Emails

The George Costanza school of formulaic but effective emails

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In the new course I just released, Simple Money Emails, I gave the example of an effective “George Costanza school” email I wrote five years ago.

That email used “The Opposite” storyline from Seinfeld. George realizes every decision he has ever made in life has been a mistake, and decides to start doing the opposite from now on. Good things follow.

I used this story to open an email for my old aromatherapy list (I used to be a low-grade aromatherapy influencer once). Sure enough, I sold some copies of my aromatherapy book via that George Constanza trope. And I’m not the only one…

… ​​and not in the aromatherapy niche only.

Yesterday, I got an email from a long-time customer and reader (not sure he wants me to share his name), who wrote me after getting SME to say:

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Hey John! Loving the course so far, and very interested in the “9 sins” offer.

One thing that made me laugh while reading it is that I used this same episode and story about George Constanza twice in different emails for different lists to sell some courses, successfully.

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I don’t know which lists and which courses he made sales to with this story. But the smaller point is clear. ​​If you ever need a formulaic but effective way to open your email:

Use “The Opposite” storyline from Seinfeld. It can fly in pretty much any market.

Bigger point:

It might seem obvious that you want to open your emails with stories that help you make the sale. But it’s not obvious at all, at least based on the 100+ emails I’ve been paid to critique and review over the past year.

All the time, I see people who open their sales emails with cute or interesting stories that go nowhere, or at least nowhere near the offer they are promoting.

And then these same people wonder why they’re not making any sales — the email marketing equivalent of being unemployed and living with your parents.

And on that note, I’m putting on a live training next Monday, 9 Deadly Email Sins.

The above is one of the 9 sins. The others are equally as simple, equally as widespread, and equally as deadly.

If you’d like find out what these sins are, so you can take a 180-degree turn away from them and towards a new, more successful episode in your life:

https://bejakovic.com/sme-classified-ty/​​

Magic vs. money in daily emails

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A couple days ago, I prompted my readers for input on a new course I’ll put out, Simple Money Emails, about writing simple emails that make sales. I even offered a reward for the most useful question.

I got lots of good replies. I also picked the winner of the contest, and I’ll announce who it is in a few days’ time.

Meanwhile, let me tell you something that you might not find interesting, or maybe you will:

Most of the questions I got I will be addressing in Simple Money Emails. But a few… I will not.

For example, I got a surprising number of people writing in and basically saying, “How can I do something creative, exciting, novel with my email copy?” A few quotes:

“I always struggle to come up with creative ideas for call to actions.”

“Sometimes I think the emails I write are almost all the same.”

“… it’s true that you can get stories from day to day, but I’m looking for something more magical than that.”

Creativity, self-expression, and novelty can happen as a result of writing a daily newsletter. But they are far from the primary or even secondary goals of Simple Money Emails.

The primary and the secondary goals of Simple Money Emails are 1) making a sale today and 2) doing so in a way that people will still read tomorrow.

If self-expression or magic happen as a result, it’s incidental. The good part is, the sales you make, and the chance to make more sales tomorrow, can soothe an occasional lack of magic.

And now, a confession:

This email that you are reading right now not what I would call a Simple Money Email. The reason is that the opening, what you read up to now, doesn’t do any kind of a job setting up the offer that’s about to come.

I told you the above story because I wanted to. Because it’s on my mind. Because I felt like writing it down.

The offer below has nothing to do with it, and in fact, it might contradict what I just said.

In spite of the poor job I’ve done selling the following offer, you might still want to get it. That’s because it’s frankly the best deal in the entire direct response marketing universe.

​​Here’s the deal:

1. Go buy Brian Kurtz’s book Overdeliver at https://bejakovic.com/overdeliver. It costs $12.69 on Kindle.

2. Then go to https://overdeliverbook.com/ and put in your Amazon order number from step 1 above.

3. You will then unlock a treasure trove of free bonus material, most of it not available anywhere else, at any price.

I once calculated that the stuff inside the Overdeliver bonuses adds up to $5,133.64 in value, based only on what the various items last sold for. But the real value is much greater than that, or at least has been to me, if you actually apply the ideas inside.

By the way, the first link above is an Amazon affiliate link. Not because I’m hoping to earn the $2.37 in commissions that this email is likely to make, but because I want a chance to track any sales that might come.

If you’re curious why, I will explain it in a couple days. But for now, if you don’t yet have it, I strongly recommend Brian’s Overdeliver above and the bonuses it comes with.

How you can influence my new course, and why you might want to

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Next week, I will release a small course on writing simple emails that make money.

The course will be small because my claim is that writing emails that make money is just a matter of two things: sitting down to write, and continuing until you finish.

“Ha ha,” you might say, “very funny, Bejako. You almost had me there but clearly you are a joker and a suspect one at that.”

Fair enough. But I really do believe that writing a simple email which gets people 1) reading, 2) buying, and 3) reading again tomorrow, is actually a matter of just two things:

1. Opening the email

2. Closing the email

And if you think I am once again pulling your leg, nose, or ear, let me refer you to no less of an authority than A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, who said the same thing about all sales messages. It’s all really just a matter of 1) opening the sale and 2) closing the sale.

This new course will be a paid course, but you will have a chance to get it for free for a limited time, by following some simple instructions I’ll send out next week.

Also, I would like to give you an opportunity to influence this course, and I’ll even give you an incentive to do so.

How you can influence it:

Write in and tell me what has you bothered when writing simple sales emails. What you would like to learn, and why you haven’t been able to learn it yet. You don’t have to write paragraphs, though you can if you want to. A sentence or two, or a specific question, will also work.

And here’s the incentive:

The most useful response, as chosen by a panel of one, all named Bejako, will get a free ticket to a paid training which I am planning to piggyback onto this simple emails course.

​​The tentative name for this paid training is 9 Deadly Email Sins, and it will be all about the 9 fundamental mistakes I keep seeing in the few dozen business owners, course creators, coaches, marketers, and copywriters whose emails I have consulted and coached over the past year.

I am actively working on this simple emails course, and I want to have it in a few more days.

​​So the deadline, if you want to give me your input, if you want to have it mean anything, and if you want to have a chance at a free ticket to that 9 Deadly Email Sins training, is tomorrow, Saturday, at 8:31pm CET.

Thousands of readers… 24 hours… 1 survivor. Thanks in advance.

10 lessons from the ClientRaker promo

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As I write this, it’s 12:36pm on Thursday July 20th, Central European Time, which means that it’s now some 16:36 hours after I finally stopped promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker.

Whenever I complete a promo, I like to force myself to look at the dead hulk, lying there on the ground, and ask myself what I see. Sometimes this triggers insights in my little head which I can use on future projects.

So here are 10 curious things I saw during the ClientRaker promotion. Maybe one of them will give you an insight you too can use on a future project:

1. Whenever I sent an email saying that others are buying, and showed proof of that, I made more sales.

2. Building Steve up, and specifically, diagnosing him as a “certifiable genius,” a slightly nonsensical term, also created a spike in sale.

3. I managed to screw up my affiliate links and as a result I could honestly write an email that said ClientRaker is so good I am promoting it without getting paid. From what I can tell, this one email drove more sales than any other. The lesson is clear. Make it clear in whatever way you can that the current promotion is not a cash grab, but first and foremost a benefit to the reader.

4. To date, ClientRaker has only Steve as a successful case study. I called this fact out. Based on the responses I got (I couldn’t tell by the sales), this turned a liability into an asset.

5. I converted about 1.5%-2% of my list. I don’t know the exact numbers because of the screwed up affiliate links for some of the sales.

The only numbers I have to compare to are from my Most Valuable Email launch, which did 4.7% of my list at the time. However, since my list grown since them and since ClientRaker sells for 4x what I sold MVE during its launch, I made more money with this promotion than with the MVE launch. I call that a solid win.

6. I sent out 12 emails over 6 days. My total unsubscribe rate, over the entire 6 days and 12 emails, was 0.4%. I am clearly not pushing my readers enough.

7. Multiple people wrote in to thank me for promoting this offer. Several did it after I wrote an email about my snafu with the affiliate links. And this morning, long-time reader Kasper Lal wrote in, after watching the first ClientRaker training. Kasper’s subject line read “I didn’t believe you…” and the email read:

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I have to admit, when you promoted Steve’s program I was a bit skeptical about that “revolutionary” way of using ChatGPT. Thought it would be just another batch of “expert prompts.”

Boy was I wrong…

Steve dropped so many paradigm changing bombs I’m still in awe.

Thanks for selling me on that chance!

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8. I found it much easier to wholeheartedly promote somebody else’s excellent training that I usually do when promoting my own trainings, which I also aim to make excellent. When I combine this with the sales made, the satisfied buyers writing in to thank me, the fact I don’t actually have to do any of the delivery, then I have to admit I would be happy to do an affiliate promo like this every week if I could. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find somebody like Steve Raju hidden away with a brilliant training that hardly has any previous exposure.

9. I got zero complaints about the emails I was sending, either about the volume or about topics, such as “‘Too many single moms'” in my Facebook DMs.” Again, makes me think I am not pushing my readers enough.

10. I did proactively kick one guy off my list. After the deadline had passed. For doing nothing more than asking me some questions. About ClientRaker. But that’s a story for another time.

For now, let’s get to my offer to you for today:

If you have bought ClientRaker and have gone through the first training, write in and tell me what you thought of it.

In exchange, I will send you the transcript of a call I did with steve, or a part of this call. I had Steve walk me through setting up LinkedIn profile — what actually to put on there, what’s important, what doesn’t matter.

I did this out of laziness, expecting Steve would tell me stuff I already knew. But as Kasper says above… boy was I wrong. Steve told me great stuff I did not know, had not thought about, and would not ever think about, including a tip for that most dreaded part of a LinkedIn profile, and that’s the photo.

Steve’s tips are yours if you want ’em, in exchange for you telling me what you thought of Steve’s first call. Simply hit reply and write away.

Open this email to take a little trip

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This morning, I had coffee at the little harbor in the old fishing village of Volosko, on the Croatian seaside, where my dad has an apartment.

The harbor in Volosko is very small, enough for a dozen small boats. It’s surrounded by colorful buildings with wooden shutters and blooming flowers on the window sills.

Today being Sunday, it was quiet, nobody much around, just the docked boats slapping against the sea. Somewhere a mast stay was clanging against the mast.

In the middle of the small harbor, there is a breakwater, which has been converted into a terrace for a nearby cafe. I was there this morning, with my dad and his wife, sitting in the shade, sipping an espresso and watching people walking their dogs.

I’ve been staying in Volosko for the past four days. I’ve largely had an unenjoyable time. I’m not joking.

I asked myself, how?

I realized it’s because I spent the four days at my computer, at home, mostly working. My dad and his wife have been doing the same — on their screens, maybe working, maybe just wasting time.

It’s been said, if you write sales emails, make them entertaining. Take people for a ride. Because people’s everyday lives are rather dull and limited. That’s not me being condescending. I myself am as guilty of living a dull and limited life as anybody, or maybe more so, since I sit in front of the computer so much.

So when you write sales emails, show people a scene. Take them for a ride, or a little trip. ​It will be good for your readers, and good for you too — because it will force you to look up from your own screen on occasion and see the rather rich world that surrounds you.

The last time I was in Volosko was a year ago. I traveled there for business — so I could write and send my Most Valuable Postcard #2.

If you want to see more of Volosko, and of Opatija, the bigger beachhead resort town that Volosko has merged into, you can find a bunch of photos of that inside my MVP2 below.

And besides the pictures, MVP2 also has a point — the essence of copywriting and marketing, as I see it, woven into a bunch of stories. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/

Keep taking your marketing cues from email Beyoncés

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Beyoncé rolled into town a week ago. Her first tour in eight years. People were desperate for tickets.

It’s customary for touring artists to have an opening act or two. Get people warmed up. Give people more for their money.

But Beyoncé had no opening act. Why should she? It’s Beyoncé. She hasn’t done a show in eight years.

Everybody who managed to get a ticket to see her and to witness the light show and the costume changes and Reneigh the flying silver horse got their money’s worth. And they were grateful to get a chance to be there, just to see Beyoncé, and to hear Beyoncé sing.

Yesterday, I invited people to send me their failing emails. The solid ones that didn’t make sales. The interesting ones that nobody cared about.

One thing I saw in a third of the emails is people taking cues from the Beyoncés of the email marketing world. The equivalent of, “Beyoncé doesn’t have an opening act. So why should I?”

No reason. If your emails are getting the results you want, then keep doing what you’re doing.

But if not, it might be time to stop taking your cues from email Beyoncés, to look at the fundamentals of your copy, and to see if you’re missing anything there.

I responded to everyone who wrote me with what I thought was the biggest mistake in their emails, and I told them how I would fix it.

I will put on a training based on this, about the most common email copy mistakes I see, in my coaching students, in consulting clients, and in copywriters and business owners who have bought my courses and trainings.

Meanwhile, my offer from yesterday still stands:

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.

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.

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/

Pretentious prick introduces himself

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Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. I was born in Croatia, but I grew up in the US. Since 2015, I’ve been working as a direct response copywriter for a bunch of clients, including many 7- and 8-figure businesses.

These days I mostly work on growing my own newsletter in the health space. I also write these daily emails about copywriting, marketing, and influence. Sometimes, I consult and coach people on things I know about, such as email marketing and copywriting.

And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this…

A few days ago, I signed up to a copywriter’s newsletter. The guy’s name is Louis Grenier. I’m not sure how I found him or how I opted in to his list. He sends daily emails, much like this one you’re reading. Except day after day, this guy starts off his emails with “Bonjour bonjour.”

“What a pretentious prick,” I thought to myself.

Yesterday, Louis sent out an email with the subject line, “A cheatcode for non-native speakers.”

“This oughta be good,” I said to myself, and I opened it.

I skimmed the email. Something about how Louis started a podcast, about how he felt insecure at first because of his American accent when speaking French, but how he realized it was actually a competitive advantage.

Huh? There was a kind of fog in my head. Why is this American guy hosting a podcast in French? And what kind of competitive advantage does an American accent in French possibly give you?

I reread the email from the beginning, a little more carefully now.

It only then started to dawn on me that Louis Grenier, though he writes perfectly in English, and though he has a name that could certainly belong to an American, is actually French. “Bonjour bonjour” isn’t the move of a pretentious prick. Rather, it’s a bit of cute personal positioning.

Point being, you have to constantly repeat yourself.

People aren’t paying 100% attention. You’re not the only one in their inbox. They skim. They forget. Plus new people get on your list, and maybe they missed the fact you’re French or Croatian or Pomeranian or whatever.

So you gotta repeat yourself, the core stuff, simply and clearly, over and over. You need to constantly remind people. And you need to constantly introduce yourself to people who just found you.

And now let me repeat the core message of my emails, at least the tail end:

There is something you can do each day to become better as a marketer or copywriter, which I call the Most Valuable Email trick.

I applied this Most Valuable Email trick once at the end of January, and I got a completely unnecessary and unexpected windfall of about $2,900 in sales, with zero work.

I applied it another time and started a buying frenzy even though I had nothing to sell.

I applied it a third time, and got a nice email in response from Joe Schriefer, the former copy chief at Agora Financial.

But even if none of those external valuable things happen, the Most Valuable Email trick is still most valuable, because it makes me a tiny bit better each time I apply it.

And it can do the same for you. If you’d like to start applying this trick today, here’s where you can discover it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Value is not how-to

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Yesterday’s email, about a strange scientific experiment on kittens, provoked some response.

​​One reader said I should have included a trigger warning. (“Deeply disturbing content. Cruel. CRUEL.”)

Another reader said we “look at Nazi scientists and cringe as we click our tongues” but we allow our own scientists all sorts of license.

A third reader wrote to say he loved the line, “The scientists are wearing white lab coats. The kitten is not.” He thought the line was priceless.

I highlight these responses because they focus on exactly the two things that got me about the strange kitten experiment.

​​The research was bizarre and cruel. At the same time, the image of two laboratory scientists in white lab coats, working hard to startle a kitten into blinking, was ridiculous and made me smile.

There was a point to my email yesterday. If you read the email, do you remember the point?

If you don’t remember, no problem. The point was not the value of the email.

In general, value in an email is not the how-to. Value in an email is the emotional spike it creates.

I could tell you how to create emotional spikes in your emails, but really, what would be the value in that?

Instead, I’ll just tell you that you can create emotional spikes even without talking about cruelty to kittens, without creating outrage, and without trying to be funny. In fact I’ve created a course all about the how-to of “intellectual” emotional spikes. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/