Mastering Manipulative Magic - Email Persuasion at it's best

A Friendly Invitation

I got a letter a few days ago from Martin Allsop telling me about his new ezine that was coming out soon, at first glance it was just another email, and as I was already signed up for his ezine anyway I just skimmed over it. What struck me instantly though was the language patterns that he had used, take a look and see what you think.

A word of warning, don't click on his link until you have read the entire blog post or you will miss some valuable information that I reveal later on. You will be amazed when you discover what is hidden within it

Martin Allsop sent a message to the members of Social networking makes money for you. Too good to miss!.

--------------------
Subject: "Unlock the secret formula for Web 2.0 success.”

Can you remember a time when all sorts of exciting possibilities seemed to be available to you? And how that felt?

You may not fully realize it yet – as there may be many things undreamed of that await your discovery – but such a time is upon us now.

As more and more people are beginning to appreciate – Web 2.0 presents us all with amazing opportunities.

In the second edition of my e-magazine (e-zine) which is due out shortly I unlock the secret formula for Web 2.0 success.
And there’s lots of other interesting stuff!

If you go to:

http://www.martinallsop.com/

now you can sign up for the e-zine which is absolutely free.

You will then be one of the first to get access to the second edition – and you’ll also be able to read the first edition.

You’re intelligent enough to understand the value of this, so I hope you go to http://www.martinallsop.com/ sign up now and enjoy all the benefits.


Warm regards

Martin
--------------------

Hidden Hypnotic Commands

If you read the letter above it just looks like an ordinary email you might not notice anything untoward or devious about it. What you may not realise is that it's filled with hypnotic commands to get you make a certain response.

Brain Wipe

Before you read the rest of the article, see if you can even remember what the email talked about in the first 4 sentences. My guess is that it is totally blanked from your memory. Even if you go back and re-read it you still probably can't remember or explain it.

NLP gives a Secret Competive Edge

NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming originated as an alternative approach to psychotherapy that was co-created by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s. It was based on the subjective study of language, communication and personal change. It later evolved and was utilised in Business, particularly sales and advertising. If you are in any of Martin Allsop's groups you will know that he is a Personal development and NLP Trainer, management consultant and entrepreneur.It is clear to me from looking at this email that he is using his skills to best advantage and most people don't even realise it.

Grown Huge

Maybe this is one of the reasons why Martin has been able to amass such a huge following and create such a large list in such a short period of time and why he has high paying coaching clients seeking him out to help them repeat the same success in their own business. He grew a Facebook network of 5000 friends in under 2 months and now has a total Facebook network of over 9,000.

Analysis

In this article I would like to explain just why these NLP techniques work by analysing his short email.

Which I think is a masterful example of persuasive writing

When you break it down you can easily learn the structure and elements that comprise this letter

The first line reads

"Can you remember a time when all sorts of exciting possibilities seemed to be available to you? And how that felt?"

This is asking you to look into your own memory and try to remember a time when you were excited about the future and the options that are open to you. He uses ambiguous language patterns so you can fill in the blanks. He doesn't specify when or where or with whom that is all left up to you. This type of ambiguous open structure makes it universally applicable to everyone.

The second sentence is getting you to connect that memory to an actual feeling. For many people who think in pictures, going to the feeling level amplifies the experience and also brings it into to the present moment. You can’t remember how it felt unless you reproduce the same internal experience again as you are reading the letter

"You may not fully realize it yet – as there may be many things undreamed of that await your discovery – but such a time is upon us now."

Feel Excitement Now

This second paragraph is telling you that you need to feel the excitement now. This is also confirming that you might not realise that you are getting excited and also acts as a way to pace and get rapport. These types of sentences talk straight to the unconscious mind. They have no real meaning thinking about something undreamed of that you have to wait to discover doesn't make sense and so the conscious mind ignores it and the other embedded command is delivered. "Such a time is upon us now", which links back to the first 2 sentences which were all about a feeling in the past and that feeling is being brought into the present moment reinforcing the effects.

So now you have a feeling of excitement and curiosity and you are "waiting to discover" something new.

"As more and more people are beginning to appreciate – Web 2.0 presents us all with amazing opportunities."

"In the second edition of my e-magazine (e-zine) which is due out shortly I unlock the secret formula for Web 2.0 success."

Anticipation

Now Martin introduces the amazing opportunities that are available in the world of WEB 2.0 and links this to his new ezine, where he promises to unlock the secrets. You are being forced to wait again, he won't tell you right now. What he has done is created a very real sense of desire. Secrets are enticing , you want to know what the secret formula to success is and that secret is only exposed in his Ezine

So now you have even more excitement and curiosity and anticipation.

Direct Commands

Martin now offers a way to fulfil your need to know, just go and sign up

"If you go to:

http://www.martinallsop.com/

now you can sign up for the e-zine which is absolutely free."

He uses "if you" implying that you have a choice whether to go or not and then gives the link and below the first word is "now". When you take away the fluff this is a direct command and reads

"go to http://www.martinallsop.com/ now"

It looks so sweet and innocent but is an extremely powerful way to get someone to click on a link and you don't even feel that you have been directly commanded. It all happens at the unconscious level. Which is the real power of NLP.

"You’re intelligent enough to understand the value of this, so I hope you go to http://www.martinallsop.com/ sign up now and enjoy all the benefits."

Martin finishes off with another direct command embedded in the sentence, can you spot it?

"go to sign up now"

You miss it consciously because of the URL and because it is placed carefully between two lines and within a larger sentence that has another meaning. Be intelligent and enjoy all the benefits.

The Real Meaning

So below the surface you are being told directly to

Feel excited anticipation about discovering the web2.0 secret formula that Martin will reveal in his ezine, go to http://www.martinallsop.com/now and sign up now.

Now you can click the link

Ok, now you can go and click the link, if you haven't done so already. I would suspect that at least half of you will have clicked the link before you even reached this point, I will report back in a few days when I analyse my blog stats and see if this post has an unusual number of click outs.

Warning

Please be aware that this is only one of many styles of hypnotic language patterns, if you want to find out more I would first suggest learning a bit about NLP from books before you try and repeat or copy what Martin has done. This is very powerful stuff and you really need to know exactly what you are doing or the effects that you achieve might not be what you expected. If you do it wrong then people will notice and might steer clear of what you have to offer or you might be unintentionally telling people the opposite of what you intended.

Manipulation and Ethics

It also brings up the issue of manipulation. Some people think that using NLP in this way is unethical or manipulative. They maybe tend to forget that almost all communication is manipulative in some way or another. It's just that with NLP the effects are aimed at the unconscious mind. One of my favourite trainers Chris Howard addresses these issues and says that you must always create Win Win situations and he refuses to certify people unless they are clearly operating from an ethical standpoint. As with any powerful tool there is a danger that it can be abused. It is up to you to make the right choices and your reputation and long term success can depend on this.

Modeling Others

I want to make it very clear that I believe Martin to be a very ethical person and a respected pillar of the Facebook business community. You only have to check out the testimonials on his webpage to see this. The purpose of this article was to bring to light just how powerful NLP patterns can be. I have been impressed by his success on Facebook and it has always been my philosophy to examine and model what others are doing well so that I can emulate this and integrate it into my own business and personal life. I carefully examine what people do and also what they don't do as this can be just as revealing.

Communication to Increase Response

Communication from a marketing or sales perspective is always about persuading someone to take action. You need to know the secrets that the professionals adopt in order to increase the impact and effectiveness of your own efforts. By using NLP techniques you can dramatically increase your response rate and can create a rapport and connection to you customers that you might not have generated otherwise.