Came across this article the other day and thought I'd share with the group. It has some very intriguing thoughts on how to use more creative language in our emails to enhance our connections with clients. (link: https://www.catersource.com/sales-market......a342ceb)

Whereas you might disagree with some of the tips, I do feel the essence of the idea of putting more of your personality into an email instead of being generic is a great one. Hope this sparks some ideas for y'all gang

I guess it doesn’t hurt to know of some and apply personality. Personally I think some people overdo it.

I like the formula I’ve developed for my in terms of content format. Last month I shared some personal stuff and I got a huge response from the typical awareness push I do.

All that said, I’m subscribed to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s email list. I read it in his voice every time lol. He delivers awesome value, though I think he does long form like a novel and if he doesn’t hook me right away I don’t have time to bother.

That is a good read Nash, thanks for sharing.

I will add that I think it is important to hold their attention with the first few lines or they could trash it before getting to the good part. Personal info or a good story can help do that. It's much easier to read a story than to read a bunch of facts & figures forced on you.

I subscribe to several of the sales and marketing lists and the better ones all seem to have catchy titles to make sure you open the email.


Tom

My thoughts exactly. My personality is businesslike and proper. So, my emails are businesslike and proper.

I have seen some ‘business’ emails that seem to have taken this advice, and I just think its weird.

Just my humble opinion.

I couldn't agree more. Sure, a bit of personality can be fine. Too much of the cuteness mentioned pulls away from professionalism.

What many here seem to forget, and almost everyone under the age of 30 doesn't understand, is that all of this type of content - this article, email books/articles/programs, marketing courses, podcasts, blogs, and so much more of the stuff out there today is for online marketers! Online marketers pushing and selling information for online businesses.

We are not online businesses. We are a service-based business - SELLING A PHYSICAL PRODUCT!

This is why it always amazed me to see so many magicians and performers trying to "automate" their business so they don't have to speak to the prospect or client, to have minimal interaction with them, to do everything online through an inquiry or booking form, etc. You might as well have someone else do your show for them so you don't have to have any physical contact at all!

People really miss the boat on this one. They bang their heads against the wall with SEO, keywords, hashtags, and all kinds of other digital stuff and try to make their physical business adaptive to the online word. It will never happen - people are buying a physical service and at some point you will have to abort the digital to either get physical or get out of the business.

I see so many struggle to try to adapt their entertainment business to the online world and go crazy in the process of doing it. This info is meant for online businesses - understand this.

Sure, once you have your entertainment business properly establish and in place, up and running, then there are some online resources that be utilized, but to think that you should operate as an online business, which by the way has a muuuuuuuch larger failure rate than physical or service businesses, is trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

If you have to use catchy titles and cutesy stuff to get their interest and for them to open the email, you are greatly missing the point and real #1 thing or reason people decide to open emails - and it's not what they gurus tell you it is.

People want real live interaction with a person. How many times have you been on hold with a bank, airline, pharmacy, doctor's office, heating/air conditioning company, cable company, utility company, etc. and go crazy pounding numbers on your phone keypad all in an attempt to want to speak to a real person? How many people would rather wait in line (because they only have one or two tellers) for real teller service rather than conducting business via an ATM?

As entertainment business owners we must understand the difference in what is considered customer service and the actual customer experience. So many entertainers are way off on this.

All of the old 60s, 70, 80s, and 90s sales and marketing stuff is outdated - the rah-rah pseudo motivation, the cutesy sayings and metaphors, the long-winded stories with a short or little payoff, years-old business books and quotations, the Successories phrases and sayings and much more. You might as well still do martini-lunches as a sales technique. Especially for entertainment businesses. We have so many unique things in out favor and benefit that conventional business do not have. We have these in our platforms, marketing, promotion and operations. These are a distinct advantage to us which we should acknowledge and embrace into our business rather than fight them and put our efforts into the wrong thing of the square peg/round hole of today's online marketing for online businesses.

Wow, I've never agreed with something as much as I agree with this.

Been trying to switch to t mobile, so far I've gotten daily automated email offers, but a person has yet to call me back.

Last time I was at a "safeway" every lane was closed, worker comes to me and says: "you gotta use self check out bro".

I'm thoroughly convinced that there are no real people at "Lowe's", as the automated system left me on
hold for 20 minutes, than acts surprised that I waited that long and hung up.

In short, respond to your emails promptly and personally, and answer your phone when it rings, and you'll
be giving better service than most companies.

I agree that the magician is selling a physical-type product. But some are doing a big part of their business online nowadays. An online business is ANY kind of business activity that happens over the internet. This includes goods and services. The internet has changed the way people do business. Banks, Walmart, and every other business you can think of are doing business online today. And you can’t even go to work for McDonald's, Walmart, etc, without them telling you to go online to fill out the application. The magician that is not doing business online is far behind in the real world. There is no good reason that a magician shouldn’t be online in one way or the other. Without question, the internet is probably the best place to go to knock on doors. But I do agree, there needs to be some person-to-person contact as soon as possible.

What is online business?  https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial......usiness/

But getting back to the email marketing part that Nash linked to. I get more junk emails today than I do in the post office mail. I’m sure I had to opt-in for most of them at one time, but after awhile it all adds up, and I have to pick and choose which ones I want to read. I delete a lot of mail without looking at it.

Tom

Tom, in my emails, if it looks like spam or reads like spam... And many of those phrases in the article sounded like spam, it gets marked as spam and is deleted.

That’s my point with the title better be a good one that screams open me. Or it is deleted.

Tom

I have been talking about this since the inception of email blast marketing.

The fact is that regardless of what the “guru speak” crowd will lead you to believe people are not stupid. THEY KNOW when they are being sold and it brings resistance almost immediately from some.

This is why conning folks into giving you their email is dumb and pointless for both parties. It is why these types of things have SUCH A LOW rate of return. To get anyone to even look at them is in the single digits. People who do respond moving to action is a single digit of THAT.

Also here is the last line of the article. They want to speak as if they are the authority and blah blah blah. But just read this last line from those PREACHING ABOUT LANGUAGE and the affect it has on people.

“Hopefully, with these tips, you can find the right balance between creativity and authenticity and produce emails that engage, drive sales, offer a high ROI, and inspire your audience.”

HOPEFULLY? Seriously they start the conclusion of the brilliant article about how to move people to action with words and use the word HOPEFULLY? The ONLY place they even mention ROI and the word HOPEFULLY is attached? Sorry but that is pretty weak.

And just one thought about the ridiculous content. Having a Thesaurus. People don’t like to read things they don’t understand and are made to feel dumb. So if you need a Thesaurus to find the word, do you think the reader will use one just to read your spam email? No. They will move to one that makes them feel more comfortable. Spam email has very little chance of being read in the first place. So why would you put up further barriers to having it read?

Hey here is an idea. Try being genuine and honest and having a wonderful product people want need and desire? Not a bad place to start is it? Try being something worth what it is you think you want to charge. Better yet be something MORE valuable to the client than they pay! And stop sending spam emails in the first place.

Mindpro is dead on. We sell a physical product.

Worth saying and to be clear and fair to the lady that wrote the article. Nowhere is she, or anybody here, suggesting you send out spam emails to just anyone. Nor does she expect a magician to send emails that only talk about food. Common sense needs to be applied.

Tom

Spam is in the eye of the receiver.

When it reads like spam, it is spam.

moreover, with the constant spam most folks receive, just about any unsolicited email
is often seen as spam by most folks, which is what makes first contact by email tricky.

Bingo.

It is very easy to believe because you have a website or do some online marketing or lead generation, or do some portion of your business on the internet that you think you have an online business. You don't.

It is this misperception that then makes one not understand the differences of a true online business and a businesses that uses online sources, features, and tools to their non-online business. The difference is similar to E-Commerce and E-Business, two different things.

This is why I said that the vast majority, nearly 95%, of the marketing material, content creation, SEO, launches, funnels, pay-per-click, lead pages, landing pages (instead of a website), lead magnets, social media mastery, sales letters, social proof, newsletters, e-publishing, blogs, podcasting, summits, upsells, cross-sells, back-end offers, subscription models, membership models, continuity programs, analytics, automation, autoresponders, Linked In, FB, Instagram, TicTok, Twitter, Amazon, and many of today's "coaching" offerings are all designed for online businesses, not those that have a regular business that utilizes some online techniques and sources.

This is so extremely important to know and understand otherwise you will never find the success you desire or get the results you are seeking, period.

Sure, most of us use electronic mail or e-mail. However that does not make us an online business. Many of us have websites, but again that does not make us an online business. So without the understanding that we do not have online businesses, anytime we follow, purchase, or buy a book, course, any marketing content, SEO, content creation, and so on, we are in reality trying to adapt what has been created for another business model, online businesses, to our own use, needs, and application in our non-online businesses. This is why so many of these things often do not work for us or fail.


The Misconception of an Online Business
Any kind of business activity that happens over the internet.

Definition of an Online Business
Running an online business includes business operations, buying, selling online, or providing an online service. All operations are conducted online. Unlike traditional business, anyone can start an online business.

E-Commerce is a type of business model where commercial transactions occur through digital or electronic networks. In most cases, this means through the Internet. For example, e-Bay is involved in e-Commerce.

E-Commerce Vs. E-Business
While most believe that E-Commerce and E-Business can be used interchangeably, it is not so. While E-Commerce may refer to conducting online promotion and/or transactions, E-Business or Online Business encompasses all the business activities and services conducted using the web/internet.


As I stated above there are some online tools and resources we can use in our businesses such as email, websites, Facebook ads, Google Ads, keywords, and to a certain degree SEO, but they are really only tools to us to enhance our regular and normal physical operations. We are entertainers selling a service delivering a physical product (our performance), which as I said makes us a physical business.

This is exactly why you see so many performers come here and in other places saying they are always working on tweaking or redoing their websites, or trying to improve their SEO, or learning to write better or more compelling copy (which the resources they are learning from are designed for digital and online businesses, not physical entertainment businesses, as the differences are vast) yet wonder why they aren't working? They spend sooooo much of their time on this type of things, adjusting to changes and algorithms, the latest and greatest new whizbang things, and yada yada, yada, and end up spending so much time working on these things IN their business that they spend little or no time working ON their business evolving, growing, progressing, expanding, and compounding their business.

Hopefully by stopping the action and identifying this you will see the point and how it is affecting, and in many cases, damaging our industry and entertainment business by this misunderstanding. Their (online guru's) promotional content attracts all types of business owners and physical businesses that their content is really not designed for but of course they are willing to take your money if they reel you in.

I have never understood why entertainers would want to read and purchase material that needs adapting to our type of entertainment business rather than to seek and follow advice and content created specifically for our industry, use, and application? It is just crazy to me!

Hopefully this will be an ah-ha moment for some to see the reality of the online world, all of the misinformation, blatantly wrong information online (which is growing by the day), outdated yet never removed online content, and the growing area now of AI, and so much more.