Let’s start with your autoresponder.
Chances are, if you have one, it’s set up all wrong.
All wrong, I tell ya!
See, Most People Write Their Emails In Isolation
Each email is an island on it’s own, with no thread that attaches it to another email.
This is not particularly effective.
Why?
Because there is no incentive for people to continue opening your emails. They are not excited. They are not joyful. They are not jumping out of their seat.
This is sad… you want your prospects to be excited, joyful and jumping out of their seat when they receive your emails.
That means you’re making an impact.
If your emails get people excited, you’re helping people.
What’s the alternative?
Open Loops – From Hollywood To Email Marketing
If you’ve ever watched a movie, you have an intimate understanding of open loops.
Hollywood uses open loops to keep you interested. In every movie, open loops are everywhere. They are what stop your mind from drifting and your eyelids from drooping.
Here’s an example…
. . .
Dave is running down the streets on New York, desperately trying to evade the police. He has stolen a rare diamond from South Africa from the local museum because he believes it belongs to his father.
Dave has trained for months for this daring heist and it’s time to make his training count. But just as Dave thinks he’s safe, he turns a corner and runs straight into the biggest cop he’s seen all night.
Dave and the cop stare each other in the eye, waiting for the other to make a move.
You feel the tension… and you hear footsteps approach and sirens wailing. The other cops are getting closer. Dave has to make a move soon… or he’ll be caught.
Then, just as you think the scene is about to explode, it switches to Jenny, Dave’s girlfriend and fiance. Jenny is sitting by the telephone, anxiously awaiting Dave’s phone call. She knows about Dave’s diamond heist and also knows that he might have run into trouble with the police. Since he hasn’t called, her mind is worrying something furious.
. . .
In the middle of the story above, I inserted an open loop.
Just when you want to know what happens to Dave, the story switches to Jenny.
This produces a curious effect in the brain called the Zeigarnik Effect.
According to Psychwiki.com:
“The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete.”
In other words, when Hollywood movie producers insert open loops into the movie, they cause our brains to experience anxiety until the open loop is closed.
You see this all the time on TV shows.
Every episode ends with a cliffhanger. A tension-filled scene begins, but before you see the resolution, the credits roll and you’re forced to watch the episode next week to find out what happened. At the end of next week’s episode, the same thing happens.
This is what creates addictive TV shows. This is the reason someone can start with the intention to watch one episode on the box set and end up watching 5 episodes, without being able to explain why.
This is some serious voodoo.
Why Don’t More People Apply This To Emails?
Most of the marketing emails I receive are LAME.
They offer barely any value and to top it off, they’re not interesting one bit.
But if someone started applying open loops while providing stellar content, I’d pay attention.
Here’s what I want you to understand… I wouldn’t pay attention out of conscious choice, I would be FORCED to pay attention by the way by brain has been hard-wired by evolution.
That’s how powerful this stuff is.
Open loops leverage our brain software.
When you apply open loops to your email autoresponders, you are leveraging your prospects brain software to force them to open your emails.
THAT is how I get INSANE open rates (and how you can too).
Have a nice day.
John – The Autoresponder Guy
P.S. I explain more about open loops in my email autoresponder crash course. Andre Chaperon gets the credit for coming up with the “emails with open loops” idea.