Customer Service

Promiscious upgrading is a very bad plan indeed

by

A Copy Riddles member named Paul writes in:

Hello John,

I purchased Copy Riddles some months ago.

Will you give me (and all previous buyers) access to the member’s area now that the program is delivered on a website?

The answer is yes and no.

I definitely gave Paul access to the members-only area of my site where Copy Riddles is now hosted.

Hence the yes part in the “yes and no” above.

But I won’t do the same for all previous buyers — not unless they write me and ask. ​​Hence the no.

The reason I am not giving access automatically to all previous buyers is that I have to do it manually, and that takes some time and effort. And why go to that expense for someone who might not appreciate it? ​​In the words of the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins:

I consider promiscuous sampling a very bad plan indeed. Products handed out without asking or thrown on the doorstep lose respect. It is different when you force people to make an effort.

As it was for bars of soap a hundred years ago, so it is for the new Copy Riddles today.

If you have gone through Copy Riddles previously, in its old, email-based form, and you’d like me to upgrade you to the new, web-based form, just write me and ask. I will do it, as Joe Sugarman used to say, promptly and courteously.

And if you haven’t yet gone through Copy Riddles yet in any form, here’s what Paul (same Paul as above) had to say after I upgraded him to the new Copy Riddles:

What you offer in the “Copy Riddles Course” is a very clever and powerful way to improve our copywriting skills. It’s based on the work of the greatest copywriters. But it’s the kind of practical value you wouldn’t generally find in the books they wrote. In fact, I think there are very few copywriting courses that offer this level of practical value. Best of all, yours is very affordable. Thanks again John. Oh, and by the way, my mother tongue is French and I find that everything you present is clear and well explained, even though I am not a native English speaker.

In case you’d like to join Copy Riddles before the price goes up:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The Psycho rules you MUST have for a stronger business and more successful customers

by

Last night, as lights dimmed around the city and the streets got quiet and a lonely owl started hooting somewhere in the distance, I settled into bed and started watching…

Psycho!

(​​The trailer.)

This was a 6-minute promo movie, made by Alfred Hitchcock, to drum up anticipation for the real Psycho movie.

The Psycho trailer features Hitchcock himself, showing off the Psycho set as if it were a real crime scene.

​​With cheery music playing, Hitchcock walks around the set, hints at the murders that happened in different rooms, and occasionally pouts and frowns at camera as if to say, “You there, in the second row, what odd thing are you doing?”

At the end of it all, Hitchcock walks into the motel, to the bathroom.

“Well they cleaned all this up now,” he says. “Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was… well, it’s too horrible to describe.”

In spite of this, Hitchcock continues his cheery tour. He points out the toilet — an important clue — and then the shower. The camera zooms in as he reaches for the shower curtain, pulls it back swiftly, and—

A screaming woman’s face flashes and the famous Psycho slasher music cuts into your ears.

The closing credits appear, and then a notice:

“PSYCHO: The picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all! For no one will be seated after the start.”

“What?” I asked my laptop. No one allowed in late? Is this for real?”

It turns out yes.

Hitchcock made a rule for the release of Psycho. Nobody would be allowed into the theater, any theater, anywhere around country, after the movie had started.

Studio honchos were worried that this arbitrary rule would hurt ticket sales.

But you, my dear marketing psycho, probably know better.

What do you think happened?

Did people hear they won’t be allowed in late, and decide to stay away?

Did a few people who did come late, and who got turned away, and who fumed about it… did these people sour everybody else from seeing the movie?

Of course not.

Lines formed around the block, in cities around the US, made up of people waiting to see Psycho, at the appointed time.

Of course, these people were not there only because of this “No late admission” rule.

But I’m 100% sure this rule contributed to the fact that Pyscho broke box-office records in its opening weekend, and has become such a keystone of pop culture since.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

People loooove draconian rules and restrictions, particularly in a take-it-or-leave it setting.

Sure, some people get turned away. Either because they know in advance they can’t make it to the theater in time, or more likely, because they dawdle.

But some people will be intrigued who wouldn’t care otherwise. And more important, many people will treat the person setting the rules with a new level of respect and deference.

Ben Settle recently wrote an email about his Psycho rule not to allow people who unsubscribe from his Email Players newsletter to re-subscribe down the line. Ben wrote:

“I’ve tested, tweaked, experimented with, and practiced this policy for nearly 10 years. And I have found, without exception, the harsher I am with this policy, the stronger my business gets with far more successful customers. On the other hand, the more lenient I am with this policy, the weaker my business gets with far more weak-minded customers. It’s such an integral part of what makes my business model work, that it’s ‘part’ of my marketing now, just like clean parks are ‘part’ of Disneyland’s customer service.”

So there you go. If you want a stronger business and more successful customers, stop allowing anyone into your theater after the lights dim.

Or stop allowing them back in, if they ever leave for a pee break.

Or come up with yer own Psycho rules. Ones that match your personality, your preferences, and your business objectives.

“Here it comes,” some oddball in the second row is saying, while rubbing his hands together. “Here come Bejako’s rules. He always likes to write about an interesting marketing and business idea, and then implement it in the same email.”

True. I do like to implement good ideas as soon as I write about them.

But another thing I like to do is to take a really important idea, and sit on it for a while, and then implement it in future emails, and throughout my business.

This particular idea, about Psycho rules, is big enough and important enough to warrant more time and space than I want to take for a single email.

But keep an eye out, if you have an eye to spare, and maybe will see me pulling back the shower curtain some time soon, and with scary slasher music suddenly playing, startling my list with one of my new Pyscho rules.

Meanwhile, if you want my advice, insights, and guidance (no copywriting) when it comes to your existing email marketing funnels, you can contact me using the form below.

No arbitrary rules or hoops to jump through — yet.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Beware “spiritual” and “heart-centered” customers

by

Time for a personal revelation:

I went to college in Santa Cruz, California, a place filled with weed-smoking, patchouli-burning, beatific-smiling hippies. And I remember talking to my roommate at the time about the following paradox.

As a group, hippies claim to be all about peace, love, and understanding. But at an individual level, they tend to be some judgmental, closed-minded, and often nasty people.

Bah. Who knows. Maybe I was just projecting.

Anyways, I remembered this today because of something I heard Todd Herman say.

I’d never heard of Herman until today. Apparently he’s a big deal. He works with Olympic athletes and became a success in spite of his dyslexia. And now he runs successful online programs teaching you how to peakify your performance.

These are quality programs, says Herman, with low refund rates. But some people do refund, and Herman wanted to see if there are any patterns here.

So Herman tracked down the social profiles of the refunders. He wanted their Twitter and Facebook self-descriptions. He took these and dumped them all into a big file, and then put this into some software for creating a tag cloud.

And what came out? Who were the people who were buying and then returning these programs, which Herman says most everyone else is thrilled with?

Well, draw your own conclusions. But according to Todd Herman, two phrases kept cropping up in these social profile bios:

1. “Heart-centered”

and

2. “Spiritual”

This personally confirms my previous biases… but even so. If you sell anything online, it might be good for you to know, and might save you some frustration.

And now, here’s my (qualified) pitch to you:

I heard Todd Herman talk about this during his Steal Our Winners segment.

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that once a month, I plug Steal Our Winners. That’s because each month, Rich Schefren manages to get six or seven top-level marketers to share a tip or trick or even strategy that’s working really well for ’em right now.

In a normal month, I find at least three or four segments to be really interesting.

But not so this month. This month, I only found Todd Herman’s part interesting. Herman talked about a clever system he has for getting his customers to reveal their deep seated motivations, in their own words.

It might not sound like breakthrough stuff… but if you do do it, it will make your audience say, “Wow… it’s like you’re reading my mind. How did you do that?” And that’s good for sales… as well as your relationship with your audience.

So that’s my qualified pitch for Steal Our Winners. Most months, you get at least 3 or 4 good and genuinely new ideas. Some months though, you might only get one.

But however many good ideas you get, they won’t be worth anything unless you implement them. On the other hand, if you implement even one, it will certainly be worth much more than the low, low price of a Steal Our Winners subscription.

How low are we talking about? Actually, I don’t know. I signed up for a lifetime subscription a while ago, and the price may have gone up since.

But I do know you can try out Steal Our Winners for one month, and listen to Todd Herman’s interview if you like, for an unthinkable fee of $1 (yes, one dollar). In case you’re interested, here’s where to go:

https://www.bejakovic.com/sow​​