Sophistication, awareness… what’s missing?

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Last night, I was walking around my neighborhood, listening for the third time to a talk by Internet marketer Jeff Walker, of Product Launch Formula fame.

Jeff’s talk is incredible. Each time I have come at it, I’ve found new valuable things inside. Such as, for example, the following oddity:

Jeff once created a completely new offer, unlike anything else in his market.

He first launched this new offer to his own list.

He opened that launch with a video of himself in the woods, on his property up in the Colorado mountains. He has a private tennis court there. Every Friday, he and his buddies play tennis there and drink margaritas afterwards.

This campaign opened with zero promises and zero hype. The implied message of the opening video was simply, “This is how life and business are really meant to be.”

​​This first campaign was a big success.

Later, Jeff launched that same offer to JV lists.

Again, he opened the launch with a video of himself in the woods. Except this time, there was no tennis court, and no margaritas. Instead, straight away, Jeff jumped into hype and promises, about making a ton of money without a list and without a product.

This second campaign was also a big success.

Strange, no?

Because back during the Cold War, direct marketing legend Gene Schwartz told us there are exactly two factors for figuring out how to position and open up a marketing message.

One is sophistication — how many ads/claims people have seen before in your market.

The other is awareness — how much time people in your market have spent thinking and researching this particular problem or desire.

But these two Jeff Walker campaigns say different.

Both of these campaigns sold a completely new offer, unlike anything else in the the market.

​​Both went out to audiences of fiending internet marketing junkies.

​​In other words, the sophistication and awareness were exactly the same for the audiences of both campaigns.

And yet, one campaign opened with zero hype or promises… while the other opened with 100% hype and promises.

My point being:

Sophistication and awareness are not the only two factors for figuring out how to position and open up a marketing message.

There’s a third, equally important factor. You can probably guess what this factor is. I won’t belabor it here.

​​I’ll just say:

Get this factor working in your favor, ​​and not only will you be able to make marketing messages that are less hypey… but your sales will come more easily… and price resistance will largely fly out the window.​​

And if you want some help with that:​​
​
https://bejakovic.com/sme

Influence the format of my new promo training

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Very briefly:

I got a good number of replies over the past 24 hours. People wrote in to express interest in an idea I floated yesterday. A new training, on how to regularly run profitable email promotions to your list.

To everyone who replied, thanks for saving me from the dreaded multi-level marketing fate that was waiting for me.

Since there’s interest, I’ve decided I will put on this training within the next 10 days.

What I have not yet decided is the exact format for it.

You can influence that. Read the questions below. And in case you find yourself saying yes over and over, then write in an tell me so. My questions to you are:

Do you have a business?

Do you have an email list?

Do you want to learn how to create new email promotions for your own business regularly?

In other words, do you want to learn how to pull out an extra $10k, $20k, $50k from your list on demand — terms and conditions apply?

Do you even want my direct, one-on-one hand-holding and help, as you strategize and execute the first of these email promotions?

If so, then reply to this email, and tell me you’re interested. And please do so today, because by tomorrow I will have the details fixed in fast-drying concrete. Thanks in advance.

Do you want my help creating an email promotion for your business?

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Today is April 1st.

​​I was going to try to “fool” you by saying I am getting into multi-level marketing. That’s on the back of a reader reply I got last week. A reader surreptitiously tried to recruit me into her own MLM organization with:

Life-Changing Products!
Breakthrough Marketing System!
Huge Compensation Plan!

Fortunately for you, I’m about as humorous as a rock. So there will be no fooling today.

Instead, I have a 100% serious and honest question for you. I’ll write an email about this question tomorrow as well. I want to make it clear this is not some dumb April Fools stunt.

As you might know, I now have a role as hot seat coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Each week, my task is to come up with a new strategy for a new email promotion for a new business.

It’s fun work. I’ve learned a lot in just my two months there. And that’s on top of my own previous experience, creating and running such email promotions. That experience is how I got this job in the first place, via a recommendation from Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell.

So my question to you is:

Do you have a business?

Do you have an email list?

Do you want to learn how to create new email promotions for your own business regularly?

​​In other words, do you want to learn how to pull out an extra $10k, $20k, $50k from your list on demand — terms and conditions apply?

Do you even want my direct, one-on-one hand-holding and help, as you strategize and execute the first of these email promotions?

If so, then reply to this email, and tell me you’re interested.

If I can get 5-10 qualified business owners who want this, I will put it on within the next 10 days.

And if not, then I really will be joining that MLM.

Save me from that fate. Get much more out of your list than you might think is possible. Hit reply, and tell me if you’re interested in this promotion training.

About all those idiots who are more successful than you…

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A reader writes in reply to my email yesterday:

===

Yep I’ve been seeing pro copywriters getting away with mid copy — functional but not exceptional, well done but nothing I couldn’t have done, just basics well executed. Yet they are raking it in.

Still I’m more drawn to innovative copywriters like Daniel Throssell and you, who have the potential to produce 95-99% outcomes (as opposed to 80% outcomes). However if I’m seeking profit maximisation (not always the case…) perhaps I should consider going darkside.

===

My email yesterday wasn’t about the light side vs dark side, exceptional vs mediocre. It was about fundamental, proven, and often simple approaches… vs novel, risky, and often complex approaches.

That said, my reader’s comment above is still valuable.

It expresses a feeling that’s pretty much universal in human beings.

And that’s the feeling that “all these idiots are running around, way more successful than me. They must have some kind of angle. They have a secret, a trick, a shortcut. It’s either they have access I don’t, or they do things I won’t because I’m better than that.”

I’m not judging. I regularly feel this feeling bubble up inside me as well.

All I am telling you is that if you write sales copy, then this feeling is almost certainly there in your audience. It makes sense to use it as a sales point.

On the other hand, this belief is not useful to have yourself, not long-term.

It’s a much better to look at people you’re competing with, and figure out what you can admire about them.

This little habit alone can help you succeed. Because when you find things to admire about your competition, you will often end up adopting those characteristics. And you will improve as a result.

I did this once. I even wrote it up as an email. In case you’d like to read that:

Things “worthy of compliment” in 12 of my competitors

Your kiss is on my list

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I have this quirk of the brain where if I’ve heard a song some time in the past few days, I will often wake up in the middle of the night with that song playing on full blast in my head.

Last night, around 3am, I woke up. What I clearly heard in the darkness was the refrain to Hall and Oats’s Kiss On My List:

“Because your kiss is on my list… of the best things in liiiiiiiiife…”

The reason Kiss On My List played in my head is that I recently listened to a lot of 80s hits. And that’s because I used several 80s hits to illustrate parts of the presentation I gave to Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL group this past Thursday.

Overall, the presentation went very well. This was a surprise to me, because I was a bit desperate in the lead-up to it.

I had tried running through the presentation a couple times before the actual call. ​It seemed like a disaster each time — “these stupid songs, what was I thinking?” But apparently, I managed to pull it off at the last minute because lots of people who watched have written me to say how much they liked it.

But!

What I want to share with you today is not a bit from my presentation.

Instead, what I want to share with you is a bit that came from the other presentation inside Thursday’s Titans call. That presentation was by a guy named Charley Mann. Charley runs a coaching business for law firm owners.

I’m not sure Charley wants me to share publicly how much money he’s making. But on the call, he shared his numbers. He’s doing very well, and he will do even better soon.

Anyways, towards end of his presentation, Charley said:

===

One last thing I’ll say real quick, which is the idea of making money — trying to make it boring for myself.

I have plenty of things that I love in the rest of my life. I love building the business. But fundamentally, I want the fundamentals. And so that’s the way I think about the business. The fundamentals executed in a really sound, even spectacular way, over time.

===

That felt like a gentlemanly slap across the face to me. Because it made me realize I do get my kicks, or at least some fun and expression, via my work — via doing things like creating an 80s-music-themed business presentation, which refuses to come together until the very last minute.

The trouble is, such creative experiments 1) rarely make for optimal business solutions and 2) demand much more time and work than simply focusing on the proven fundamentals and performing those very well.

I’m sharing this in case you too might be like me.

If you are, then maybe it’s time to consider taking up skydiving or high-stakes roulette or perhaps drag racing as a way to get your kicks in the real world, outside your business. Or at the very least, perhaps it’s time to consider, like Charley says, focusing on just the fundamentals, and executing those very well over time.

And now, if you want the fundamentals of email copywriting, then I have a course for you.

I’m not sure I would ever have been able to prepare such a course had I only ever written emails for this newsletter, where I feel compelled to say something new and creative every day to get my small kick of excitement.

Fortunately, I’ve also worked extensively with clients, including a few clients where I had to write multiple daily emails every day for years at a time, along with tons of other copy, and where real money was on the line – $4k-$5k of actual sales coming in with each email.

If you want to learn what I learned while writing all those emails and pulling in all those sales, and if you want to implement something similar in your business, then here you go:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

I got a hot date tonight HONK

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Yeah, about my hot date… I’ll get to that in a second.

First, here’s a scene from the animated TV show The Simpsons. The scene illustrates a valuable/funny point about influence. But hold on.

I grew up watching The Simpsons. If you didn’t, that’s no problem. You don’t need to like The Simpsons or even to have ever seen a single episode to get what this scene is about, or to understand the underlying point.

Scene:

Moe the bartender is being interrogated by the police for shooting the local billionaire, Mr. Burns.

Moe is hooked up to a lie detector machine. He’s asked if he ever held a grudge against Mr. Burns. He answers no. But the lie detector machine HONKS to indicate he’s lying.

“All right,” Moe says. “Maybe I did. But I didn’t shoot him!” Sure enough, the lie detector machine DINGS to confirm Moe’s statement as true.

“Checks out,” says the cop. “Ok sir, you’re free to go.”

So far, so conventional. But then, Moe executes the following rapid-fire descent into humiliation, to the sounds of the lie detector machine:

“Good,” he says. “Cause I got a hot date tonight!” HONK

“A date.” HONK

“Dinner with Fred.” HONK

“Dinner alone.” HONK

“Watching TV alone!” HONK

“All right!!!” Moe says. “I’m gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue!” HONK

Moe hangs his head. “Sears catalogue.” DING

“Now would you unhook this already please! I don’t deserve this kind of shabby treatment!” HONK

That’s the end of the scene. Maybe you found it funny even in my transcript above. But if you didn’t, trust me that it’s funny in the original version.

The question is… why?

Is it just funny to find out Moe is a loser? That’s part of it. But would it have been as funny if the scene simply went:

“Good. Cause I got a hot date tonight!” HONK

[Moe hangs head] “Actually, I’m gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Sears catalogue.” DING

My contention is no. That wouldn’t be nearly as funny. Which brings me to the following valuable point that I promised you:

“We build interest by adding more: more movement, more color, more sound, more light, more people, more intensity, more concentration, more excitement. In short, anything whatever that the spectators regard as increasing will also increase their interest.”

That comes from a book about magic and showmanship. In other words, the above advice about adding more is how expert magicians build the audience’s interest.

But it works the same for comedy.

And in fact, it works the same for copywriting.

Stack a bunch of moderately interesting, or funny, or insightful stuff on top of each other… and the effect is multiplicative, not additive.

And with that punchline, we conclude today’s episode. DING

But if by any chance you want more simple tips on building interest and desire in your readers, you can find that here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

A need so strong it actually eclipses survival

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I’m preparing for the Brian Kurtz Titans XL presentation that’s happening later today. I’m still not done with the slides. So I will just quickly share one valuable quote with you and get back to slide-making.

Maybe this quote will speak to you, maybe it will not.

​​Let me set it up first so it has a chance to mean something. Ever wonder about any of the following things:

Why, when a dive bar cleans up and becomes in every way nicer, the regulars often stop coming?

Why, when a run-down apartment building is renovated and repainted, the kids who live there will often tag it with graffiti the first night?

Why, when a rich and successful businessman loses years of work through no fault of his own, he will often rebuild his prosperity in record time?

If you’ve never wondered about these things, that’s ok. Neither have it.

​​But the legendary direct marketer Gary Halbert sure did. and here was Gary’s conclusion:

===

Have you ever heard about the hierarchy of human needs? Maybe you studied it in sociology or psychology. Anyway, according to what you learn in college, the #1 human need is survival. After that comes sex. Then, further down the line is the need for an extended family, a need to contribute to society, etc.

I beg to differ. As usual, those college guys have got it wrong. I’ll agree that the #1 need is for survival but #2 is not sex. No sir, #2, just below survival, is the need for humans to remain in their own comfort zone. Not only that, sometimes this need is so strong, it actually eclipses survival.

===

So what to do?

How to overcome this overwhelmingly powerful need for humans to remain in their own comfort zone?

Well, I’ll cover a couple possible answers to this during my presentation to Brian’s group.

But really, overcoming this comfort-zone issue is what the totality of all direct marketing is about.

There are deep psychological principles that direct marketers have figured out, which can be used to move people, in their own interest, against their own inertia.

And there are also many clever tricks and tactics to do so.

I have no hope of covering even a tiny fraction of all this material in an email. But I have prepared a training which guides you through it, and makes these principles and tactics your own. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The end of newsletters

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Well, the end of my newsletter.

No, not this one. This one will keep going, as long as I keep needing therapy and as long as I keep refusing to trust anyone else with the task.

But as of today, I have decided to stop publishing my health newsletter.

I started that newsletter in January 2023. I published a new issue every week until this week — some 120k words in total.

Researching, writing, and publishing all that word-tonnage took up 300-400 hours of my productive waking time over the past 15 months.

And yet, I’m closing the old heap down. My reason is simple:

I couldn’t get my health newsletter going as a business. And rather than thinking about what I’ve already invested into it, I’m thinking about the time, money, and effort it might still take to turn it into something.

It’s not simply a matter of persistence, either. Because knowing what I know now, I’m not sure my health newsletter would ever turn into something, even if I were to persist.

I could tell you my arguments for that, or my predictions for the future of newsletter businesses.

But instead, I’ll share something by someone much more invested in newsletters than me. That someone is Scott Oldford.

Over the past year or two, Scott bought up dozens of newsletters and newsletter-related businesses with the goal of creating a newsletter roll-up. And then, here’s what he found:

===

Our model originally with newsletters was to create lead flow for the companies that we owned inside of our portfolio.

As time went on we ended up a little further away from that model than I’d like to admit.

We attempted to monetize in many different ways and in the end we realized that keeping it with its original intent was a much better strategy.

[…]

We realized that the cost of running a media company at scale simply did not make sense and majority of the costs were actually from attempting to make it a direct-profit driver instead of a value-driver for the dozens of businesses we own and eventually hundreds of businesses we will own.

In short — newsletters and owned media makes a lot of sense. However, I believe the opportunity that people see isn’t the true one.

The real opportunity? Owning your audience.

===

For me at least, it’s the end of newsletters as a business.

​​On the other hand, I will be looking for a business to start or grow, one where a newsletter could be a valuable tool.

Maybe you’re lucky, and you already have a business like that. Maybe you even have your own owned audience. But maybe you’re not doing anything with it.

If so, you’re not alone. I’m always amazed by how many businesses have email lists of tens of thousands of leads or even buyers — that they never do anything with.

If you want my help or advice with that, hit reply and we can talk.

​​Or if you don’t want my help, and you want to profit from your email list all by yourself, here’s how to start writing a newsletter that complements and feeds your business:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

I just wanted to help

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Today, I found myself watching a YouTube underwater livestream from the bottom of a murky river. 993 other viewers were watching along with me.

The YouTube livestream showed impenetrable green water, with the only change being the digital clock in the upper right corner, which counted away:

2024-03-26 12:52:28… 12:52:29… 12:52:30…

I was on the fish doorbell site.

Apparently, every spring, fish migrate upstream through the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

But there’s a river lock in the city. The fish cannot swim past it.

For reasons of their own, the Utrecht city government created this YouTube livestream, and allowed people to press a digital button once they see a fish on the livestream. This I suppose will somehow cause the river lock to open and will let the fish through.

Like I said, I and another 993 bipedal simians were intently watching this unchanging livestream of murky river water, hoping to be the one to press the stupid fish doorbell and the let fish through on its way.

I thought my willingness to sit and stare at nothing was notable because I am currently in the middle of preparing my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL mastermind this Thursday.

I’m scheduled to talk about writing emails that elicit engagement — that get people to hit reply and write you something in return to your daily emails.

Eliciting engagement might seem like a foolish endeavor — “sales emails are there to make sales, bro.” But in my experience, writing for engagement does in time boost sales, plus it has lots of other good knock-on effects.

So how do you write for engagement?

The fish doorbell gives a clue. One big reason that people will engage with you is simply to feel helpful.

Just ask people for help. Give them the opportunity to feel smart and useful. More often than not, you will get engagement.

This can be taken to extremes or exploited to make people do foolish things, such as, for example, getting them to watch a livestream of nothing, in order to press a button that does nothing, with the ultimate goal being something completely absurd or intangible — “swim on little fish, godspeed.”

Of course, this is a newsletter about influence and persuasion.

​​And so you can bet that my conclusion is that appealing to people’s better sides, their desire to feel helpful or useful, is not the only way to go, or the most effective way to create engagement.

Maybe I will one day turn this Titans XL presentation into some kind of training on how to write for engagement, and make this info available more broadly.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Whatever may happen, if you would like more ideas here and now about how to write for engagement, plus see specific examples of it in action, you can find that in my Most Valuable Email Swipes #8, #9, #11, #23, #24, #27, #31, #42, and #48.

MVE Swipes is a swipe file I include with my Most Valuable Email training. This training shows you how to help your readers understand and experience abstract ideas in first-hand, intuitive ways, which stick with them for years to come. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Problem: There’s nothing happening in my brain

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It’s day three after my flight back from North America to Europe. Jet lag skipped the first night, but kicked in last night.

I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 1am, lay awake, got up, read for a while, went back to bed, tossed and turned some more.

I’m guessing it was 5am by the time I finally fell asleep again. I slept until 10am and woke up like I was emerging from a month-long coma.

I’m telling you this because it’s now a few hours later. I’ve gone outside to clear my head. I’ve had breakfast. None of it has helped.

It’s time to write my daily email. But because of this disturbed sleep and resulting confusion, and because it’s very late for writing by my usual standard, there’s absolutely nothing happening in my head.

No new ideas for today’s email.

Nothing good based on recent reader replies in my inbox.

Nothing in my extensive journal that sparks any kind of miserable light in my mind.

In situations like this, I have enough experience that I can brute-force my way and write something acceptable. And that’s what I started to do today as well.

But then I caught myself.

I realized that the fact that nothing is happening in my brain today is my topic for today’s email.

I recently listened to an interview with a stand-up comedian, Chris Grace. Grace was talking about what he does when things are not going well, when his jokes are falling flat, when the audience isn’t responding. He said:

===

My main tool is that I never pretend that it’s not going the way it’s going. And I think this is a pretty common standup tactic, which is just to call out exactly what is happening in the room.

​​I think the skill level here is how aligned you can be with the exact energy of you plus the audience. So if there is a certain tone happening or if there is a vibe, the closest you can get to accurately naming that vibe and building from there, it can help you unify the room sometimes.

===

I heard somewhere that the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz threw out all of his winning sales letters and ads.

Schwartz didn’t have a swipe file to consult. He didn’t have templates. He looked at each sales situation as unique. And he tried to align himself and call out the exact vibe of the market he was writing to, right in that moment. This is how he paid for a penthouse on New York’s Park Avenue… a world-famous art collection… and an all-around ritzy Manhattan lifestyle.

It works in dating, too.

​​I once went on a first date with a Norwegian girl. She was a very smooth conversationalist. I believe she was a psychologist, or maybe a therapist.

Through her professional training, this girl kept the conversation on our date going without the slightest hitch. She made me feel she is very interested in my life story… what I’d studied in my many years of college and grad school… what I think about turtles, life, and the universe.

I kept talking and talking. Gradually, panic started to build inside me. I realized I was drowning in quicksand.

So when the Norwegian girl smoothly transitioned from one waning topic and opened up yet another avenue of promising scientific discussion, I cut her off.

“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” I said.

“We’re not?” she asked. “Why not?”

“Because we need to do some first-date stuff.”

She laughed. “What do you have in mind?”

“This is the moment during the first date when you and I have to work together. We have to see if we can create some kind of sexual spark between us.”

The girl’s eyes sparkled for the first time that night. And the conversation shifted to much more promising waters, about the strange hookup culture in Norway, about how dating worked in Hungary where I was living at the time, and about the kinds of things she found attractive in men.

I’ll leave off that story for now. And I’ll just remind you of the power of calling out the vibe, whatever it is — particularly if it’s not working in your favor.

That’s free, highly specific advice on persuasion and influence.

For paid, more widely useful advice, specifically a framework for owning persuasion and influence skills of all kinds, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve