You’re funny and smart, and I’ll tell you why

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Here’s a personal story I think you will appreciate (I’ll explain why in a second):

Today I walked up the hill to the local tourist attraction. A couple was dragging behind me.

When I got to the entrance, a guard popped out, blocking my way.

“Where are you from?” he asked with a scowl.

I told him — a neighboring country.

“And where are they from?” He nodded towards the couple.

“Russians, I guess.”

“All right,” he said, “hold on a moment.”

The upshot is, the Russians got in first, paying 5 euro each for the privilege. I had to wait a minute while the guard talked to me about the political and economic crisis in his country. And then he let me in for free.

I was chuffed by this experience. I kept replaying it as I climbed up to the fortress at top of the hill… and then all the way back down.

“I got in for free,” I chuckled to myself, “while the Russians had to pay!”

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

It’s not just that I managed to save 5 euro. That part is nice, but the fact is, I can afford 5 euro. Instead, I was pleased because I was somehow chosen, selected, and approved.

Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins do this in their programs.

“You are very special,” they effectively say. “How do I know? Because you bought this course… which tells me you care more about success than most of your peers. Because you listened this far… which shows you’ve got the determination to improve and succeed.”

You can use this same approach in your sales copy as well. And I’m not just talking about the lazy argument you’ll often hear at the end of a VSL. (“You’ve watched this far, so you must want this product… so click the Buy Now button.”)

No, I’m talking about everything you can conclude about your prospect. Bring these things up, and use them to explicitly compliment or flatter. Make your prospect feel special, as though these reasons are what make him or her perfect for your offer.

For example, what do I know about you?

I know you’re not satisfied with surface-level ideas, and you want something deeper. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done the research needed to dig up my blog.

I also know you’re a reader. This gives you a big advantage in today’s world, where most everyone needs information served up in fluffy, less dense formats.

Finally, I imagine you resonate with the stories and examples I use to illustrate these marketing lessons. This tells me you’ve got a great sense of humor and a refined taste.

And for all of these reasons, I think maybe you will like to subscribe to my email newsletter. It’s where I talk about marketing and persuasion, and sometimes even give demonstrations of the techniques I talk about. In case you are interested, here’s where to go.

Offer flu

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Today, I want to quickly warn you about a dangerous pandemic that’s cutting down hundreds or even thousands of bright and eager entrepreneurs. It’s called offer flu, and it was first discovered by marketer Travis Sago.

According to Travis, offer flu starts with the following warning symptoms:

1. You think your whole sales success depends on your reputation (or you think you cannot be successful without a reputation)

2. You can’t make any of your ads work, or you need high-tech webinars, segmentation, or funnels, just to barely turn a profit

3. If you replace your product or your company’s name with your competitor’s, you find your marketplace doesn’t notice or doesn’t “give a crap” (Travis’s words)

The concerning thing is that offer flu is highly contagious. The more people you are exposed to who have offer flu… the more likely you are to contract it yourself. And that’s a terrible thing.

Because in the final, deadly stages of offer flu, you become incapable of saying anything unique. You start spouting out gibberish power words — 7-figure! Blueprint! Inner circle! — and yet you can’t stir any kind of response from the marketplace.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that, for those lucky few who are naturally immune to offer flu, or the even rarer birds who have received both shots of the exclusive offer flu vaccine, life is pleasant and easy.

Travis says that, if you don’t have offer flu, you can even put your offer in a simple Word doc… send this to the right people… and get back an enthusiastic “Hell yeah, I want this!” along with free money in your PayPal account.

If, that is, you don’t have offer flu. So how can you protect yourself from this crippling disease?

The cure, in two words, is “specificity” and “problems.” But if you want the full 2-shot vaccine, I suggest you listen to Travis’s “Natural Offer Flu Cures” course. It’s free, and it’s available in the “Videos” section of his Facebook group, right here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/milliondollaroffermojo

Verdict in for Agora

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The verdict is in. The background is this:

In October 2019, before any of us had heard of such an animal as a pangolin, the FTC went after direct response behemoth Agora. Specifically, the FTC said Agora deceived customers with two products.

The first of these was “The Doctor’s Guide to Reversing Diabetes in 28 Days.” No diet changes… no drugs… no exercise required.

How?

The pitch was that diabetes is caused by “Non-Ionizing Radiation,” which the FTC says is based on no known scientific fact.

The second deceptive product was a book titled, “Congress’ Secret $1.17 Trillion Giveaway.”

The advertising for this book claimed you are entitled to get “Republican checks.” And if you don’t collect yours, somebody else will.

Really?

According to the FTC, it turned out to be the old play of “transubstantiating” dividend-paying stocks into free money.

So two days ago, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, Northern Division, announced the verdict for this anti-Agora action.

​​From what I understand:

Agora has to stop making misleading, unsubstantiated claims, as with the two products above. (For example, they have to drop the “Non-Ionizing Radiation” shtick I mentioned upstairs.) They also have to pay a fine of $2M.

I’m just reporting this as industry news. I don’t have a single specific point to draw out of this. But here are a few thoughts circling in my head:

1. The $2M fine seems easy to manage for a billion-dollar company.

2. I’m no lawyer or blind supporter of the Bill of Rights. But to me, banning books (and consequent advertising) that promote unproven medical theories sure sounds like a violation of the 1st Amendment.

3. Overall, this decision seems fairly limited and uninteresting. At least it’s nothing comparable to the Raging Bull action currently in progress, which I wrote about before Christmas.

But fear not. When that verdict comes out, I’ll send you another update… and you can then decide whether it’s time to look for a new job.

Do copywriters have to be funny?

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“That’s the face of every married guy ever.”

Sam Kinison was a former Pentecostal preacher turned standup comic. He was a stout man, with girlish shoulder-length hair, and in the video I watched of him today, he wore a black trench coat on stage. He started off his set in a sweet and quiet tone:

“I’ve been going around the country trying to get as many people as I can not to get married. I’ve been married and I’m just trying to help. Anyone here never been married?”

A guy in the front row raised his head.

“You never been married?” Sam said, his eyebrows rising up innocently. He walked over to the unmarried guy. “Ok, just promise me this.”

“If you ever think about getting married,” Sam said, “remember this face.”

And he started screaming — AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH — the patended Sam Kinison “I’m in hell” scream, right into the poor unmarried guy’s face.

“That’s the face of every married guy ever,” Sam concluded, back in his normal sweet voice.

In my email self-critique yesterday, I criticized myself for missing an opportunity to be funny.

But do you have to be funny if you write copy?

As Dan Kennedy likes to say, you only have to be funny if you want to get paid. Dan even wrote a book all about it, “Make ’em laugh and take their money.”

From what I’ve seen, a few rare individuals can be funny just by being who they are. By being unfiltered or obnoxious or polarizing. Sam Kinison was apparently one of these. According to his brother:

“With Sam, what you saw was what was there. He didn’t exaggerate for the stage.”

But what if you don’t have such an unfiltered personality?

Well, here’s what humor writer SJ Perelman once said. Perelman was asked what it takes to be a comic writer. He responded:

“It takes audacity and exuberance and gaiety, and the most important one is audacity. The reader has to feel that the writer is feeling good. Even if he isn’t.”

In other words, you can fake it. Fake it till you make it… or at least fake it until you’ve finished writing that email or VSL lead or seminar stump speech that’s been sitting and looking at you for days.

And if faking it isn’t working, then go on YouTube and watch some Sam Kinison screaming… or Bill Burr ranting… or Eddie Murphy grinning.

​​These guys will make you feel good for a few minutes. They might even give you some audacity. Just remember this face — AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH

My unflattering email critique to my earlier self

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[I gave myself a harsh email critique recently. It’s for an email I wrote exactly two years ago, which gets a “C” at best. If you want to see why, here’s the original email in bold, along with my comments in brackets:]

SUBJECT: The email that broke the camel’s back

[I’ve found that “play on a popular phrase” rarely works as a subject line, at least to my personal newsletter list. So I would say, force yourself to come up with 10 new subject lines, and use the best of those. But if you insist on the subject line above, then make it more specific and intriguing. Something like, “The sticky sweet email that broke this camel’s back.”]

A while back, I subscribed to the Farnam Street email newsletter.

I’d seen a headline in the New York Times about Shane Parrish, the guy who writes Farnam Street. The headline read:

“How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter”

Interesting.

So I subscribed, without knowing too much about what the content I would be getting.

[Only people who really love you will read past this opening. Everybody else will leave. As James Altucher says, you have to bleed in the first line. Options:

– “How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter.” Lead off with this and then explain what it’s all about.

– “And that’s when I unsubscribed.” Lead off with the end of the story (below) and then work your way back to explain how it all went wrong.

– Make it into a metaphor. “I only dated the Farnam Street newsletter for a few weeks. In that short time, we had several nasty fights…”]

The first email arrived with a ton of links to important, helpful articles on the Farnam Street blog. I scanned through, but I didn’t read anything.

A second email hit me a few days later, with more helpful content.

Then a third.

And a fourth.

There was nothing wrong with any of these emails. And the content was apparently good — after all, Shane Parrish got a feature written about him in the New York Times.

But none of it clicked with me. It was too earnest, too virtuous, too positive.

[Ideally, make this section more concrete. Give examples of specific emails, and make each example funny or stupid. If you can’t do that for any reason… then make this section shorter. Your copy should never be both abstract and long, which is what’s happening here.]

Finally, I got an email with the headline “Introducing your new favorite holiday tradition” (it was around Christmastime).

I opened it up. It was about a “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” to exchange books and then spend the evening reading them together with friends and family.

That’s when I unsubscribed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no beef with Farnam Street or their email newsletter. I personally didn’t find the content interesting. On the other hand, a lot of other people obviously get a lot out of the same emails that I unsubscribed from.

[This is a missed opportunity to be a bit funny. You can make fun of the Icelanders and their nerdy tradition… of Shane Parrish and his virtue signalling… or of yourself and your cold Grinch heart, two sizes too small.]

I only bring up my experience with Farnam Street emails to illustrate a point:

It wasn’t that last email that made me unsubscribe.

That was just the straw, or the email, that broke the camel’s back.

All the previous emails had already primed me to open up the “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” email and say to myself, “Oh, hell no.”

This is something to remember in case you do a lot of email marketing.

It’s very hard to assign blame (or praise) to an individual email.

Odds are, it’s the entire email sequence that’s driving readers away — or winning them over.

[This point is worthwhile. But it could be developed further. An easy way to do this would be with another, positive example. “I was on Ben Settle’s list in two separate bursts, for 3 years in total, before I subscribed to his paid newsletter. The last email I read before I subscribed had the subject, “The Myth of Security”… but you can be sure it wasn’t that email alone that made me subscribe. It was those 3 years of cumulative reading.”]

Of course, there are things (unvirtuous and unearnest things) you can do to stack things in your favor early on in the relationship, while you still have your reader’s attention and good will.

If you’d like to find out what some of those unvirtuous ways are, you might be interested in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. For more info or to sign up to get a free copy (once it’s out), here’s where to go:

[A couple of points to wrap this up for you and for myself both:

1. Even though this email is weak from a copywriting standpoint, that’s ok. Sometimes these daily emails come out a little undercooked, other times they are dry and flavorless. But the more you write, the more of them turn out fine.

But even if not, so what? A weak daily email still has value. It strengthens your relationship with your list… it cements the central idea in your mind… and it can form fodder for your future emails, two years down the line. So keep writing, or if you haven’t started yet, then start.

2. When you tease something at the end of your email, make sure you write down what you had in mind for the payoff. I’d like to know now what info I was teasing back then… but two years later, I have no idea any more. Time to head over to Farnam Street and see what advice Shane has about improving my failing memory.]

Look at your copy… it should make you cringe

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“‘Bild’ car tester Peter Glodschey compared the new Panda to a ‘shoe box.’ But shoe boxes look nicer.”

In 1999, Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro was named “Car Designer of the Century.” Giugiaro designed such icons as the 1961 Aston Martin DB4… the 1966 Maserati Ghibli… and the 1981 DeLorean, which would time-travel once it reached speeds of 88 miles an hour.

But Giugiaro also designed some ugly ducklings. There was the 1988 Yugo Florida… the 1985 Hyundai Excel… and the initial Fiat Panda.

Back in 1980, when the Panda came out, Giugiaro called it the “most enchanting work in my life.” But reviewers weren’t buying it. German magazine Der Spiegel likened the Panda to a “tin gnome,” while Bild called it a “shoe box” (quote above).

You can’t win ’em all, right? But you can learn from your flops, and see how you can improve.

I don’t know if Giorgetto Giugiaro ever did this. But I decided it was a good idea for myself. Because I remember hearing somewhere that if you look at your copy from a few years earlier, it should make you cringe. That means you’re improving.

So I just went through an email I wrote exactly two years ago. My face didn’t lock up from cringing… but the email could definitely be better. So I wrote up a cold and nasty critique to myself, about what needs to be changed, cut, or made sexy instead of grandmotherly.

It was a good exercise. And if you’re interested, I’ll share my results with you tomorrow. Maybe these insights, which come after 2+ years of non-stop daily emails, can help shorten your own learning curve. Maybe they can help you get from “shoe box” to “enchanting work” a bit more quickly.

Learning from my hurt sense of importance

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I had a run in with the police two weeks ago.

They stopped me on a dark and abandoned road. They frisked me. They rifled through my wallet. They opened my box of takeout food and sniffed at the dumplings inside.

In the end, they gave me a fine. “Would you like to pay now?” they asked.

I said no.

They seemed surprised. “Then you have five days to pay at the police station. Otherwise you won’t be able to travel or leave the country.”

I’m telling you this story because it illustrates Dale Carnegie’s first rule of dealing with people. Carnegie says, never criticize, condemn, or complain.

When the policemen stopped me, I was pretty sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But when they gave me the fine, I became 100% sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The policemen were being arbitrary and stupid, and I could prove it. Or as Carnegie says,

“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself.”

But that’s not all.

Because I never did pay the fine. “What can they do to me?” I reasoned.

I pictured the two cops checking their police computer, day after day… seeing my fine not being paid. In my fantasy, they shook their heads in frustration. “All that work we put in… for nothing!” A smile spread across my face.

But I also imagined getting stopped at the airport when it was time to fly out. I imagined being taken to a small windowless room, with those two same policemen waiting for me.

It made me nervous for days. But no matter. I would spite myself and not pay the fine — just to spite the stupid and unjust police.

And that’s part two of Carnegie’s argument against criticism:

“Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

This applies if you’re talking to people one-on-one. And it applies to your copy also.

Some copywriters — particularly when starting out — try to be edgy and insult or mock the prospect. Like this weight loss ad that started:

“ATTENTION ALL FAT PEOPLE! DOES YOUR GARBAGE MAN DELIVER INSTEAD OF COLLECT, AND THEN YELL ‘CHOW TIME!?'”

Don’t scoff. That radio ad was written by a young and cocky Gary Halbert. It pulled in a grand total of 3 sales after thousands of dollars of ad spend.

Of course, your prospect might really be in the wrong. He might be the one to blame. But if that’s what you want to make him see, don’t say so.

Only do it indirectly. For example, by telling him a cautionary tale of somebody else making a similar mistake. Otherwise, your prospect might spite himself — even if he might want your product otherwise — just to spite you.

Hopefully your sense of importance is still in tact. And if you’d like to subscribe to my email newsletter, here’s where to go.

Exclusive “Bejakovic livery service”

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Here’s a quick foray into big-brand marketing, which might be relevant to you even if you’re a complete non-brand:

To start, imagine the year is 2008. Skinny jeans have just become non-negotiable… M.I.A.’s Paper Planes is playing everywhere… and the biggest question on everyone’s mind is, “Was that really Sarah Palin, or was it Tina Fey?”

You, a young and stylish traveler, have just landed in New York City. So you check into your hotel — the hip and modern W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. You’re starving, and you’re ready to hit the town and get some Sbarro’s.

But Uber hasn’t been invented yet. You don’t want to walk all the way to Times Square… so you ask the concierge to call you a cab.

“A cab?” the concierge chuckles. “Oh no, sir. We have something better for you. Something much better. We have a luxury livery service… an Acura MDX SUV to chauffeur you around town.”

It turns out back in 2008, Acura (Honda’s premier line of cars) teamed up with W Hotels to offer something called the “Acura experience.”

Acuras were supposedly good cars, but nobody knew that. Back then the Acura brand of luxury cars was about as desirable as the Flint brand of bottled water.

So rather than plowing more money into ads, the marketing team at Acura created an exclusive “livery service” to anybody staying at any W hotel. You could be chauffeured around town in the new Acura SUV… or if you’re the controlling type who doesn’t want anybody else touching the steering wheel, you could take the MDX out for a test drive yourself.

According to Jonah Berger’s Contagious, the “Acura experience” resulted is millions of rides… tens of thousands of new car sales… and 80% brand switching.

I think there are two lessons here.

The first is that demonstration is much more powerful than bloviation. But you probably knew that.

The second is an illustration of the central idea of Jay Abraham’s marketing philosophy:

“Any problem you have is the solution to a much bigger problem somebody else has — they just don’t know it.”

Jay’s idea goes way beyond what you might think of as joint ventures or affiliate marketing. Instead it’s the insight that, whatever you’re trying to do, somebody out there would love to help you, because it serves their interests also.

I’m not sure what problem W Hotels had back in 2008. But I guess if you’re trying to position yourself as fancy and hip, it’s a constant race to keep ahead of expectations. That’s how Acura helped W Hotels… and made a bunch of car sales as a result.

Like I said, I believe this can help you even if you’re a complete non-brand. Wherever you’re trying to go, there’s somebody out there who has a stable of horses… and will lend you one for free, if you just deliver a package along the way.

I’ve been taking this attitude since the start of this year, with several projects I’ve taken on.

Is it working? Well, I’ll let you know (in the next week or so) if my exclusive “Bejakovic livery service” has produced any result. And if you like, you can decide then if Jay’s idea is something you should adopt as well.

Final point: I have an email newsletter where my updates go first. If you’d like to subscribe so you find out how my livery service experiment goes, you can do so here.

How to win boring friends and influence guarded people

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I was in a cafe today and I saw a masterclass in human relations.

A bare-shouldered girl was sitting and working near the entrance to the cafe.

A guy came out of the bowels of the cafe, and confidently walked over to the hand sanitizer that was stationed next to the girl. He pumped out a disgusting quantity of sanitizer onto himself. “Good morning,” he said to the girl, sanitizer dripping off his hands.

Apparently, they knew each other. But the girl didn’t seem excited by the encounter. She didn’t turn to face the guy, and she kept staring at her laptop.

No matter. The guy started to enthusiastically speak about the work he was currently doing. He kept his gaze on the girl, spoke loudly, and didn’t move.

The girl still refused to turn towards him. She kept scrolling through Facebook on her laptop, occasionally picking up her phone to continue scrolling there.

And yet the guy kept talking at her, more about the project he was working on.

Gradually, the girl put down her phone. Bit by bit, she turned more and more towards the guy. She started to add a sentence here or there to his stream of words.

Finally she started laughing. And then she started to show the guy stuff on her own laptop that she was working on. He leaned in to see better, putting his hand on the back of her chair.

Chapter four of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People tells you how to get people to like you. Carnegie explains:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”

And it’s true. It’s amazing how impressed people will be with your humor and wit if you just shut up and listen to them.

But the thing is, it doesn’t ALWAYS work. Because there are many situations in which people are either guarded or boring or both.

Showing “genuine interest” in these people right off the bat can backfire. It puts additional pressure on them, making them more clammed up and more guarded… and it makes you smell suspicious and needy.

So what can you do?

Well, one option is exactly what the guy in the cafe did today.

Be enthusiastically interested, not in the other person, but in your own hobby horse. At least at the start, until the other person thaws.

Because most of us, the non-psychopaths, have a strong instinct to mirror others. And if you are enthusiastically interested in a topic, it will rub off on other people. As comedian Andrew Schulz once said about his standup material:

“Who cares if they relate to it. Make them relate to it.”

By the way, this can apply to your marketing as well as to person-to-person interactions. Particularly in this day of free marketing channels, like YouTube and Facebook and email.

Write or talk about things that interest you, with enthusiasm. And some people will respond.

That’s what I do. In case you’re curious, my email newsletter is here.

Bump your order form bump 15% without changing the offer

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Two days ago, I watched an interview with a successful marketer who currently has several million-dollar funnels. He broke down his most recent success and shared some tricks and tips. Here’s one that got me, about an order form bump.

You probably know what an order form bump is. It’s an impulse buy you can tack onto your order form that doesn’t need a lot of explaining. If you haven’t seen one of these before, you can think of it as asking, “Do you want fries with that?” This can often substantially increase your average order value.

So this marketer discovered (by accident) how to increase his order form bump take rate by 15%, even for order form bumps that cost as much as the front-end offer. The breakdown:

1. The customer goes on the order page

2. He sees an initial two-sentence description of the oder form bump, along with a checkbox that says “Yes, add this to my order!”

3. If the customer clicks the checkbox, the 2-sentence description expands into a slightly more detailed description, which also includes the price.

This marketer’s accidental discovery was leaving out the price out of the initial two-sentence description. All his offers used to show the price there… but he forgot to put it in one time. The take on that no-price order form bump was 15% higher. And once he took out the price out of the initial description in other funnels, he saw similar increases.

Just in case you’re wondering about the legality or ethics of this:

The price is perfectly revealed once you click the checkbox. And for anybody who decides he doesn’t want the order form bump, another click on the same checkbox will remove the order form bump from your offer.

In other words, this is just of one of those human quirks. You might attribute it to the endowment effect or consistency or whatever you like. The fact is some portion of those extra 15% of people find it easier to convince themselves they actually want something they don’t really want… than to click on the checkbox a second time.

And that’s my point for you for today.

Because I don’t normally share these kinds of funnel hacks (though this one is worthwhile). Rather, I’m more interested in fundamental human traits and how we can use them for influence and persuasion.

Well, the trait here is how even tiny obstacles, particularly phyiscal obstacles, can have big effects on human behavior. Like in the example above, you can use tiny obstacles to reinforce the behavior you want. And vice versa.

Because right now, there are sure to be tiny obstacles that are hindering the behavior you want from people. It makes sense to hunt down those obstacles and terminate them with extreme prejudice. As Jonah Berger wrote in his book The Catalyst:

“Instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already.”

For example, I have an email newsletter. I could probably help get my optins up by offering some small gift for signing up, besides the pleasure of hearing from me each day.

I should work out what would make a good gift… but in the meantime, I can offer you the following, a special report called Copywriters Hero. It’s my collection of the best free and paid resources for discovering the world of copywriting and direct marketing. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/copywriters-hero/