The profitable case for being a control freak…

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Did you ever notice that when you’re fat, men don’t look you in the eye? They look across your shoulder. There’s no eye contact. My name is Leslie McClennahan I’m a real person. I live near Goose Creek, South Carolina. Up until two years ago, I was never looked in the eye. By anyone.

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So started an advertisement from the June 21^st 1992 issue of the Houston Post.

Notice how the above words conjure up a completely different image – in the reader’s brain – than what would happen if you just put, well…

A real image/photo of Leslie at the start of the ad.

Because it’s the reader’s imagination, the former is going to be a whole lot more engaging… emotional… dramatic… relevant and HORRIFYING…

…than the latter.

Why am I telling you all this?

Not to impress upon you the difference in effect between plain-text emails and the classic HTML image/graphics-heavy emails…

(Although there’s that too…)

But also the importance of controlling the user experience.

This was at the forefront of Walt Disney’s mind when designing his amusement parks:

Disney was an absolutist in demanding only one entrance & exit in order to fully control the user experience from A-Z…

(When the norm was to have multiple…)

His competitors – although not just them – called him crazy, and said things like:

“That’s not the way things are done!!!”

Yet decades later…

Disney’s name and his park are still around…

(While his competitors are either gone or irrelevant…)

So it is with plain-text vs image-heavy emails – we’ve been conditionally & subliminally trained to react to images by just staring at them and scrolling.

This is called “Banner Blindness” – it’s a real phenomenon that you’re free to Google or run to Grok for an explanation…

(I also touched on it in my Book in Blind Spot #4)

But I digress:

You are in no control with the industry standard pretty-poster style emails – how could you even be when the reader’s attention is being drawn in 37 different directions with the amount of protein, creatine and pre-workout tubs you have thrown in there on the screen?

This is why the plain-text email is king.

(Amongst plenty of other reasons – I touched upon a couple of them in my Book, and this email.)

Yes they’re harder to craft – because it is hard enough to NOT ONLY get someone’s attention…

…but then carefully control it all the way from your hook, your segue, your offer and lastly your CTA.

But if it were easy then everyone would be doing it.

Now luckily…

That’s actually some of the best news ever.

Because it means that there’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap – just waiting to be filled – for those kinds of emails in this industry.

Or not.

Some people wouldn’t know an opportunity if it were banging on their door at 1 AM…

…with a megaphone shouting their first name and date of birth.

If that’s you, then just put this email on the shelf – perhaps you might find it useful a few years later down the line…

(Although it may be too late by then – it will certainly be too late to acquire a first-mover’s advantage…)