The dog trainer’s “casino trick” to get people eating up your emails

Training a dog is an interesting task. There’s a lot it teaches you about human interactions strangely enough. 

And because sales is mostly about human interaction and decision making, dog training gives an interesting ‘window’ into successful selling. Whether that be in print, on the phone, or face-to-face. 

Take “the dog trainer’s ‘casino trick’ to get people eating up your emails”. This is how it was explained to me:

(paraphrasing)

“Casino’s use ‘variable rewards’ in their slot machines. So sometimes you win a little… sometimes you win a lot… and sometimes you don’t win at all. And the fact you don’t know what you’ll get makes it more addicting.”

In dog training, this means having a few different treats and randomly giving a different treat with every reward. Doing this effectively “supercharges” the reward pathway in the dog’s brain. Making them much more likely to be motivated to listen to your commands. 

Which basically comes down to injecting variety. 

And when applied to emails this means: 

1. Rotating topics — Sometimes I’ll hear “I don’t know what to write about?” This is 100% an understanding your market problem. If you really understand your market, you’ll have endless fodder. More: The best email topics will always be a problem or a pain point. So write down a laundry list of the problems plaguing your market, then rotate them in. 
2. Rotating email lengths — There is no ‘best’ length for an email. As Ben Settle says, use the “skirt ruler”. Just like a skirt, an email should be long enough to cover the details, but short enough to get attention. 
3. Rotating email ‘types’ — It’s extremely common for people to send the same ‘type’ of email over and over. Maybe it’s a newsletter style. Maybe it’s always a story. Or maybe it’s always just a straight sales pitch. Train your list to expect variety. This means using different types. I cover 10 of them in my book (I’ll share how to get a free copy below).
4. Rotating offers — Are you pitching the same ol’ boring offer? Bleh. Even worse is the obligatory “black friday” or holiday sale. Find unique ways to create offers. Bundle things into high-ticket, but discounted offers. Do 1-day flash sales. Bundle bonuses together and sell them cheap. Just do something unique and create offers people want to buy. 
5. And on and on — Variety can go for everything. The bonuses you use. The podcasts you go on. The topics you speak about. The products you make. At the very least, don’t be predictable. 

But don’t use this as a “tactic” either. Don’t trick and addict people like casinos do. 

Simply understand that humans crave variety. And if you’re the one to give them that variety, they’ll be much more likely to read and buy from your emails. 

Which is part of the reason why I’ve added email and subject line templates into the Addendum section of my book. So you can easily inject variety into your emails starting today. 

To get a free copy, go here:

www.copybymcune.com

Tyler McCune

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