Everybody could do this. I
cannot think of one single instance where you couldn’t do this.
John: It seems like this is a pretty good place to talk about the terms of what
sort of content do you sell them. You talk about in your products that it’s got
to be entertaining. This pool guy can’t send an email every day that’s just
talking about a pool. He’s got to turn that; make it entertaining so that people
will open that email. Maybe it’s winter. Maybe they’re not buying a pool or
swimming during the winter. If it’s entertaining then they’re going to enjoy
that relationship between this guy. He might point out fun stuff. He might
have joke one day. He’ll have a funny story another day. It’s all related back
to pools. It’s not bad.
Ben: He could even be selling, preselling his services for the next year. Hey,
I’m going to start a list now, a waiting list. I’m so booked up with people
who want to hire me. I’m starting a waiting list early this year. He got start a
sub list of people. Then, guess who he emails when the first season starts
with a hard offer; that sub list. If nothing else he could be building a sub list
all winter while talking about pool related stuff or home improvement related
stuff. You could go so many different directions with that, it doesn’t really
matter.
John: I like to think about when their on his list he has their attention. These
people care about pools but they also care about having fun. If they have a
pool they’re going to be having fun. They’re probably into fitness and health
because they have a pool. There are a series of things this prospect is going to
be interested in.
Ben: That’s true.
John: You can write content about that kind of stuff.
Ben: He could write an email about how to hold your breath for 10 minutes.
All this stuff, anything that comes to mind; you’re right. He could be talking
about swimming; how to get stronger if you swim a certain way. He could go
to town on that kind of stuff. Then he’s staying in their awareness and then
when pool cleaning season comes they’re not even going to think of anyone
else. He’s going to be the only choice to clean their pool. He will be backed
up; he will be so backed up he would have to hire other people to do it. He
would probably have to expand to other areas.
John: You talk a lot about a soft teaching and hard teaching. In the case of the
pool guy or other hard businesses like brick and mortar businesses like that is
he can talk about what makes the pools he makes so good. He can throw out
the specific tiles that go into them or the concrete; the sort of water and
chemicals that they use or a supplement person can talk about all the
ingredients. No one, their customers and prospects aren’t going to go and
make their own supplement in their kitchen.
Ben: Right, they’re not going to make their own fish oil.
John: Right, but for you, you have an info business so you’ve got to be
careful not to give away what’s in the product while also providing values.
This is a whole soft teaching, hard teaching thing. How do you do that?
Ben; First I also recommend even other businesses go with the soft teaching.
People are getting bogged down with content these days. You know what I
mean? You’ve got to make it …. My opinion is you focus more on having
fun than on hard content. To answer your question, with an information thing,
there’s so many ways to go about this. My general rule of thumb is except in
very rare circumstances I never give away anything in the product. I can talk
about anything as long as it’s not in my product.
You can talk about strategy but your product is probably tactical. You could
talk strategy all day long. A guy can talk about, for example; I’m selling an
email newsletter about how to do email. I can about, all day long about not
worrying about email deliverability and open rates. I did this recently. I
wrote an email about don’t obsess over your email deliverability. That’s
interesting information for someone because most people are; they’re oh my
God. The truth is there’s not much you can do about it. There’s some things
you can do, but that’s an email; its soft teachings.
It’s what you would find in an article as opposed to a technical manual. A
technical manual is going to give you all the details of how to do something,
but an article like a magazine; they give you tips but they’re not hard life
changing things. They’re not your best stuff. A lot of it is common sense.
Some of it is inspirational. There’s a lot to be said for writing emails that are
inspirational. I think everybody likes to read them. I like to read them. They
inspire people to want to take action about whatever problem is you’re
solving. That’s a great example of doing soft teaching; just inspire people.
Tell inspiring stories about people who used your product or people who
have had the product that you’re solving. That’s a great way to do it.
Talk about symptoms if you’re selling a health product. You can go to town
talking about symptoms. Man, you’re going to have people glued to your
emails if you do that. Somebody has hemorrhoids or something and you
wrote a book about how to get rid of hemorrhoids. You can’t talk enough
about that topic. They will read everything you say and they will buy it from
you if you do it daily.
John: That’s really good. One thing I know you do is you sell in every single
email. You might be teaching, but you’re selling in every email. How do
you get away with that without being a blatant pitch guy, or hype guru, or all
that kind of stuff?
Ben: You know what, that’s a good question. A lot of time I’ll get critique.
People in my news letter; they send me emails for critique. This is especially
for affiliate marketers. They don’t know any other way what to hype and
come out guns blazing. You can do that once in a while and you should if you
have a launch going on or a new product that’s fine. You’ve got to connect
with people.
Here’s the way I look at it. If you pretend you’re writing to friend or family
members who have the problem that your product solves. You’re not going to
come out and say hey I got this new thing. No, you’re going to say hey, I
heard that you have this problem. I know about this other guy who had this
problem and he was telling me this, that and the other. I have something for
that.
You’re connecting with them by having a conversation with them in the
email. You’re still being valuable. You’re still being interesting. You can
still talk about potential solutions and that sort of thing. There are all kinds of
ways to do this. You’re not being blatant. You’re going to sell. You’re going
to put your link in there. You’re not doing anyone any favors by hiding your
product if it can truly help them.
In fact, I’ve said this a lot. It is your moral and ethical obligation to tell
people that your product at least exists every day if they have a problem that
you can solve. That’s the way I look at it. If you really care about your
market you’re going to want them to at least know about what you have. You
don’t have to be obnoxious about it. You shouldn’t be obnoxious about it.
You should at least let them know it’s there.
John: I think that’s a really good point because people get in a huff about this.
They think content … content marketing is all the rage right now, especially
online. Everyone is raving about it. If you’re not selling and you have a
product that genuinely helps people and you don’t tell them about it, then if
their problem persists in a weird kind of way you’re responsible for it.
Ben: Yes, if you have the cure for somebody, I know we’re not supposed to
use the word cures here in America to describe things. If you have a solution
that you know in your heart is going to help somebody, every day I know my
newsletter can help. I know I’ve seen it; I completely believe in it. People
who subscribe to it have told me it’s increased their income immeasurably.
Some people are like it saved their fricking … from being able to pay the
mortgage and stuff. How can I not tell everyone? I’m not saying they have to
buy it. I’m saying here it is. It’s up to them.
I don’t have this …, I’m contrary in this, and I don’t do a lot of ass kissing. I
don’t butter up; I don’t sit there and kiss the customer’s butt. I give them an
opportunity to buy it. I don’t push what I have on them. That’s the thing; just
because you’re putting the link in there every day doesn’t mean you’re
pushing it. I don’t think you should be pushy. I think you should be helpful. I
think you should be interesting. Then I think you should say, hey if you have
this problem or you want this benefit check out this link I have. They can
either go or don’t and you don’t care either way. It’s up to them.
John: The typical format that I’ve seen in your emails and I’ve seen a lot of
other people do is you start off with; well actually not many people do it at
all. You start off with, the opening is you have the hook which is the subject
line and the first line or two. It’s like the Aida outline. Get their attention,
make them interested with a short story that’s somehow relevant and that can
sag into your product somehow. Then at the end all you’re doing is saying if
you want to learn more check out the product.
Ben: Yes that’s basically what I do every day. You see it every day. Some
days are more aggressive than others. That’s all part of being unpredictable
and fun. They don’t know what they’re going to get from you tomorrow.
They don’t know what John McIntyre is going to send them tomorrow. He
doesn’t even know yet. He hasn’t started writing the email. You keep it fresh
and interesting. You might think man, you know what? I have a pretty good
hook here. I just described that problem pretty good. I had this cool
testimonial. I’m going to push this a little harder today.
Other days you might be you know I’m not really feeling it too much; it’s a
nice, fun interesting email. I’m soft to it. You do it every day.
John: It seems like the aggressive thing is the fact that there’s a link in every
email. What people need to understand is that it’s not about; you’re not
going in there with your guns blazing ripping off benefits, benefits, benefits.
It’s more having a bit of small talk or something with someone. Then you
say, I’ve got this product over here, here’s the link. Go check it out if you’re
interested.
Ben: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. I am not … I’m big on having, if you
really believe in what you have then you have to believe that you’re doing the
world a favor by offering what you have. I don’t mean that in an arrogant
way. I know that comes off kind of arrogant but it’s true. If you have the cure
for cancer aren’t you going to be pretty confident about when …? You’re not
out pushing it on anybody. You’re going to say here it is and they can take it
or not.
I’m not equating what I sell to a cure for cancer. I’m just saying that’s the
attitude and the posture to have.
John: Absolutely. We’re just coming up to time right now. Before we finish
what are the top one to three big wins that someone listening to this could
walk away and implement them and get some good results in their business.
Ben: First of all, start writing every day. This is the big thing. You can’t get
around it. Just start doing it and don’t edit yourself, just write. Don’t worry if
it’s perfect. Don’t worry what anyone’s going to think. It doesn’t matter
because you can always come back tomorrow and do something different.
That’s the beauty of emails; a very forgiving medium.
The other thing they can do is start putting a link to what they have to offer in
every email. Even if you have to do it passively, get over this fear of selling.
Get over a fear of doing something by doing it. You will find that some
people get mad but they were never your prospect in the first place. Let them
go. You shouldn’t want them on your list anyway. You’re doing them a favor
and they’re doing you a favor by doing that.
The third tip, a good third tip would be to have fun with it. If you’re not
having fun writing it, they’re probably not going to have fun reading it.
They’re going to get bored with it. You cannot bore people. This is the big
thing. You make sure, if you’re not enjoying writing about a certain topic,
throw that one out and write about something else. Trust me, people can
sense it if you’re boring. People will not be bored in email or any kind of
advertising. Especially email where they have 500 other emails coming at
the same time.
John: Hell yes. This has been super valuable. I’m sure everyone has gotten
tons of ideas from this. Before we sign off, tell people where they can find
you and any of your products; that kind of thing.
Ben: The best way to find me would be go to bensettle.com. If you opt in and
you don’t have too, you can just bypass that opt in and go to my 800 or 900
pages of content on there and 12 or 13 hours of audio content. If you opt in to
the list I will send you a PDF version of the first issue of my email player’s
newsletter, which is an offline newsletter. I’ll send you the PDF and the first
issue. You asked me for three ways, well there are 24 ways in that one issue
to profit immediately. You could apply any one of these 24 things or any two
or three of them in the next few days. If you have a web spot ready at lease
you should see some good results.
John: Thank you. Thanks for coming on here. See you again soon.
Ben: All right. Thank you very much.
John: Hey everybody. Thanks for listening. If you want to discover more
insider tips and secrets about driving sales with email marketing sign up at
daily email tips from the Auto Responder Guy. Go to
themcmethod.com/podcast. Sign up, confirm your email address and I’ll
send you daily emails on how to improve your email market and make more
sales via email. You’ll find out why open rates go up and the seven little
words that underlies all effective marketing and much more.
http://www.themcmethod.com/bensettleonwhyyoushouldbesendingdail
yemails/
