How to grab your email list by the dodgeballs

Have you ever seen the film ‘Dodgeball’?

I think everyone should watch it. It’s one of my favourite films of all time. (Yes, I am highly sophista-ma-cated.)

And it's about the members of Average Joe's Gym, who need the prize money from a dodgeball tournament to stop their hangout spot being repossessed and taken over by the evil Globo Gym.

But when the owner of Globo Gym hears about their plan, he also joins the tournament with a bunch of highly athletic professional dodgeball players.

So the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against the underdogs.

But I'm sure you can already guess what happens in the end, even if you haven’t seen it…

(Spoilers ahead!)

Yes, it’s a typical happy ending. Where Average Joe's win dramatically, and Globo Gym lose dramatically.

Hollywood sure does love to make underdog stories. And we sure love watching them.

But what's interesting about Dodgeball is that it apparently had a completely different ending at first.

An ending where Globo Gym actually won in the end.

Problem was, test audiences hated seeing the baddies win. And so before release it got changed to the typical “underdogs win” ending instead. This is even alluded to in the end credit scenes where the big bad guy rants about how American audiences “can't handle any cinematic complexity”.

Which is a shame, cause I think it could’ve been a breath of fresh air to have an underdog story where the underdog didn't win.

After all:

That's how it goes in real life. Whoever has the unfair advantage (like the stack of professional dodgeball players on his team) will win pretty much every time.

And it’s the exact same with email marketing.

Where whoever takes the time to keep their finger on the pulse of their market - with a deep understanding of their fears, their doubts, their desires, their insecurities, and so on - will have a massive unfair advantage over all their competition.

Because when you truly understand your audience, writing your emails becomes 10, 100, a 1000 times easier. The right words suddenly flow from your fingers as easily as lies flow from the lips of lawyers.

And if you’d like to know how to understand your audience on a deeper level, then why not sign up for my daily email newsletter?