A couple of months ago I subscribed to the Early To Rise newsletter.
It seems to be interesting and useful – and also often full of marketing hype (which I also find interesting and useful).
This morning I found an e-mail in my inbox with the subject, “Early To Rise: Never Again Will We Offer This!”
The message opens like this:
Dear ETR reader,
“Are you crazy? You’re giving away $73,520 to each subscriber over five years! Stop selling this immediately or you’ll put us out of business!” That’s what ETR’s business manager Josh told me when he ran the numbers for ETR’s Lifetime VIP Club…
If you’re a student of marketing and advertising, like me, then you’ll recognise this type of headline. Now, I don’t know who used it first, but I’m guessing it’s fairly effective, or it wouldn’t still be doing the rounds after all these decades.
It’s natural to want to ‘talk up’ what you do. And you’ve got to grab your prospect’s attention. But to me, this opening just reeks of bullshittery.
I mean, seriously, why would the business manager be pissed off about the prospect of signing up a bunch of people for a $5000 product (an info product at that – sure, some of it is hard copy, but the margins are still pretty nice at $5k, don’t you think?).
And the $73,520 they’re "giving away" is of course in the form of money they’re ‘leaving on the table’ by not selling the individual program components for their ‘full price’. (Wow, what a lot of inverted commas! – All intended)
Anyway, as you know I’m always looking for the golden nugget in these stories – in this case it’s something like, "go easy on the bullshit!".
Have a nice day,
Steven
Technorati Tags: Bullshitting, honesty, marketing, truth in advertising