If you’ve ever been to Times Square, then you know there are a lot of interesting things happening on the streets.
You have the street performers.
The naked women with body paint.
A naked cowboy playing a guitar.
A person dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.
And you have people dressed up as different cartoon characters. Speaking of, I had an incident with those people back in 2016.
Here’s what happened.
I was roaming around the streets of Times Square while waiting for a friend to arrive.
All of a sudden, I saw Olaf from Frozen and Minnie Mouse approach me asking if I’d like some photos with them.
I immediately declined and told them I had no cash in my wallet because I knew they weren’t doing this for free, but they said it was.
Fine.
I gave my iPhone to the cameraperson and he took 10+ photos of me standing next to Olaf and Minnie Mouse.
I took my phone back, thanked them, and was about to take my leave until…
Minnie Mouse said, “We’d really appreciate it if you could give us a donation. We work so hard.”
And I replied, “But I told you, I don’t have any cash.”
She then proceeded to tell me to go to an ATM and pointed to the nearest one. I walked towards the direction she pointed at, never returned, and deleted the pictures as I walked.
I have no clue what they were thinking back then. It doesn’t make sense to tell me that taking photos with them is free and insist on receiving a donation.
That’s almost no different than the emails with the subject line, “How to get X product for free,” but it turns out that X product is a bonus of another product that you get when you pay for it.
Technically speaking, it’s not really a lie. But at the same time, you do have to shell money. It’s a grey area, but I think it’s more on the deceitful side.
Do what you will with this opinion, but that’s not how I teach email copywriting.
The methods in How to Become an Email Titan more so teach you to make your sales emails:
Direct, as in, “Here’s what I’m promoting. Either check it out and buy it, or click away. Up to you.”
And valuable, in more ways than one, sometimes in ways you won’t even realize.
Anyhoo, here’s the link to the book.