andre chaperon – Mark Salmon

I’ve been studying about how to do story telling with email marketing – specifically reading Auto Responder Madness by Andre Chaperon.

At well over 300 pages, it is an ebook that I have had on my computer for quite a while and failed to read properly because of its length – indeed, I refer to it in one of my previous blog posts.

However, it is well worth taking the time and effort of ploughing through it because it gave me clarity about how to upgrade my email marketing efforts.

Your list building efforts will have a pitiful return on investment unless you get your email marketing right – my biggest failure to date is ‘list attrition’ i.e. not knowing how to properly develop a long-term relationship with my prospects and clients even though that was always my intention. ‘Intention’ is not enough unless you deploy a few writing strategies

My email marketing has been relatively poor in the past – lacking proper structure, strategy and, yes, based on what I read in Autoresponder Madness, the content of my emails can be greatly improved.

There are 3 core tactics that are employed within Autoresponder Madness:

List Segmentation – i.e. to ensure that you send relevant messages to your list it is critical that you understand who is on your list and what they want. List segmentation is critical to this. Andre outlines a number of strategies and tools for achieving this. It is not easy to do but it is very effective!
Story-telling – he delivers his content by way of stories in automated sequences – he calls them Soap Opera Sequences – to engage the reader and uses open loops and cliffhanger content to draw his reader through his emails. These stories are in a strategic order to deliver an overall solution to the client but the client can be diverted onto sub-lists with new Soap Opera Sequences depending on which topics they show interest in. Product Launches are delivered sparingly via broadcasts, perhaps once a month. Each email has a ‘hook’ and ends in a cliffhanger.
He uses Jay Abraham’s Strategy of Preeminence in creating a strong relationship with his readers i.e. he works hard to become their trusted long-term advisor, which results in incredible conversion rates from small lists.

A surprising bonus at the end of the book was that he outlined the structure of his working day. His work schedule is two 90 minute sessions in the morning with a 30 minute rest in between and then in the afternoon he works in Pomodoro sessions of 25 minutes each to reflect his shorter attention span in the afternoon. As he lives in Spain, he takes ‘siesta’ time midday.

Within Autoresponder Madness, he refers to a product called Nano Lists which is not officially for sale. I managed to get hold of a copy of this too. This was also an eye-opener as to how well you can do with skilful list-building and email marketing i.e. adopting a smart strategy is crucial for success.

Together, both these products have made me realise that my email marketing needs to be upgraded in both strategic intent and content. I have received a glimpse of how it can be done so much better and I now just need to take action on what I have learnt.

I wish I had read Autoresponder Madness a long time ago – possibly I wouldn’t have realised just how good the content is had I not first ‘failed’ with my email marketing!

This book and ‘Email Slick’ by Lee Murray should be required reading for any internet marketer who wants to get to grips with their email marketing.

If I can just implement the strategy of story telling with email marketing, it would be a massive improvement!

I have been learning more about how to write powerful email copy from three top products:

The Tao of Email Copywriting by Matt Furey
Kickass Copywriting Secrets by John Carlton
Autoresponder Madness by Andre Chaperon

Last night I finished going through the Matt Furey product (which retails at $197). He is reputed to be one of the best email writers on the planet.

It all started out a bit slowly, with Matt talking about how to get yourself into the correct mindset to write email copy. This consists of some deep breathing exercises designed to get you into the moment and to energise your mind – this energy to be reflected in your subsequent writing.

As I lay on my office sofa listening to Matt in CD one, when he was talking about the fact that he was a world class copywriter, I was beginning to think it was all a lot of guru bullsit. You know the sort of thing – they spend a lot of time telling you about what a wonderful person they are and all the incredible things they have done!

I don’t really like this much – it’s a technique that Brendan Burchard uses to excess in my opinion to establish his credentials – too much hot air and not enough content!

Any ways, after not really being fully engaged by CD1 I decided to put on CD2 and see if I could manage to focus on what was being said (because I found CD1 hard to digest!)

I have to say that CD2 turned out to be simply the best explanation of copywriting that I have heard in all my 13 years as a business and marketing consultant.

What really electrified my mind was that Matt simply stood up and delivered an example of an email in front of his audience – it was made up ‘off the cuff’ so to speak. He said it was important to write your copy exactly as you speak (tidied up a little of course). This makes his writing very natural and he delivers his copy based on STORIES and his own life experience.

He starts his stories based on TIME & PLACE e.g. ‘when I was 5 years old growing up in XYZ this happened to me’ and eventually he transitions his story into his promotion. He said that this was a technique that Ronald Reagan used very effectively.

As soon as you begin your story with time and place you draw your audience into what happened at that time and place. Sometimes stories weave in and out of each other.

This is a very powerful technique and I believe that Andre Chaperon’s technique is similar – he basically creates a ‘Soap Opera’ in his emails that draws you into the story.

Matt talked about the fact that there are at least two stories in every email – what you want your reader to understand and your product or service promotion and how it relates to your positioning storyline.

The power of this story technique is further emphasised later in CD 2 and CD3 when Matt gets his audience to write emails based on this technique and then picks on members of the audience at random to read out their emails. Through the use of powerful personal stories I have to say that in every case these examples are quite riveting.

I think that if you can tell a story based on your own personal experience it seems more authentic and real – particularly if you can outline your failure and personal problems.

I have to say from a personal perspective, my own email copywriting should be a great deal more powerful as a result of listening to ‘The Tao of Email Copywriting’ because the lesson of writing from your own personal experiences has really hit home hard this time.

When I was at school I excelled in English Literature and English Language but through many years of business report writing and business writing, I lost touch with the creative muse that really enables me to write powerfully and authentically.

Just as I have recently rediscovered a love of creating art from photographs, I think I will now have a great deal of enjoyment writing powerful and creative email story-lines.

(I live in Shakespeare’s home town, so I really ought to take a leaf out of his book and dig deeper into my creativity. How did a home boy from Stratford-upon-Avon begin to write that stuff – it still baffles scholars today?)

Matt made the point that you do need to be FEARLESS in your writing – this will offend some people but this is also good because it means that you are having some impact on other people in a sea of grey and mediocre rubbish. It also means that you need to reveal your frailties as well as your strengths.

Whilst Matt isn’t the greatest speaker, it was really when he started to give examples of his work that the ‘penny dropped’.

It is also very evident that he is not afraid to SELL his products and services hard – he says that it is important to send emails daily and even twice or three times daily. He always makes more money if he does this and he makes millions from his email marketing.

You can read examples of Matts emails here.

And this leads me onto the purpose of this article. At some time in the near future I am creating my own email marketing product entitled – ‘Email-ATM’ – which will be based on my own experiences and what I learn from these top copywriting products – each of the products listed above costs quite a bit of money if you were to buy them yourself.

Copywriting is one of the most prized and also lucrative skills that you can possess in online marketing. I have paid a heavy price my not outsourcing my own sales letters to professional copywriters. I write all my own copy because this is a skill that I really want to master and Matt’s ‘The Tao of Email Copywriting’ has moved me a big step closer to that goal.

So why not join my list at the top of the sidebar and I will inform you when I launch my email copywriting product based on the distilled wisdom of these gurus, and others that I have studied, like Gary Halbert and Gary Bencivenga.

If you get Email ATM you will definitely learn a lot more about how to write powerful email copy – so make sure you join my list now to get what will be an awesome product.

Mark Salmon

Posts Tagged → andre chaperon

Story Telling With Email Marketing

How To Write Powerful Email Copy