Slipping them the pill

Mary Poppins tricked her employer’s children into swallowing a suspicious, color and flavor changing liquid. How?

She confessed she used a “spoonful of sugar.”

When I need to trick my dog into swallowing a pill, I cover it in peanut butter or wrap it in cheese.

And the Big Raisin industry relies on hiding their product inside cookies or covering them in chocolate to get people to eat them.

What’s the point?

In all of these cases, something undesirable by itself is embedded in something highly desirable to ensure consumption.

Now this should be used ethically, of course.

I only give my dog pills wrapped in cheese if I believe taking the pill is in his own best interest. The cheese is the good thing that allows a better thing to be consumed.

What does this have to do with email marketing?

Everything.

Before humans had written language, information was passed along orally.

But no one likes to listen to a lecture.

Besides, most only retain a tiny portion of information from a lecture. It’s simply a bad way to transfer information.

So how was all of human knowledge passed along before pen and paper?

They wrapped the important bits in a slice of cheese.

A slice of cheese called stories.

The human brain is highly receptive to stories. It’s baked into our biology.

Stories worked since the woolly mammoth days, and they are still one of the most effective slices of cheese you can wrap your intentions in.

Using stories is one of the elements of ForePay.

If you go back and read some of my older emails, you’ll see that I use three basic ingredients:

1. A good story.

2. An insight or intention to embed.

3. A way to link 1 and 2 together that doesn’t raise any red flags.

It’s not that hard, even if you’re not a “good writer.”

But if you do it wrong you’re cooked.

There are some secret ingredients that are invisible but very important.

I’ll tell you a little about them tomorrow.

See you then,

Greg

P.S. Are you digging this? Want to learn more? Should I keep going?