Building Desire through Newsletters

To succeed in your email marketing efforts, you have to understand that desire is the engine that drives people to buy. Your primary job is not to create desire out of thin air. Instead, you should focus on channeling the powerful "mass desire" that already exists and directing it toward your product.

Here’s how you can understand and use this concept:

Understanding Mass Desire

• What it is: Think of Mass Desire as a private wish that has spread to millions of people. It's born from huge social, economic, and technological forces that are far bigger than any single drip campaign. A market truly exists the moment enough people share the same private want.

• Its Power: You can't create this force, and you definitely can't fight it. The failure of the Edsel car is a classic example of a product that tried to go against the public's desire for smaller, cheaper cars and failed spectacularly. Your power comes from tapping into the hopes, dreams, and fears people already have.

• How to Measure It: When you're trying to understand a desire, you should look at it in three ways:

  
  

  • Urgency: How badly do people want it satisfied right now?

  
  

  • Staying Power: How often does this desire repeat itself, like hunger?

  
  

  • Scope: How many people out there share this feeling?

• Where It Comes From: You'll generally encounter two types of forces creating these desires:

  
  

  • Permanent Forces: These are the big ones that never fade, like our instinct to be healthy and attractive or our frustration with ongoing problems like bad TV reception.

    
    

  • Forces of Change: These are the trends, styles, and shifts in public opinion, like the move from wanting powerful car engines to wanting better gas economy.

    
    

Your Role in Using Desire

• Be a Channel, Not a Creator: Your task is to find the strongest desire your product can fulfill and build your entire drip campaign around that one idea. You're a "conceptual midwife," helping to bring a market to life by connecting it to a product.

  
  

• Intensify the Feeling: Once you've chosen the right desire, your job is to amplify it. You need to paint vivid, detailed pictures that make your prospect feel and see the satisfaction your product offers. There are 13 specific ways to strengthen this feeling, including putting claims in action, bringing in the reader, and showing experts' approval.

  
  

• Build a Bridge to Your Product: Your newsletter must connect the dots for the customer. It starts by acknowledging their desire and then shows them exactly how your product's performance and features will give them what they want.

  
  

Applying This to Your Email Newsletters

You can directly apply these powerful principles to make your email marketing and newsletters far more effective. Think of each email as a direct conversation designed to channel desire.

1. Your Subject Line is Your Headline

Your email subject line has one critical job: to stop your prospect and get them to open the email. It doesn't have to sell the product; it just has to sell the open. To do this, your subject line must connect with your reader's current state of awareness.

• For a problem-aware subscriber: If your subscribers know they have a problem but don't know your solution, your subject line should name that problem or hint at a solution. For example, instead of "Our New Tax Software," try "Why Haven't Small Business Owners Been Told This?"

  
  

• For a completely unaware subscriber: If your audience isn't even aware of their desire, you can't mention the product or the solution. Your subject line must echo an emotion or an attitude to get their attention, like "To the man who will settle for nothing less than the presidency of his firm."

  
  

2. Intensify Desire in the Email Body

Once they've opened the email, the body copy is where you build and intensify their desire. Use storytelling and vivid descriptions to make them feel the benefits.

• Paint a Picture: Don't just list features. Describe what their life will be like. Show them the "after" state. If you're selling a vacation package, describe the feeling of the sun on their skin and the sound of the waves, making them practically live the experience before they buy.

  
  

• Use a Conversational "You" Voice: Put your reader directly in the middle of the story. Use phrases like, "Picture this for yourself..." or "The first thing you'll notice is..." to help them visualize themselves using your product and getting the benefits.

  
  

3. Segment Your List by Desire

People want the same product for different reasons. A small business might want to avoid competing for the entire market and instead focus on a specific segment. Your email list is the perfect place to do this.

• Create Splinter-Market Segments: Divide your email list based on the different desires your subscribers have. For a fitness app, you might have one segment of people who want to lose weight for health reasons and another who wants to lose weight for appearance.

  
  

• Tailor Your Message: Send different newsletters to each segment. The "health" segment gets emails focused on long-term wellness and safety, while the "appearance" segment gets emails focused on speed, ease, and looking great. This makes your message hyper-relevant and far more powerful.

  
  

4. Build Belief Before You Sell

Don't just jump to the sale in every email. You need to build trust and belief first, especially with new subscribers.

• Use an Email Sequence for Gradualization: Create a welcome email series that gradually builds belief. The first email could simply acknowledge a shared problem. The next could offer free, valuable advice that builds your authority. Only after you've established trust and proven you understand them should you introduce your main product as the ultimate solution. This makes your final sales pitch much more believable.

By applying these principles, you can transform your newsletter from a simple announcement tool into a powerful engine for channeling desire and driving action.