LucrativeGames.com

On the surface, the new five-day e-mail series “Starting an Online Business That’s Right for You” at LucrativeGames.com, may appear like a typical e-mail-marketing course. For years, Internet marketers have offered such free content via email in order to establish relationships with new customers. But behind the scenes, is more than just an e-mail list.

This course uses story-based game design principles to provide a better experience for the user, and to provide better marketing opportunities for the publisher.

Here’s how it works. A recipient reads one of the e-mail messages in the series. This e-mail raises an issue about which he wants to learn more. The e-mail includes a link to a page on the LucrativeGames.com website, which he clicks through to. There, he discovers the information he was promised. But this discovery only raises more issues, for which there are further links to other web pages.

Rather than distributing a long sales letter that addresses all of the reader’s issues, the letter is split into multiple pages. Each page’s purpose it is to poke the reader in a tender spot, see if he responds, and then address each issue. This establishes agreement and trust with the reader. Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People that if you want to win someone to your way of thinking, “Get the other person saying ‘Yes, yes’ at the outset.” Each “Yes” makes it all the more difficult for him to say “No.” On the web, every time a reader sees something he wants and clicks on a link, he’s saying “Yes.” Whenever he skips over large portions of a sales letter, he’s saying “No.” Giving him more links to click on, gets him saying “Yes, yes,” establishes agreement and trust, and makes it more likely he’ll find something he wants to buy.