I proved that to myself yesterday, and I mean yesterday.
My list is roughly 4,000 people who hadn’t replied to anything in a year.
There were no links in it, I just asked the readers to reply with the word ‘consistent’.
Two people did.
Two.
I know that number looks pathetic.
It’s not – two is all it takes to break the argument.
A list can’t be dead and reply.
Those are two names, from people who’d been mute for twelve months, and I got them by changing what I asked for rather than who I asked.
It’s the same people who didn’t reply for a year.
All I did was write an email and send it.
You don’t need twenty thousand engaged subscribers to start.
It’s what some people will show you so you’ll assume it was the cause.
But we’ve all been told that.
Placement and asks beat list size.
Your list isn’t tuned out, it’s luke-warm.
You can fix that this week.
No re-engagement campaign, or purging.
If you’ve already run the test yourself, you’ve got your own number sitting in your inbox from a couple of days ago, and if it’s more than nought, the objection is answered.
Doors open 15 September.
If you already know you’re in, reply with the word “consistent” and I’ll make sure you see it before the list does.
I told you yesterday that I would give you stage one today.
I changed my mind because I want the stages to be consecutive and tomorrow is a gap day.
So, today I’m giving you an exercise to do.
Stage one is the next email.
Block out forty minutes.
You’ll probably use twenty-five.
1. Open a blank email. Not your standard template.
Blank.
2. Write it to one person. Not the whole list.
Pick one person from your list whose name you actually recognise, and write to them.
The others will read it over their shoulder and it’ll feel like it was meant for them.
3. First line: one thing you’ve noticed about them.
“You’ve asked me before how to get more engagement from your list.”
That’s the whole line.
No “hope you’re having a good week.”
No warm-up.
4. Then one short paragraph saying where this is going. “The next few emails are about fixing that.”
This is not a teaching moment, it’s a teaser moment.
No selling or the replies don’t happen.
5. Then the call-to-action, and tell them exactly what to type: “Hit reply and send me either ‘Interested’, or ‘Not Interested’.”
That’s it.
If you’d rather the question was about them than about you, use an either/or instead: “Which is closer — opens but nobody clicks, or clicks but nobody buys? Reply A or B.”
Both work.
Pick one.
Two questions get you zero answers.
6. Take every link out. The obvious ones, and the sneaky ones.
No P.S. with a link in it.
No link in your signature.
They can only reply to it, or ignore it.
7. Keep it under 150 words. If you’ve gone over, you’ve started teaching.
Cut back to the noticed thing, the paragraph, the ask.
8. Send it to the whole list. Today.
Not a segment.
Not a test batch.
9. Now stop. No follow-up tonight, tomorrow, or anything else.
One send.
Most people ignore this and it’s the part that makes the result real.
10. Twenty-four hours after it goes out, open your inbox and count. Write the number down.
Then write down three of the names.
That’s your result, a number and three real people, not a feeling that the list seemed a bit warmer.
Do this and you should have replies sitting in the inbox tomorrow.
Names on them.
People who’ve been on your list for months and hadn’t said a word to you until you asked them a question they could answer without thinking.
You should think about that for a moment, because it tells you what was actually wrong.
The list wasn’t dead.
Nobody had asked it anything.
One email that gets replies doesn’t pay for dinner.
It proves the mechanism works on your list, with your name on it, which is not nothing, it’s the thing you’ve been missing for months.
But you can’t run a business on one good email.
What you’re still short of is twenty of those in an order, each one leaning a bit further toward a date, so the replies turn into money instead of a nice afternoon.
That’s stage one, and it’s what the next email is about. Who’s buying, what they’re buying, and why the date gets fixed before the material is finished rather than after.
I lost years to getting that the wrong way round.
Doors open 15 September.
If you already know you’re in, reply with the word “consistent” and I’ll make sure you see it before the list does.
Six days a week for months, and the only reason today’s email exists is that yesterday’s went out.
Consistency is important, but writing an email because it’s due is aimless.
The underlying belief is what’s costing you: consistent sales come from writing better emails.
They don’t.
They come from emails that were placed on purpose, in an order, pointing at a date.
You can write a beautiful email into a void.
I’ve watched people do it.
I’ve done it.
It’s the same as perfecting the app, ultimately pointless.
Tomorrow I take stage one on its own and slow it right down. Who’s buying, what they’re buying, and why the date has to be fixed before the material is finished rather than after.
This is the stage most people skip, because deciding feels like it can wait and writing feels like progress.
It can’t and it isn’t.
I lost years to that exact swap.
I’ll also show you what happens to your sending week the moment there’s a date at the end of it.
It’s not more work.
It’s the same work, aimed.
Doors open 15 September.
If you already know you’re in, reply with the word “consistent” and I’ll make sure you see it before the list does.
He’s been emailing six days a week for months to a list of around 4,000 people.
Opens swing between 5% and 20% depending on nothing he can identify.
A link gets about five clicks.
A sale lands roughly once a week, then doesn’t.
He isn’t short of discipline and he isn’t short of tactics, he’s short of a result he can point at, and his wife has started asking, kindly, how long this is going to take.
He doesn’t need permission to work harder.
He needs the emails he sends to start paying, and he needs them to keep paying.
If that’s you, here’s the only thing to do next: on Tuesday September 15th, the doors to Stranger to Sold open.
Join, and instead of writing tomorrow’s email the way you wrote today’s, you’ll rewrite one week of emails against a plan that’s built to get replies and sales rather than volume, self-paced, no calls to miss, no cohort to fall behind.
Reply with the word “consistent” and I’ll make sure you see it open before anyone else does.
