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You Have Nothing To Lose and Numbers Don’t Lie
You DO Have Something To Lose
I’m getting them again. Emails that grab me with subject lines that are misleading as heck. As a marketer, you’re better than that.
Let’s dissect a couple of these.
“You Have Nothing To Lose.”
That was the subject line of a recent email that begged me to take advantage of a coaching program with a guru. It costs me absolutely nothing to do – it is, in the style of the Internet Marketer, “FR.EE.” The calculus behind this, and other emails like it, is that I’m going to take a flier on your event, course, value-added service – and that I won’t think of my time as something I have to spend.
This is a problem. This is not an Empathy Marketing tactic. This is just lame.
See, I don’t know about you, but I choose to invest my time wisely. The reason I have nothing to lose, in your opinion, is because you know what’s on the other side of this offer, and it’ll only take an hour for me to find out.
If I ever fail to take your time seriously as a marketer, you can ignore my message.
What’s sad about this particular message I received is that the guy behind the curtain is probably someone I could learn from. But, because I got flummoxed by the email arrogantly telling me I had nothing to lose, I put the message into the mental circular file.
Let’s take a look at another one:
“Numbers Don’t Lie.”
Oh, don’t they? Peeling back the onion in this particular email and it’s even scarier. “9000 people visit this site every month!” “50 people have qualified for the bonus already!” I’ll agree: Numbers Don’t Lie.
The 9000 people who visited your site every month: are they bots from another country?
The 50 people who qualified for the bonus: what did they do to qualify?
Let’s amend the statement: Numbers Don’t Lie, but you can sure as heck use whatever numbers you want.
How About This? Let’s Take Each Other Seriously
My time is something I take seriously. 3 minutes reading your email from top to bottom are three minutes I’m not there for my wife and my kids.
Truth is something I take seriously, too. Mislead me with numbers that I can EASILY CHECK on the Internet and I’m going to lose respect for you.
We’re all trying to make a living. We’ve all got lives to lead. Take me seriously and I’ll do the same to you.
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