Lesson 23: Understanding the objective of your email sequence
All about true versus false objectives in email
Just as we started your sales page at the end, we need to start planning your email sequence in the same way.
Not that you must write it all in reverse order — but when you are planning it, you need to know what you’re aiming toward. Without knowing your objective, you can’t work backwards to figure out how to achieve it.
True versus false objectives
As you’ve surely heard, Sam loves to buy, but hates to be sold.
If you see copywriting as a kind of dilemma where you need to get Sam to do what he loves (buying)...but without him realizing that’s what you’re doing...then you’re always going to feel like it’s hard, icky work.
Selling is not getting Sam to buy.
To say that Sam hates to be sold means he hates being lied to, coerced, pressured, and in every other respect prevented from making up his own mind in his own time. He also hates feeling like those things are happening (even if they aren’t).
Unfortunately, as we’ve covered to some extent, it’s very easy to slip into thinking that this is what selling means. Especially when the pressure is on to make sales.
But selling is not any of these things.
If you recall from lesson #19, selling is just showing Sam how to get what he wants, with enough detail and proof that the decision becomes a no-brainer for him.
“Selling” this way is completely covert — it goes unnoticed, because you’re not trying to make him do anything. You’re helping him to get what he wants.
No pressure tactics, persuasion tricks, or any other nonsense.
In other words, don’t try to control outcomes that aren’t up to you.
Remember in lesson #3 when we talked about the difference between true and false objectives? Let’s recap:
A false objective is one which you do not have any real control over. For example, on your sales page, aiming to persuade Sam of anything is a false objective.
A true objective is one which you can control and plan to achieve. For example, the true objective of your sales page is to help Sam accurately decide whether your offering is for him by clearly explaining it and effectively connecting it with his needs.
Keeping this distinction in mind is critical for planning and writing your email sequence. If you aim at an objective you have control over, you’ll write good, entertaining emails. The task of writing them will be more enjoyable, because you have a tangible and achievable goal to work toward.
If you aim at an objective you can’t control, like making Sam buy, you find yourself consumed by a vague, icky need to make someone you don’t know do something they might not want to. This results in shrill, breathless, needy emails. It kills candor. And it makes Sam unsubscribe rather than buy.
Trying to control Sam’s decisions will always end badly, because the only person who can control them is...Sam.
No one else has any ultimate power over this — least of all you.
When we try to control the wrong outcome, Sam senses that we’re trying to take charge of his decision — and he doesn’t like it one bit. And neither do you, because you know you’re breaking the golden rule. So you need to stop trying to do his job, and do yours instead: you must decide that your goal is to help him to see as clearly as possible what he wants, why it matters, and how to get it.
To take a simplistic example, consider the difference between the following pieces of copy. Notice how the first is just telling Sam what to do, while the second is giving him an objective fact, then relating it back to a benefit he may value:
Buy this car — it’s more efficient than any other vehicle on the market
Testing has shown this car to be 3% more efficient than any other vehicle on the market — so if saving gas money is important to you, check it out
You can take a cue for copywriting from negotiation tactics. In negotiating, it is important to give your opponent permission to say no. If you act presumptuously and assume that Sam needs your offering, it comes across poorly, and tends to make you look needy.
By contrast, if you focus on helping Sam — not assuming you can, not trying to force the outcome you want — it comes across as paradoxically humble yet strong.
Don’t start writing with an attitude that assumes Sam wants what you have. Start writing with the attitude that he should be able to check it out and make up his own mind.
Compare one of Mint.com’s old headline with one of its more recent ones. The first assumes Mint.com really is the best for the person reading. The second does not:
Not this: The best way to manage your money
But this: It’s easy to understand what’s going on with your money
The strength of email
In person, you have limited time to sell. Yet even then, you get the best results when you refuse to rush — because rushing creates pressure, and pressure causes...
You to try controlling the wrong outcomes (because you feel you only have one chance to get this right).
Sam to resist the sale (because he feels like you don’t have his best interests at heart).
Everyone to make bad decisions (because you don’t give yourself time to properly think things through).
This is where email really shows its strength.
Why try to take potential customers from “nice to meet you” to “let’s get married” in the space of a couple of web pages, when you can spend as much time as you like building a real relationship? Websites are very weak for filling in the meat of the selling process — no matter how good you are at copywriting. I guarantee that right now, using email the way I will teach you, you can blow away the best A-level copywriter’s sales page, simply because you don’t have to make the sale in the space of a few minutes. By its very nature, email lets you sell gently, gradually, without pressure — either for Sam, or for you. And this is really important, because as I’ve said, when you feel pressured you automatically respond by trying to control the wrong outcomes.
Email gives you lots of little chances to tell Sam how to get what he wants — instead of one big chance you’re afraid of blowing.
Plus, because it is a highly personal medium, you give him the reassurance that he can reply and talk to you directly if he’d like. Indeed, it mitigates the appearance of selling almost entirely, and replaces it with an ongoing conversation, where you simply keep telling Sam how to get what he wants.
What you’re aiming at with your email sequence
Given what I’ve said above, you might think your emails, and the sequence as a whole, should be selling your offering — just like your sales page.
But in fact, with only rare and obvious exceptions, your objective is not to sell your offering. Here’s what it is:
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