If you are a budding copywriter, then you should be collecting
and modeling effective emails.
Here’s one that was written by my friend David Schwartz that
really resonated with me, and it’s NOT because he says nice thing
about me 
It’s his story telling, and his very down-to-earth, hype-free style
that makes you believe what he says.
You get the feeling that he’s not trying to hide anything, or to
pull a fast one on you.
Here’s that email:
Subject: How many ways are there to prepare chick-fried steak?
Body:
I *LOVE* chicken-fried steak! How about you? I got
to wondering … how may ways are there to fix it?
That may seem like a strange question, but I realized
it bears a close relationship to how people go about
promoting their stuff on the internet.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Willie Crawford
last week about how he earns 7-figures annually as
an Affiliate Marketer. We’ve packaged up that
interview and it’s available for a modest price
as a download, along with the transcript and some other
goodies.
You can see the offer here: http://is.gd/aEkf
But the reason I’m writing you today is because this
is not your usual rah-rah product promotional interview.
Willie really isn’t promting anything here, although
we do mention a couple of things we’ve both got up
for sale right now.
What prompted me to write this is conversations I’ve had
with two different people this weekend who have been trying
to hook up with Willie to get him to JV with them. Like
most folks, they both figured that since Willie has this
humonguous mailing list, all he has to do is send out some
emails and he’s in like Flynn. While that may be true,
I’ve got a simple question to ask:
You’re probably on mailing lists from Willie, as well as
people like Mike Filsaime and several other marketers. How
many emails do you get every week from Willie, versus how
many do you get from Mike, Tellman Knudson, Cody Moya,
and many others?
If you’re looking for someone who bombards their mailing
lists with offers, Willie is NOT the person to look at as
an example. Don’t expect him to discuss it much. Because
he just doesn’t do it.
Mike once said he’s cut way back on his email promotions,
but you couldn’t prove it by me. He’s got a few dozen
lists, and he blasts the same message out to all of them at
the same time. So you end up getting a dozen or so each
time. Some other marketers make it a religion to send out
SOMETHING to their lists EVERY SINGLE DAY — and TWICE on
Sundays. All it takes is a quick glance at these
emails to see they’re some kind of an offer.
Willie isn’t very religious about his mailings. He writes
interesting stories and uses them as a way to generate
the readers’ interest in whatever his objective may be.
I can’t remember the last time I read one that even looked
remotely like the kinds of promotional emails I get from
everybody else.
But I can tell you that, from this interview I did with him,
as well as numerous chat conversations we’ve had, Willie
does not leverage his mailing lists anywhere NEAR what most
people expect. Yet he’s regarded as one of the most
successful internet marketers in the world today.
Isn’t that a curious thing?!
As I explained to these fellows this weekend, I think the
primary message Willie is trying to get across in our
interview is that there are so many channels of
communication available to us today as marketers that
thinking of email as the “primary channel” is really
“old school” thinking. This interview is nearly two hours
of Willie sharing how he approaches marketing. Do you
think it would take two hours to talk about how to promote
stuff through email? In fact, I don’t recall that he even
mentioned email very much.
Willie is all about motivating the masses. His message
is simple, his methods direct. He can only be considered
a “stealth marketer” to the extent that he’s regularly
using communication channels that hardly anybody else is
using today. He even explains how he gets other top-level
marketers to help him with HIS promotions without even
realizing they’re doing it.
It’s like the folks at Pepsi getting the folks at Coke
to run a nationwide taste-test between the two!
If you do any kind of affiliate marketing, you probably
rely mostly on either email blasts or posting something
on your blog. Just like 99% of most other marketers.
Willie is part of the 1% who are off noodling around
with other methods.
(I’d like to believe you’re even using Viral Document
Toolkit as part of your arsenal, but I’d probably be
very disappointed. Willie does, though! BTW, take a
moment to read the updated sales page for VDT. It
might inspire you.)
EMail blasts reach the same batch of people every time.
And while blog posts are more likely to attract new
eyeballs, they’re essentially a passive channel.
Every single thing Willie promotes gets published and
discussed through a dozen or more DIFFERENT channels!
As a result, he’s constantly reaching new prospects in
increasingly diverse niches.
What I’m trying to say here is that most internet
marketers are extremely uni-dimensional in terms of
their promotional efforts. Willie took nearly two
hours of his time to explain to me the MULTI-DIMENSIONAL
nature of his marketing strategies and tactics.
People want to JV with Willie, IMO, because they see this
guy with a huge mailing list, reportedly huge revenues,
and put the two together figuring one leads to the other.
They couldn’t be more mistaken!
Look, how many times do you think you could get Paula
Dean to show you different ways of making her world
famous chicken-fried steak?
I’m sure she’d say something like this:
“LISTEN UP, Y’ALL! There’s only so many ways to fix a
plate of chicken-fried steak! Like, maybe TWOOOOOO.
Alright?”
And there’s only so much you can get out of a mailing
list! Alright?
If you wanna learn how to wear out your mailing lists
with one promotion after another, talk to someone who
does it — uh, that would NOT be Willie.
But if you wanna learn about the kinds of MULTI-
DIMENSIONAL PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES that Willie uses
to generate 7-figure income from his affiliate sales
every year, then grab a copy of this interview and
be prepared to take lots of notes.
Check it out here:
http://is.gd/aEkf
-David Schwartz
