I wrote the following on Twitter the other day “stream of consciousness” style.
I’ve slightly edited it for clarity.
But it’s quite timely for what’s coming down the pike, so I am sharing it again here:
One of the problems info publishers run into eventually are customers who bytch & moan about “too much info!” and “info overload!” and “I need time to implement!”
And it’s all hamster spinning.
Take my Email Players newsletter as an example.
It’s usually about 17-pages of content and 3-pages of ads. No particular reason for that many pages, incidentally. It used to be 16, another newsletter I used to publish was 12. If I was starting from scratch I’d make it only 8 pages, will not explain why here though.
Whatever the case:
Sometimes I do an extra-sized issue.
And, like in January next month, a Triple+ sized issue (64-pages — to commemorate the monthly newsletter’s 150th issue). I can’t say for sure, but I suspect this upcoming January 150th anniversary issue will get a bunch of people complaining and barking at the moon about how they don’t have time to read it all, yada yada yada. And that is okay — as I figure 2024 would be as good a time as any to do some “new year cleaning” of the bums off the customer list anyway.
It’s not that I don’t want lots of subscribers.
It’s that I want the right kind of subscribers.
And people uncomfortable with too much info that can make them lots of money are so outside my realm of reality that I cannot comprehend their way of thinking, and have nothing to offer them. And while it may be anecdotal, my customer list has always, without exception, grown, along with my sales, the more aggressively I repelled and gotten rid of the crud.
It’s almost like it “makes room” for better customers.
Back to the point:
In a lot of ways doing a 64-page issue is the worst thing anyone can do in info publishing.
Too much info scares away the luke warm types, and they tend to make up the majority of most customer lists. One reason why a lot of people in the subscription offer business (like newsletters, membership sites, SaaS, whatever it is) like to find the perfect balance (not too much, not too little) is they want to keep people as long as possible, almost hoping they forget about the offer, and just keep paying.
Retention is everything, after all.
You are not really in the “subscription offer” business if you sell a subscription offer, you’re in the — as Bob King told the great Gary Bencivenga — renewal business.
But I have always run my newsletter differently.
I prefer the types who are so disorganized and have such jumbled life priorities (as business owners and marketers) they can’t read 17-pages a month get off my list (not just not buy, but leave my email list, stop following me on social media, etc) altogether.
Most of them are not ‘bad’ people.
But they do make bad customers for my business and always have. And so this 64-page issue is sure to drive a bunch of them away and, as always happens, they’ll be replaced with better and more higher quality customers.
It’s a weird phenomenon I cannot explain.
It does not even really sound all that logical.
Frankly, it almost borders on the woo-woo, although there is nothing woo-woo about it ultimately. If it was woo-woo I’d just reject it as bull shyt as I think all woo-woo, life coach, airy fairy, crystals & rainbows & pronouns is bull shyt.
What’s definitely not woo-woo though is the math.
Imagine a grown adult who votes and pays taxes not being able to read 17-pages per month of a newsletter where they need only pull out and apply ONE thing to make that issue’s money back in spades. Like, for example, this customer in the tennis niche (not sure he wants me naming him) does who told me just yesterday for his side business (he barely puts much time into):
“I only read your stuff and implement minimum one thing from every issue of Email Players. That works well.”
The punchline:
17 pages is a little over 1/2 a page of reading per day, for a newsletter that costs just $3.23 per day. The guys who can’t even do that are, I guarantee you, reading more than a 1/2 page of absolute horse shyt on social media or somewhere else each day and spending more than $3.23 per day on frivolous sugar coffees, or entertainment, or God-only-knows what else that does nothing to add to their business, their health, or their life.
Of course, 64-pages like the upcoming January issue is a lot more than 17-pages.
Or, more specifically, 61 pages of content and 3 pages of ads.
In this case someone need only read 2 pages per day before the February issue hits their mailbox to read it all (they can literally do that on the toilet while pinching a loaf if they want, instead of doom scrolling twitter or facebook or fapping or whatever they are doing), and read it with understanding — while spending a few minutes implementing just ONE of the dozens of ideas I am sharing inside this one.
All of which brings me to another point:
Recently a guy on his way out said:
“I look forward to returning in the future!”
And I told him —
“I don’t allow people to come back – good luck”
To which he replied:
I was surprised and disappointed by your response to my cancellation request. As a fellow business owner, I understand the value of every customer, especially in challenging times. Your policy of not allowing customers to return is, frankly, unusual and seems counterproductive. It’s particularly unexpected coming from someone in your field, where communication is key.
I had hoped to return as a subscriber once my situation improved. However, your response has not only deterred me from doing so, but also makes it difficult for me to recommend your services to others. In business, as in life, bridges are better left unburnt. A respectful and considerate approach often leads to lasting relationships and opportunities.
No, Spanky, you got that backwards.
It’s precisely because of my policy that I do have such a strong, lasting relationship with my customers, list, and market — with a monthly newsletter that’s run for 150 consecutive issues/months, with more testimonials than I can possibly count at this point. Certainly it’s a far stronger relationship than the needy goo-roo types have with their customers, always nattering on about how they will happily take in anyone like a lonely wine aunt taking in stray cats.
More fun:
There was one goo-roo a couple years ago who said my policy was the result of a “scarcity mindset.” It was borderline Babylon Bee parody-level sounding to the people who sent it to me, and it made for great email fodder (to sell our Subscription Biz course the couple times we’ve promoted it), so it was useful.
However, at the same time:
It had to have been one of the single most backasswards takes ever uttered in the online marketing industry. Turning money away from people who should not be buying from your business is the exact, polar opposite of scarcity. It’s raw, unfiltered honesty, which is what everyone should be striving for to bring out truth, do right by your market, create real value and solve real problems… as opposed to creating a revolving door and letting anyone buy from you, many you can’t help and will just be wasting their money and time, which is like the poster child for scarcity mindset.
People make all kinds of idiotic assumptions about my no coming back policy.
Usually it’s from someone who I’ve blocked to-so-surprisingly.
And it’s as ironic as it is amusing that more and more legitimate players in our space are either following suit or considering it. Like, for example, Perry Marshall – who publicly admitted (in an email to his list) a couple years ago he shamelessly got the idea to have the same policy with his subscription offer buyers from me.
Same with my pal Doberman Dan.
And, I don’t know his name, but apparently one of the guys over at Agora Financial (in charge of a 8 or 9 figure wing of the company, not exactly sure what the details were, but no matter) was telling my pal & Email Players subscriber Tom Beal he was inspired by my no coming back policy to the point where he would like to do the same thing with his own subscription offer eventually.
On the other hand:
The gaggle of social media naysayers gossiping like little girls about my policy — none of who have ever bothered to ask me personally, and instead just post about it on social media (no social clout in asking me privately, I guess) — assume it’s because I’m trying to “trap” people or something. When anyone who spends more than a few minutes reading any of my content knows if anything I’m constantly curating, trying to “break” people for worthiness (I wrote a 40-page Email Players issue about this for the newsletter’s 10-year anniversary a couple years ago, it’s a deep topic, and important) to get rid of them, and am in full-on repel mode.
No, not as some kind of idiotic goo-roo trick.
But as curation.
A small curated list is far more valuable than a big non-curated list.
It’s much better, in my way of thinking, to have 4 shiny easy-to-manage quarters in your pocket than 100 sticky, dirty, God-only-knows-where-they’ve-been pennies stuck in there. It’s why some 15+ years ago I consciously started defying the norm of of “attraction marketing” and started aggressively implementing:
“repulsion marketing”
I never focus on attracting anyone, only on repelling people.
I don’t know if I am the first to coin the following term or not, but I call it:
“Sell by repel”
It’s automatic just by following my Email Players methodology that I follow myself each and every day:
* Daily emails repel by default
* Imposing your expectations on your customers repels
* Telling them the truth (the downsides, flaws, glaring problems with your offer) repels
* Keeping your sales copy as legally compliant as you repels since you’re not bull crapping anyone, and automatically turning away the new product junkies and other idiots who just buy and never use, whose attitudes are useless to both themselves and your business
* Making it abundantly clear who should NOT be buying from you, and why, repels
* Creating barriers to entry (opt in, buying, access to you, etc) repels
* And the list goes on
Repel who, exactly?
The lukewarm.
It’s a Biblical concept that works magnificently in marketing based on Revelation chapter 3. Jesus is talking to 7 churches and is displeased with 5 of them, only happy with 2 of them. One of the churches He is angry with does good deeds, etc but, they were, as He put it:
“Luke warm”
God would rather they be hot or cold.
But because they were luke warm He said He’d vomit them out.
Thaaaaaaat’s what I’m talkin’ about.
Vomit out the luke warm.
Force them to be hot or cold.
Hot is obviously good — they will buy if you stick with them long enough.
Cold is okay too, they will leave peacefully, on their own, and maybe even come back later. Email Players subscriber Russell Brunson told me, about 10 years ago at a mastermind I used to co-host while we were at dinner, that he originally hated me.
Guy couldn’t stand me or anything I said.
But he kept reading and I grew on him.
Until, he admitted, he went to that event just to hang with me.
That’s not something that happens a lot.
But it does happen when you sell by repel.
And in a lot of cases:
A cold lead will leave, go venture off into the great night of your market, see a bunch of horse shyt, maybe even get royally screwed over, realize you are indeed the real deal, and come back and be hot.
All these forces are impossible to control.
They’re too big.
But you can harness them by doing the right things, long enough, consistently as I once heard some motivational speaker (think it was Kevin Trudeau actually) say. And I have found it to be true in many other disciplines in life — not just business and marketing and copywriting.
It all comes down to:
Having standards (no, you don’t have to have my no coming back policy, you run your business in whatever way you see fit, this is not a checklist or “how to” post) and enforcing them mercilessly. Those left over will be the best, most successful, and most eager to spread the “gospel” of your business.
People want “value”.
But the best value is not a list of stuff to do.
It’s content that gives people a different way of looking at the world, at their business, at their problems.
Hopefully this post did just that.
If not?
That’s your problem for having read this far…
For more on the Email Players newsletter go here:
Ben Settle
