Respect the Leverage
R3 for Email I guardianmarketing.substack.com I ExperienceR3.com
There's a very interesting concept in R3, which only takes up one page of the book, but it encompasses such an important and powerful component of the underlying psychology of your prospects and customers that it *must* be explored thoroughly.
This is all about leverage and your customer's expectations.
R3 talks about leverage in terms of the buying decision.
Here's the quote from R3 (you can get the whole book here)1:
The internal dialog of your customer is something like this ...
“Right now, I have the credit card - the leverage - and you're being nice to me and making me promises. When i give you my credit card number I lose my leverage. Then what happens?"
But, this isn't just something that happens at the purchase point where they become a customer. All transactions change the leverage and the relationship.
You can replace 'credit card' in that quote with 'email.'
So let’s contend with the leverage associated with getting someone onto an email list and how this dynamic impacts the way you build your email audience and grow your business.
How do you get someone onto your email list?
Most people will chose a bribe. A free download or access to something in order to get your email.
But "bribe" distracts from the fundamental structure of that kind of interaction.
What you're really doing is selling access, and their payment is their email.
You're selling the pdf download, payment is email. You're selling a "free trial," payment is email. You're selling coupons, payment is email. Etc.
We use words like "free download" and "gift" because we don't want people to consciously realize they are entering into a transaction and giving something up in order to get something else. The currency in this case is their contact information and potentially attention.
What most marketers don't realize is that even though you can go to great lengths to trick people into getting on your email list, they will still have this subconscious frame of ...
"What happens after I lose my leverage?"
And this is why so many people who opt in for a bribe don't*engage on your email list.
It's the leverage.
Before they have opted into your list, the leverage they have is their email. You want their email, so you offer them a pdf, access, etc, in order to get their email. They have the leverage. They have the control. You are hoping that they want the "free" thing more than they want to keep control over their data.
But what happens after they lose their leverage with email?
They are subconsciously, and sometimes consciously, searching for confirmation that they either still have leverage, or they have new leverage.
After they give up their email, their leverage is their attention. Because it's not the actual email address you really care about, it's whether they pay attention to the emails you send them.
And whether or not you confirm that good things happen after they give up their email leverage is going to determine how they end up behaving with their attention leverage.
ALL transactions affect leverage and the relationship.
Whenever your prospect or customer needs to give up something in order to get something, you must contend with their subconscious and answer the question for them "What happens after I lose my leverage?"
Your success with email, with applying R3 in Email, is going to depend upon how you handle those transitions and inevitable shifts in leverage and relationship dynamic throughout the journey and experience that a person has with your business.
There are 3 different ways you can positively answer the question for people and keep them moving forward with your business.
Whenever there is a leverage exchange you can either ...
Provide new leverage options
Return leverage to them
Confirm that they still retain leverage
There are likely innumerable different ways to go about each of these. For now I'm going to give a quick summary of each, and then go through some common transition points in email and how you might handle the question of leverage for the reader.
Providing new leverage options
This one is straightforward. In email a good example is essentially the following "now that you've given me your email, I'm going to respect your time and attention, because you have control over that."
Rarely said that directly, but depending on your market/audience, your list and brand, you CAN be really direct about what you're doing.
(AN ASIDE: Though generally, the more removed people are from familiarity of the techniques you are doing, the less it makes sense to speak directly to those techniques. For example on an email list about email copywriting, I can talk about how when the reader clicks a link I'm going to trigger an automation that starts up a new experience for them. But on an email list about keto dieting, that wouldn't make sense at all, you'd hide the technical stuff and just say 'click the link and I'll send you something cool.' Audience sophistication and awareness are important to understand.)
The point is, after giving up their leverage, you provide to them or highlight where they have new leverage. Make them consciously aware of those points, as well as how you are going to respect that leverage.
Confirming they still retain leverage
Similar to the above, you can communicate directly with them that if at any point they are displeased with the emails you are sending, they can click the unsubscribe link below, which will remove them completely from your database.
On the one hand people are skeptical of their data being respected like that, but on the other hand no one communicates that directly with their prospects and customers. It's actually very rare to have this level of direct communication and respect in an email list. Most of the general population do not receive respect when they sign up to an email list (let alone have their leverage confirmed/returned/replaced).
Because of THAT, another way you can confirm they still retain leverage is to simply be kind, respectful, and communicative. If people feel like you respect their time/attention/energy and that you will work in order to keep having it, they will recognize that they still retain leverage. That feeling of being able to just click a button and completely leave is leverage for them.
Don't be afraid to point that out. It's not just good communication but it increases the likelihood they stay around, read your stuff, and get engaged because they will feel in control of their leverage.
Return Leverage To Them
This one is a little more nuanced, but similar to the dynamic of informing them that they can unsubscribe at any time on a single click.
Let's look at this from a "bribed opt-in" perspective. When you bribe someone to opt in, they are giving you their email in exchange for the thing you are providing.
That means they are giving up the leverage of their email address?
How do you return that leverage?
By returning their email. Which may sound weird, since you have their email on your list, how can you return it back?
The answer is, you essentially make them re-opt in to your list at certain points. This is a technique I have personally used primarily for filtering for a certain kind of engaged individual. It's highly dependent upon the full context - audience, list, brand, etc - but the idea is that at a certain point you present your reader an option ...
If you want to stay on this list, click here to continue.
Most people are reticent to use this approach because they have the prospects email, why would they give anything up?
My answer to that is because the email is actually relatively worthless. What I'm interested in is the connect, relationship, attention, interest, and momentum of the person I'm trying to communicate with.
Sometimes, I see a need to return their leverage in order to move things forward properly.
Your Ultimate Goal In The Question
When answering "what happens after I lose my leverage?" Your prospect and customer want to know that they are going to get everything they want, that they will be happy and respected having given up their leverage to move in the direction you want.
In the sale interaction, this is easier to do when you are offering something that is immediately delivered.
In non direct sale interactions and interactions where the return on the money they spend is not experienced for a long time, the waters are muddied. If you give your email to a business and all they do is try to convince you to buy their stuff with your email, whether you like it or not you gave up leverage in order to get a lot of unwanted attempts to get you to buy stuff.
(The caveat being that sometimes, that's the dynamic you're after, and if that's explicit then that's ok! *Their intent and expectation are relevant*.)
The Email Opt-In and Leverage
One of the primary ways I think about the experience that someone has coming into my email list is to ask myself "what do they really want when providing their email?"
And I also ask myself "what do I really want out of this transaction?"
I don't know about you, but I'm typically trying to build an email list so that I can have communication and build a relationship with people on that email list. Most likely so that I can ultimately sell the products/services of the business.
There's a lot that goes into that, but at the beginning of it all is this simple dynamic - I want people to give me their email so that they can receive and read my emails. I want people to be signing up so they can read my emails.
And not only is there a leverage challenge when it comes to bribing people onto your list, there's also an intent challenge built into that.
If someone is giving you their email to get a free download, then when they give you their email and you give them the download, the transaction is complete. From the framework of intent that means their intent was to transact on the free thing, not to receive your emails. From the framework of leverage, they used their leverage to get the free thing ... Now they are free to get the hell out of there.
If their intent is to receive communication from you, then that's what the leverage will hinge around.
(In an ideal scenario, you want them to use their leverage to get closer to you and get emails from you)
I tend to reduce the styles of opt in available to 3 variations on a theme. The theme being, someone has a reason for giving you their email, and it's either because you're offering them something to get on your list, or you are offering the list as the reason.
So, broadly that's Bribe and Not Bribe. And within Bribe I present a couple sub variations which work better in the context of leverage and intent.
The Opt-in Bribe
I've talked a lot about the bribe opt in already because this is the most common kind of method people use for getting leads onto an email list.
This encompasses anything from your standard "enter your email for this free pdf" to "enter you're email for a free trial" or "create an account" type scenarios where the focus is simple: they are incentivized to provide their email for an immediate "free" item or access.
You can use all the techniques I talked about above in order to answer the question of leverage and how you're going to treat the reader.
If you don't respect their leverage, they will just become a dead email on your list. It's as straightforward as that.
When you have the Bribe Opt-in you actually make more work for yourself in transitioning the reader's intent and leverage so that they stay connected/invested/interested in receiving communication from you.
And that's because of the simple dynamic that once you deliver the bribe, transaction is complete.
Now what?
In many ways you start over from the beginning where they have all the leverage, only this time - whether you acknowledge it or not - the leverage is their attention. It's their control over whether they see your emails or not (not seeing them can mean ignoring them, forgetting about them, unsubscribing from them, marking them as spam, deleting them, etc).
So you have a big bridge to build in order to help your reader feel like they are retaining leverage, getting leverage returned, or being given new leverage.
I'd like to present two of these "bridge" options I find effective.
The Opt-in Bribe Bridge
One way to do this is to build a bridge directly from the bribe through your email into the rest of your email list using a series of emails right after they get the free bribe.
The content of those emails can do the following
Extend off the bribe - offer bonuses related to the bribe, next steps they can take, etc
Integrate with the bribe - teach them how to get more out of the bribe, further insight they can't find in the bribe, upgrades to the bribe
Application of the bribe - show them how to apply the bribe to their life/business/situation
A big part of what makes these variations work is that it changes the dynamic of what it is they signed up for. If they feel like part of what they gave their email for is not just the free download, but also includes the emails following that free download, that shifts their perspective, their intent, and how they feel about where their leverage lies.
This is still a transition to deal with so you must be clear.
A simple example: Prospect enters their email to get a free download. The download is delivered by email and they are explicitly invited to keep reading to get more out of the free thing they just got. If that hooks them to keep paying attention, they then receive an email series which guides them through applying whatever is in the free download. Now they are still getting value from their leverage while you are delivering the emails.
You just have to be mindful that the transition still exists where you must return leverage to them (but wait there's more). AND ... this has an end point. It's at the end of those emails.
Once they receive the final email, that is when the transaction completes.
However, this structure gives you time to demonstrate how you value their leverage, to give them opportunities to continue stepping forward into your world, to give you opportunities to replace, return, or add leverage for them so they still feel empowered enough to continue even after the series is over.
The Email Series Bribe
This is similar to the bribe bridge, but instead of having an email series play off the download, you make the free bribe the email series itself.
You can see an excellent example with Nicsmas 2021 here, which you can receive free by email.
But if you don't want to make a whole series specifically for email, you can always take a free download you currently have and deliver it through a series of emails.
The only caveat is ...
The free bribe really has to be worth their time and attention to go through it over several days delivered by email. (Honestly, whatever bribe you're providing should be more than worth their time anyway regardless of the delivery mechanism)
In other words, instead of the person providing an email in order to get a free download, they provide an email in order to get your direct communication by email.
This is closer to the ideal scenario where you want someone opting in to receive emails from you.
BUT
Similar to the bribe bridge, this has an end point and it's at the end of the email series.
However, I find this type of opt in more effective in the long term than a free download style bribe because the transaction is overtly incomplete until they receive all the emails.
They sign up with the intent to receive an email series, they are much more likely to at the very least pay attention to the beginning of that email series because that's what they exchanged their leverage specifically for. This gives you time and attention to establish a stronger connection, new leverage, and longer term intent.
(Intent is important)
You still have to respect their time and leverage. They still have the ability to leave and take their attention elsewhere.
The No-Bribe Opt-in
This one is my favorite, and also the most difficult to execute.
In this scenario you actually overtly refuse to take leverage away from your prospect and reader before they ever opt in to your email list.
You do this simply by never offering anything for them to sign up to your email in the first place other than the opportunity for them to receive emails from you at all.
This is the most difficult to execute because in order for people to opt into your email list with zero overt incentive, they have to already be at the point where they are thinking "I'd really like to receive emails from this person/brand."
This means an extensive amount of work that you do before they ever get to the point of signing up to your email.
But it's the most powerful long term tactic for list building from a reader leverage, intent, and value perspective because the transaction is so forward leaning. When they provide their email they aren't doing so in order to get a free download, or an email series, with the open ended question of 'well whats going to happen now that you have my email?'
They are giving their email specifically so that they can get closer to you and receive all the email that you might send them. You aren’t actually taking anything from them in the “transaction.”
For this to work it requires an extensive amount of overt communication. You can't hide anything. The moment you do something they aren't expecting after they opt into your email list is the moment you have broken the veil of trust and they will very rapidly recapture their leverage and leave.
But if you do it right,
They enter the list intent-fully engaged from the very beginning.
"Sign up to receive my daily emails. When you do, you'll get a week long intro series to bring you up to speed. Be warned though, if you don't read those first 7 emails, I'll remove you from the list (I don't think either of us wants to waste each other's time)."
If you see that "offer" in the blind you aren't going to take it.
But if you already really want to know what that person is saying in their private little email world ... doesn't that feel pretty good?
The Underlying Expectation
One of the best ways to manage the question of leverage as well as reader's intent through email is through Allegiance Capital.2
Think about the expectation and experience of the reader. When they put in their email, what are they expecting to happen? This is connected with the question "what happens after I lose my leverage?"
What actually happens? Can you set the expectations for their experience beforehand both to clarify their intent AND make it abundantly clear that your word can be trusted?
If you use a free download bribe, consider the following style of setup:
On the opt in page, tell people they can expect after entering their email to receive an email from you welcoming them to your email list and providing their free download. And then also tell them they can expect something further that will add to their experience with the free download.
After they enter their email, remind them. They are going to receive an email from you. It's going to have their free download AND some information about what they can expect going forward.
In the email provide the free download and let them know that you have further insight and understanding which will enhance the value and experience they get from the free download, and that they should look out for the next email from you.
And then keep telling them what to expect and how it's going to be useful to them.
Through all this, look for opportunities to return their leverage, replace their leverage, or add new leverage.
"I know your time and attention are valuable, so if you walk through these next couple emails with me I'll demonstrate to you what that means and how you can benefit from being in my world."
Respect the Leverage
All transactions impact leverage and relationship.
In an email list this dynamic is often centered around the transaction of the email itself. Someone gives you their email they expect something in return, but they also give up leverage.
How will you handle that?
The more you weight the leverage in the reader's favor, the more power that will give you in the long run for your email list,
Counterintuitive though it may be,
But you MUST inevitable contend with the fact that no matter what you do in an email list, the reader always has the leverage (whether they realize it or not) of their attention. Even if you make it impossible for them to unsubscribe (which would be illegal), they can still ignore you forever in the spam bin, they can give you dummy email accounts that they abandon, etc.
The only sensible solution is to actively engage with the dynamic and either return leverage, replace leverage, or add leverage overtly.
And you know what ...
There are so few businesses out there which take this approach of valuing the individual and the relationship over the short term needs of the business that when you do this, it will blow the socks off of your readers.
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
, CMO Man Bites Dog
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Great perspective about leverage in conjunction with allegiance capital.
Leverage + Empathy = Force Multiplier