Alienating 40% of Your Fans?

I’ve always loved opening letters with a knife (or scissors in a pinch).

You unsheathe your shiny polished blade, slide the sharp edge under the flap, and shffft, now you can check what’s inside.

If you’re lucky, the letter has that fresh paper smell, almost akin to a freshly baked cake. And it’s perfumed with rose water, too! Your heart jumps at the sight of a love letter inside.

If you’re unlucky, it has pages upon pages of fascinating legalese, and you’d like to have the memory of the enclosed bank statement eradicated, pronto.

It’s a shame that one can’t open an email in such a dramatic way. It sure brings some nostalgia.

You may have noticed that I incorporated multiple senses into my opening paragraphs:

• kinetic (unsheathing the knife and sliding it under the flap),
• sight (shiny knife),
• touch (sharp edge),
• smell (of the letter),
• taste (cake simile),
• the vestibular sense (“jumping heart” is a vestibular metaphor).

Your emails are more human when they communicate through various senses. They feel like stories and not just bland content (as the standard AI stuff).

And there’s also that alienation thing… Yes, it’s possible you’re alienating 40% of your fans. But why?

Why You (Probably) Alienate Your Fans

Dave Wolverton, writing coach behind the success of authors like Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive), Stephanie Meyer (Twilight) or James Dashner (the Maze Runner) came up with the concept of the KAV Cycle.

According to him, people take in information in the following ways:

• Visual: 60%
• Audio (auditory): 20%
• Doing (kinetic): 17%
• Smell (olfactory): 3%

If you learn by watching others, you’re a “visual” person.

If you learn best by listening, you’re an auditory learner.

A person who learns best by doing is called a “kinetic” learner.

And if you respond most strongly to smell, then you’re an olfactory learner (and you’re a rare, rare breed).

Just like your followers have learning preferences, so you have a bias in how you present your content.

If you’re smart (for sure you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this letter), you already see where this is going…

If you’re a visual learner, you’re likely to focus on the visuals in your emails. And while that appeals to 60-77% of your followers, it doesn’t appeal as much to the rest.

Consequence? You may be alienating 23-40% of people because the non-visual group can’t fully relate to what you’re talking about.

In the same way, if you’re a non-visual learner, you may overuse your preferred sense and underuse other senses. A singing coach may focus too much on audio cues while a fitness instructor may share information in an exclusively kinetic way.

Whichever way it goes, the end result is that your content is fine for some people but lacking for others… Sort of like generic AI content.

To humanize your email marketing, avoid communicating exclusively through your dominant modality.

Remember that your audience’s sensory and emotional preferences may be different, and to be more human means to adapt to these differences.

The KAV Cycle to Avoid Losing Attention

Dave recommends writing stories following a cycle that goes from the kinetic to the auditory to the visual, and then back to the kinetic.

(That’s why it’s called the KAV cycle… kinetic, auditory, visual)

Ideally, add more senses/dimensions to each cycle, such as smell, touch, taste, emotions, and thoughts.

Let’s look at the following line:

My training plan is going to make you look like a Greek god on the beach, with arms as if carved from marble and abs so defined it’ll look like they were chiseled by the gods themselves.

The description is mostly visual, with a little kinetic (the “chiseling”) thrown in.

If you’re visual, you may find this line evocative enough. But 23-40% of people will find this description lackluster.

And that’s 23-40% of sales you’re missing out on.

Here’s how we can make this better:

Promenade down the beach bare chested and barefoot, to the tunes of oohs and aahs from all the seductive chicas (unfortunately NOT bare chested) cruising by on their pastel-colored roller skates.

That subtle scent of salt in the air mixed with the smell of sunscreen makes you want to jump into the balmy ocean. But you’re too busy protecting yourself against all the ladies throwing themselves at you.

Their girlish giggles and gasps reverberate, and that sea of sexy bodies around you is so overpowering and suffocating that now you regret buying my training plan and following it to a T.

I’m having fun with this so maybe that’s not how you’d sell your training plan. But it paints a picture that appeals to everyone, including those who respond to less frequently used senses.

Hypnotize Your Followers and Run With Their Money!

Come on, I’m just kidding. We don’t do BS sales manipulation or any unethical stuff here.

One important caveat to make all of this work and captivate your followers is to be precise with your descriptions.

Take a look at this line:

Kinetic: I went to the beach,

Auditory: and heard some shouts,

Visual: and saw a lot of people,

Smell: and smelled some smoke.

In theory, we start with the kinetic, include sounds, add the visuals, and even finish with a smell.

But it’s not an evocative scene. The description is too imprecise, too vague. It may mean anything, so it doesn’t resonate and for sure isn’t hypnotizing.

Here’s how we can improve it:

Kinetic: I sprinted toward the beach breathless

Auditory: as the frantic squeals of passersby asking for help made my ears ring.

Visual: There was a little girl trashing in the ocean, the dark green waves engulfing her helpless body as the crowd watched.

Smell: The air was filled with smoke from the burning jet skis bobbing a few feet away from the girl.

Same KAV cycle, different details. Now we have a precise image of what actually happened, written in a way that appeals to all the major senses.

This way, you (ethically) hypnotize your audience. Regardless of sensory preferences, everyone feels included.

Pepper in Multiple Senses

We’re talking about stories but it applies to anything you write, including sales copy. You can always pepper in multiple senses to make your content more human.

For example, a personal finance coach may use various senses in the following way:

• Visual: Log into your bank account and see that beautiful line of six figures… Yes, these are your savings.
• Sound: Hear the rustling of palm trees as you can finally, for the first time in 10 years, enjoy time off on a beach in the Bahamas.
• Smell/taste: Breathe in the rich, earthy aroma of your morning coffee, savoring its taste, knowing that you’re finally debt-free.
• Kinetic: Tired of running in circles, saving some money here and there only to spend it all again and end up right back where you started?
• Touch: Feel the smooth velvet of that beige couch in your living room. You’ve finally been able to pay cash for it, instead of adding yet another monthly payment.

What’s your dominant modality? Have you noticed how this influences your writing and how you may be unintentionally alienating some of your fans?

Until next time,

Martin

P.S. There’s an awesome writing exercise David suggested to his students to address their sensory blind spots.

Write the same story or message to your followers five times, each time focusing on just one sense.

Start with just kinetic descriptions. Then write the same message only focusing on the visuals. Then focus only on the sounds. Then just the smell. And then finally, focus only on the touch.

You’ll be surprised how each time your piece conveys the same things in such a different way. After you finish, combine all five senses into one deeply evocative story.