Do you make these mistakes in email copy?

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I’ve critiqued over 100 sales emails by a dozen or more business owners and professional copywriters. I’ve found 9 mistakes repeatedly keep popping up, like moles in a manicured lawn, spoiling what might otherwise be fun, engaging, money-making emails.

Many people use Reddit threads or personal stories at the start of their email that are sure to kill the sale by the end of the email.

Others try to express their personality with language that chases off good prospects.

It is astonishing how often people resort to subject line tricks that attract the exact wrong segment of their audience.

Why do most people make these mistakes in email copy?

The reason is clear. There are only a few fundamentals to writing good emails. But learning what those fundamentals and mastering them are two different things.

The fascinating thing is that, by fixing a few common mistakes, sales emails become faster and easier to write. Maybe even more fun, for you and for your reader.

Most importantly, corrected sales emails make more sales, not just today, but tomorrow and the day after.

I’ve decided to put on a training about the most common email copy mistakes I’ve seen, in my coaching students, in consulting clients, and in copywriters and business owners who have bought my courses and trainings.

If you like, you can help influence this training, and even get more benefit out of it when it’s out.

Have you written a great email that made zero sales? Or did you send out something super interesting — but nobody cared?

Send me an email of yours that was a disappointment or failure. In return, I’ll point out the biggest mistake I see in that email, and I’ll tell how you can fix it in the future, quickly, easily, and profitably.

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

Why the girl-and-python show is a great place to negotiate

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Here’s an intriguing (and for writers, a most instructive) scene from one of the greatest films in Hollywood history:

“Christ what a trip. The whole time I’m thinking, what if somebody knows what I got in here? Can you imagine that? Two million dollars on the seat next to me in that plane? Mikey, what the hell’s going on anyway? I’m totally in the dark.”

Mikey picks up the suitcase and carries it off. “The family’s making an investment in Havana. This is a little gift for the President.”

Maybe you recognize this scene. It’s from The Godfather, part 2. ​​Fredo Corleone, the oldest surviving son of the Godfather, is talking to his younger brother Michael, who now heads the Corleone crime family.

Michael recently survived an assassination attempt. He knows his business partner Heyman Roth and Roth’s henchman Johnny Ola were behind it. What he doesn’t know is who inside his own circle betrayed him and collaborated with Roth.

Fredo puts his hands in his pockets as he watches the suitcase disappear.

“Havana’s great!” he says. “My kind of town. Anybody I know in Havana?”

Michael pours himself a glass of water. “Oh… Heyman Roth? Johnny Ola?”

Fredo stares for a bit, trying to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. Finally he manages to get the cigarettes out. He looks away.

​​”No. Never met them.”

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email about negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp helped negotiate many billion-dollar deals, but he became famous thanks to his contrarian, oracle-like sayings.

One thing Camp said is that he likes to negotiate in the bathroom. That might sounds contrarian, but it’s not. It’s very literal, and backed by basic human psychology.

For an example, fast forward a bit, to Havana.

​​Fredo isn’t smart or strong enough to run the Corleone family, but he’s a fun guy. He knows all the cool spots. He takes Michael and a few U.S. Senators and judges to a girl-and-python act.

“Watch,” says Fredo, as he pours out glasses of rum. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

A young woman is brought out on stage. She is tied to a kind of ceremonial pillar. Then a man in a silk robe is brought out. Two assistants pull off his silk robe to leave him standing naked in front of the audience.

The guys with Fredo — except Michael, who’s checking his watch — gasp and then start chuckling.

“That thing’s gotta be a fake. Hey Freddie! Freddie! How’d you even find this place?”

Fredo doesn’t take his eyes off the stage. “Johnny Ola told me about this place. He brought me here. I didn’t believe him, but seeing is believing. Old man Roth would never come here, but old Johnny knows these places like the back of his hand.”

Michael doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. But he looks like somebody just punched him in the gut. And he turns around, and gives a signal to his man who is standing at the door.

So there you go. The reason to negotiate in the bathroom, or during the girl-and-python act. It’s because barriers come down. Jim Camp explains: “As they go to the bathroom, you ask them a question. They’ll answer. They smile, and they answer the question. It’s a great time to do research.”

I wrote about that in my email couple weeks ago. But then I asked myself, what’s really going on? Is this just a negotiation trick?

Eventually, it dawned on me. It’s not a trick. It’s a bit of very basic human psychology.

Our brain likes to think in discrete events, snapshots, scenes, like a movie. This much is obvious. What’s less obvious and more interesting are the consequences. From a New Yorker article on the topic:

“Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.”

Like I said, a bit of fundamental human psychology.

You can now shrug your shoulders and say, “So what?” That would be a Fredo-like thing to do.

Or you can be more like Michael Corleone, and think about how to adapt, how to use this bit of psychology for your own ends.

That’s what Jim Camp did. That’s what successful magicians do. And successful writers, too. In fact, it’s what I’ve tried to do in this very email.

Let me end there, and point you to an offer you can certainly refuse. It’s my Most Valuable Email training, a kind of man-and-keyboard act. In case you’re a person who likes to take advantage of fundamental human psychology:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My new, Morning Brew-like newsletter gets an F

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A few days ago, I mentioned a guy named Scott Oldford, who is buying up other people’s newsletters. Yesterday, Oldford tweeted a long thread about what makes a newsletter worth buying.

I got my popcorn ready and I sat down to read.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started a new, Morning Brew-like newsletter in the health space.

I told myself from the start to make it sellable. Not because I want to necessarily sell it. But simply because if it’s sellable, it’s more likely to be the kind of business that’s viable for the long term, and that I’d like to be involved in.

I stuffed my mouth full of popcorn and started reading down Oldford’s list. And though it’s still early days for my newsletter, I started feeling pretty good about myself.

Diverse traffic sources: check.

High engagement: check.

Not a personal brand: check.

Diverse monetization strategies: getting there. Like I said, it’s still early days, but monetization is something I know how to do.

​​But then, I got to this part of Oldford’s thread:

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5. You need everything inside of your media brand segmented and process driven & it shouldn’t require you whatsoever.

If I see a business and the founder is running everything— it’s not valuable.

If I see it and the founder is working 5hr/week— it is.

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I stopped chewing my popcorn and I swallowed hard. Fact is, I’m working way more than 5 hours a week on this thing. And I’m doing everything myself.

The biggest time suck is simply the research — keeping on top of all the news stories, tweets, podcasts, blog posts, YouTube videos, and science papers relevant to my newsletter.

​​Like I’ve written before, better ingredients, better emails. If you want to write an interesting newsletter, you have to have interesting things to write about. And that takes time.

So here’s where I hope you can help me:

I might in the end simply have to hire somebody trustworthy and competent to do all this research for me. ​But I’m holding out hope that there’s a technological solution to this problem. Some combination of automated polling of all these resources… machine transcription… AI-based parsing of what’s interesting or not.

​​Something that can reduce this research work by 50%, 80%, maybe 95%.

Something that can take this aspect of my newsletter from an F to maybe a C. Or who knows, a B or even an A.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream. Maybe not.

If you have any info here — whether you yourself have skills and experience to create something like this, or you know someone who does, or you have somewhere to point me to — write in and let me know.

​​All I can promise in return is my gratitude. But who knows — maybe there’s a business in here as well, because there are a million and one newsletters like mine, and I imagine most face this same problem.

Simple strategy to build your status, turn readers into advocates, and create a content flywheel

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Yesterday, I wrote an email about true magic, in which I promoted my Most Valuable Email course right at the top. I got a reply to that email from reader Jakub Červenka:

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John, I hope you are selling tons of mves.

Had I not bought it already, I would now, just as a thank you for many clever ways how you pitch it.

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Perhaps you skimmed across Jakub’s message just now, without really reading. I hope you didn’t. But even if you did, well…

I always thought that when people write emails featuring a reader comment, it’s all about being 1) pressed for time, because it’s easy to write an email that’s mostly a reader reply, and 2) self-serving, because the reader comment is usually a testimonial or an endorsement of some sort.

And no doubt, both of those are good reasons to regularly feature reader comments in your emails.

But there are other good reasons, too.

For one, it shows off you have readers. Don’t scoff.

Lots of people who write a newsletter don’t have any readers, particularly readers who are engaged enough to reply. So if you do have ’em, and can prove it, it builds your status and authority, independent of the content of the actual reply you got.

For two, it acknowledges and recognizes the reader who wrote in. It’s nice to see your name in print, going out to thousands of people, even if it’s just in an email.

Plus, it can give the reader added benefits. I’ve had Ben Settle featured something I wrote him in one of his emails, and people found me and signed up to my list as a result.

Point being, featuring a reader’s reply can benefit that reader in different ways, making it more likely he sticks around and becomes an advocate, not just a reader or customer.

For three, it encourages more responses in the future. This contributes to all the other benefits I listed above.

I could go on. But if you weren’t convinced by three arguments, what are the odds you will be convinced by a fourth? Slim.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, perhaps you too are in the daily race to find clever ways to pitch your offers. And perhaps you find yourself writing things that are a little too dry and literal. Perhaps you don’t even have any readers replying to your emails yet. If so, here’s a way to fix it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

A story about true magic

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If you’re interested in my Most Valuable Email program, you can find that here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

And now, here’s a story about true magic:

Magician Max Malini made his reputation thanks to impromptu performances.

One time, Malini sat down at a restaurant for dinner with company. He spent hours there, talking with his friends, drinking, eating. Fish soup. Lamb chops. Then a slice of chocolate cake.

During the entire time, Malini didn’t get up from the table.

Eventually, he turned to a woman at his table and asked to borrow her hat. This was at a time when women still wore hats. The woman took off hers and handed it to Malini.

Malini set a coin spinning on the table, and asked the woman, lady or eagle? The owner of the hat called out, eagle.

Malini used the hat to cover the still-spinning coin. When he lifted the hat, the coin was flat on the table, tails up, showing the eagle.

Mailini set the coin spinning a second time. He asked a man at his table, lady or eagle? The man said, lady.

Malini covered the coin with the hat again. When he lifted the hat, the coin was flat on the table, heads up, showing the lady.

Malini then set the coin spinning a third time, and covered it with the hat.

And when he lifted the hat, there was no coin at at all.

Instead, there was an enormous block of ice on the table, a cube about one foot to a side, perfectly chiseled, without a single drop of melted ice water anywhere.

And the point? In the words of another magician, screenwriter and novelist William Goldman:

“In a sense, a screenplay, whether a romance or a detective story, is a series of surprises. We detonate these as we go along. But for a surprise to be valid, we must first set the ground rules, indicate expectations.”

And now you can go back to the beginning if you like.

“The one thing all my mentors have in common”

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This past Sunday, Novak Djokovic won the French Open and his 23 Grand Slam title — a big deal in the tennis world.

​​On Monday, in an off moment, I decided to check if there were any interesting news or interviews with Djokovic following the French Open.

I automatically headed to the r/tennis subreddit on Reddit. But in place of the usual page with tennis links and videos, I was hit with a blank page and the following notice:

“r/tennis is joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th, to protest the planned API changes that will kill 3rd party apps”

Perhaps you’ve heard:

Reddit the company, which is basically thousands of different news boards, is experiencing a kind of strike. Special Reddit users — mods — who control the different news boards are protesting Reddit’s proposed policy changes. As a result, they’ve basically made the site unusable for hundreds of millions of users.

I haven’t been following the drama. But apparently, as of yesterday, Reddit’s CEO said he plans to go ahead with the policy changes. To which many mods decided to extend the strike from 2-3 days, as originally planned, to indefinite.

All this reminded me of email conversation I recently had with Glenn Osborn.
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​Glenn is a curious creature. Once upon a time, Glenn attended 15 of Jay Abraham’s $15k marketing seminars by bartering his way in.

​​He also went to one of Gary Halbert’s copywriting seminars in Key West, and watched Gary go up on stage with that “Clients Suck” hat.

​​These days, Glenn writes an email newsletter called “Billionaire Idea Testing Club” about influence tricks he spots from people like Taylor Swift and James Patterson and J.K. Rowling.

For reasons of his own, Glenn likes to reply to my emails on occasion and send me valuable ideas. A few weeks ago, Glenn wrote me with some things he had learned directly and indirectly from Clayton Makepeace and Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham.

​​Good stuff. But then, in a PS, Glenn added the following:

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P.S. -For Consulting Clients I Do ALL THE Work F-O-R them – MYSELF and thru staffers.

CONTROL is the one thing all my Mentors Have in Common. If You Don’t CONTROL what you do You Cannot Make Munny.

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That last idea definitely stood out to me.

There are so many ways to be successful in any field. And contradicting strategies will often produce equally good results.

But a very few things are non-negotiable. You could call those the rules of the system. Perhaps CONTROL is one of them.

At this point I would normally refer you to Glenn’s newsletter in case you want to read it yourself. ​​But as Glenn himself says, “My ARCHIVE Is By-Referral-Only – Too ADVANCED to Toss Strangers into.”

If you are determined, then a bit of Googling, based on what I’ve told you above, will lead you to Glenn’s optin page and his unusual but valuable newsletter.

And in case you yourself want to want to write an unusual but valuable newsletter, the following can help:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Magical incantations to make people laugh, fail, buy, or unzip their pants

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Yesterday, I shared two puzzles, two incomplete stories of two hypnotists, Mike Mandel and Derren Brown.

I asked people to choose which puzzle they wanted the answer to. The requests came pouring in, and the results were clear, two to one. People wanted to know the answer to the Derren Brown puzzle twice as much as to the Mike Mandel puzzle.

My “two puzzles” offer is now over. I replied to everyone privately with the answers to the puzzle they chose. I’ll save the Derren Brown puzzle answer for a book I’ve decided to put together. But if you’d like to know the answer to the Mike Mandel puzzle, here it is:

Mike did his induction in his hypnosis subject… then planted his suggestion to remove the phobia. And then, hypnosis over, he asked the person to try to bring back the feelings of fear they had before.

There are two reasons Mike did this. One was straightforward — to test if he had done his job.

“Why don’t people test their work?” Mike asks. “Because they are afraid it hasn’t worked. But if it hasn’t worked, isn’t it better to know when they’re still in your office than when they phone you two weeks later and they’ve had a nervous breakdown?”

The second reason was more subtle. It’s that the word “try” sets people up to fail — or so Mike claims.

I’ve tested it out on myself, and I agree. Whenever I say, “I will try…” I’ve found that what I really mean is, “It won’t happen but let me make a show of it.”

Mike claims you can subtly do this to other people too. Whenever you want to get somebody to fail at something, simply tell them to try to do it. “Try to bring back those feelings of fear.”

Now try to ignore the bigger point, which is that individual words have real power.

This is true in hypnosis (“try”)… in copywriting (“secret”)… in confidence games (“opportunity”)… in comedy (“moose”)… and in pickup. In the words of pick up artist Nick Krauser:

“I tell my students that Game is not a series of magical incantations to get into an unsuspecting woman’s pants, but that’s only half true. It sort of is.”

Now try to tell yourself you didn’t read anything new here. And try not to be interested in what I promise on the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Please pick one and only one of these two puzzles

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Today I have two little stories, two little puzzles for you. I also have an offer for you based on one of these two puzzles.

First puzzle: Mike Mandel is a hypnotist. Back when Mike used to have a hypnosis therapy practice, he would often take people with very bad phobias — snakes, elevators, chocolate rabbits — and put them in a trance.

Mike then did his “change work” to remove the phobia: “The next time you see a chocolate rabbit, you will bite its head off, and you will love it.” Mike would then bring the patient out of trance.

And then, at the end of the session, Mike would say, “Try to bring those feelings of fear back. When you came in here today, you said your fear of chocolate rabbits was a 9 out of 10. Try to bring that feeling back. How would you rate your fear of chocolate rabbits right now?”

So the puzzle is, why did Mike Mandel do this little exercise at the end, after curing people of their phobias?

Second puzzle: Derren Brown, best known for his Channel 4 show Trick of the Mind, also got started as a hypnotist. He never did therapy work, but he did hypnotize his friends. He got very good at it, and he got very confident.

One time, in college, Derren talked to a friend about hypnosis. Derren snapped his fingers, and told his friend to sleep. His friend dutifully collapsed and fell asleep.

Meanwhile, Derren stood there, scratching his head, wondering what the hell had just happened.

So the puzzle is, why did Derren Brown, who had successfully hypnotized lots of his friends before, wonder at the fact that he had successful hypnotized this particular friend?

Now here’s the deal: Write in and tell me which of these two puzzles, if either, is more intriguing to you. I’ll reply and tell you the answer to the puzzle, and I will also tell you how this translates to fields such as copywriting, pickup, negotiation, and comedy.

Please pick one and only one — the puzzle you would like to know the answer to. And then write in and let me know. Thanks in advance.

Do you make this mistake on your optin page?

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Readers do the darnedest things:

I sent out an email last night and I asked if the point I was making was clear. One of the first people to reply was one of my most loyal readers, who has bought several of my courses and given me testimonials on multiple occasions.

He wrote a thoughtful response, told me a little personal story, said my point was clear, and thanked me for the work I do.

I also went to check my unsubscribes from the same email. I saw that this same loyal reader had unsubscribed.

A few days ago, I got an email from a second loyal reader, with the subject line, “Unsubbed… again 😂”.

It turns out he had been unsubscribed for some reason, for the third time. And once you unsubscribe, ActiveCampaign won’t let you resubscribe. The only way back is to write me directly and ask.

I’ve been surprised over the past few months by some of the specific people who have unsubscribed from my emails.

Many had bought courses from me, many had bought trainings, many regularly responded to my emails. Perhaps they genuinely got sick of me — it’s certainly possible, and I know it happens to me. But perhaps it’s some technical glitch. ActiveCampaign does have plenty of those.

So if you have been unwittingly unsubscribed and you are not getting my emails any more and you are not reading this right now, please let me know so I can investigate and maybe fix the issue.

And if you haven’t been unsubscribed and are still getting my emails and are reading, then all I can do is remind you that one is the most dangerous number in business.

People usually say that about one traffic source… or one offer… or one client… or one merchant account. But more than any of those, it applies to only one way to reach your existing audience.

​​If you rely only on one channel, and anything ever happens to that channel, it’s kind of like getting a penny stuck in your windpipe.

I still have the email addresses of all the people who have ever unsubscribed. I guess I could email them again to ask if they really meant to unsubscribe. I do believe that might technically be a crime. Or who knows, maybe I’ll get on TikTok or start collecting physical mailing addresses on my optin page. Gotta have a second reliable way to reach people.

I wrote to the loyal reader who unsubscribed last night. I asked him if he meant to unsubscribe or not. He replied:

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What???

I would never cross myself off your list.

Your emails are my favorite. My daily appointment.

I don’t know why this happened, but if I don’t get your email tomorrow I will panic.

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Again, if you’re not reading this right now, let me know so I can add you back to my list today and prevent a panic tomorrow.

But if you are reading, then thanks. And you might be interested in the following, to help you write emails that people consider their daily appointment:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/