I Sent This Email to 63,396 People. You Won't Believe How They Responded.

While running an email marketing campaign for my podcast I stumbled across a fascinating accidental psychology experiment.

I sent the same email to 63,000 people and the responses I got were puzzling, kind, rage filled, entertaining and thought provoking.

If you want to spoil the surprise, scroll down a bit and you can read the text of the email itself. I think it’s more fun to read the reactions and then find out what all the fuss was about.

To give you a bit of context, this email was sent as part of a giveaway promotion that I did for my podcast, The Science of Success.

Let me show you what people thought of it.

“Just want you to know that I’m an email marketer and I absolutely love this intro email. Maybe stealing haha.”

Ok.. we’re off to a good start. Digital marketers think it’s a pretty legit email. I’m patting myself on the back. I got a few more like that too.

“That has to be one of the cleanest welcome letters I’ve ever seen, well done.”

“Really nice welcome email! Thank you! You made me actually want to stay subscribed. Props from a fellow digital marketer!”

Now I’m really feeling good.

On top of getting a little bit of digital marketing love, I got some love from regular people too.

“I have to say that I LOVE your email below. What a refreshing approach.”

"Thanks for the clever and thoughtful acknowledgment of the bizarre way we get tossed onto email lists and all with group projects like this. I appreciate your revelatory and honest message and will have a look at what you’re up to here.”

“Gladly unsubscribed… You seem somewhat rude & NOT my cup of tea!”

Wait what. Hold on. What did that last one say? I guess some people thought the email was rude. But people still seemed mostly to like it…right?

“I’m staying subscribed just because I love this email so much! Great job!”

“Literally because of that email I will totally stay on board. =D"

“Please stop emailing this email. You sound honestly ridiculous no offense dont care for all of this nonsense.”

Woah..

Hmmm looks like we got another feisty one. Must just be an outlier.

“I didn’t sign up for liberal snowflake sh*t !”

“Well Matt, Your assuming! If I didn’t. I’m running a business taking care of my 80yr. old dad, Taking care of all the house duties and take care of my dog. Well just getting out of the HOSPITAL!!!! So! I don’t want to be here with that CRAPPY ATTITUDE YOU HAVE!”

“I don’t even know what I u sell ,”

“Hey Matt ! F*ck Off !!!! YOU ARE A TOTAL F*CKING FAKE !!!!! GET ME THE F*CK OUT OF YOUR SYSTEM !!!!!!”

“I want to be totally up-front with you. Unsubscribe right here.”

“Lol u r crazy “

“GET LOST SCAM”

“So how exactly did you get my email address?”

“Who are you again??”

Hmmm.. maybe I sent something rather incendiary? This is starting to look like it’s a pretty inflammatory email.

“What a sweet, kind and well written email/content. You go, Matt. And yes, I want to stay on. I think you’re awesome, but you already know that. :)”

Aww, thank you too! Finally someone else is showing me a little bit of love. Who else want’s to chime in?

“How do u know I’m smart n rational? I NEVER heard of ANY of those ppl! SORRY! I’ll check it out, then decide! DEAL?”

OK fair enough, this guy drives a hard bargain, but I’ll take it!

I think you’re starting to get the picture, but I’ll share a few more responses just for kicks!

"Sorry Dud. I don’t like your attitude. So screw your contest and your email.”

“Matt, I like your email. You tell it like it is. Keep me on your list and I look forward to your emails.”

“You know Matt, associating yourself with fine print that takes advantage of privacy laws is not a wise choice to market. Your comment about it being kind of ridiculous that marketers who subversively take emails and sell them and then make a joke of it is disgusting. I don’t really care to be on your list. I find the whole thing strange and uninteresting. Thanks but no thanks.”

“Matt, your style is awesome! I love your upfront mannerism as well as your conversational, easy to read introduction. I look forward to receiving the information you mentioned below. Have a great day!”

Now I want to remind you that these people are responding to the EXACT same email. Word for word. The same text.

We will get into some of the fascinating lessons that come from this, but before we do — I wanted to pull back the curtain and show you the actual text of this highly polarizing email.

The Infamous Email

Subject: Hey

So you recently signed up for this giveaway, huh?

Well, I want to be totally up-front with you.

By signing up for the giveaway you also signed up to join my email list.

I think it’s kind of ridiculous when someone shows up in my inbox and pretends like they didn’t get my email from somewhere, so I want to be completely honest with you.

So who exactly am I?

Well for starters, my name is Matt. I’m the founder of The Science of Success.

My mission is to help smart, rational people like you harness the wisdom of the smartest people on our planet to transform yourself, to rise to any challenge, and become the best versions of yourself you can be.

So, if you decide to stay on our email list you’ll get an email from me twice a week.

Every Monday, I will send you a short list of our favorite articles, videos, and ideas for that week — we call it “Mindset Monday” or “MM” for short.

Every Thursday, I’m going to send you a link to the latest episode of our podcast, Science of Success, which has more than 3 million downloads, listeners in over 100 countries, and has featured guests like Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, Carol Dweck, Neil Patel, and Ryan Holiday.

So I would love if you stick around and check out all the awesome stuff going on here at The Science of Success

But if this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, just unsubscribe right here. No hard feelings.

If you decide to stick around, I’ll be sending you another email tomorrow with a little surprise!

Have an awesome day.

Matt

What Can We Learn From This?

So what exactly is going on here?

I wasn’t expecting anything like this when I sent this email out — but I absolutely love the lessons it can teach us. There are so many different learnings to pull from this experience.

Let’s start with the most obvious.

People’s Reactions Say A Lot About Them, Not You

Just like the responses to this email, the way most people react to you and treat you says very little about YOU and a whole lot more about THEM.

People are caught up in their own worlds and lives. More interactions than you realize have almost nothing to do with what you’ve done, what you’ve said, or how you’ve acted and are almost entirely a result of the person you’re interacting with and their biases, beliefs, and emotional state.

The flip side of this principle is that the world around you mirrors your own internal state. You get out what you put back. If you’re looking for negativity you can find it, and if you’re looking for positivity you can find that too.

Ever been angry or in a bad mood and you keep doing things to make it worse? That’s exactly how this works.

So don’t take things too personally when someone rubs you the wrong way. It’s far more likely that their behavior is a reflection on them than it is a reflection on you. 

Most People Are Focused On Themselves

Most people are focused almost entirely on themselves. This isn’t an indictment of anyone, just a fact that’s well supported by psychology research.

In their responses to my email you can see very clearly that people’s replies were deeply shaped by what they were going through in their lives when they responded to it. It’s as if the email was almost holding up a mirror and just reflecting back whatever was going on with the people who responded.

There’s an amazing influence hack that comes out of this lesson — when you reframe your communication to make it about other people, you can massively improve your ability to influence others. Take the time to learn what matters to other people, what’s going on in their lives, and what’s important to them — and then frame what you do and say in terms of their goals and priorities instead of yours. 

It’s All About The People Who Say Yes

Another fascinating lesson that comes out of this email is something all great salespeople know. It’s not about the people who say no, it’s about the people who say yes.

Imagine instead of sending this email I was having one on one conversations. And by random chance the first one, two, five or ten people I spoke to said some of the negative things that those email responses are filled with — that they hate my attitude, that I’m a scammer, that I’m a fake etc.

It’s only because I have the lucky position of looking at the entire data set of emails and responses that I can see the whole spectrum of people’s replies. The good, the bad, and the ugly. But often in our daily lives we end up with a few negative responses and we get down on ourselves, we give up, or we feel bad.

At the end of the day, the negative replies aren’t the replies that matter. It’s the people who loved what I had to say, who stuck around, and who became engaged fans of my podcast and our community that really counted. 

In day to day life this is why it’s so important to have a pipeline of opportunities, why you have to “kiss a lot of frogs” because you never know what’s going on with someone else that might cause them to say no. You don’t win by focusing on the no’s — you win by getting to the yesses.

If you don’t have a big enough pipeline of people to talk to, if you’re scared of getting rejected, or if you give up after one or two negative responses, you are missing out on all the amazing people waiting to say yes to you.

I never thought I would learn so much about human nature from sending out a few emails, but if nothing else at least I had a good time laughing at how differently people reacted to the exact same.. if I dare say.. rather uncontroversial email.

What Do You Think?

What do you think about it? Let me know in the comments! Or if you wanna get some shockingly polarizing emails for yourself, sign up for my email list!