Oh no! Controversy! RUUUUUUN!
It all started when a Persuasive Page reader forwarded me one of his own emails this morning, asking for help …
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Daniel,
Love your content bro.
I sent this email out this morning and people got upset! My email list/audience is comprised of real estate investing industry business owners.
This was the subject line: Are women any good in the real estate investing industry?
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Mmm. Accusations of misogyny. Sounds juicy!
So I checked out the email he sent, to see for myself what a dirty woman-hater this guy was.
The first few lines read:
“Greetings, <First Name>! Are women any good in the real estate investing industry? The remarkably candid answer is, ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT!”
… that sure is some misogyny if I ever saw it!
🤔
But it got better:
The email went on to announce a new podcast …
… literally dedicated to featuring women and their contribution to Real Estate.
But of course, that wasn’t good enough.
And a few do-gooders still took him to task for being “offensive” and “marginalising” women …
… for the crime of asking a rhetorical question in his subject line.
(At this point I just have to stop and muse … who ARE these people who get offended at something so small — to the point where they write emails to complain? Like, if you are literally that sensitive to things, wouldn’t your life just … suck? Everywhere you look there’s something OFFENSIVE. OFFENSIVE. OFFENSIVE. Ugh! What a freaking terrible way to live your life.)
So what do you do in such a situation?
Well, I’ll tell you what you don’t do:
You don’t apologise.
Instead … you lean in to the criticism. And use it to your advantage.
I did this for a client recently.
We were launching a paid offer in a market where everything else was free. And we had a LOT of people — including competitors — criticising and mocking us for doing that.
So what did we do?
We trolled the competition.
Specifically, I wrote an email titled “How to get everything in <Our Product> for free”.
And we literally named all the free alternatives to our product … and encouraged people to use them if they were beginners. Then come to our product when they wanted to actually get good.
It was a very cheeky email. And it sure got some people talking in the industry. The people whose products we named were furious. (Heck, even my client had to calm down some of the people in his own company who were saying the copywriter he’d brought in was “too aggressive”.)
But controversy is almost always a good thing when you’re trying to sell.
So, for our friend here?
Well, if it were me, I’d be tempted to run a follow up email with a subject line like:
“Is this undeniable proof that I hate women?”
And quote the haters he got … make fun of them … and then use them to promote his podcast further.
I don’t know if he will, though.
It takes a bit of chutzpah to run a subject line like that and use it to blatantly promote your stuff.
And to be honest, I don’t know many people crazy enough to do that.
But if I did, I’d probably want to learn more from them.
And I’d want to join the waitlist for their Inbox Detonator program, so I could get them to coach me on how I could also become an entertaining, opinionated copywriter.
But yeah … someone that stupid probably doesn’t exist. So that option’s out …
Daniel Throssell
P.S. Just so you know, I love women.
I love them so much … I married one!
😁