Newsletter Subject
Selling health offers without going to jail?
From
bensettle.com
Email Address
ben@bensettle.com
Sent On
Fri, May 10, 2024 01:45 PM
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Following are two cautionary tales for marketers selling health offers. I am not, in any way, giving
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Following are two cautionary tales for marketers selling health offers. I am not, in any way, giving legal advice here. Frankly, youâd be an idiot to take any legal advice from me. But, I have learned a few things over the past couple decades about selling heath offers going back to when I co-owned an info publishing company selling weight loss eBooks to when I wrote all the ads for a companyâs supplements and even going back to the 90âs in some ways when I was shilling MLM. Anyway, on with the cautionary tales. Cautionary tale #1: When writing all the ads for a health supplement line my client (this is back in 2009âish but I doubt much has changed in this particular regard) hired a lawyer who specialized in FTC regulations, etc. And when I turned in a draft of the first ad I wrote he said we couldnât use any of it. I mean, it was basically and totally gutted. I think all we could keep was the story. Everything else had to go. And so I went to work removing all the offending parts (claims, etc) and, once again, I had to take a bunch of my copy out â including the copy that was totally and completely compliant and well within all the regulations and law. The reason? I canât say for sure but I think it was TOO good and persuasive. He said his lawyer told him: âImagine a big pharma exec with the FTC in his hip pocket looking at this this and trying to determine if youâre competition or not.â Yowza. That was admittedly a whole other obstacle I was not expecting. As for cautionary tale #2: About ten years ago Agora Financial flew me into their Baltimore office to teach their copywriters and editors and managers about email marketing, storytelling, and infotainment. And while there I met a young copywriter (not sure he wants me to name him) who I hit it off with immediately. And, at the time, I had an offer in the prostate niche. And I asked if heâd be willing to read it to give me his thoughts on it going by what heâd learned from Agoraâs lawyers on keeping health offers legally compliant and clean. And he agreed. And I sent him the sales letter. And he read it. And he got back to me with two big insights. The first was, my copy had convinced him he had prostate problems even though he was in his 20âs at the time and there was probably no earthly way he had prostate problems. A good thing for my ego, but made me realize that maybe was not such a good thing overall for reasons I wonât go into here. The second? He said it was great I was telling the reader to be responsible. That I was urging them to vet everything I said with a doctor. That I was truly looking out for the customer by telling them to check with their doctor, etc. A very moral and logical thing to do that youâd think would be commended by all the powers that be in the health niche if looking out for the customers is the #1 priority. But alas⦠that isnât necessarily so. And he told me some things that made me rewrite and change that ad. And, in many ways, made me want to get out of the health niche altogether. Just not my bag. What, you ask, did he tell me? I talk about that in one of the bonuses I am including with my course: âEmail Bastard!â Very enlightening info if you sell health offers. And, yes, you absolutely should double check it with an actual lawyer. (I certainly would.) But I suspect you will find they tell you more or less the same thing the copywriter told me. And, I also suspect you will end up changing a lot of your copy around if you were doing what I was doing or just say to hell with it and go into a safer niche where you can actually have fun serving your market and trying to improve their lives. We shall see. That is, if you get Email Bastard! by tonightâs deadline. (Friday 5/10 at midnight EDT) Full story here: [httpsâ¶//www.EmailPlayers.com/bastard]( Ben Settle P.S. This course is made up of multiple talks Iâve done at various events people paid not a little bit of money to attend. And some of the info inside has been included in other offers Iâve sold over the years. So read the sales letter carefully before buying if you donât want to just end up buying the same information all over again. This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to
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