Emails

It took me 40 minutes of fruitless research to write this email

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A few days ago, I got a frustrated question from reader Ron Abrahams:

===

I have been writing emails, twice a week, for seven months.

I keep a file that contains a chart of titles, date sent, and brief summaries, and a file of all the content I have written. A friend told me that at some point it will make sense to write a book based on my emails.

A month ago, just as I finished one I thought something sounded familiar. I went back to my chart and sure enough, I had already written that five months earlier. Some emails are a different angle on a perspective, this one was almost the same. This one I could not use. Besides, the first one was much better.

Is there anything I can do to avoid this again? I mean, you write every day. How do you do it?

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First off, good on Ron for writing regularly for seven months. ​And in answer to Ron’s question,

​​I don’t do anything to avoid writing about the same idea twice. Because it’s not a problem. Quite the contrary.

As I’ve written in an email before, the problem is if you have a good idea and you don’t repeat it enough.

But maybe, like Ron above, you still feel that accidentally repeating yourself is a problem.

Maybe you even feel frustrated or embarrassed that you’ve done it in the past, maybe recently.

In that case, I would like to tell you that’s also not a problem. Rather it’s an opportunity, for a new email.

Somebody somewhere once said, nothing bad ever happens to you if you write a daily email. Meaning, every fumble you make, every annoyance that happens to you becomes a new topic for an email. And people actually appreciate it.

A couple days ago, I wrote about being annoyed by a reader repeatedly replying to my emails with, “write more about advertorials more on.” That email about being annoyed drew more nice replies from readers than I’ve gotten in months.

But nice replies aren’t money. So let me tell you about money.

I read once that Larry David, back when he was the show runner for Seinfeld, would fly out a new batch of NYC-based writers to LA at the start of each season.

David would squeeze these writers for for their frustrating and embarrassing stories of NYC life. By the end of the season, when the writers and their stories were all used up, David would fire them and ship them back to New York. He would then hire a new batch of NYC writers, with new stories of frustration and embarrassment.

Larry David is slated to make $1.7 billion thanks to his Seinfeld syndication rights. That’s a lot of money, because stories of frustration and embarrassment resonate widely.

But let me wrap this email up. It’s taken me an ungodly amount of time to write, and I’m worn out.

That’s because I spent 40 minutes earlier this morning fruitlessly searching for the article where I read that thing about Larry David. I searched for the article because I wanted to get the facts just right, and maybe even share the quote with you.

But I couldn’t remember where I’d read the article, and no amount of googling or scanning the New Yorker website would help.

To make things worse, I have a cold, so I kept sneezing and running to bathroom to blow my nose.

Each time, I came back to the computer to continue my fruitless Larry David search for a few minutes before the sneezing kicked in again. And nothing.

In the end simply had to tell you what I remembered of it out of my head. Oh well. At least it formed a bit of content for the email.

In entirely unrelated news, there’s my Most Valuable Email training..

If you enjoyed today’s email and found it valuable for your email writing, then there’s a pretty, pretty, pretty good chance you will like Most Valuable Email too.

For that, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Are your emails too long? A litmus test

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A tale of two long emails:

A few days ago, I recorded a breakdown of a Ben Settle email that got me to subscribe to Ben’s $97/month Email Players newsletter.

That email is long, very long, almost 1,700 words.

I use that email as a reminder to myself whenever I worry my own emails are getting too long. The fact is, if you have the right message-to-prospect fit, you get your reader in a hypnotic trance, and length becomes an asset, not a liability.

Then this morning, I did a copy critique of an email that’s also long, and clocks in at almost 1,100 words.

This second email is interesting and insightful. It makes a bunch of convincing sales arguments. At the end of it, I want to actually take up the offer the email is making.

And yet, part of my critique was that this email is probably too long. Even though it’s interesting. Even though all its parts are necessary. Even though it is actually shorter than Ben Settle’s email.

​​Still, this second email just feels too long.

Why? What’s the difference?

It’s not the writing, the formatting, or even the design.

The difference is that Ben Settle wrote his very long email for his own list and his own business.

On the other hand, the quite long email I critiqued this morning was from a freelance copywriter, working for a client.

​​That’s the real litmus test for whether your emails are too long. If you like, I will explain.

The reality is you have two sales to make as a freelance copywriter. One is to your client’s market or audience — the sale you probably think you’re getting paid for.

But you have another sale to make. And that’s to the client himself.

If the client doesn’t like your copy, he will nag you to change it. Or he will neuter it himself. Or he just won’t run it.

But wait, it gets worse.

You might count on your powers of persuasion to make your client see the light. To convince him to try out your long email as-is, without changing a word.

And you might succeed. But there’s a good chance that your long email will get less response, not more, compared to a shorter email.

For example, the email I critiqued is trying to get people to sign up to a free webinar. There’s a fair chance that a much shorter email, which just hypes up the urgency and scarcity and repeats the phrase “hot new opportunity” a few dozen times will actually pull more webinar signups.

So why would you ever want to send longer emails, with three pages of story and argument and proof?

Well, I told you already. Because those are the emails that select the right people. That get those people not just to click or opt in, but to buy from you. That get those people not just to buy from you, once and at $37, but to spend thousands of dollars with you over a period of years. The way that Ben Settle email did with me.

Unless you have a very, very sophisticated client, those are not things that your email copy will ever be judged on.

Instead, you’re much more likely to be judged on the client’s gut feeling or some shortsighted metric. “I don’t know, it’s kind of long, isn’t it? The other email we tried is much shorter. And it got more clicks to the optin page.”

I’m telling you all this because today is the last day I’ll be promoting my coaching program for a while.

Over the past seven days promoting this coaching program, I realized there are two categories of people who make a good fit:

1. People with their own quality list and their own quality offers, whether products or services

2. Copywriters who have near total control of a client’s email list, and who also have some sort of rev-share deal on the money coming in from that list

If you fit either of those categories, and if you want my help and guidance in making more money from the lists under your command, then as a first step, get on my email list. After that, we can talk in more detail.

And if you’re a freelance copywriter, but you don’t fit either category above, then my advice is to work towards getting into one or the other or both of those categories.

And not only because it would make you a good candidate for my coaching program.

But also, because those two categories are the only place where you will be truly be judged on your results and your copywriting abilities, rather than on how well you can divine and cater to your client’s whims.

Plus, the two categories above are where the real money is. Or where there’s the potential for real money. At least in my experience — and I’ve been in both categories.

My frustrating personal experience reading a well-known marketer’s email a few days ago

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A few days ago, a well-known marketer sent out one of his daily emails. I don’t to make it sound like I’m trying to make my name by repeatedly picking on people with bigger audiences than me, so let me just use an impenetrable alias for this guy. We can call him Gavin Juff.

So Gavin sent out an email a few days ago. The subject line read something like, “The one thing all successful copywriters have in common.”

But then, Gavin opened the body copy of his email with a long and I assume interesting personal story.

I say I assume it was interesting, because I just scrolled through it, looking for that “one thing” payoff.

And you know what? The payoff was, in effect, “We all make mistakes, and it’s okay.”

I rolled my eyes at this.

The fact is, Gavin was actually sharing a worthwhile point. The fact is, he put in a good amount of effort to illustrate his point with an (I assume) interesting personal story. And the fact is, it took me all of three seconds to open his email, scroll to the end, and feel he had wasted my time.

So there you go. That’s my personal story of a frustrating recent experience. I’m not sure what valuable point you can take away from that. Perhaps it’s something like:

“Excessive use of proven direct response techniques in personal daily emails can be more of a liability than an asset.”

Or maybe it’s something like:

“Make sure the transitions between your copy sections (including from subject line to body copy) are congruent and adequately prepared.”

Or maybe it’s just something like:

“The number one problem with daily email copy is a preachy, old-hat takeaway. But if you have to make such a takeaway because it’s actually true and important (like in Gavin’s case above), then sell something else in your subject line. Such as, for example, yourself and your frustrating personal experience.”

Anyways, I realize I haven’t done much to educate you in this post. I will try to do better in the future.

In case you would like to get my daily emails, and witness me trying to educate you more on the fundamentals of email copywriting and persuasion and influence more broadly, click here and follow the instructions.

Breaking News: I have an email surplus

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Yesterday, I was sitting on the couch trying to work.

The girl who was sitting next to me had her phone out. Suddenly, it started blaring with an English woman’s voice:

“I came into office at a time of great economic and international…”

I waited for a second, hoping that the noise would die down. The phone continued to blare:

“… instability. Families and businesses were worried about how to pay their…”

I frowned, both at the level of noise and the level of fluff. “What is this?” I asked the girl.

“It’s breaking news,” she said. “The UK’s Prime Minster just resigned.”

“Who cares?” I asked, hoping she would get the hint and turn the noise down.

“It’s breaking news!” she repeated.

I’m telling you this not to highlight how little I care for breaking news, though that’s certainly true.

I’m telling it to you to set up the fact that yesterday, when the UK’s Prime Minister resigned, was Thursday October 20.

Today, as I write this email, is Friday October 21.

And tomorrow, when this email will actually be sent out so you can read it, will be Saturday October 22.

In other words, I am a day ahead in my emails. I have an extra email written and scheduled — for the first time in something like 18 months.

The last time this happened was during my trip to Colombia in January 2021.

​​I was traveling with friends, and I was unsure that I’d have time each day to sit down and write a new email. So when I did find time to sit down, I’d write several emails at a time. By the end of that trip, I ended up with a surplus of a few days’ worth of emails.

The same thing happened this time.

​​I was traveling to London with a friend this past weekend. ​​Again, I was unsure when I might have time to sit down and write. Again, as a result of this, I wound up with an email surplus.

Which brings me to the paradoxical mathematics of email copywriting:

I find it’s often easier to write two, three, or 10 emails than to write one.

I can think of a few diff reasons why this is:

* More time spent on research…

* Less time spent on fiddling…

* And an overall tighter, clearer, faster structure for the emails in a batch of 10 than for a lone, lonely, and possibly bloated single email.

So my takeaway for you is, if you’re having a hard time writing a single email, set yourself the goal to write 10. Paradoxically, you might have an easier time of it.

And now, here’s some real breaking news:

Next week, I will be releasing my amazing Copy Riddles program for all the world to marvel at. I’m planning to throw a big and loud launch party in this newsletter, starting next Thursday and ending next Sunday. Maybe it will be a costume party, and if it is, I’ll dress up as Po the Kung Fu panda.

In case you’d like to be invited to that party, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter. Click here for the application.

A budding email copywriter makes me an offer I can refuse, and in 10 different ways

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A couple months ago, I got the following unattractive proposition in my inbox (edited down for length):

I’m into email Copywriting(been studying it for a good year now) and would love to get my foot in the door as soon as possible.

I want to make you an offer that would

1. Benefit you(hopefully)

2. Benefit me(most definitely)

So here it is

Would you be open to me writting you a bunch of subject lines daily and also writing copy for you whenever you want?

This would make great practice for me and save you a lot of time coming up with subject lines

I should mention I studied the infotainment aspect of email Copywriting so my subject lines and copy are all entertaining and educational mixed in one awesome bundle

Would really love to hear your feedback on this

My feedback, the short version, was no.

My longer, more detailed feedback is no, repeated over and over, in many different languages, with many different supporting reasons.

In fact, for my own benefit, I sat down and wrote down 10 impregnable reasons why I would never accept this offer.

Some of the reasons you can probably guess:

Like the total impracticality of it. How would this guy possibly write my subject lines? It’s an integral part of the email copy. Would we get on a Zoom call each day where we would hash it out? Would we get on another Zoom call on the rare (but certainly possible) days when I found that all his subject lines were trash?

So that’s one easy reason. Another, more complex reason, is:

The fact that most of the value in an email is the personal voice. Even in newsletters like mine, where I make almost zero effort at having a unique voice, and where I instead work hard to dig up something new to say to you each day. Even so, the personal element is still the most important part. And like Dan Kennedy says, why would you outsource the most important part of your business?

So that’s reason two. But here’s a third and really most important reason:

There is value to me in writing these daily email besides just getting them out. I learn stuff. I become a more valuable marketer and copywriter. I get exposed to interesting new ideas and approaches and techniques, because I write about them for you. Writing these emails is an investment in the future.

Which is why I called my recent course the Most Valuable Email. What makes it so valuable is not the nice external things it brings. It’s not the list growth, the endorsements, the perceived authority, the free stuff, or the cool job offers I’ve gotten as a result of using the trick I describe inside this course.

Instead, it’s that that each time that I write any of my daily emails, and specifically, each time I use this MVE trick, it makes me more valuable.

So to any budding email copywriter out there, looking to practice or to get their foot in the door, my advice is:

Start your own email newsletter. Keep it up for a few months. And there you go. An opportunity to practice. And your foot will be jammed tightly in between the door and the wall.

And if by some strange magic you want to find out more about my Most Valuable Email trick, you can do that at the sales page below.

The sales page is still criminally short. And yet many people bought through it. That’s because I write my own daily emails, and people read those, and so they trust me.

If you want to do something similar:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

What we can all learn from princes William and Harry

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A few hours after I write this, the Queen’s coffin will be placed on a gun carriage and will lead a procession down a packed Mall, along Whitehall and then into Parliament Square before entering the Palace of Westminster.

Walking in the procession behind the Queen will be her son, the new king, Charles III.

But perhaps more remarkable, Charles’s two sons, William and Harry, will also be walking in the procession.

That’s remarkable because for the two princes, this act will bring back painful memories of when they, aged 15 and 12, walked behind the coffin of their mother Princess Diana in 1997.

What makes this act still more remarkable is that princes Harry and William are embroiled in a bitter personal feud with each other. (I don’t know the details of the feud, and the Daily Mail article I just read didn’t elaborate. So I guess I never will know.)

Whatever the case may be, I think this all just highlight the importance of unity.

Unity of family… unity in moments of crisis… unity when different, individual, tiny elements come together to form a bigger and more powerful whole.

Because after all, isn’t unity really the essence we all strive for, in life in general, and in email marketing in particular?

In particular, I have just read about the first ever email marketer, a man named Mr. Pease.

Mr. Pease sold a product called “Pease’s Horehound Candy,” a kind of cough drop. And since he lived in the first half of the 19th century, he clearly didn’t use email, not the way we know it today.

But Mr. Pease’s remarkable marketing was the essence of what email is about. It would work today as well as it did in early America.

So what did Mr. Pease do to advertise his cough drops? ​​From chapter 8 of P.T. Barnum’s book, Humbugs of the World:

Mr. Pease’s plan was to seize upon the most prominent topic of interest and general conversation, and discourse eloquently upon that topic in fifty to a hundred lines of a newspaper-column, then glide off gradually into a panegyric of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.” The consequence was, every reader was misled by the caption and commencement of his article, and thousands of persons had “Pease’s Horehound Candy” in their mouths long before they had seen it! In fact, it was next to impossible to take up a newspaper and attempt to read the legitimate news of the day without stumbling upon a package of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.”

Mr. Pease got very rich selling his horehound candy with his humbug news item advertisements.

And that’s what I hope will happen for you as well, if you only follow his very smart, very durable, very unified marketing approach.

The good news is, in many ways you have it easier than Pease did. For example, Pease had to pay for advertising space each time he wanted to get his message out. But email today is pretty much free.

Of course, Pease did have some advantages that you today do not have.

Such as, for example, a ready-made and large audience of newspaper readers.

Or the fact that those newspaper readers read their newspaper with a curious and trusting mind, rather than with skepticism and disinterest.

Or the fact that those readers didn’t have Twitter, where they could start campaigns to mock or even shut down Pease’s company because of its misleading advertising.

But fear not!

Because there are simple, quick, and quite specific methods to overcome those problems in your email marketing today.

And if you have a business, and more specifically an email list, and you would like to make like Mr. Pease and market your way to great wealth, then may I advise you take a look at the fine offer below.

What, you want me to tie this offer into the topic of unity, or to princess William and Harry?

Not today. That’s not what I learned from Mr. Pease.

But if you do want potentially business-changing guidance with your email marketing, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Ben Settle or Daniel Throssell? My #1 recommended resource to learn email copywriting

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In my email yesterday, I wrote that I’m traveling for a few days and that my subconscious let me down.

That’s because I wanted to write a quick and easy email. But even though I channeled my inner Gary Bencivenga and summoned the giant within to help me out with my copywriting duties, I got nothing.

​​Absolutely nothing…

​​Or so it seemed.

In reality, maybe the giant within did do some work on my behalf.

Because there was something about the email I did end up writing yesterday.

For some reason that’s not clear to me, it provoked a bunch of earnest, curious, and even strange responses from people on my list. These responses will provide me with good email fodder for the next few days and maybe beyond.

​​To start with, here’s a question I got from a reader named Paul:

I am a relatively new copywriter but one thing that fascinates me is email copywriting. People like you, Ben Settle and Daniel Throssell make their email interesting to read, persuasive, even addicting.

If you could recommend some/one resource for learning email copywriting, which would you recommend? (besides your 10 commandments book, which I already bought and read, btw it’s a really great book)!

Well, if you have $100, you can give it to either Ben Settle (for his Email Players Skhema that comes with his Email Players monthly subscription) or to Daniel Throssell (for his Email Copywriting Compendium).

​​I have both, and I cheerfully endorse both.

Also, some time soon, I will re-release my Most Valuable Email training in a formal, course-like format. That will also sell for $100.

​​I’m biased to the tactic I discuss in that training, because it’s been responsible for many good results for me personally. So maybe you can just wait a bit and give me your $100 when the Most Valuable Email is available again.

Of course, there’s also an entirely different route if you want to spend you $100 in the best way.

Most people won’t want to hear this. But if you want to learn email marketing, I mean really learn it, then the best resource I can recommend is…

Active Campaign. Or MailChimp. Or Constant Contact. Or whatever.

The email software you use isn’t important.

What is important is that you start your own list.

Do it today.

And then later today, write a short email and send it to your list, even if you’ve got zero subscribers.

​​In that email, give a little occasion of what happened to you earlier in the day — “this Bejako character suggested I start my own newsletter.” Then tie it up with something you learned about email marketing by reading the newsletters of people who are a few years ahead of you.

Such as, for example, the fact that there’s a lot of value in free daily email newsletters, if you will only read carefully and then apply the advice.

So write that email today.

And then tomorrow, do it all over again, with a new occasion, and a new bit of something you learned.

Keep this up for a week. Then 30 days. Then for 90 days.

By that time, I bet you will be well on your way to making your own emails interesting, persuasive, and even addicting.

All right, so much for the free but valuable advice that almost nobody will take.

Again, if you’ve got a $100 burning a hole in your pocket, you can buy solid courses from both Ben, Daniel, and eventually from me.

But $100 will also get you 11 months of the lowest plan of Active Campaign. That’s the software I personally use. It’s fine, and I’m fine endorsing it to you.

If by some small chance you want to take my advice and want to get started now, you can use my affiliate link for Active Campaign below.

And if you do sign up for Active Campaign using my affiliate link, send me an email and let me know.

Once you set up your optin form, I’ll get on your list.

I don’t promise to read your emails all the time. I certainly don’t promise to give you feedback or coaching or public endorsements.

But I do promise to stay subscribed for at least 90 days. And maybe knowing that at least one person is on your list will be enough accountability to allow you to go from being fascinated by email copywriting… to being fascinating.

In case you are ready to get going:

https://bejakovic.com/activecampaign

The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way

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Yesterday evening, I got an odd email from a reader. The subject line read:

“About your email subject lines”

There was nothing in the body of the email. There was just an attached file, “7 Tested and Proven Email Subject Lines that Get Your Emails Opened.” Among them:

1. How to survive _____
2. The biggest mistake _____ make
3. The fastest way to ______

I have this Chateau Heartiste policy of keeping my replies to readers no longer than what the reader wrote me. And since this reader didn’t even include a hello, I couldn’t, according to my policy, reply to ask him why he was sending me this guide to subject lines.

Was he displeased with my subject lines in general?

​​Was he impressed with my subject line yesterday? ​​Did he think it fit one of these molds in some way?

​​I guess I’ll never know.

But since this reader did send me tested and proven subject line ideas, I squeezed a bunch of them into my subject line today.

After all, why not? I don’t think it will make a molehill of difference. Here’s a story on that matter:

Last year, I wrote an email with the subject line, “More real than real.” That email was about some slightly esoteric stuff. I purposefully didn’t want a DR-style subject line for it, one that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

A bunch of people wrote in response to that email to tell me how much they liked the story and the lesson I was sharing.

I also got a response from a smart and successful marketer. He warned me that he almost missed my email, which he thought was valuable once he read it, because my subject line didn’t catch his eye at all. He even rewrote my subject line to show me how it’s done.

And then, the next week, he wrote in with a similar message, again pointing out that my subject line is suboptimal and that he almost missed another valuable email from me. As far as I can tell, he continues to read my emails to this day.

I am not pointing fingers or making fun of anybody.​ I’m just pointing a finger at something obvious:

A lot of standard copywriting wisdom, which was extracted from cold-traffic tests, isn’t particularly relevant to warm daily emails, which people mainly open because they’ve learned that you have something fun or interesting to say. In warm emails, the “headline” is really your name, and not your subject line.

Maybe you say I can be cavalier about this, because I still don’t sell regularly in this email newsletter, and I certainly don’t A/B test my subject lines here.

Fine.

But I have been in situations where I was actively selling in email, and where I was actively testing. I’ve managed two 70,000-person email lists, which were made up of buyers, and which produced millions of dollars of sales, thanks to emails I wrote. And yes, thanks to subject lines I wrote.

And you know what?

I once ran a little test to find out how our email open rates influenced our sales.

​​Result?

Experts were shocked. Literally. I mean, I, an email marketing expert, was shocked.

And that’s why I want to warn you about the biggest mistake that email marketers make when it comes to subject lines. And that’s to follow “Tested and proven subject lines that get your emails OPENED.” If you want to read the real secret of why this is a big problem, here’s the fastest way to do that:

https://bejakovic.com/why-ecommerce-list-owners-should-beware-high-open-rates/

About my semi-confessional love note to the wrong girl (and my lifelong history of sending such notes to the wrong people)

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When I was in 10th grade, I had a light-to-moderate crush on this girl in my English class, Sarah K.

One day, while we were in class, I wrote Sarah some kind of a note. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote. It was not a full-on confession of love. More like a semi-confession, veiled in some kind of inside joke.

The class was seated in an L-shaped arrangement of desks. Sarah’s desk was in front of and perpendicular to mine.

I folded up the note.

I waited for the opportune moment.
​​
And I tossed the note from where I sat to Sarah’s desk.

But Sarah didn’t notice. She was busy writing something. In fact, everyone was busy writing something. Well, except me.

“Psst, Sarah!” I tried to get her attention.

But in my characteristically careless way, I forgot that Sarah K. shared the desk with Sara L.

Sara L. looked up from her writing. She saw my hopeful-then-terrified face. And then she spotted the note on the desk.

Sara L. picked up the note. Unfolded it. Tried to parse the meaning of whatever I had written for Sarah K.

Sara L. then frowned, shook her head a little, and gave me a disapproving look. It said, “You are SO weird.” She crumpled up the note and threw it over her shoulder.

Well, that was a long time ago. It doesn’t sting much any more.

​​But really, how little things change.

Yesterday, you may have been surprised to get an email from me with the subject line “Death of a postcard.”

I meant to send that email just to the 20 people who are the first subscribers to my Most Valuable Postcard.

But instead, I ended up sending the email to my entire list. Years of daily ritual clicking is a hard habit to break.

I realized my mistake only a few moments after I sent out the email.

I literally groaned. Because here’s something you might or might not know about me:

In spite of the frequent typos, missing articles, and ungrammatical sentences in my emails (a consequence of how I write, a topic for another time), I actually hate making mistakes.

The memory of even a tiny mistake can keep me up at night, or startle me awake in the morning.

And sending out a semi-confessional note to a mass of people who were not supposed to get it — well, that’s a less tiny mistake than just a typo.

Like I said, I groaned.

And then, in the very next moment, I took a deep breath.

I reached into my mental library. I pulled out my copy of Daniel Throssell’s Email Copywriting Compendium. ​​And I flipped the mental pages until I got to rule #101.

“Aha,” I said, “here we go. Here’s the fix for this mess.”

I won’t tell you what Daniel’s rule #101 is. If you’ve bought the Email Copywriting Compendium already, you can reach for it now in your mental bookshelf, or at least pull it up on your computer, and look up rule #101 yourself.

And if you haven’t bought the Email Copywriting Compendium yet, well…

Daniel certainly doesn’t need my help in selling it. And since so many people on my list are also on Daniel’s list, I’m not sure what help I can give.

Still, I have been in a giving mood lately. And I have been sharing resources that I personally find valuable. So I will link to Daniel’s Compendium below.

If you write daily emails, I encourage you to get it and read it. Maybe even twice. That’s how many times I’ve read it so far, and I might read it again.

And in case you’re wondering:

This is not an affiliate link. It’s also not part of any kind of JV, cross-promo, list-swap deal with Daniel.

I’m just linking to Daniel’s Compendium because a) you might get value out of it and b) in gratitude over that rule #101. Plus a few other of Daniel’s rules, which I’ve peppered into this email.

​​Maybe you can spot these rules in action. If not, here’s where to go:

https://persuasivepage.com/compendium/

Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?

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Last night, I sent out an email vaguely threatening you with a bunch of upcoming emails to promote my Copy Riddles program, which is now open for enrollment until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

After I sent that email out, I slumped in my chair and hung my head.

“Great, now what?” I said. “Where am I gonna get all those emails? Who’s gonna write all that stuff I threatened them with?”

Beyond the one half-finished Copy Riddles email I had written during my Most Valuable Email presentation, I had nothing.

But then a desperate idea hit me. “I have that useless diploma from the Oregon School of Manifestation… why don’t I apply what they taught me?”

So I closed my eyes, put my fingers to my temples, and started to massage slowly, while sending out vibrations of easily-written emails into the universe.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my AOL account suddenly said.

Well, not really. I don’t use AOL. But I did get an email, just a few minutes after I wished for some easy help.

The email came from Ben Settle, and the subject line read:

“Advice to a new Agora copywriter”

This email of Ben’s is full of uncharacteristically detailed and forthcoming advice. If you’re on Ben’s list, it might be interesting to read. I will highlight just one bit, because it serves my purposes here.

A new Agora copywriter wrote in to ask Ben’s opinion on a bunch of stuff, including that bullets aren’t at all important any more.

To which Ben responded:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Now I’d like to think Ben wrote this specifically at this moment, just to help me out with promoting Copy Riddles.

After all, the first basic premise behind Copy Riddles is that once you own the skill of writing bullets, you own the essence of intriguing, irresistible copywriting, no matter what format you write in.

The fundamental ideas inside Copy Riddles apply whether you are writing bullets… headlines… subject lines… body copy of sales letters and VSLs… ads… or emails.

In fact, I think Copy Riddles ideas transfer directly if you are writing sales emails, and not just in subject lines. I’ve even made the claim before that sales emails are basically the modern version of “expanded” bullets.

So that’s the first premise behind Copy Riddles.

The second premise is that you go further and faster by doing and experiencing… than by reading/listening/watching and then forgetting.

That’s why Copy Riddles is built around a unique, effective, and, I modestly think, clever mechanism. The mechanism gets those bullets lodged into your head, not just as a bunch of how-to information, but as a skill that you own.

But don’t take it from me. Since we are speaking of new Agora copywriters, a junior Agora copywriter named Harry Thomas went through Copy Riddles during the last run. And he had this to say:

“Honestly, John’s course is brilliant. While the content is bullets-centred, everything inside can be applied to other aspects of copy. Whenever I’m choosing endo subject lines or writing Taboola ads, I’ll write them out in bullet form first, then pick the best ones to use. And this might sound weird, but I can almost feel myself improving in real-time with John’s exercises.”

To get more details on my Copy Riddles exercises or to join while the joining’s good:

https://copyriddles.com/