How to get featured to anyone’s email list (even if you don’t have “guru” status) - Trial and Eureka
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How to get featured to anyone’s email list (even if you don’t have “guru” status)

By Alp | List-building

Something otherworldly happened yesterday.

Ben Settle featured me to his email list - totally unsolicited.

If you don’t know who Ben Settle is, let’s just say he is the God-Pharaoh of Email Marketing.

He is universally recognised as the world’s #1 email marketer.

Just to put things in context:

Ever heard of Agora Inc - the $600 million a year email marketing empire, also known as the “Harvard of direct response copywriting”?

It’s where some of the finest copywriters on the planet ply their trade.

Well, Ben Settle is the guy who trains the “professors” at Agora - especially when it comes to using infotainment to sell.

I got introduced to Ben Settle’s work through my subscribers earlier this year.

Two subscribers emailed me out of the blue on different days to ask if I was one of Ben’s secret “protégés” because my emails reminded them of his teachings.

At that point, I was like “Who is Ben Settle?”

So I Googled him, and joined his paid newsletter.

Scroll forward several months...

I wake up to find this in my inbox:

(It’s always weird to read about yourself in the third person.)

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“(...) subscriber and lawyer Alp Turan exposes the pathological fear of selling that drives practically all the popular marketing trainings the goo-roo fanboys get chubbies over.

There are at least 5 Valuable lessons (some obvious, some not so) embedded in his testimonial.

See if you can catch them all:

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‘Here is how I would summarize the benefit of subscribing to your paid newsletter:

1) You sold me on the idea of emailing my list daily.

As dumb as it sounds, the idea that I *could* do this had never occurred to me. And once it did, I had to be sold on the idea of bending your strategy around the white hot centre of your list and not the trolls on the fringes who unsubscribe.

2) A sense of kinship.

Previously, whenever I spoke to an online marketing expert, they always treated my way of doing things with contempt

Because I am from the Mediterranean (and ergo: rather hotheaded), I actually ended up telling these “big names” very directly that:

a) I don’t intend to take business advice from a man who has never made good money in anything other than teaching other people how to teach other people how to teach other people how to make money online.

b) That frankly, the idea that I don’t know how to sell is absurd.

The moment you open your mouth in court, you are selling an idea to the judge. Every time you negotiate a contract, you’re selling your client’s point of view to the other side. Everything you do as a lawyer IS selling.

And a lot of their convoluted philosophies (like jab, jab, jab, right hook) are, in my not so humble opinion, born out of a pathological fear of selling - not a “mastery” of it.

c) Don’t talk to me about the “psychology of buying”.

Unlike those gurus, I have actually been professionally trained in this. As a lawyer dual-qualified in two jurisdictions, I have been professionally trained to use psychology to cross-examine witnesses, read between the lines, and negotiate.

So, for the love of God, stop parroting Cialdini’s Influence. There have been 18 years of academic research published since then.

None of the above made me popular, so it’s good to find camaraderie with like-minded marketers in Email Players.

3) Not having to reinvent the wheel.

Studying your work helped me understand WHY the stuff I stumbled upon in my email writing was actually working. So it supplied the theory to a lot of what I had accidentally discovered.

Also, you’re obviously incredibly talented and you’ve been doing this for a lot longer than I have. So it’s great to have the benefit of your experience, experimentation and thoughts instead of having to test everything myself.

This allows me to focus my experiments. “Ben already tested this. So I can cross these four questions off my list. Let’s do an experiment on this hypothesis instead, because I’m curious about it and Ben doesn’t seem to have tested that yet.”

Anyway, all of this is a rather long-winded way of saying “thank you.” :))’

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(...) If you want to diddle around with substandard ways of trying to look like a nice guy and like you’re not “oh noes!” in business with something to sell that can solve a pain in their lives, have at it.

The Alps and my other students will happily keep outselling you.”

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Getting paraded before the audience of the God-Pharaoh of your industry confers three blessings upon your business - one obvious, two not-so-obvious.

First, the obvious:

The “halo effect” of rubbing shoulders with the greats.

It positions you as someone “in the know”, and makes non-buyers more likely to invest in you.

Social proof and all that nonsense. (People are sheep.)

But the second benefit is more subtle:

You see, your customers are not just on your email list. They probably are also on those big name lists.

So when the God-Pharaoh issues a decree conferring titles upon you, they witness the knighting ceremony with their own eyes.

This boosts your credibility in their eyes.

It makes them more likely to implement the stuff they bought, and therefore get results, and therefore make your courses easier to sell.

For example, within 1 hour of my making a cameo appearance in Ben Settle’s email list, loyal customer Hilde replied to one of my daily emails to say:

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“It's such a riveting story and I have to admit I was super happy when I saw it was long: Yes! I can have fun for 3 minutes instead of just one.

Seriously, it reads like the beginning of a Tom Robbins novel and nothing makes me happier than wacky stories. I even had my husband read it.

The segue to talking about emails works like magic too. I'm curious if this resulted in sales because the panicky feeling of dealing with maggots might push people into taking action.

AND - Huge congrats on being cover boy for Ben Settle today! I just LOVE what you wrote there. A touch of elegant arrogance (I mean that in the best possible way) is very becoming. Kill the dragon Alp!”

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And the final boon bestowed by your cameo appearance?

This one often goes unnoticed until much later.

The thing is…

You never know who else is watching.

For instance, Ben Settle’s list is mainly for advanced marketers. He also has a lot of big names in there.

If I ever unwittingly contact one of them, they might recognise my name and be more likely to open the message - who knows?

But I can say this from experience:

Several months ago Bryan Harris featured me to his list. He told them about a list-building strategy I invented, and the results I got with it.

Then all of a sudden, lots of JV opportunities came out of the woodworks.

Aside from JV offers, you also get a pat on the back from your peers when you get featured like this.

For example…

My colleague Josh Earl (who, btw, is a much better copywriter than I am - by order of magnitudes) dropped by my inbox after he read Ben Settle’s email:

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So did Pete OC, who used to work as a top-notch copywriter at Agora, the “Harvard of Direct Response”:

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In short, the word gets around.

OK! Enough about me.

Let’s talk about YOU now.

How can you get featured by the God-Pharaoh of YOUR industry?

Before any of that even… how do you get past the gatekeepers and reach them in the first place?

They get more guest post pitches, requests, questions and social media messages a day than it’s humanly possible to read.

So if you do what everyone else is doing, the math is against you.

Instead, you want to find the least crowded channel and approach them there.

(That’s a principle I learned from Tim Ferriss’s podcast.)

Let me teach you two very practical applications of this:

First, interact with the newsletters you read.

Especially in the first 15-30 minutes after they land in your inbox.

In the first half hour or so after the broadcast goes out, the big guys are usually manning the inbox themselves, so your reply is less likely to run into an assistant.

Second, do what they tell you to do and get results.

In the online world, “results” are the least crowded channel.

Because very few people implement what they read - and even fewer actually manage to get results.

But to get results you need to have the right people in your list.

Because the world’s best marketing technique isn’t going to work if your entire audience is made of non-buyers.

Getting those “right people” into your list?

It’s the job of your opt-in offer.

And that’s where FAST50 comes in. It helps you build a list of buyers from the get-go, so that all the other marketing tactics you subsequently implement actually get you results.

So when you’re ready to take your marketing game to the next level, step onto your chariot and speed over to:

https://fast50optins.com/


PS: Win-do good-win offer: If you are looking to invest in FAST50, you can get access to the course AND help the Hurricane Harvey victims.

If you invest $500 in any Hurricane Harvey relief fund, I will give you the Complete Edition of FAST50 at no cost. Yes, I will bear the cost of your strategy session, ongoing coaching, done-for-you tech implementation, and graphic design IF you help the hurricane victims.

The Complete Edition is priced at $797, so you not only save money, you also help someone who desperately needs it.

Offer valid for 24 hours. Just email support@trialandeureka.com a screenshot of your $500 donation, and my assistant Jonna will set you up with your access.

EDIT (01 September 2017): The Hurricane Harvey offer has now expired. We managed to raise $3500 in 24 hours to assist the hurricane victims. Thank you for your generosity! I’m so proud of you guys.