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How to Use 'Memory Craving' to Make Your Offers Irresistible
Episode 2495th February 2025 • The Email Marketing Show • Email Marketing Heroes
00:00:00 00:23:45

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Imagine if your audience couldn’t stop thinking about your offer.

If they felt an emotional pull so strong, they craved it - like a favourite childhood dessert or the first thrilling rush of a rollercoaster ride.

This is the power of Memory Craving: a psychological trigger that makes people deeply desire something because it reminds them of a past experience they want to relive.

It’s the same reason people reconnect with high school sweethearts, why a certain song can bring tears to their eyes, and why they keep going back to a brand that once made them feel amazing.

And guess what? You can tap into this emotional magic in your marketing to make your offers irresistible.

Let’s break down exactly how to do it.

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Transcripts

00:01.11

Kennedy Kennedy

How can you use the incredibly powerful emotion of memory craving to get more people to buy your offers? That's what I'm gonna talk about in today's show.

00:39.67

Kennedy Kennedy

Yes, yes, yes. Welcome back to the email marketing show. Kennedy here with you as ever. Every single email marketing Wednesday, I am here with you talking about all things email marketing, digital marketing, of course, marketing psychology, and that's one of the things we're gonna be talking about today. If you're brand new with the show, hello, it's lovely to have you with us, listening, watching, whatever the heck you happen to be doing. If you haven't already, hit subscribe on your podcast player.

01:04.07

Kennedy Kennedy

Do you know what we haven't had for a while? We haven't had any new reviews of the podcast on Apple Podcasts for ages. So if you're sitting there thinking, I think I left a review, I'm not really sure, or maybe you know, maybe you know you haven't left a damn review yet.

01:19.06

Kennedy Kennedy

So what the hell are you waiting for? Get over to Apple Podcasts, leave a review. Honestly, it lets me know that you're watching or listening to the show. It lets me see ah who who is out there, what you're enjoying so I can do more of what you like. And just let me know like, hey, I enjoyed this episode. This is the episode I really enjoyed. I really got a lot of value out with that other episode. That would be super, super good.

01:39.39

Kennedy Kennedy

It also helps to show other people who are maybe new to the show, looking for a new podcast to listen to, that this is a good one. It's definitely worth the time, which I'm hoping you think it is. So go over, leave a review on Apple Podcast. That would be absolutely cracking. Thank you very much. ah So yes.

01:59.12

Kennedy Kennedy

Today, I wanted to talk to you about this principle of memory craving. so One of the things I like to do whenever I'm looking at the principles of marketing and what I'm ah applying to the campaigns that I'm running, the campaigns that I'm creating for our clients,

02:18.57

Kennedy Kennedy

is I like to look for where can we leverage natural human behavior or things that are already happening. There's no point, really, it's very difficult to invent brand new things, like to be completely innovative, completely new. So one of the things I was thinking about not that long ago,

02:42.34

Kennedy Kennedy

was one of the things that people do, which is just still amazing to me, is they smoke cigarettes, right? My mum has smoked my entire life. Like, as far as I know, like I don't remember a time my mum ever smoking. My dad smoked for a lot of my childhood, he then gave up. I remember that.

02:59.46

Kennedy Kennedy

But why do people smoke cigarettes? and It doesn't make no sense to me. As a person who's never smoked, I really can't understand it. But what I do know is it's about addiction, it's about habits, and it's about craving something.

03:15.39

Kennedy Kennedy

But this this idea of creating cravings is such a powerful thing. Very few marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners have actually tapped into. There's a huge opportunity for us here because it's this kind of craving that will cause rational, smart, intelligent people to put a stick in their mouth, set it on fire, breathe in this fucking disgusting tasting smoke

03:47.76

Kennedy Kennedy

They are then happy enough to walk around smelling like a fucking ashtray. They're happy for their homes to stink of it, their clothes to stink of it. They're happy, they're not saying they're happy, but they are willing to keep doing it.

04:04.24

Kennedy Kennedy

They're willing to keep doing this, even though there is a lot of evidence, pretty empirical. ah you ain't pretty What's the word, empirical? and pretty Pretty certain evidence, whatever the freaking word is for that. Pretty certain evidence that it causes all kinds of cancers and horrible, slow, disgusting deaths that I'm sure we've all got family members who have been affected by.

04:28.11

Kennedy Kennedy

and to even enjoy it. You have to go stand out in the freaking cold. So it's difficult to do. They're not like all shiny and advertised on TV. They're not in the yeah UK. They're not even like on the shelves, in the stores, in the shops. They're behind closed cabinets these days and have been for more than a decade. Yet people still will go over the counter, hand over their money,

04:53.86

Kennedy Kennedy

and choose to inhale that shit, know the damage it's doing, know that they're gonna stink, know that everyone around them is like, damn, you stink. Go stand outside and still do it. Why? Cravings. Cravings is the answer.

05:11.54

Kennedy Kennedy

And so what I wanna think about and really discuss with you today is the power of creating cravings. How do we actually do that? And one of the techniques that I think is really, really powerful is memory craving. And this is where, and I'm gonna give you some practical examples of of how to do this in a second, but this is where Memory craving is where you are able to call somebody to think back to something that they would really like, using their memories, to think back to something they've enjoyed, to think of a time that made them feel good. That might be something warm and and and and and that's really wholesome.

06:00.88

Kennedy Kennedy

something that was really bringing them joy, perhaps, and that brings them all of these ideas and these feelings and you are going to bring those emotions to the surface. And then when we are confronted as human beings, we are confronted with the fact that we are currently not experiencing that, what happens? We then crave that emotional response. So if you've ever seen the movie Trainspotting,

06:28.47

Kennedy Kennedy

And I've actually only ever seen clips of it, so full admission here is, I've never seen the full movie trains button. I know, okay, fine, leave that in your bloody Google review that I've not seen it, right? I've never seen it, it's just, all all the clips will just look horrifying, I don't know if I need that shit in my head, in my psyche, right? but we know that one of the things that is talked about in there is like people inject themselves with heroin and then forever more they are chasing that feeling of that first initial high again yet they can't get it and that's why people take a lot of a lot of that stuff and they end up overdosing all the horrible horrible things right um it's it's a horrible world

07:06.79

Kennedy Kennedy

So we we get addicted to the memories and chasing the memories of things, right? It's why you hear of people um marrying their high school sweethearts after years of not seeing them because they are craving the emotion of that youthful excitement, love and lust, right? It's awesome. It's really, really powerful. So how do you actually do this? Of course, like most things I share on this podcast,

07:36.61

Kennedy Kennedy

And in most of our trainings inside of our email here, a blueprint inside of our programs and and everything, you'll know that this applies to email marketing, but this also applies to your content. It also applies to your YouTube videos, to your sales pages, to your sales videos, your VSLs. It applies to everything. And that is, yes, we are told over and over again, the basics of marketing are we must make people feel something.

08:05.94

Kennedy Kennedy

We're going to make them feel something. And some of that, that one of that emotion one of those emotions that we might be made when people feel might be hope. It might be happiness. Sometimes with with my stuff, it's like humor and people are laughing and having joy and excitement. I know when we when we have our group coaching calls, we call the hotline call inside of Email Hero Academy. We always have a bloody good laugh and people love that.

08:27.86

Kennedy Kennedy

And one of the reasons people keep coming back to those calls or stick around is not only for the amazing results that we're seeing people getting in the program, but it's because they're addicted to those emotions as well, right? So how do we create these things? The first thing we have to do is make people actually feel something in the first place. We have to be really thinking about our emails, not as just lists of facts. I want you to think about your emails and actually putting some kind of feeling One of the things I talk about a lot is this rule of one. Each email you send should have one point and it should have one primary emotion like you're trying to evoke, right? So when are you sitting down to write your email? The first thing you do is go, right, okay, what do I want this email to feel like? Is this a funny email?

09:17.51

Kennedy Kennedy

Are most of your emails funny emails? That's okay too, by the way. Is this an inspirational? Is this sincere? Is this a vulnerable email? like What is the one feeling? What is the one emotion that we are evoking? And the best way to get someone to evoke that emotion is to ask them a really simple question which asks them to remember something. I want you to think back right now as you as you're listening to this. I want you to think back to the very first sale you ever made online. If you don't remember the very first one you made, just remember the earliest one you can remember and how that felt when you saw it come through. You put the page live, you sent out the message to say, I've got this thing for sale. You waited.

10:11.18

Kennedy Kennedy

There was anticipation as you're waiting and you're refreshing your inbox, probably refreshing your PayPal or your Stripe account, waiting. And then there it is. There's that person's name. There's the amount. The sale came through. The technology worked. The the page worked. They liked it. They like you. They like the product. You've got validation.

10:33.52

Kennedy Kennedy

and you've done it, you've made the sale. And i know I don't know about you, but when we set a new offer live, getting the first sale of that new offer is that high, is that thing we're chasing? Can you feel that? Awesome. Now, do you see what I've done? What I've done here is got you into an emotional state by getting you to think about and anchor back to an emotional state you've experienced before. We're not trying to create a new emotional state. The easiest way to evoke any state, any emotion, any feeling, is to get someone to remember, is to remind people. And you have to vividly remind them, right? Remind them by asking them question after question, did it feel like this and did it feel like this and then this happened and that happened and this happened.

11:25.68

Kennedy Kennedy

Build them to that point, so they feel it, they see it, use multi-senses. What did it sound like? That emotion, that that ding when you heard it on your phone? Right? When you sat up straight, when you leaned into the computer. That is more of a physical thing, right? What did they smell?

11:45.00

Kennedy Kennedy

What did they taste? What did they see? Use as many of these senses as possible. Your mouth was dry while you're waiting for it to come in. You held your breath, like all these things, anticipation, and then release, okay? And then now they've got this very vivid image in their mind. And it's not just in their mind, and this is the really important thing. We are not just trying to influence and impact people and help people using just their logical brains. We have to do it with their entire body, with how they feel. So that their hairs on the back on the back of their neck, their hairs on their arms, literally the hair across their body where mammals, right, are standing on end. Their mouth gets dry. Their brain is lit up. They're sitting forward. They change their posture, their physical posture.

12:41.06

Kennedy Kennedy

And now you say, hey, would you like that again?

12:45.75

Kennedy Kennedy

And you can use this, of course, towards and away from, we'll talk about away from it and it in a second. But if youve you've evoked a positive memory, a positive emotional memory, the answer is, oh my God, I want to feel that again.

13:00.13

Kennedy Kennedy

That's pretty powerful. But what's more powerful is if you point out the gap like this, how long is it since you had that feeling? You put a light, you shine a bright light on that gap. How long has it been since you felt like that? Well, and then now we're gonna say, would you like that? Would you like to experience that again?

13:29.37

Kennedy Kennedy

And that's when the craving comes in. You've given them a sample. Like the other day I was walking around a market in London. We were um we had some friends visiting from Barcelona. And ah we we met we and we we went all the way down to London. We live in the northeast of England. So it was like a three and a half, four hour journey.

13:46.63

Kennedy Kennedy

down to London actually took seven hours because there was problems with the tracks and wind and stuff like that. But we get there and we're wandering around one of these markets and and on the market stands where there's all these different foods, there's hot food like chicken and this and that and the other and then there's fudge and all these vendors are like getting a little piece of their fudge and saying, hey, try it, try it, try it. Why? They're giving you a little sample of the emotion. They're giving you a sample of that feeling.

14:15.17

Kennedy Kennedy

that, what does that do? That creates the craving. That's why if you ever done this before, you've you've had a little sampling and oh my god, it's amazing. It tastes fantastic. And you're like, I've got to buy some of that. That's why they do it. You buy it. And you eat lots of it. And you're like, Oh, it was nice as a sample. But the whole thing like having a whole one, that was a little bit too heavy, a little bit too much, a little bit too strong, a little bit too sweet, a little bit too bitter, a little bit too whatever a little bit too much. That's why that is happening.

14:44.06

Kennedy Kennedy

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna build up that memory of an emotion. We're not gonna just build up a memory of an event. Yes, we're gonna often use an event, a thing that happened, a time, a moment, a period of their time, as a way of building up the emotion. Remember when this happened, what did it feel like? And then get them to crave it. The only way someone can crave something though, is if you put a spotlight on the lack of it.

15:14.50

Kennedy Kennedy

Think about the person with the cigarette. If they haven't had a cigarette, they'd be on a long, long haul flight. They'd not be able to smoke for hours. As soon as they get off, what do they do? They don't go to collect their case. They go to the smoking room at the arrivals lounge in the airport. Why? Because they've gone without. So the desire, the craving is intensified. Think about how much more intensified that would be.

15:36.59

Kennedy Kennedy

If on the plane, and obviously they wouldn't do this, but if on the plane they started showing ads or movies, especially ads, of people taking a big long draw on a cigarette and blowing out that smoke.

15:52.80

Kennedy Kennedy

just as I just, I mean, you're mid flight. Think about the person with a so nicotine smoking addiction, how that would intensify it. Why? Because we are displaying and really putting a shining a spotlight onto the lack, onto the lack. And then we're saying, would you like it?

16:13.22

Kennedy Kennedy

We're creating that anticipation. Quote the movie, quote the movie. We're creating anticipation. We are creating that tension that when we release and say you can have it, they are the the rest of their body, not just their brain, but the rest of their body is released into that desire to go and get it. Think about it. Your brain and the power of your brain that makes logical decisions is very small.

16:42.42

Kennedy Kennedy

So if you can get the rest of the body and brain to decide it wants that thing, then your logical brain is going to follow along and post justify. It's going to say, well, I did it because of this and this is the reason why. So think about in your emails, I want you to start telling stories that throw people back to memories of emotions so you can then shine a big, strong light into the lack of and create this craving. We're gonna get these people to remember a time when they experienced this emotion and then we're gonna say, would you like that emotion again? Would you like another slice of that cake? Oh my God, yes, it was so good.

17:33.52

Kennedy Kennedy

I went to a cafe just this weekend and they had tres leches, my favorite cake of all time. right There was this um little um Turkish coffee shop opposite the hotel we're staying in, we went in. I've never seen tres leches anywhere in any cafe ever in my life. I make it at home. I had it in a restaurant in um in in in where was it? South America somewhere maybe? Can't remember. Maybe it's in in Puerto Rico and I love it. I go in and the guy's like oh I've got this cake. It's called tres leches and I'm like what did my brain do?

18:10.51

Kennedy Kennedy

My brain went back to the last time I made it for a family barbecue here at my home. I was like, is anyone going to like this? It's quite a sticky, soft, kind of gooey-ish cake. It's got three different milks poured and absorbed into it. It's quite an unusual texture. I served it really anxiously after the barbecue and everyone had just eaten all this amazing, basically protein, lots of different proteins.

18:34.60

Kennedy Kennedy

I served it, and then everyone's telling me it's the greatest cake they've ever tasted. And I'm eating it, and I'm loving it. So I have all these wholesome, brilliant heightened emotions around it. So when this Turkish guy in the Turkish coffee shop, at cafe, says, would you like some tres leches? I am flung back in time to this emotion of this fantastic family barbecue I hosted.

19:01.25

Kennedy Kennedy

Yes, I don't just want to taste the tres leches. I want to feel how I felt when I had it. That's what I want you to think about doing. Telling the stories in not just the way that tells stories, but in a way that re-evokes emotions from people's past, brings them to now and shines a spotlight on the gaps when there is a craving to feel that emotion again. And then, of course, you link it to how your product or service or solution actually satisfies that emotion and shows them. You can experience it. All you have to do is enroll, invest, apply for my program and we can get you feeling that again. Again, the rest of my body is like, we're going. And my brain's like, hang on. I need to decide. I need to decide. Okay. I guess we're going. That's what's going on in the brain. The brain. All right.

19:54.84

Kennedy Kennedy

Awesome. So please go and use it. I'm really excited ah for you to go and use that. As you probably tell, I'm playing around with the format of the show a little bit. I really hope you enjoyed it, by the way, giving you this more psychological, more deep psychological insight. And we're going to be changing things up over the next few weeks. like example next week. I'm really looking forward to sharing with you how to actually use social proof in your emails to increase your conversions. I'm going to show you seven different types of of of social proof you can use. Seven different types of social proof to use in your emails to get more conversions. I'm looking forward to sharing on that with you. That's going to be next week so make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast player so you don't miss it. Hit subscribe because I'm going to be sharing with you next week. And then the week after

20:37.04

Kennedy Kennedy

you are not gonna wanna miss it. I've got a really special guest. I've got like the webinar guy. In case you're thinking like I've got a webinar, I'd like to make my webinar work better. I thought about doing a webinar. I'm interviewing and i'm I sat down just the other day and recorded a really, really amazing conversation with Jason Fladland, who is the webinar guy. He's made millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars with webinars. And he's sharing with me um what's working right now, webinars, what to stop doing.

21:05.93

Kennedy Kennedy

And the thing I really liked is how do you fix an underperforming webinar? Who had one of those? So make sure you look out for that. That's coming out on, um, on February 19th and two weeks time. So make sure you look out for that. Looking forward to these great upcoming episodes. Anyway, before all of that, let's get into this week's.

21:27.52

Kennedy Kennedy

This worked really well. As you know, I um do a split test of our subject lines every single day pretty much. And this email, the subject line was uppercase danger semicolon chair comma silk comma chainsaw danger chair silk chainsaw.

21:46.23

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, the reason this works really, really well is, first of all, we've got three items. Chair. Okay, that's a very everyday item. A silk. so What was that? Is that a piece of silk? Is that a cloth? What is that? And chainsaw. Those three things don't really go together. We want to know, as soon as you read those three words, what on earth do they mean?

22:07.32

Kennedy Kennedy

And then I put the word danger before it, which is quite interesting because on its own, a chair and a piece of silk are probably not dangerous. But the word chainsaw, but that's a dangerous one. But I'm talking about the fact that ah a chair and a silk and a chainsaw combined are dangerous. I'm creating an emotion and now people want to know,

22:27.41

Kennedy Kennedy

How are these three things related? That's one piece of curiosity. And why are they dangerous together? So that's this week's subject line of the week. I hope you go and use that principle, too. Well, that's it pretty much for this week. If you haven't already, make sure you do hit subscribe on your podcast player, because I'll be back next week when I'm going to be sharing with you how you can use social proof in your emails, including seven different types of social proof. You're not going to want to miss it. If you haven't already, do leave me a review on your podcast player. app Oh, and if anybody is not already a member of our free Facebook community, come and talk with us and discuss how you're going to apply the principles that I've just shared with you about memory craving in our free Facebook group with everybody else who's looking at applying to their business. Just go to Facebook, search for the email marketing show community.

23:18.96

Kennedy Kennedy

and you'll be able to just request to join. You'll even be able to get on my email list and get my free emails every single day with more tips, inspiration. See the subject lines that I talk about every week on this podcast as well. So just open up Facebook search for the email marketing show community and I'll see you in there. That's it. I'll see you next week when we'll talk all about social proof and the seven different types to be using in your emails. I'll see you then.

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