814 – Everyone loves a good story: Tom talks Story Emails

Episode 814 – Story Emails
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 814 of Screw the Commute podcast. I have to apologize in advance. I'm a little bit under the weather, which is kind of crazy. I went the entire pandemic, probably four years total, and haven't even had a sniffle, and all of a sudden I get hit in the face with this. It's blowing my nose and getting in my throat and everything. So if I sound funny, well, hey, I'm still going to get some good information for you. They'll help you. Today, we're going to talk about story emails. I put out one just this week and got a lot of interesting responses. So we're going to talk about that in this episode and hope you to miss episode 813. It was a kind of a template I gave you for writing sales emails. I mean, I have probably 50 templates, but this was one of them that you can repeat over and over and over again, and it can help you sell more. That was 813. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, the episode number. That was 813. Today is 814. And make sure this is your last chance to get on the list building summit. I mean, you can write great emails, but if you've got nobody to send them to, it doesn't help you that much, right? Go to screwthecommute.com/lbs. It's all free for this weekend, so you better jump on it.

[00:01:49] You can watch all the sessions you want. I have two master classes on there, one just for signing up, and the first session of the whole event were two separate master classes that I charge $500 a piece for, so you should take advantage of those. And also if you buy the premium pass, which is super dirt cheap to get all the sessions that you can listen to permanently, then I'll give you a 30 minute consultation worth 500 bucks. So there's 1500 bucks worth of value for I think about, I don't know, $67 or something like that, plus $1 million worth of training from everybody else. All right. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com, and grab a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:02:34] Let's go. Story emails. What they do is they give a little slice of either your life or someone else's life. You know, you can tell a story with them. And what happened to them or what happened to you. Some people depend solely on these kinds of emails, and some people like me use them once in a while. Although I'm going to be experimenting with more of them, which I'll tell you about in a minute. Now, if you're doing this for business, the most important part is to learn to tie the point of the story to the business point you want or to make.

[00:03:13] Make them do what you want them to do. Click to something, or like I want you to do today is go over and sign up for that list building summit. Now the same thing holds true for speaking. Many of the points are made with stories. And here's a great tip for either speaking or writing email stories. Don't say something like, let me tell you a story that makes resistance to you, or I want to tell you a story about. No, don't do that. Here's what you do. You just. Get into it. You don't use the word story. So I did a story email earlier this week with the subject line. Yesterday I was a milkman. Okay, so that used the curiosity technique, the Zeigarnik technique of copywriting. And the first line of the email was my girlfriend and her brother are here helping me renovate the retreat center. They only drink raw milk. Now you don't know the rest of the story till you, you know, if you want to get a copy of it, just let me know. But. But I didn't say, let me tell you a story about yesterday. Me chasing around town trying to find milk, right? That kind of thing. I just got into it. Boom. You're into it before you know what hit you.

[00:04:33] That's the best way to do storytelling. And I didn't say, let them. Let me tell you a story about my frustrating trip to pick up milk. I mean, I don't want the word story to create any resistance in the reader or to make them think about anything but the topic of the story. I want them sucked into the story right away, not knowing or resisting that. Oh, here's a story about something. Know that their mind is going places I don't want them to go. I want them into the story before they know what hit them. Now, if you want a copy of that email to see the whole thing, just email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com with the subject line milkman, and I'll send it to you now in that email at the end of the story, after telling them about all my troubles getting the milk, I transitioned by using this sentence here it is. The only saving grace to this entire frustrating story is that I had sent out an email right before I left, and hundreds of dollars came in by the time I got back. That's the power of a list. All right, that was the the sentence. And then it transitioned to then. And then I got them to sign up for the list building summit that's still going on this weekend, which you should sign up for too if you haven't. Screwthecommute.com/lbs.

[00:05:57] Now I'm going to start doing more of these emails, but here's what's going on with my situation. The good side of that email is that I got tons of responses from people I hadn't heard from in years. They were on my list, but they really weren't that engaged. The downside of putting out an email like that, and I hadn't done one for a long time, was that people got absorbed in the story and didn't click through to the summit as much as I would have liked. Now, this could be for a couple of reasons. They had already had eight emails from me about the summit, so most either had signed up already or decided they didn't want to. Or the other reason could have been they were shocked because most of my emails are hard core internet entrepreneurship and pro speaking topics rather than a slice of my life. I don't really know for sure, but I'll experiment with more story emails, but I'm going to put them out on what are for me days that normally get less response, like Mondays and Fridays. Now, that doesn't mean those are bad days for you. That's just not as responsive for me. You have to test it. Maybe by putting out story emails on those days, I can wake up some of the people that aren't thrilled with my mostly marketing emails, and maybe they would rather hear stories.

[00:07:29] I'm going to test it. And that brings up another good point. You think after 29 years of me sending out marketing emails, I would have things down already, right? Well guess what, that would be very arrogant to think so, because times change and you have to keep changing and testing and changing, you know, changing with them. So I suggest you start experimenting with story emails and see if the people that hear from you respond better or worse. I mean, some people, this is all they do. Every day. They send out a story email. That's their thing. I don't think they make as much money as me, but but the thing is, is that's that could be something for you that improves what you're doing now. Or you can do part marketing, part story. That's what I'm going to do. So in the meantime, take advantage of your last chance to grab the free videos from the List Building Summit today. If you're listening to this today, this is Friday. Then you might see the recap of all the sessions and pick the ones you want to watch for the weekend. So go over to screwthecommute.cpm/lbs and I'm thinking about my next story is going to be called the Golden Cabbage. Wonder what that's about huh? All right. Catch you on the next episode. Do those story emails.