Hi Reader

Seventeen of you answered a one-letter question last week. The previous issue asked you to run an audit and report back, and exactly one person did.

Response A won, overwhelmingly.

A. They open everything and never write back.

So here's the part I didn't expect to be arguing. I don't think A means that your email strategy is broken.

Earlier in my career, I was Director of PR and Sponsorships for Brad Keselowski. Right after that, I did sponsorship work at Sony.

The two most expensive pieces of creative I ever had my hands on were Sony's signage inside Petco Park and the hood of Brad's car.

Neither had a call to action.

No phone number. No website. No scan-this. Just an enormous logo, and that was the whole brief.

That isn't laziness, and it certainly isn't cheap. It's an honest read of the room. Nobody in the upper deck is pulling out their phone because of an outfield sign, and nobody watching a car at 200 miles an hour is doing anything at all. The medium can't carry a response, so the creative stops pretending it can. You buy presence instead, and you accept that the payoff turns up months later, with no way to trace it back to you.

Now go look at the person who opens every email you send and never writes back.

They're in the stands. They're watching. They aren’t ready to act yet, and it has nothing to do with whether they like you.

Four Emails With Nothing To Answer.

The test on each one: if there were no reply button, was it still worth sending?

• The street number. What actually sold near them this quarter, and for what.
• The deadline they'd have missed. The tax appeal window, the permit change, the thing with a date on it.
• The honest advice that might cost you. "Inventory on that street just doubled. I'd wait."
• The thing you remembered. Something specific they told you a year ago, brought back up without being attached to a question.

Bolt "let me know if you'd like to chat!" onto any of these, and you've turned a deposit into a withdrawal.

Take the next email you were going to send someone who never replies.

Delete the ask at the bottom. Send it anyway.

A successful email strategy needs consistency and value. Keep showing up in their inbox, and the replies will come.

Niña said she read last week's issue twice. Lori said she couldn't possibly answer with one letter and then sent me a paragraph, which I loved.

And Anna-Marie invented a response “C”: "I don't know if they received it and, if so, if they opened it."

She's more right than she knows. That one's getting its own issue.

I'm aware I just spent 400 words telling you to stop chasing replies, and I'm about to ask you for one. In my defense, it's a number.

What's the longest gap you've had between someone's first email and the day they actually called you?

Reply with the number. That's it.

Alice

The Heist · Marketing playbooks for real estate agents, stolen from every industry except this one.

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