John Fancher’s 30 Day “Send an Email Everyday” Series

I recently signed up to John Fancher’s 30 Day “Send an Email Everyday” autoresponder series.

What a mouthful.

What it is, is a series of emails from John Fancher for 30 days straight, about autoresponders in general. Being a copywriter, he weaves powerful thoughts and ideas into his emails.

I’m now on day #8 and am looking forward to my daily dose everyday.

I thought I’d share two of these posts with you here.

Day 2!

Review of the ground rules:
*I won’t be pitching anything
*I’ll try to keep all of them less than 500 words
*They won’t all be genius marketing insights, but hopefully they’ll
all be at least a little fun
*I welcome your feedback. Good, bad or incoherent.

Ok, here’s #2.

Yesterday I wrote about one of great "idiot savant" songwriters in
rock history, Iggy Pop. Iggy writes deceptively simple songs by
keeping his word count low, repeating phrases, and writing from the
perspective of a much-less-intelligent and self-aware persona.

(He’s not as dumb as he sounds)

I also ended the message with some stats. One was a word count. The
other was a reading level.

Perry Marshall and I will send each other texts…

"5.9!"

"5.4!"

"5.2!"

We both know what they mean just from the numbers. It means the
other one has written some unrevised sales copy that reads at a low
grade level. (Btw, Perry, "4.4! Beat that!").

Yes, we’re PROUD of this.

Why? Because simple copy sells. If you can take a complex idea and
communicate it simply…well, that’s kindofa salesmanship 101 thing,
right?

The readability stats are based on a few key numbers: Average
number of characters per word, words per sentence, sentences per
paragraph, and percentage of passive sentences.

You can find out the reading level of your copy by running it
through Word’s spell check function and looking at the bottom of
the results screen that pops up when it’s finished. If you don’t
see the results screen, go to Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar and
make sure "Show readability statistics" is ticked.

I use this ALL the time. It’s a great way to get an idea of how
well you are communicating your message. It’s not perfect. But if
you run your copy through it and you get back "12.8" you’ve
probably got some serious revising to do.

General rule of thumb: shoot for "8.5" or lower.
I just ran "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan through it. Dylan is
not a songwriter most people associate with "simple". And
"Mr. Tambourine Man" is more than a bit trippy and obtuse. "Your
ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming" ???
But readability?

5.8

That’ll sell.

Word count: 389

Reading level: 5.5

Recommended Song: "Mr. Tambourine Man", Bob Dylan
John Fancher
NoLameCopy.com

Inspired by this post, I’ve gone out and found a wordpress plugin evaluates the readability of your posts automatically.

And here’s day 8, my other favorite.

I’m a HUGE Bob Dylan fan.

And whether you’re a fan or not, you have to admit, the guy is a great songwriter. Allmusic.com’s bio of Bob starts like this…

"Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable."

And most of that influence is due to his songwriting, or course. But did you realize that right up until his first album (mostly covers with only two originals), Dylan doubted whether songwriting was "his thing"?

Right up until he started, perhaps the greatest songwriter of the rock and roll era, doubted that he could write. Then he heard a song ("Pirate Jenny", I believe) that made him believe he could do it. It was his tipping point.

So, he started.

And the productivity that followed over the next 7 years or so might be the most voluminous outpouring of genius that the rock world has witnessed. He put out so much great material that what he LEFT OFF his albums could have been collected into 5 or 6 more fine records.

What does this have to do with ARs?: Well, one thing I’ve discovered during this 30 day challenge is that the ideas will come AFTER you commit. After you GET STARTED.

Dylan didn’t have 1001 ideas for songs stored up waiting to be written back in 1961. But once he committed. WOW! Boy did the ideas come! One on top of the other like an avalanche.

Same here. I had a handful of so-so ideas for this series before I started. I wondered whether I’d have enough.

Now? The ideas are just rolling in. And, here’s the kicker: the ideas are BETTER than the ones I had before I started. I probably won’t even use any of those old ones now.

So, if you think you don’t have enough ideas to write a 10- or 12-part follow-up AR series, here’s what I say to you: You’re right. And you WON’T have enough ideas UNTIL YOU COMMIT to writing them.

But once you commit, you’ll have way more than you need.

Word count: 356
Readability Level: 3.4
Suggested Song: "Start Me Up", Rolling Stones

Rock on,

John Fancher
NoLameCopy.com