I know what you're thinking… ethical?? Will that even work?

YES. And I'm about to tell you why Max Simon's new concept of "Tribal Marketing" will actually work far better than any other short-term, shortcut, flavor-of-the-month marketing strategy that we often see come and go.

But first, a quick intro of who Max Simon is.

A couple weeks ago, Max Simon from GetSelfCentered.com came all the way over to Malaysia to hang out with me, Mike, and the whole MindValley crew.

Let's just say we had a lot of fun

And not to mention a lot of shared learnings. The people at my office loved him.

It was a great experience. You see, Max, who's a great entrepreneur, marketer, and personal growth junkie, taught us this awesome concept that he calls "Tribal Marketing".

So I thought I'd share this video of Max's training to MindValley so you can learn EXACTLY what he taught us.

He's a pretty cool kid, as you'll see in the video below. It's 30 minutes long, but Max shares with us his amazing secrets to Tribal Marketing. Be patient, let it load and let me know what you think.

Tribal Marketing by Max Simon

Click here to view the embedded video.

BTW, It's a YouTube playlist and should run seamlessly. However, if you run into any problems, you can also click next to view videos 2, 3 and 4. Alternatively if the playlist does not work at all for you -- check below. I've posted individual videos

What to look out for in this video:

• Why mass marketing is dead and how tribes have formed in its place
• Top 5 outdated fears that still control many marketers (and how these mistakes actually hold them back from having a LOYAL and RESPONSIVE following)
• 7 qualities you should (and CAN) attract so you won't ever again worry about squeezing dimes out of your following cause they'll be more than happy to throw dollars at you

BTW, Oh, and if you're not familiar with Max, he's well known for his Public Displays of Meditation, his Enlightened Entrepreneur Experience seminars, and for his work with the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You just need one main powerful ingredient to make it work well - testimonials.

That's right.

Testimonials sell. The more you have, the better. Plus, they do boost conversion rates on websites.

So, we thought, what the heck, let's literally put some testimonials in our emails and see how that goes.

Building Your Email from Testimonials

To give you a demonstration on how to do this, here's a quick and simple example.

The following are testimonials from one of our major websites, SilvaLifeSystem.com

First Testimonial

“I’ve used the Silva Method for many years. It has helped me overcome my own illnesses. I urge you to attend Mr. Silva’s training sessions that are presented around the world.”

~ Dr. Wayne Dwyer, motivational speaker, author, and popular self-improvement guru from best-selling book Real Magic (Harper Mass Market Paperbacks, 1993)

Second Testimonial

“One of the earliest workshops I took was the Silva Mind Control Course… The most important technique I learned in that course was the basic technique of creative visualization… Our rational mind is like a computer… The intuitive mind, on the other hand, seems to give access to an infinite supply of information. It appears to be able to tap into a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom…”

~ Shakti Gawain, author of numerous books, including Creative Visualization (Bantam Books, 1983) from Living in the Light (Bantam Books, 1993)

Third Testimonial

I have been investigating and researching everything in the self-help and metaphysical field for the last 20 years….I have learned many techniques to help people, and the best of all is The Jose Silva UltraMind ESP System. I cannot imagine anyone not wanting to learn Jose Silva’s System once they understand how valuable these techniques are.

~ Ellen Roper, certified hypnotherapist.

Great, so now we have a few lovely testimonials. Here's how we can include them strategically in a captivating email.

Remember, this is just a simple example.

Hi {FIRSTNAME},

The Silva Method community can
be a very talkative one - I get
lots of email every day from
people asking questions and telling
stories.

I wanted to share a few to show
you what others are saying and
experiencing. If Jose Silva was still
alive, he would have been pleased
to hear all the positive feedback.
After all, he's done something special.

{LINK}

Read these stories now and then I'll tell
you what Jose Silva did:

*************************************

Testimonial 1

*************************************

Testimonial 2

*************************************

Okay, so we've seen 2 examples of
people across the country taking the
1st step to start - and getting results FAST.

All it took was an expert teacher
and a little effort.

When you go after something with
the right mind set, coincidences
happen and the universe works FOR
you. It's almost like the universe
WANTS you to succeed... so pick
some good goals

So what did Jose do you ask?

Jose Silva spent 50 years developing
The Silva Method, by far one of the
most powerful personal development
programs ever invented.

{LINK}

You owe it to yourself to give it a try
and take advantage of the 30% discount
being offered ONLY in the next 5 days.

Grab it fast here:

{LINK}

And it would be great if you sent me
your reaction after trying it.

It's really making waves...

Regards,
Sender's Name

P.S.: Here's another story from a
satisfied spirit

*************************************

Testimonial 3

*************************************

If you're ever going to try the Silva Method
you should right now since that discount
is still available

You can get going here (I recommend it):

{LINK}

And that's basically it. That's how you strategically place testimonials in an email. Go ahead and use the structure of the above email for your own email marketing efforts.

We've had great success with this strategy.

A Few Closing Words

Now of course, the above isn't meant to be a substitute for other important things a good email needs to have such as a captivating subject line. It's meant to be a solid complimentary tactic you can use once in a while to boost your email marketing performance.

For me, writing an email is a 4-step process – it’s a system that you can use and build on.

4 Step Process to Email Copywriting

1. Current or Evergreen?

First, you have to strategically decide whether it’s an evergreen email or a current email.

An evergreen email is the type of email that you can put in your autoresponder and you can keep it running repeatedly year after year or once every 4-5 months, depending on the subject and on your sequence.

In other words, you can keep it there forever.

A current email means that you write emails as a reaction to what is happening in the world right now. It usually a news-related item, for example oil prices going up, summer, the Dark Knight Returns, or back-to-school.

If you decide to write a current email, use the USA Today secret and put in little facts to get your reader’s attention.

However, to put it another way – it’s long-term profit vs. short term gain, because something evergreen isn’t affected by circumstance and is an eternal issue that won’t go away. However, it’s with current emails that you’re able to make more money in the short run because that’s directly relevant to the person reading your email.

I don’t know what the magic ratio should be - 50% evergreen and 50% current so that your work as an email copywriter is reduced because there’s more evergreen content? Or, should you focus on bringing in short term gain because email is so flexible that you can write one in 2 hours? That ratio is up to you to determine.

Either way, always decide whether your email is evergreen or current.

The people who are really good with evergreen emails are the seduction gurus who do it for topics they believe are evergreen in their niche market– people like John Alanis or Ross Jeffries. David DeAngelo (Double your Dating), for example, has a 100email autoresponder sequence, every day except weekends for about 3 months, and then it repeats – and he has a 20M dollar business!

If you want to do the same, you can send the same emails – but preferably after a long time. Chances are, people won’t remember after 6 months.

2. Determine the Strategy

It sounds very big, but there are actually just 3 components: List, Story, Offer.

1. Which list am I emailing? Because this determines your customer avatar, and what resonates with the people on each list is different.

2. What’s the story I want to share? Did my friend share with me an amazing technique that I want to introduce? Or how I used a particular technique to do overcome something?

3. What’s the offer, and what product am I selling to this list?

You just need one sentence for each of the above: you don’t need to be very elaborate because emails aren’t meant to be elaborate – they’re meant to be simple and to the heart.

Matt Furey says the “3 C”s of email marketing are to be Clear, to be Concise, and to be Colloquial.

By concise, I don’t necessarily mean short –just don’t repeat yourself. With email length, it works 2 ways – David DeAngelo’s emails go on and on, and at the same time Matt Furey says the recommended length is about 500 words. It doesn’t have to be short because 500 words does give you a bit of room.

Here’s the thing – to be successful in email marketing, you must write the way your grandmother would write email, in a way similar to how she’d ramble to you. The more you replicate that formula and the more you write like a friend, the more sales you’ll make because you’ve developed that connection.

This is because when people go into their email, their mindset is to open an email from a friend. If you write something ‘salesy’, they’ll most likely find it a turn off and they’ll immediately switch off.

3. Write down the Bones

At this point, I start writing the emails. ‘Writing down the Bones’ is a strategy employed by one of the top creative writing teachers of all time, Natalie Goldberg. She said that there are 2 persons residing in you – the writer and the editor – and they’re always at odds.

That means when the writer writes something, the editor immediately says, ‘Hey, that sentence looks funny…why don’t you improve this structure?’ So, initially, you have to cast the editor aside, and write.

To do this, I give my self a time-line –usually exactly half an hour. I don’t care how long it is; there’s some sort of structure, but I just continue to write whether the sentence seems weird or it’s not flowing.

Why? Because that is most probably the most authentic thing you can get because it’s heart to heart.

As Matt Furey says, Talk-Write Write-Talk. It’s heart to heart communication, so it can only work when you write out of your stream of consciousness. You write from your subconscious to touch the other person’s subconscious.

Usually, in the first draft, you’ll have the story. You may not have all the psychological triggers and you may only have a bit of the offer, but it is really all about the story (because grandmothers like telling stories). The more stories you tell, the more things you sell.

Even if initially your story is ill formed, just make sure to spend that half-hour writing. No second thoughts, no going back – just keep moving forward.

4. Edit

I usually spend one hour editing the foundation of my email and cleaning it up here and there.

I use psychological triggers – things like scarcity, anticipation, curiosity, etc. I’ve also assembled my copywriter's toolbox which contains transition words and phrases, power words, electrifying your ads, colloquialisms, idioms etc.

I regularly use Magic Transitions (from Ted Nicholas) and the new Clayton Makepeace free report, ‘The #1 Way to Electrify Your Ads’, which you can use to make your email more ‘warm’ by using clichés, colloquialisms, and figures of speech.

And voilà - that’s how you write an email using my simple 4 step process.

Additional tips:

• Collect subject lines – when you see a good subject lines, copy and paste it into your collection. I’ve seen really cool subject lines, like “Headless man found in Topless Bar”, or Dr Dave drinks his own urine to lose weight – I mean, that would make you open that email! Even things like real life, like people’s Skype messages can make for eye-catching lines – one of our programmers wrote “hackers have CSS designers too”. You can so easily use this as a template and adapt it to your needs e.g., ‘serial killers have friends too’, etc.
• When it comes to trying to understand your market and figure out the psychological triggers in relation to the subject you’re writing about, it’s useful to go to Amazon and find a book related to what you’re writing about. If you look at the chapter break downs / headlines, it’s pretty much all the psychological triggers there because they’ll cover topic by topic what the reader is looking for.
• The top bullet swipe files are not in copywriting books, but 2 general books that you most likely have heard of before: the first is ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People' by Dale Carnegie. The second is ‘How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling’ by Frank Bettger, with the table of contents by direct mail master copywriter Victor O. Schwab. The contents are all essentially bullet point templates for you to swipe.

It's interesting and eye-opening, almost like a "survival of the fittest" experiment with the best emails rising to the top and the ones not cutting the mark sinking to the bottom (simply because I subscribed to 140 marketing mailing lists).

All 140 marketers proclaim themselves the 'best expert', throwing all kinds of free information... and yet there were still only 2 or 3 that really impressed me. Every single time these guys send me an email, I open it.

I've tried to reverse-engineer how and why these emails are so amazingly effective at capturing my attention, and even in some cases, my heart. I call this single most powerful concept 'SOS': Setting Off Sparks.

Setting Off Sparks

This finds its basis in the analogy of a forest fire, where all it takes is a spark to some dry wood to set alight 1000 acres.

In the same manner, sparks happen in everyday life. It's like the tipping point from being acquaintances to becoming best friends. It's the tipping point at which best friends suddenly become lovers, because of that one spark.

This is our role as marketers: to create those moments for the subscribers' list to become followers, and ultimately, loyal customers.

How do you embed sparks in your emails?

How do you create the conditions for 'love' to happen? I'd say there are three different ways to set off sparks.

1. Dazzle them with revelations

What I mean is, don't just give information: give information that will rock their socks off, shake their world, and change the way they do things. You can accomplish this in 2 ways:

1. Give out brand new information that no-one else has. Failing that (because there's no such thing as brand new information anyway),
2. Translate old information in new ways. According to Joel Bauer (the best public speaker in the world according to some), when you name something it becomes more real, more credible. You could take some old concepts, string them together, put a label on them, and kaBOOM...it seems like a revelation and looks like something new.

Why give revelations?

Because you can keep giving out information to your list and they won't appreciate it because there's a lot of free information available out there. But, when you hand them something that suddenly strikes them deep in the core and changes the way they do something, they will remember you.

And every single email you send thereafter is an open door for you, every word you say has more weight, and every technique you share has more value. That's how it works.

For example, even I follow the people who've dazzled me with revelations. Even if, afterwards, they don't give me 'good' information, I still follow what they're up to because of that one dazzling revelation.

That list includes Eben Pagan, for example, when he said to move the free line and make sure everything you give away is of value and can be monetized.

There's another guy, Stu McClaren, a JV expert who spoke during the JV portion of Jeff Walker's product launch workshop. (I subscribed to 140 mailing lists so naturally I'm on his list, too.) I clicked through and his newsletters had a couple of pointers that dazzled me.

I thought to myself, "Wow... I will never look at entrepreneurship the same way again." Because of that, I now follow him and am a fan. Why? Because he dazzled me. It works.

The thing is, you only need to ever dazzle them once and they'll follow you. BUT, of course, at the same time you always need to remember that it's a numbers game. You need to keep giving out as much new information as possible because some of it will hit, and some of it won't. But it's worth it because once that one idea hits, they're yours.

Like Victor Hugo said, there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

2. Touch them with stories

Not just any stories, but your stories.

Touch them with your autobiographical sketches, your snapshots of yourself. Why? Because that story will create identification and empathy between you and your prospects.

For example, again Stu McClaren captured my attention because of his story about his fiance and the trouble they had getting money for their wedding, and that was something I could identify with because, you know, weddings are expensive these days.

There is suddenly a moment of empathy with that guru or with that person, and you start following his story. Now, it's not so much about the revelations he can give you anymore as much as it is about who he is, to you.

3. Tease them with Cliffhangers

There's a famous saying in marketing that 'curiosity killed the cat but made the marketer rich'. As humans, we are always curious to discover new techniques and  strategies, and new ways of doing things.

Mark Joyner describes this as the Zeigarnik effect in his book, Mind Control Marketing, where the use of the Zeigarnik effect keeps people 'glued in' to discover what's going to happen next. It basically says that all human beings have problems with unfinished stories.

Even if they watch a terrible movie, if they're three-quarters of the way in, they'll want to finish that movie, they will not walk out of that theater.

Why? Because unfinished stories are torturous to your mind because they cause such a disruption to your thoughts.

So, one of the keys to building adoration is to torture them. You can achieve this by placing a cliffhanger in the subject line or body copy, e.g. "This involves something called the BK effect...find out in the next segment what it is!"

Even CNN does this, by the way. They give you a useless trivia question, and then you stay through the commercial so that you can find out what the answer is.

The most important thing about this point, though, is this: your answer had better be satisfying! Don't throw something out and build to an anti-climax. If you can give an answer that will blow their minds somewhat, you have a friend for life --a friend who'll listen to you and when you say 'open your wallet', they will.

I always try to say 'old stuff' in a new way, because sometimes it's the only way to be heard in a sea of competitors. In your market, how can you begin to translate your information into dazzling revelations? If you are inspired specifically by the ideas I've shared, let me know by posting a comment or just saying hi.

Email marketing plays a very big role in what we do; it contributes significantly to our revenue and profits. Despite that, I've realized that no one really talks about email copywriting. The few people who do are Frank Kern, Yanik Silver, maybe some of the material contained in many email swipe files, but given its importance, not many people really talk about it enough.

No one has actually quantified or qualified email copywriting as a way of making sales, nor as a category of study or to champion. I took a stab at actually trying to reverse engineer emails from some top email copywriters to see what kind of techniques they are using.

The first person that came to mind was, of course, Matt Furey. Dan Kennedy and Michael Masterson, the head of Agora, have rated Matt Furey as the best email marketer in the world. In fact, last year he charged $5,000 per head for an email copy writing boot camp for one of Agora's copywriting offshoots. He must be doing something right.

He also came to mind because his emails are really entertaining. Mind you, I'm not even the target market or audience but somehow, I actually I want to open and read every single email he sends. It shows that he is actually doing something right. I Googled him yesterday to see what he actually does. I've found that he has an Internet marketing product out as well.

Matt Furey is a multimillionaire, purely on email copywriting. His emails take him about 20mins or less to create. I came up with 5 different things I think Matt Furey does that have made him who he is today.

5 observations on Matt Furey's Email Marketing:

1. He is as aggressive as humanly possible

What I mean by that is this: if you thought Armand Morin was insane by sending 20 simultaneous mails, this guy has a 100-email sequence. Per product. I signed up for 4-6 of his lists, and gives 50-100 tips in a row. You receive a constant barrage of emails from him every day. Some days, he even emails twice a day because he has special promotions in between. In every tips/lessons email, he squeezes in an offer to buy something and often it's not even the list's product –either an affiliate product or one of his other products.

If you sign up for his fitness product, he'll push you towards his Carpal Tunnel Syndrome product. He tells one long story that has nothing to do with anything, and then at the bottom he inserts "PS. This story is related to my product, please click here to buy".

It's also really interesting that at the end of every email, his signature is a collection of links to his 6 WebPages. It actually works because after reading his story, you do want to see what else this guy has to offer.

2. "It's all about infotainment"

Matt Furey wrote this to Michael Masterson's copywriting list, and added that it's not about education. Oftentimes, we try to give value to the customer by providing them with education, tips and tricks. But, Matt Furey says, education is boring! People DON'T want to scroll through a long boring email just to gather a few nuggets of truth wedged in between long boring words. Matt Furey says it's about informing in an entertaining way.

And how do you provide information in an entertaining way? You make a story out of everything. I've observed that this is one of observations Matt Furey's techniques –he makes a story out of the smallest things – from the benefits of using his product, to case studies disguised as elaborate stories of people who have successfully used the product, to processes and even the product itself.

Examples include his 'Farmer Burns Stomach Flattener' exercises, on which he wrote 3 emails. He wrote in an attention-grabbing way, giving stories on who Farmer Burns was and what will happen when you use these exercise. He includes testimonials in his stories as well, and this is how he can write 100emails –by micro-focusing on one benefit, feature or case study and amplifying it. I can even remember his stories by head because they really were good.

One of his best stories was about a monk, one of only 46 monks to have ever run 1,000 marathons through the terrain of Mt. Hiei in seven years. That's right, 1,000 marathons through the mountains in seven years! Moreover, failure to complete the course requires suicide! It is actually a true story, by the way.

He used it for one of his fitness seminars, where he was planning to invite the monk to talk about how he used to be a loser until he started running these crazy marathons. Matt Furey uses stories like these and although you may not be the target audience, he draws you in. You don't delete any of the 100emails because each of them is so entertaining.

3. He creates something to champion

We often talk about creating business categories to champion; Matt Furey has done this really well. He decided that having used weight training for body building in the past, he would now be anti-weight training. He came up with a product called Combat Conditioning, involving Hindu Squats and Hindu Pushups etc, which he uses to champion body weight training. He also champions the 'Farmer Burns Stomach Flattening' exercises.

Matt Furey is the champion of the micro-cause. He makes every process and benefit a cause. He makes the 'Farmer Burns Stomach Flattening' exercises THE exercise, THE secret weapon that all stomach flatteners use.

When done in this way, this technique creates a halo effect. If you amplify one key benefit in your product and spread it out, the 'goodwill' generated around that one cause or benefit will cascade down to your entire product.

This is what Apple did with iPod, for example. They focused 80% of their marketing on the iPod, and every single Apple product has benefited from the coolness of the iPod. Matt Furey does the exact same thing. He takes one principle that seems novel or cool, amplifies it, and the benefits cascade down.

4. He maintains a very high level of energy in his copy

Even his lead-in has very good personality. When most emails begin, "Do you have a problem with surgery?" Or "Do you have a problem with this ailment?" Matt Furey says, "Allergies suck! Now, what are you going to do about it?"

Well, not really. Actually, he says stuff like "Start Your Day With a Donut, Coffee and a Smoke" or even, "Pain, Pain Go Away", and his emails maintain that high-energy pace throughout. His emails are fast and catchy, and none of them are more than 500-600words long; they're very short. He calls it zero resistance writing –don't care what people may say and just write what you feel. It makes people more drawn to you because this way, you write with passion and energy.

5. He builds towards a mythology

Mythology is a system of stories and beliefs. I define mythology as a network of stories, personality, expressions and causes, channeled through a sense of secrecy to contribute towards the aura and branding of the product.

Obviously, Matt Furey has a lot of stories and all of them are integrated into his mythology DNA. He has stories on how he 'discovered' kung fu sex, and he writes a Chinese phrase which loosely translates to 'on the bed kung fu' or 'kung fu on the mattress'. That particular sales letter was all story, bullet points and the close.

Although he repeats some of them, he has different kinds of stories including one on how he met the Japanese pro wrestling champion who taught him Combat Conditioning. His personality shines through in everything he does –even his Internet course is called "51 Bullshit Ways to Make a Fortune on the Internet." –that's the real title of his mailing list. His causes can also be found throughout his sales letters, and there is a consistency to the way he writes.

Matt Furey say: sell secrets –very good advice. Channel your product through a veil of secrecy, so for example, you wouldn't say you're selling 'The Hardworking Man's Way To Earn A Living Online Using PPC Optimization.' No. You'd say, 'This Is The Secret To Boosting Your Lifestyle.' Sell secrets and make everything seem mysterious.

In his Chinese kung fu sales letter, he threw around Chinese words which, to the Chinese, are very simple, everyday words like stomach ache, headache, translated literally. But, he uses them brilliantly to create aura and mythology. Again, personality, expression and zero resistance writing play an important role.

Lastly, your product should come out the world of stories and expressions you have created.

One last thing. Matt Furey is very timely. If it's Spring Break, he'll have a Spring Break story. He'll begin, "This reminds me of the last Spring break…" and he'll tell a story which has nothing anything to do with the product… yet. And unsurprisingly, as in every single email he sends, right at the end he'll say, "PS. This kind of relaxation can also be found with my products, click here to buy."

Matt Furey always writes and closes his emails this way. And perhaps, all of the above contribute, in varying degrees, to his knack of closing sales.

Often, what is at the top of their minds is covered in news media. I learned this from Paul Hartunian:

First, you go to USA Today.com, especially if most of your target audience is predominantly in the United States and other western countries. USAToday.com summarizes what is at the top of people's minds - be it a school shooting, a politician's sex scandal or a football team victory - in the following categories:

• Most read
• Most commented
• Most recommended
• Most e-mailed

When you look at the Top 10 news stories on USAToday.com, you know what is influencing people's feelings at this point:

...it's about General David Petraeus’ testimonial

...it’s about the fall in sales of existing homes

...it's about the baby born with two faces in north India

...it’s about the Women’s NCAA Tournament

This is what's going on in their minds, and your role is to bridge the gap by speaking to them at their point of need.

Our role as marketers is to find a hot story – it doesn't even need to be that relevant – and connect the product to the story. However, this technique can only be used on the day or the day after the news is released because that's when it's still hot in the minds of the prospects.

One of the best examples I've seen was when Shameless Shamus Brown, a sales guru who does really good email marketing, used this technique after Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal was covered by the press.

The day after Eliot Spitzer's story was out, the subject line of his email read:

'Did Eliot Spitzer ask for a discount?'

Anybody would click on that immediately. You see, I believe that the open rate for that email really shot up that day. Why? Because it was connected to a current event.

In that email,  he talked about sales technique; he explained that there are some clients who are not price sensitive at all, and Eliot Spitzer could be one of them.

The prostitute charged $5,000.00 dollars an hour…did Eliot Spitzer ask for a discount? Maybe a 20% 30% discount? No, he didn't. The high price… the price insensitivity… the high premium gives these kinds of clients a sense of power and worth.

The same goes for press releases. As Paul Hartunian says, there's a difference between ‘hot’ stories and ‘non-hot’ stories. A hot story means that it is urgent at that point in time. And the only way to ensure that your story is urgent at that point in time is to be in sync with current affairs of that time.

If there's a new tax law coming up, you come up with a new Internet marketing product or press release that says, 'if you buy my product you can beat the tax law', or 'this tax law will not affect you much if you buy my new product'. Chances are, people will listen to what you have to say because that's what's in the prospect's mind at that point in time. 

If you run a multinational company, try to cater to other hot locations them as well, although most importantly, look at your key demographics and key geographic space. More often than not, however, US news is world news.

This secret, when implemented at the right time, will get more of your emails opened, your sales letters read, and your press releases quickly picked up by the press. This is only a small fraction of what this secret can do for you.

S + IC + OT = BF

where,

Scarcity + Increased Coolness + Outside Threat = Buying Frenzy

What Frank Kern says is this: when it comes to the last 4 or 5 emails of your launch process, you incorporate all three of the above-mentioned elements.

S = Scarcity:

Like all product launches, you must have scarcity in some form. However, you must make sure that it is implied scarcity. Don't say, "If you don't buy it by this time you'll be miserable," but rather say something like, "I don't mean to put pressure on you, but here's the facts: we've got 5,000 people on our prelaunch list, and we only have 200 products to sell so it will be sold out fast. So again, I don't mean to put pressure on you, but please buy my product."

IC = Increased Coolness:

This is one of the key factors, and it's basically a form of reverse psychology. Well, not really psychology, but it does flip the whole scarcity thing on its head. Most direct marketers, and these days, internet marketers as well, play this up a lot. It's always in the negative 'if you don't buy this product there will be consequences' kind of way, but this is different. He says, 'if you buy this, there's cooler and cooler stuff you can get'. What Frank Ken suggests is taking the cooler bonuses and putting them aside only to reveal them in the last 4-5 days.

To illustrate, Frank gave the example of marketing a product to a fraternity, where they can 'buy a date with Paris Hilton'.

Scarcity is obvious, because Paris can only go out with one guy per night, and you have only 40 packages.

Increased Coolness is announcing in one of your last emails -only days before your launch - "By the way, Nicky Hilton is coming along too, so your date is with both Nicky and Paris." Remember, it is important that the unexpected, perceived added value or surprise bonus is something you have not previously revealed in your sales letter or anywhere else.

And the very next day, to increase the implied scarcity and to increase the coolness even more, you would say, "Not only do you get to go on a date with the 2 sisters, you also get a complimentary champagne Jacuzzi to round off your night". What you are simply doing at this point is literally stacking up the 'cool'.

Outside Threat:

This outside threat is something that will increase the scarcity even further. For example, in these last 4-5 emails you could write that you 'just got off the phone with the NY Times and they are very interested in this…and as you know, this publication is read by a few million people...' As a result, the implied scarcity increases at the mention of more competition for the already limited supply. The key secret in this is –you put the blame for the scarcity not on yourself, but on other people.

Let me give you an example of using the Death Grip in the more generic internet marketing field.

Scarcity: You are only supplying a limited number. For example, you have 50,000 people on your list but only 500 products are available. E.g. when you are doing something personally, you can say 'because you only want to give quality consultations and want to be available for people around the clock, there's really only so many people you can take on'. You simply lay out the facts, and come straight out and say that it's scarce because it just really is scarce. Don't mention misery and consequences if they don't buy, only imply scarcity.

Increased Coolness: In the last few emails, you say that you have a really cool product that can do A, B and C for them, and you've just decided to give it away with the first 100 sign-ups. But, in order to trigger the psychological desire to buy when you launch your product, it has to be a very desirable bonus that people actually really want.

For example, on the third-last day of his launch Frank Kern said he was going to give a live seminar, free. The thing is, he normally charges $5,000-$10,000 and suddenly he says that if you buy his product you get his live seminar for free. It definitely increases the 'coolness' of the product .

Alternatively, you can also slip in a few small bonuses if you don't have any really big ones but, obviously, the cooler the bonus the better. This is evident when there's a big launch going on; you'll see the gurus suddenly give out a video for free and they'll say something like, "I've just come up with this, it's supposed to come with my new product but I just couldn't wait for the launch, you'll find even better and more in the new product itself."

What is really great is that Mass Control actually comes with all the swipe files for the Death Grip –i.e. the whole series of emails, among other things.

Outside Threat: You say you've just got off the phone with Mike Filsaime, and he's going to email his list first thing this morning, and he has a list of about 200,000 people. And you say that there are other affiliates are coming in as well and it's going to be a melee, so you are going to open the doors 10mins earlier for your list before your affiliates' lists buy out everything. All your information has to be true, of course, so don't name Mike Filsaime if you don't know him.

The trick is, it's not one-by-one but it's all three coming at once. You layer on all three (Scarcity, Increased Coolness and the Outside Threat) in every single email so that every email hits these psychological factors.

The last email literally reads, "Click here to buy now".

This method may seem subdued, but Frank Kern really puts on pressure + pressure + more pressure in his emails…and then he says, "I don't mean to put pressure on you,..." then he adds more pressure, and then, "But don't worry, it won't sell out in 2hours..." and then even more pressure. Another diffusing line follows, and he goes on like that in his emails.

In summary:

Just before a launch the Death Grip Formula states that
Scarcity + Increased Coolness + Outside Threat = Buying Frenzy

Hi mike,

You know what today is, don't you?

As I indicated in yesterday's email to you, if you decide
not to give Market With Postcards a fair try within the
next 24 hours, we'll remove you from our opt-in list.

No offense, but we only provide our best offers for our
clients and students and because you've let 6 weeks go
by without ordering, we sense that you're not interested.

So if you don't click the link below and order within the
next 24 hours, you'll be removed from our list. I hope
you're okay with this so we can part as friends

Here's the link to order the course and stay on our list:
http://www.MarketingWithPostcards.com/orderpage <---

If you decide not to order, then I wish you good luck,
good sales and I hope our paths cross again soon.

Sincerely,

Alex Mandossian, Chief Instructor
http://www.MarketingWithPostcards.com/orderpage
Heritage House Publishing Inc.

What happens when you pull a reversal on your customers? Instead of begging for their money and putting them on the pedestal, what if you stood up there and told them they could either "take the offer or get the H out"?

And yes, it's been about a week and I haven't heard from him again.

We used our trusty appetizer-main dish method of email marketing, which I gave the theory on here and further how-to here.

The method was for one of our personal development sites and revolved around Spring cleaning (this was our "reason why").

We provided them a free ebook that would help them Spring clean their life instead of just Spring cleaning their house, and the book acted as a link to our product.

Here's how the schedule looked:

Day 1 - appetizer email
Day 3 - ebook ("gift") delivered, promotion started
Day 5 - reminder of promotion deadline
Day 7 - promotion ended

You can refer to those linked posts for the full rundown, but we refined the method further and over this 4 day period we saw a 500% boost in sales. To put it in perspective, we did 2 WEEKS worth of sales in just 3 days. It took just a few hours of work.

The only thing I would have changed is that we should have sent reminders on Day 6 and 7. We probably could have put that boost up to 600 or 700% with those additional emails, but alas, vacation called and no one wants to blast emails from the beach.

So What's a Customer Avatar? In this video I explain this concept and talk about a major screw up we made by sending out an email recently without understanding the "Customer Avatar" Concept.

Watch the Video Below...