Ben Settle

Yeah, absolutely.

I appreciate you guys having me on. And Luis, it was nice talking to you a couple of weeks ago. I just appreciate it.

Ben Settle

The foundational idea of how I did things is not necessarily the same as what everyone else does.

I’ve noticed a lot of the email experts, most of us are friends with each other, and we talk about this stuff. My friend, Andre Chaperon is big into this soap opera sequence way of doing it. Everyone has their way.

Ben Settle

My way is based on the idea that email’s nothing more than talk radio. It is your talk radio show, your podcast so to speak, in a text. It’s like a segment of a talk radio show. You get in, you say what you have to say, then you get out, and you make your commercial, and that’s it.

I do that day in and day out, seven days a week, and that’s how I build the relationship. That’s how I get people trusting me enough to buy from me. I can answer questions by doing Q and A type things. It allows a lot of flexibility. It’s very forgiving.

Ben Settle

If maybe I say something dumb one day or I say something that just wasn’t correct, and I can go back the next day, and correct myself. It’s just one of the most flexible mediums there is, and like I said it’s like a talk radio show.

I just come in, speak to my audience for a little bit, make a pitch for what I have, and then I get out. I do other stuff throughout the day. It takes me about 20 minutes at the most on average every day.

Ben Settle

I recommend daily seven days a week, and for some people, it’s twice daily. People can even do it three times daily.

I heard someone put it like this.

If somebody’s positioning himself as an expert or leader in their market, and they don’t have something to say every day, then, there are going to be people who wonder subconsciously. They’re probably not thinking this out loud like “Is this person the leader and expert they say they are?”

Ben Settle

If you’re coming in every day with something interesting to say that’s relevant to your market and about them, they’re going to love that.

You’re not boring them. As long as you’re not boring them, you’re okay. You can get paid to send emails.

There’s this dude. His name is Jim Camp, and he recently died. He was the negotiation guy. He was known as the world’s most fair negotiator. He would go in and negotiate for Fortune 500 businesses and that sort of thing. He put it like this, and it was not about email. He was just talking about negotiation in general.

Ben Settle

He’s like, “You’re always safe when you’re in the other person’s world.”

As long as you’re in your market’s world talking about things that are important to them, you can’t bore them. They’re going to look forward to hearing from you.

If you’re in a market where you’re solving like an urgent pain, you can’t talk to them enough to somebody who has a severe health problem or something.

Let’s say somebody has arthritis, and it just plagues their life. You cannot talk to them enough about arthritis from different angles tells stories about people who have arthritis, about certain remedies that are out there, things that happened to people on a daily basis they can relate to. It’s just a conversation with that person. You can talk to them as much as you can.

I do one a day usually, but I’ll do two a day sometimes if I have something extra I want to say from that feeling, especially lazy. I think daily is ideal.

Ben Settle

A lot of people are procrastinators.

If you’re selling something, they may have made the decision to buy, and I’ve seen this happen many times.

They may have made a decision to buy two weeks earlier, and you’re just there every day reminding them your product exists and why they should take a look at it. You would be surprised how many people will tell you, “Man, I’ve wanted to get this thing forever. Thank you for today’s email for reminding me.”

I look at it like you’re doing them a favor. You are.

If you have something that can benefit your market, you’re doing them a service by letting them know it exists.

Ben Settle

If you have something that can help someone’s life and you don’t tell it to them that it at least exists, I’m not saying you have to sell them hard every day. You just let them know there’s a link here.

I almost think it’s like our ethical duty. Just let them know it exists if they have that problem.

Ben Settle

Yeah. I’ll even run with that a little bit. I talk about this on my podcast all the time.

Ben Settle

There are many parallels between the dating world and the marketing world. It’s almost scary. It’s the same thing. It’s nearly identical, and that’s one example of it.

Ben Settle

Okay.

I know you guys are in that world of helping people, men and women get along, and all that.

Ben Settle

Okay. And I sell on the dating niche on the side.

Ben Settle

I always tell guys “Before you’ve built attraction and she likes you, and you’re starting to bombard her with stuff, you’re probably going to creep her out.” But after you’ve established the attraction and she likes you, she wants to hear from you usually, and vice versa.

Maybe it’s not identical as far as selling by email but the parallels just in business in general, I’ve found just are close. They are closely aligned because it’s all about persuasion, human nature, and gaining trust.

Ben Settle

I have had a girlfriend for the last 15 months. I still talk to her every day. Let’s take this a little far. If I didn’t talk to her one day, she would start freaking out and think there’s something wrong. I have to speak with her every day just for her sanity and mine.

I would say it’s the same in business too. Why not let them know you’re out there, and that you have something that can benefit them?

In fact, I’ve gone days where maybe an email didn’t go out on time, or it got sent to a spam folder or something, and people go, “Hey, Ben. I haven’t been getting your emails for the last couple of days. Is everything okay?”

Ben Settle

I’ve been sending them out, but for whatever reasons, they didn’t get them. You’ll get that a lot too when people are starting liking to hearing from you, and they’re enjoying it, and they’re looking forward to it because you’re not just giving them a sales pitch.

Let’s say we’re going to take it to the dating thing. The guy’s trying to date a girl. He’s not propositioning her every day. He’s just having a conversation.

Ben Settle

“How’s it going?” “What’s going on in your life?” “Hey, did you see that movie over there?” “Did you read that book?”

or whatever it is they want to talk about. Or, “Would you like to do something next weekend?” It’s not like he’s asking her to go to sleep every night and same with emailing to your customer base.

Ben Settle

I’m not saying to come on strong every day pierce blade in a sales pitch. I think you would turn people off doing that. It would come on way too strong. There’s a time for it, and there’s a time not to do it.

Most of my emails are like a hybrid. It’s useful information, and then I just say, “Hey, if you want to solve this problem, check out this link.” or maybe I’ll build up to it a little bit stronger but I like to vary it up.

Ben Settle

For me, it depends on one of two things.

In some markets where I just want to have the energy to write a daily email for everything, I want to build an auto responder for. Maybe 90-day autoresponder, and then after that, we’ll take them off the list or do something else. If they don’t buy by then, they’re probably never going to buy it.

Ben Settle

It’s not always going to work out this way. In those cases, the first five emails ideally are brochure all above the fold like, “Okay. Here’s what you just subscribed to. Here’s how often you can expect to hear from me. Here’s the opt-in bonus,” assuming that’s what somebody’s offering. And “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then, the next day, I want to tell my story and get in sync with them.

Ben Settle

I’ll say, “Here’s where I was. I was where you are right now. Struggling with X, Y, Z problem, everything was going wrong. I didn’t know what to do, and then one day, I’d stumble onto this way of solving it, and that’s what I’m going to be teaching about in these emails. If you want to know exactly how my system works, check out this link.” It’s a longer email story base.

Then, after that, to me, it’s like talk radio style. Whatever brain fart I have about that market and how I can help them, I put it down.

What I do for my main list that I work on at bensettle.com, which is my main hub thing, the first email is just, “Okay. Here’s your opt-in bonus. Here’s what you can expect to hear and how often you can expect to hear from me.”

Ben Settle

I think it’s important to let people know exactly how often they can expect to hear from you, especially if you’re like me that you’re going to email them every day. You want to tell them at every point.

After that, they get right into the daily broadcast, whatever going is out. There’s no rule or any reason to it.”

Ben Settle

Okay.

First, I have to make an admission that the other email people don’t like me saying this.

Ben Settle

I don’t even measure open rates anymore. I did it one time, but I have found something many times over and over in many different markets, and this isn’t just one market. This is multiple markets.

The higher the open rates are, the lower sales I would get. Not all the time.

Higher open rates don’t exactly always equal higher sales and vice versa.

I don’t worry too much about it.

Ben Settle

Now, there are reasons to track opens. There are some legitimate reasons.

For example, if you’re worried about your auto responder service being on an IP blacklist, that’s a good way to find out because the falls on your open rate drop to a really small amount. You can bet probably your auto responder is on some blacklist temporarily, which happens all the time.

A computer scientist friend, his name Jim Yaghi is into this thing. He’s like, “Well, here’s another problem with the open rate tracking. Our people are checking their emails on their phones, which is fine but a lot of android phones do not always have HTML turned on by default. It’s not even tracking the opens.”

Ben Settle

Like mine, I never bother to turn my HTML on because I’ve heard you can get viruses easier and all that. I don’t see images in my emails or anything, and that means it’s not tracking the open. I just want to get that out of the way first.

I’m not saying not to track opens. I’m just saying I don’t worry about it. But to answer your question, to get the email open and get paid to send emails, which is a critical question.

If they don’t open it, they’re not going to buy anything. They’re never going to hear from us.

I use a lot of ways. I’m going to share two things to get paid to send emails.

Ben Settle

1. Even more important than the subject line is the “from” line like the “from an actual person.”

I don’t want it to say “From Settle, LLC.” I want it to say, “From Ben Settle.” Just that split second where they see my name in their inbox, they think “Hmm. This could be a personal email.”

They know deep down they’re in a list, but that little hope, that “Wow. Did this guy email me personally?” You always want your first and last name up there.

Ben Settle

2. There are multiple ways to write a good subject line to get paid to send emails. But the most reliable I’ve ever done, or use, and which I think works the best is just simple curiosity.

I don’t know if your audience has heard of the guy named Gary Halbert.

Ben Settle

Okay, good.

Ben Settle

He was one of the best of the best marketers and copywriters who ever lived. I think most people would agree with that. One of his students was named Scott Haines who was another high-level copywriter. I just hung out with him in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. He’s a great guy, understands the topic on how to get paid to send emails at a deep level.

He was telling me the story about when he was learning under Gary Halbert that Gary would take him out on a boat. That was what Gary did. The day before the deadlines, Gary got him on a boat, still thinking through it, and they’d write everything for three hours. That’s what they did.

Ben Settle

He takes Scott on a boat, and he says, “Scott, what do you think the most important part of the sales processes? What the most important appeal you can make to somebody?” And Scott goes, “That’s simple. It’s self-interest.” And Gary Halbert goes “No, you’re wrong. It’s curiosity.” I’ve found these featured too in all kinds of medium.

He goes, “People will buy expensive products, stuff they don’t necessarily want, and things they didn’t even know existed three minutes earlier. It’s just because they read a bullet, like a curiosity drenched bullet in a sales letter on page 10 like buried in the middle of nowhere, just got them and they can’t sleep, and they need it.”

Ben Settle

Curiosity is strong of a tug for people. If you do it right, it almost makes an impossible from not at least see what you’re writing them about. That’s why spammers get still get paid to send emails sometimes because some of them are good at curiosity. That’s how they still get paid to send emails.

Spammers still get people clicking on things and get paid to send emails. They’re selling crap or whatever but it works because it’s curiosity. If you do it with very ethical products and everything, you can’t go wrong.

Ben Settle

I think that’s a great question because if you ask ten different people, you’ll get ten phrases, right?

Here’s how I do my pitch process and to get paid to send emails.

I pitch in every email no matter what. It doesn’t mean it’s a hard pitch that sound like “Oh, here’s this new thing. You must get it today.” I will just tell a story and then lead into the products to get paid to send emails.

Ben Settle

Sometimes, I’ll write an email, and there’s no connection to the product. But at the end, I’ll just say, “By the way, if you want to know more about X, Y, Z, check out this link.

I think this is important at the beginning of every email. You have this school of thought where people say you need to incubate new people. You don’t want to sell them anything. You want to scare them off and all that. I don’t agree with that.

Ben Settle

I think you should let them know in the first email that you’re a business and not going to be just giving away everything for free and yes, you’re going to make it worth their while to read your emails. It’s going to be a valuable experience.

I don’t think you should push “send” unless what you have to say weren’t interrupting their day from the next two or three minutes. I think that’s very important.

But they know, right off the bat that you’re a business. You’re going to sell them ethically. You’re not going to try to can them or anything, but you are a business. You do have a product for sale.

Ben Settle

If people are at that point where they’re not interested or they don’t have that big of a pain, maybe, they shouldn’t be on the list, and I don’t even mind when they opt-out. When someone opts-out, I practically celebrate it because I don’t want people on my list who are cold or lukewarm.

If somebody is lukewarm, my emails are designed to warm them up to make them hot, or it will just make them colder, and they’ll remove themselves from the list, and everyone’s happy. They can go on and pursue whatever knowledge they want because obviously is not what I have, but I let them know every day, there’s something for sale.

Ben Settle

Sometimes, I come on stronger than others, but they will know every day there is a link in there. Whether they buy or not, it’s up to them, but I have something to sell, and I’m not shy about letting them know about it.

Ben Settle

That’s an excellent question.

Ben Settle

There’s this guy, I don’t know if you guys have ever talked to him, but he’s brilliant. He name is Sean D’Souza, and he is the only one I know who teaches this. It’s very rare to find anyone who’s doing this, what he calls sequential selling.

Instead of having multiple products that he pitches randomly, what he does is he has one flagship product. You could not buy anything else unless you bought that product.

Sequential selling is like going to a karate school. You go to into a karate school. You have to start at white belt. They don’t let you just skip to the green belt or orange belt. You have to do white belt first.

When you’re getting your white bell, you know that exact next thing to get. You always know where you’re at in the sequence. You always know what to buy next. You don’t have to wonder about it.

Ben Settle

I apply that a lot of what I’m doing to get paid to send emails. I have an opt-in which free. Then the only thing I pitch with rare exceptions, maybe the first week of the months I veer a little bit from what Sean does. I pitch other stuff.

I pitch my main flagship product which is a print newsletter. I don’t let them buy anything else usually. Then, when they buy that, I’ll let them buy whatever they want. Like, “Okay. Here’s all my other stuff.”

I have found that has simplified everything and it takes the uncertainty out of people’s minds because a lot of individuals don’t know what to buy first.

Ben Settle

I used to get questions like, “What products should I start with?” I’m like, “Oh, man.” This is like the worst situation to being, is “What are you telling me?” without sounding bias and everything. I just give them one option, and that’s it.

I want to add something else to this that piggybacks on your last question that I think is important to be able to get paid to send emails.

I’m a little extreme on this. I admit it, but I believe that it makes for better quality customers and for you to get paid to send emails.

Ben Settle

At every stage of the opt-in, the opt-in page and opt-in box, underneath the box, it says “You agree” or “I agree” language like that. “I agree that I’m going to get daily promotional emails from Ben Settle” and they have to check a box or I won’t let them opt-in. There are no ways somebody’s going to complain to me about selling them too much, and they don’t.

I haven’t gotten a complaint like, “Oh, Ben. You would send too many emails in a very long time,” unless I were selling something like an affiliate. Last time, I sold something as an affiliate. I did this four days sale where I sent three emails a day during the first three days, and eight emails on the last one, which is a little extreme even for me, and I got a little blowback on that.

Ben Settle

But basically, most people know coming in what to expect. I’m not springing anything on them. I’m not coming out of anywhere like I got something to sell up the last minute. They just know going in exactly what to expect, and I love doing that. I love to be completely transparent with people.

I don’t want them to feel like they’ve been tricked, and I don’t want to give them any false expectations. I’m just going to bombard them with free stuff. I have a free stuff on my website that they can check out but once they were opted-in, it’s obvious what I’m going to be doing.

Ben Settle

I barely ever get spam complaints. They don’t even know I exist because I get the lowest spam complaint rate probably of anyone I know at the number of people I have on my list at least.

It gets rid of all that, and people aren’t complaining to you, “Oh. Why are you selling me something?” You’ve made it very clear, and that’s what you want. What do you want on your list? Do you want people who don’t know they want to solve a problem or do you want individuals who know they want to address a problem?

Ben Settle

I want people who are hot to solve their problem, and I don’t want other individuals who aren’t on there. I want people looking for a solution, and that makes my job easier, and it makes their job easier, and I’m not bothering individuals who are just on there who are kind lukewarm not knowing what they want.

Ben Settle

Especially with something like what you guys do, you’re probably saving marriages. What’s nobler than that? You have to tell everybody.

Ben Settle

You’re not doing anyone any favors by not telling them that exists. If somebody is not in that market or whatever, who cares what they think. Let them opt-out. Encourage them to opt-out and not in a mean way, but just like, “Oh, this is not for you. That’s fine.” That’s the way I look at it.

I believe in being aggressive about this. I mentioned Jim Camp earlier, the negotiation guy. He would talk about it when he first got into negotiation or just sales in general. He’d be the guy that would go in and give up all his best ideas, and give away all this free information and all that. Then, the person will end up buying from the person who would sell it on.

Ben Settle

Assuming our products are better than our competitors and surely, most of us think our products are, isn’t it better that they buy from us than the inferior stuff?

That’s the kind of the mindset I have to get paid to send emails.

Ben Settle

There’s a mindset where people don’t value what they don’t have to pay for.

Ben Settle

And so, even if people get stuff for free, they’re never going to apply it. They’re never going to use it. They’re not going to benefit from it, and this sounds like a little different than what most people would say, but I think we’re doing them a favor by charging them.

The more we charge, the more the favor we’re doing because the more likely they’re going to use it, and the more seriously they’re going to take it.
Then, what happens to that person when his or her life benefits from it? They’ll go and tell all their friends about the same problem, and everyone’s benefiting.

I just believe business has been looked at as something you’re trying to benefit a whole market, and you can’t do that by being timid. You can’t do that. It doesn’t work that way.

Ben Settle

I’m not saying people have to be like self-boasting and all those, but just coming in every day and saying, “Look, let’s talk about this problem you have or this solution you want. Let’s speak of the challenges going on in the market right now. Let’s talk about this stuff. Let me tell you about something that happened to me recently the reminded of you.”

And then, you just side wind to the product, and people love it. People want that. That’s why they listen to talk radio. That’s why they watch reality TV shows and all that. They want to become voyeurs of other people’s lives and that sort of thing. They want to know they’re not the only ones who suffer from the problem they have.

Ben Settle

In fact, you ever heard about that joke where the guy died doing what he loves, looking at his symptoms at WebMD. It’s because we all love looking at and hearing about our symptoms.

An email is where you talk about the symptoms of the market and come at it from different angles.

Ben Settle

I would say this.

Let’s say somebody was inspired like you were to write more emails, and they get caught up in the writing part of it like “I don’t know how to write, and I hate writing.” I understand that. I do.

Ben Settle

Write like you talk, just like casual, in your personality, your colloquialisms, your slang, your way of speaking. It becomes so much easier. If you have to, worst case, be talking to every quarter, and then transcribe it.

I’ve had people who hated writing, and then they get into this, and now they love it. They love it because they don’t look at it as writing. They’re just having fun communicating. If it’s not fun, it’s probably not worth writing about in most case. Some subjects don’t lend themselves being fun.

Ben Settle

That’s kind of what I do, and it works.