Copywriting

How to write emotional copy, with examples that made sales

by

Today I will recommend to you a book that I have not read and that I have no plans on reading.

Let me tell you why I am still recommending it to you.

The book in question is written by Denny Hatch. Just yesterday, it was re-released after a long time of not being available.

A bit of background:

I’ve known of Denny Hatch for a long time because he once put together a different book, called Million Dollar Mailings. That was a book with a cool proof element. It brought together a bunch of sales letters, each of which had made $1M+, along with the history and context of the mailing and the people behind it.

My kind of stuff. And worth the big price tag it sold for.

But that is NOT the book I am recommending to you today.

The book I am recommending to you today is one that a long-time reader of this newsletter, Jeffrey Thomas, decided to republish on behalf of Denny Hatch.

Jeffrey himself is not just some kook who likes to republish out-of-print books. He’s a direct response copywriter at MarketingProfs, a big education platform for B2B marketers. He’s also got a podcast on marketing, on which I appeared some years ago.

A few months ago, Jeffrey contacted me, full of enthusiasm, about resurrecting this great Denny Hatch book, called Emotional Hot-Button Copywriting. Would I want to read it?

The fact is, no. My own to-read list is already too long. I’m reluctant to take others’ recommendations even when backed by a lot of enthusiasm.

I asked Jeffrey why he thought this book was so important that it merited republishing. In his own good time, Jeffrey responded:

===

Hey John,

A few weeks ago you asked why I was interested in releasing Denny Hatch’s book (which will be officially released next Monday, Feb 16).

When I first started in copy, there were many people saying how important benefits are in the sales process. And they still say that, and they’re not wrong.

But a small group of direct response writers talked about emotions in copy. The Rule of One, for instance, occasionally includes the importance of a single driving emotion. But not everyone includes emotion in their description of the Rule of One, like it’s a secret or a shameful thing.

Personally, I’ve tried hard to not be too emotional in life. I already cry easily at movies, which I find ridiculous, and I worried that being emotional might convey the wrong message. One of weakness.

Slowly I realized that emotions are in fact why we choose to do most things, and that I’m a fool if I leave it out. But that doesn’t mean I need to cry. There are plenty of powerful emotions.

And since Hatch’s book was based on successful sales letters focused around emotions, what better way to learn how to apply this aspect than with swipes from highly successful copy.

I couldn’t find the book, so I asked Denny if I could help him republish it, for his benefit and my own and anyone else who wants to learn how emotions can be used to sell with success.

===

Denny Hatch’s republished book has a legit reason for existing (emotions ARE important in copywriting).

It also has legit proof behind it (again, a bunch of winning sales letters, which illustrate the concepts and techniques).

That’s why I’m recommending this book to you today, in case you need it.

The fact is, I needed this book myself, and I coulda gotten a lot of value out of it, 10 or so years ago, in the first 2-3 years of learning about copywriting.

At that point, I had learned the structure of sales copy. I understood how to provide proof and make a logical argument. I could handle objections.

But much of the time, something was missing, and I knew it. Some substance. The emotion.

I fixed that for myself over the years. I read a lot about copy and about psychology. I bought a bunch of courses and even went through some of them. I experimented, I observed myself and others, I dissected others’ copy and my own when it worked.

I took me, I don’t know, two, three, four, five years, but eventually I overcame my own deficits or reluctance around writing emotional copy, in those situations where it’s needed.

And that’s why I have no plans to read Denny Hatch’s republished book.

But if writing sales copy is still a mysterious topic to you, and in particular, if you’re awed or intimidated by the alchemy of getting people to feel something real, just by arranging the little black letters they see on a page or screen, then this book can be valuable for you, today.

This book is expensive.

$49.

That’s because it’s only available in a large, paperback edition, full of color and pictures and real sales letters.

If you’d like to get it, before it goes out of print again:

https://bejakovic.com/emotional

One is the loneliest number

by

It being Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and it being a fact that, in spite of looking everywhere, high and low, I still don’t have a sweetheart, a date, or anybody who could possibly serve as a Valentine, I have to admit the following truth:

One is the loneliest number.

No, come on. Get real.

I am an incorrigible bachelor, and whether by nature or by longstanding habit, I’ve found I almost never get lonely, even after months spent alone. (Although it does turn me quite weird, more so than usual.)

But still.

One is the loneliest number… of clients.

Yesterday, I teased a mystery A-list direct marketer and copywriter, who is helping a small and select group of copywriters profit from the crisis, confusion, and uncertainty in the market right now… by doing something that no copywriters are doing now, at least none that I know of.

I asked for a show of hands from those who are interested.

A good number of people replied.

I followed up for more info.

Some replied to my followup.

One curious thing stood out. Multiple people wrote they are working as copywriters… and they have precisely ONE client.

I remember from my days of being a freelance copywriter, it’s a stressful situation to be in, particularly if you don’t have a reliable way of getting more good clients.

I remember periods of time of not even looking for new clients, because the search seemed futile, and simply spending my days delivering the work I had, and either praying for a miracle or waiting for the axe to drop.

I’ve been thinking of kicking off a group with the mystery A-lister to help with this.

The idea being, this group would be a place where this A-lister would talk about how he gets clients by going to businesses no other copywriters or marketers are going after… and how he turns those clients into 5- and 6-figure paydays.

Is this group something you’d be interested in?

If so, tell me a bit about where you’re at right now with your copywriting biz, and what even has you interested in this.

If I feel there’s enough serious interest, as evidenced by people actually replying in meaningful ways, I’ll make this group a reality.

If not… no problem. I’ll just go and sulk, on my own.

 

Offer for copywriters

by

I’ve been talking to… a guy.

He’s a legit A-list direct marketer and copywriter.

He has made millions with his own businesses… he’s been hired by the biggest brands (like Agora) to help them start entire new ventures….. he counts legends in the DM world as close personal friends.

(Among these close personal friends is the #1 authority I have mentioned over and over and over in these emails.)

Back in 2021, at the height of the covid confusion, this A-list marketer and copywriter ran a small group program.

He personally worked with a select group of copywriters and helped them profit from the crisis, confusion, and uncertainty in the market then… by doing something different from what all other copywriters at the time were doing.

Now, 5 years later, with AI taking jobs (and copywriting gigs), and with the overall market wobbly and unsure outside the NVIDIA-OpenAI cross-investment bubble, he is doing it again.

He is putting together a small group of copywriters whom he will help to profit from the crisis, confusion, and uncertainty in the market right now… by doing something that no copywriters are doing now, at least none that I know of.

Is this something that interests you?

If so, hit reply and let me know.

It’s as easy as ABC

by

Maybe you’ve heard?

Google and Meta are now on trial for creating apps that are addicting to children.

No?

You haven’t heard?

Well I have heard. Or rather, yesterday I read an article about it.

I have little to say about the actual substance of this case, since I have neither children nor any apps, but I thought something else in the story was very interesting.

Trial lawyer Mark Lanier, who is representing the plaintiffs, was using all kinds of sticky messaging strategies. A few examples:

1. “They don’t only build apps; they build traps.”

2. “They didn’t want users, they wanted addicts.”

And my favorite…

3. “This case is as easy as ABC. Addicting the Brains of Children.” [Lanier also had some toy blocks to spell out ABC]

I looked up this Lanier guy.

Turns out he’s one of the biggest trial lawyers in the US. He’s represented plaintiffs against big corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Merck, and has been able to win ~$20 billion in damages for his clients.

And get this. In an asbestos damage trial, Lanier used the same ABC strategy as in the recent Meta and Google trial:

“This case is as easy as ABC. Asbestos, breathed in, causes cancer.”

My point for you today is as easy as ABC:

Aphorisms. Boost. Conversions.

(Particularly if you can get them to form an “ABC” acronym.)

If you’re interested in more ways to make your message sticky and persuasive, I have a book recommendation for you.

It’s a book I’ve read only once but that has been immensely sticky in my head, in part because the entire message of the book is summed but up in an easy-to-remember acronym (you’ll have to read it to find out).

I think this book is so important if you thrive or starve by how well you persuade people that I have repeatedly said I would include it in the first-semester required reading of my mythical AIDA School.

In case you’re interested in getting your hand on the ABC’s of effective messaging:

https://bejakovic.com/sticky

3 conclusions from my 1-day, 3-sale promo yesterday

by

Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s course 24 Hour FUN Auction, which is the course I followed to run a $31k auction in my own community Daily Email House.

My email yesterday succeeded in making… 3 sales of Travis’s $49 course.

As I always do, even following a 1-day, 3-sale blockbuster like this, this morning I sat down and wrote up my conclusions from this promo.

I’d like to share three of them with you:

#1. Run live tests

On the one hand, a number of people on my list wrote me to express interest in exactly the information in Travis’s course.

On the other hand, I had floated the idea of selling Travis’s course before in my community, and the results were feeble.

How would my entire list react if I ran a promo selling Travis’s course?

There’s only one way to tell, and that’s to put the offer in front of them.

I had all kinds of plans in case Travis’s course sold well:

– A community for running penny auctions

– Extra bonuses on top of the one I offered yesterday

– Valuable and intriguing additional offers to make to people who bought Travis’s $49 training

… but none of that matters much if the core offer, and the way it’s packaged up, is not something people want.

People’s stated interests, or even stated lack of interest, doesn’t matter much until the test is “live,” meaning people either put money down on the table or they refuse to do so.

I have learned this lesson in the past, and I applied it yesterday.

I didn’t spend any time developing other bonuses, or creating a new community, or writing up an upsell page with additional offers.

I treated yesterday’s email as a live test. The email was straightforward. There was no deadline. It was really just the core offer and a bonus I already had lying around, plus my best arguments why you should buy.

If that sold well, it would make sense to invest time in doing all the other stuff I had planned and to run a full promo. Otherwise, even bonuses and upsells wouldn’t have made this promo worthwhile.

#2. Make sure you get credited for affiliate sales

I made 3 sales yesterday. I got credited for 1 of them.

Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction is delivered within Travis’s Skool group. Two of the folks who bought yesterday were already members of that group. And even though they bought through my affiliate link, Skool doesn’t credit me for the purchase. Lesson learned.

#3. Don’t be satisfied with a mystery, or with your own best guesses

Yesterday, I watched from the front row as Maliha Mannan of The Side Bloger ran a 2-hour auction in her community of 60 people.

Results:

– The group grew from 60 people to 97 in a matter of hours

– Even though the group wasn’t massively engaged before, the auction post had 249 comments, and people at the end were commenting things like “that was so much fun”

– Maliha made $1,029 from the winning bidder, and will make untold millions and possibly billions more, from post-auction offers she can make to other people who expressed interest

All that’s to say… auctions work, and do all the stuff I promised in my email yesterday, stuff like:

– They make sales

– They identify high-intent leads

– They act as a price discovery mechanism (and the discovery is often shockingly high)

– They create engagement in communities

– They help communities grow

– People find them fun

– etc.

And yet, my promo yesterday of a $49 offer that shows you how to do this drew 3 sales.

Why?

I could shrug my shoulders, and chalk it up to the “mysteries of the mind.”

I could also make guesses about why people didn’t buy.

But better than either of those is to simply do some investigative journalism, and go out into the world and collect data.

So lemme ask you:

If you clicked through yesterday, but you didn’t buy Travis’s course, what was it that made you say no?

Or if you read though my email yesterday but decided to not even click through, what was the deciding factor?

Hit reply and let me know.

In turn I will reply to you with a bit of a thank-you gift.

I’ll tell you the #1 lesson I got from a quick and dirty marketing book I just finished reading. In a nutshell, I’ll tell you how one smart marketer solves the “top of funnel” problem for himself in a different way from most:

– How he converts bunches of hesitant, skeptical, or unaware prospects in 20 minutes or less (and no, sales copy ain’t got nothing to do with it)

– How he gets these prospects-turned-first-time-buyers to upsell themselves (all very natural, no pushing or persuading) so they turn into high-value, long-term customers

– How he gets them to eagerly refer him to others, so his marketing message spreads without him creating tons of content or spending a cent on ads

Are you curious? Then think about your own reaction to my email yesterday and the offer I made, and tell me what about it made you react the way you did. In turn, I’ll share with you the above marketing mystery.

Why I keep putting “coaching” in quotes

by

Yesterday, a long-time reader and customer wrote in, with confusion about my current offer to help you turn “coaching” into a simple $1k+ offer:

===

I guess I don’t know why “coaching” is in quotes. Is this to sell coaching? Part-time coaching? There is something I’m missing or don’t understand about the offer.

===

It takes a big man to admit he has been making a mistake in his emails for a week or more, and to apologize for failing his readers.

Fortunately, I am not a big man, so you don’t have to listen to me apologize or admit to anything.

Instead, I can tell you I’ve been reading a book about marketing (I know, what’s new).

Says the book, there’s gold in what your marketplace tells you, not directly when you ask, or in formal situations like when they decide to sit down and write you a testimonial. Instead, there’s gold in unguarded moments, in casual comments, in the tone in which they write in and ask questions or reply to your emails.

In short, you gotta read between the lines.

Looking at my reader’s comment above, my reading between the lines is of frustration.

My further reading (ok, guessing) is that this frustration is due to being both intrigued by my offer and being unable to make a yes or no decision on it.

And getting still further in between the lines, I’m fully guessing this inability to decide is because my reader cannot tell if this offer I’ve been talking about is intended for him or no.

Am I right in my reading between the lines?

I have no idea. But let me try to be explicit about who this offer is for and who it’s not for, and see the result.

If:

– You have tried offering coaching in the past, or are trying to offer it now, without much success, and

– You have a small but dedicated list of readers, meaning 500 or more folks who open your emails whenever you send one…

… then what I’m offering right now is for you. My offer is to help you repackage “coaching” into a simple 1k+ offer that actually sells, and to keep helping you until you’ve sold $10k of your new offer.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a list, or you never write them, or you have no interest in working with any of the folks on your list directly and 1-1, then I’ll be useless to you, at least in my current incarnation.

As for why “coaching” is in quotes… from that same book I’m reading:

===

Want to know what separates the experts who have people begging to buy from the ones who struggle to make sales?

It’s not their expertise.

It’s not their marketing.

It’s not even their solutions.

It’s knowing exactly how to package what they know into the perfect next step.

===

That’s why I keep putting “coaching” in quotes. Because “coaching” stands for a specific way to package up and publicly present what you know.

It’s not the only way.

If offering “coaching” hasn’t been working for you, I’m offering you a new way. A way to package up what you know into the perfect next step for people in your audience, one that you can realistically and congruently charge $1k+ for, and that the right people will readily say yes to.

If that’s something you are interested in, then hit reply, and write me some lines that I can read between.

How to write a really great hook

by

A hook, as you prolly know, is how you pull people into your marketing message. It’s the core sexy idea in the headline of your ad, or the lead of your sales letter, or the top half of your email.

A few famous hooks:

* “The lazy man’s way” (to riches, to comb your hair)

* “Do you make these mistakes” (in English, in your underpants)

* A picture of a dapper man with an eyepatch [to sell dress shirts, or a parrot]

So how do you write a really great hook?

I don’t know. I wish I did. Consider the following:

For the past few weeks, I’ve been talking, on and off, about creating a $1k+ offer that sells 3-5 times a month.

At some point, I created a 1-page overview of how I have already guided a few people to that outcome, and I started offering that to people on my list, if they reply to say they want it.

Here are the email hooks I’ve used, and the number of people who responded to ask for the 1-pager:

Jan 10. Hook: “Where to buy crack.” Responses: 26.

Jan 11. Hook: “Taking credit for your rock star clients’ results.” Responses: 14.

I then spent some time talking about the promise of a $1k+ offer, without directly offering the 1-pager. I eventually offered the 1-pager again and…

Jan 22. Hook: “You’re probably creating too many products.” Responses: 7.

7 replies for a free and short and valuable PDF? At this point, I figure I’ve pretty much tapped out demand. I still try one more time and…

Jan 23, yesterday. Hook: “Really great price on coaching.” Responses 39, including my own father, an economist, who wrote, “Dear John i really need this paper for the subject I teach on the prices. Kind regards”

In case you’re as bad with numbers as I am, my point is that the responses I got, while making the same offer to my list, day after day, with different hooks, went like this:

Big, small, tiny, BIGGEST.

That’s contrary to all intuition, but that’s the power of a really great hook.

And if I knew how to write one regularly, I would write one regularly.

But my best advice for how to write a really great hook is to write a bunch of hooks, to serve them up to your market, and to let the market surprise you by which ones they love and which ones they treat like blood pudding.

If you want my help coming up with hooks for your daily emails — some good, some meh, some AMAZING — I’ve got a service just for that. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The next step

by

A couple days ago, I heard a very smart marketer share a story from the trenches:

Back in the day, during the ClickBank wars, this marketer used to do webinars to promote offers from other offer owners.

The owner of one such offer told this marketer, “My upsells are sucking. Don’t be mad if you promote and nobody buys the upsells.”

The very smart marketer said, “We’ll fix that.”

He spent most of the webinar talking, not about the offer on sale, but about why folks need the upsells that will be available if they buy the front-end offer.

In a way, he flipped the script, or reversed the normal order of selling. He talked past the actual thing on sale, and focused entirely on the step after.

Result:

60% upsell take, and though it wasn’t mentioned when I heard the story, I imagine higher front-end conversions also.

In case you’re tempted to file this away in your mental folder of “interesting but useless factoids about webinar selling”:

This isn’t about just upsells, and it’s certainly not just about webinars.

As the very smart marketer put it:

“Any step that you know is coming, you want to presell or preframe that first.”

In entirely unrelated news, let me tell you about my own plans for the rest of this month.

This February, starting February 3, I will be going for a ride. I will also be taking a few folks along with me. You have the opportunity to come with.

The destination is a $1k+ offer, which you can sell 3-5 copies of per month, and which you can deliver in 5-6 hours total to start and then faster and faster each time you sell it.

You don’t need a lot in case you want to go for this ride with me.

I’ll provide the car (well, minivan), the route planning, the music, and maybe some snacks and drinks along the way.

What you will need:

A pair of sunglasses (to look cool), a small but dedicated audience, and knowledge or experience you can pass on to people.

(If you’ve previously thought of or tried selling “coaching” or “mentoring” to your audience, you are most likely ready to go, even if nobody took you up on your offer. We’ll fix that.)

For the rest of this month, I’ll be talking about this ride, and seeing who would like to come with me. I already have people who have expressed interest in various ways, and I will be starting with them.

Meanwhile, you might be interested in my Daily Email Habit service.

It makes it easier to email daily, which is key to being able to sell 3-5 copies of a $1k+ offer even with a small audience. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials

by

I’ll tell you in a a sec how to sell a $1k+ coaching offer without testimonials. But first lemme tell you a related and intriguing list-building tactic.

It comes courtesy of marketer Kevin Hood, who shared it inside my Daily Email House community a couple days ago. It goes like this:

1. Come up with a list of “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive buyer personas” who could potentially be interested in what you offer (Kevin used AI, but you can use… other methods also)

2. Come up with a list of “pain points, desires, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings” those people might have

3. Go on social media and write 100s of tweets or threads or stories or whatever and combine one item from list 1 and one item from list 2 in a statement that looks like:

“If you spent your 20s or 30s digging yourself into debt but deep down you desperately want to become financially free, I hope you find my page.”

Says Kevin:

===

Where most posts get 500-1000 views.

These get thousands.

No matter your follower count.

This is a real post from one of my clients who teaches Financial Independence and investing, and it got 189,000 views while generating 1,600 new followers for his account. And while we can’t be 100% precise on measuring email subscribers according to individual posts, the estimate is around 100 new email subscribers from this post alone.

===

I don’t know what Kevin client’s “my page” looks like. Maybe it has some testimonials. Maybe it has a unique mechanism for how he financially frees 20- and 30-somethings from debt. Maybe it features risk-reversal copy such as, “Sign up to my newsletter and if you don’t like my emails, you get to come to my house and kick me in the shin.”

Whatever. All those things are nice addons.

But the fact remains, specificity, and in particular double-specificity like Kevin is using, is a powerful way of drawing attention… creating interest and desire… and providing proof. Even if you have nothing else going on.

Now back to coaching programs.

Q: How do you sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials?

A: You rely on other forms of proof.

There’s many, beyond testimonials. In particular, there’s specificity. I’ll leave you with a riddle related to that:

If you’re looking to monetize your list with a $1k+ offer… if you tried offering “coaching” or “mentoring” to your list before but got zero takers… then how do you figure out what specific or double-specific segment of your audience to appeal to in order to actually make some sales?

I’ll give you a hint about my thinking.

My recommendation is not to do what Kevin did, and use AI to come up with a bunch of stuff that you throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

My recommendation is also not to use your own creativity and brainpower, to sit and introspect what specific segment you could appeal to.

If you eliminate both of those options… then what’s left as a means of determining which specific people you could help with your $1k+ coaching offer?

If you like, guess what I have in mind, write in and tell me so, and I’ll tell you quick whether you got it or no.

Free 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales

by

Here’s a 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales:

STEP 1. Sell an offer.

STEP 2. Offer people a bonus if they buy the offer now.

STEP 3. When people buy, send them an email with the promised bonuses. At the top of that email, paste in the following mystical, secret, wizard-like spell:

===

Thanks for taking me up on [the name of your offer].

I’m curious, what made you do it?

===

Yes, that’s it.

Yes, I can see your jaw drop and your eyes roll back in your head from mock amazement.

All I can say is, don’t knock it till you try it.

I’ve been doing this all week long with people who took me up on my recommendation for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As usual when I interact directly with people on my list, I’ve been blown away by how little I know, how pale my own imagination, and how rich and surprising it is to go out to my market and talk to them.

You want examples?

I’ve gotten a dozen responses so far, with varying answers to “What made you do it.” Three categories have been prevalent so far:

A. The opportunity of the beast

This being a biz-in-a-box offer, it’s inevitable that people would cite the opportunity of it. Ok, that’s not surprising. But still, it’s different and more insightful to hear it in people’s own words:

#1. “I still don’t plan on leaving my job which I like no matter how successful it is though I might stop working overtime and do this instead once it starts paying. In the meantime it’s not that much of a time commitment that I can’t do both.”

#2. “I like Travis [Sago]’s model of working other’s lists but this method looks equally profitable but might be more helpful in expanding my skills.”

B. A point of differentiation

I hadn’t thought of this one at all, and I didn’t talk about it in my emails. And yet, multiple people brought up the uniqueness of advertorials as opposed to other things copywriters can offer:

#1. “It’s also a point of differentiation since it seems that everyone who hasn’t firmly planted their flag in the email copywriting camp (i.e. most copywriters/marketers) has rebranded themselves as a creative strategist overnight (soon-to-be most copywriters/marketers).”

#2. “Clients who are willing to spend money on advertorials are more serious overall. Meta ads is the bright shiny object that everyone and their dog in law wants rn. But advertorials have been around way longer and sophisticated clients like them a lot.”

C. Because of me

1-Person Advertorial Agency is a great offer, I think its value is self-contained.

And yet, the fact that my readers know and trust me (and maybe even like me???) definitely helps sell the offer, and makes it more credible — even when I say I haven’t used this system myself:

#1. “Plus, as a previous buyer of yours, products you recommend carry more weight than other offers.”

#2. “The fact that you are promoting it. Especially your honesty in saying you have not been taken the course yourself.”

So there you go. Sell something. Then ask people why they bought, and you shall receive.

And now, an important announcement:

The opportunity to get 1-Person Advertorial Agency + the bonuses I am offering is ending tonight at 12 midnight PST.

Along with the core 1-Person Advertorial Agency offer (full details at the sales page below), I am offering the following bonuses:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

If you wanna get that, you will have to act today. But why not act now, while it’s on your mind? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency