Emails

Frankly, I’m a little passive aggressive…

by

I got an email from a marketer not too long ago, and the subject line read:

“Frankly, I’m a little concerned about you…”

The body of the email was predictable — I’m concerned about you because you might miss out on this amazing offer.

I groaned.

Not just because I recognized this subject line as a yet another marketer abusing Paul Greystone’s “Frankly, I’m puzzled” hook.

But worse than that, I groaned because this came in a daily email from somebody I was curious to hear from, somebody who seemed promising and cool. And here he was, sounding needy, awkward, even a little passive aggressive.

I’ve committed my share of marketing sins, so I’m not here to lob tomatoes at this guy.

I just want to share something with you. Something it took me a while to accept, but which was really rather obvious once it clicked. It’s simply this:

Copy in email marketing is not the same as classic direct response copy.

Obvious, right? Right. But how many times a day, if you are in the marketing and copywriting space, do you get things which are blatantly lifted from old school sales letters and hooks?

Or how many times have you done it yourself, if you write emails for your own business or a client?

My accountant says I’m crazy…
I’m eating steak whether you buy this offer or not…
Our warehouse manager just called me to say we are overstocked!

I’m not saying not to study or use proven direct response classics.

I continue to read classic marketing and copywriting books, and study old sales letters, often for the fourth or fifth time.

I continue to find brilliant ideas in them.

And I continue to work them into my own daily emails, often with great success.

So the way I see it, you’ve got two choices right now. Choice one is to ignore everything I’ve just told you and continue to make profit-crippling email marketing mist—

No, we won’t go down either route of the crossroads close in this email.

But if you want a different, more subtle, more entertaining and less passive aggressive way to use classic direct response ideas in your email marketing… at least if you are a copywriter or marketer, selling yourself first and foremost… then you might like to hear a presentation I will put on next Wednesday at 7pm CET.

I’m calling this presentation the Most Valuable Email. Because that’s what it’s been for me.

If you are a marketer or copywriter, maybe it will be the same for you. But whether you sign up or not, I’m eating stea—

(Professional habits are hard to break.)

But seriously:

To register to watch my Most Valuable Email presentation live, sign up to my email newsletter by next Wednesday. This will give you an opportunity to sign up for the presentation — and who knows, maybe it will inspire you with a few classic direct response ideas as well.

Most Valuable Email… for copywriters

by

I’d like to tell you about a type of content, specifically a type of daily email, that has been most valuable for me.

This type of daily email is my go-to whenever I want to stimulate and engage my readers, including the many grizzled, wary, and sophisticated marketers and copywriters on my list.

In this way, this type of email has helped me sell stuff… grow my email list organically… get amazing job referrals… and sometimes even get interesting and cool stuff for free.

This type of email has also been most valuable to me because it builds up immediate and unquestionable authority.

It makes it clear I know what I’m talking about, even if I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

And finally:

This type of email is most valuable because it’s the type of email I personally find most enjoyable to write.

Going back to this type of email over and over has helped me stick with daily emailing for the long term, while making me exponentially better at the actual work of copywriting.

If you’ve been reading my daily emails for a while, you can probably guess the type of email I’m talking about.

But if you cannot guess, or if you would simply like to hear me go into this topic in more detail and tell you how you too can write this type of email yourself, I will do that in a free presentation I’m calling The Most Valuable Email.

You can register for the Most Valuable presentation below. But first a warning:

This type of email has been most valuable to me personally. I can imagine it being equally most valuable for for any other copywriter.

If you are not a copywriter, you might be able to adapt and use this type of email profitably in a different market, for a different type of audience. But that’s something I haven’t thought much about, and so I won’t be talking about it on this presentation.

If that doesn’t turn you off, then here are the details:

The Most Valuable Email presentation will happen live, on Zoom, on Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022, at 7pm Central European Time.

You can sign up for the presentation by clicking the link below. I will then send you a confirmation email with the Zoom link and a public calender invite — which I can never manage to make work, but will try for anyhow.

Also, there will be a recording. I will only send it to you if you express interest and register below. I won’t be sending the recording out to my list in general.

I haven’t yet decided what I will do with this Most Valuable Email training in the future. I might make it available only as a bonus for a paid offer, or I might turn it into a paid offer itself.

One thing is for sure:

I will make the recording available for one week, following the live presentation. Beyond that, I make no guarantees.

So if you want to join me live for this Most Valuable Email training, or if you want to watch the recording during this guaranteed 7-day replay window, sign up to my email newsletter before next Wednesday. You will then get an email from me with the registration details for this presentation.

About that time Israeli jets bombed a US Navy ship

by

“We’re under attack, send help!” is probably what Captain William L. McGonagle yelled over the radio.

McGonagle commanded the Navy spy ship USS Liberty, stationed in the Mediterranean sea, in international waters off the coast of Egypt.

Four Israeli jets had just fired rockets and dropped napalm bombs on the Liberty.

In that initial attack, nine US navy men died. 60 were wounded, McGonagle among them.

Then Israel dispatched a second attack, made up of high-speed torpedo boats.

These boats fired torpedoes on the Liberty, and strafed the lifeboats that the Liberty had launched.

McGonagle succeeded in evading all but one of the torpedoes, which damaged the Liberty heavily. He also finally made contact with the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga.

The Saratoga dispatched 12 US jets to defend the Liberty. But when word of this reached Washington, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the jets to retreat. It was never made clear why.

All in all, in the combined air and torpedo-boat Israeli attacks, which lasted for two hours, 34 Americans servicemen died and 171 were wounded.

Shocking, right? I’d never heard about this incident until today. I found it surprising and new. I thought you might find it surprising and new as well.

The truth is, today I had no ideas for a story to open up this email with.

I also had no valuable takeaway to give you.

I didn’t even know what offer to make.

So really I had nothing, zero, in all three main dimensions of your standard copywriter’s daily email.

The good news is I figured out a takeaway eventually.

Takeaway: You gotta have an occasion for your copy. In other words, your sales copy has to answer the question, why now?

I first heard this idea from A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari. An occasion is standard in financial copy. But it’s a very powerful idea that works in other markets just as well.

For example, Dan once wrote a sales letter in the health space that tripled response over the control. In large part, he did it by using an occasion to frame the promotion.

So that’s the valuable takeaway today, have an occasion.

What about the offer? I also figured that out:

My 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters Book.

I just told you Commandment IV.

And really, if you comb through my emails over the past few years, you will also find all the other nine commandments, in more or less disguised form.

But if you would like to read them all, undisguised, in a quick and fun package, for just a few dollars, you can get a copy of the entire 10 Commandments book here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So that takes care of the marketing takeaway and the offer.

And clearly, I also figured out a surprising story to open up with.

I did that by reading a bit about what happened on today’s date in history. Because the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty happened on today’s date, June 8th, exactly 55 years ago. That’s why I’m telling you this story today.

This “on today’s date” is not something that will work as an occasion for a long-running sales letter. But it’s a good fallback for daily emails like this one.

So let me wrap up this email and the story of the Liberty:

Israel apologized later, paid a $6.5 million restitution, and said it had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian warship.

But many American officials and military personnel, including those who served on the Liberty, believe the Israeli attack was intentional.

One theory is that the Liberty was attacked because it was a spy ship. It would have intercepted and discovered Israel’s secret plans for the controversial invasion of the Golan Heights, which happened the next day, on June 9th.

I might use the occasion of that Golan Heights invasion to write another email tomorrow.

But for today, I gotta make you my offer. I won’t even make you scroll up for it. In case haven’t yet got a copy of my 10 Commandments book, you can do so here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to increase your chances of winning acclaim and validation from the very highest levels of the direct response industry

by

Last week, Joe Schriefer, formerly the copy chief at Agora Financial, now the owner of his own business, wrote me to say:

Hey John,

Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy reading your emails. I think you’re one of the best email writers out there!

Finally! Acclaim and validation from the highest levels of the direct response industry! The world is waking up the tremendous value in each of my—

But hold on, I said to myself.

I looked at Joe’s message again. Yes, he says he has been enjoying reading my emails. That’s very nice of him to say, and it suggests he’s been reading for a while, and has liked more than one of my emails. But my ego was on alert. Come on, why did Joe have to write exactly when he did?

The fact is, Joe sent me the message above in response to an email I sent out last week, about Gerry Rafferty and my obsessive love for the song Baker Street.

But in that email, I very consciously made the effort not to write the way I would normally write.

I mentioned yesterday that a couple weeks ago, I agreed with Daniel Throssell to do an analysis of his email copywriting style.

I identified three techniques that Daniel uses regularly, which aren’t standard copywriting practice, and which aren’t in Daniel’s Email Copywriting Compendium.

The night before I wrote that Baker Street email, I had finished writing up the results of my analysis for Daniel.

And when it was time to write my own email, I said, what the hell, why don’t I try using these techniques myself?

Result: I got about double the responses I normally get to an email I send out, and among them the message from Joe.

Coincidence?

Possibly.

The result of 3+ years of non-stop daily emailing, with an effort each day to tell you something fun and new, while working hard on improving my writing?

Possibly.

The hypnotic effect of Daniel’s secret copywriting techniques?

Possibly.

Thing is, it’s not easy to generate favorable coincidences on demand.

​​And 3+ years of daily work requires, well, 3+ years of daily work.

So if you want to increase your chances of boosting your email engagement… and maybe even winning yourself some acclaim and validation from the very highest levels of the direct response industry… then I figure you got two options today:

Option 1 is to dig up that Baker Street email I sent and analyze what I did.

This kind of critical analysis of marketing is good practice. After all, the best marketing — and by this I mean not just my spectacularly valuable emails, but other stuff, too — is out there for free, ready for you to dissect and profit from.

Option 2 is to click the link below and sign up on the next page. That will get you into the presentation I will hold tomorrow, where I will tell you exactly what those three techniques are.

I will also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and I will spell out how you too can start using these techniques today. I’ll even point out how I used them myself in that Baker Street email.

If you can’t make the presentation live, sign up at the link below and I’ll send you the recording when it’s out.

But if you do attend live, I will give you a surprise gift that won’t be part of the recording.

Either way, if you do want to see this presentation, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

7-time Mr. Emailympia’s self-improvement habit

by

Werewolves were still roaming around when I woke up this morning. The clock showed 4:51am.

I lay around in the dark for a bit. I imagined laying around some more… but no! I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, and raced off to the 24-hour gym.

In case you’re starting to break out in a cold sweat, thinking this email is about seizing the day by the tail… don’t worry. The fact is, I should have stayed in bed.

Because in a few minutes, there I was at the gym, sleepy and foggy-brained. Somewhere in this haze, I thought it would be a good idea to lift a weighted barbell over my head.

My mind was elsewhere. My muscles were tired. I staggered forward under the unexpected weight… braked by standing up on my tiptoes… swayed back and forth… and almost dropped the barbell, plates and all, onto my skull.

A moment later, I stood there, looking at the now-harmless barbell on the floor. And I remembered something that 7x Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger once said:

“Doing an exercise once with awareness is worth ten times an exercise done while distracted.”

Good advice for the gym.

But maybe you don’t care for the gym.

Maybe you just care for better marketing and stronger copy.

In that case, I can share a related idea by 7x Mr. Emailympia, John Bejakovic.

Here’s a little habit I used to practice in the old days of writing this email newsletter.

First, I made a list of what I called “1% improvements.” These were things that I knew made for better emails… but that I didn’t practice regularly. Not with any awareness at least.

My habit was to pick one of these 1% improvements each week. And for the rest of the week, with each email I wrote, I consciously and awarely practiced that idea.

Result?

Wealth, fame, and, like I said, 7 Mr. Emailympia titles so far. And who knows what the future holds? Hollywood stardom… a career in politics… or maybe marriage to a Kennedy.

So I’d like to suggest to you:

Make your own list of “1% improvements.” Pick one each week. Bring your awareness to it. And watch your returns compound, just like they are doing for me.

“Incorrect,” I hear an accountant saying. “In order for returns to compound, you have to keep your investment alive. And you said you stopped your 1% habit. Therefore, you are not compounding anything, you meathead.”

Fair point. So as of today, I’d like to announce I’m picking up this “1% improvement” habit again.

I won’t spell out which specific habit I’m working on this week. Maybe you can spot it in today’s email. And if not, don’t worry. You get another chance tomorrow. I’ll be back.

A crazy and messed up way to end an email

by

Some time in 1981, future “Songwriters Hall of Fame” member Darryl Hall was sitting at the piano in his Greenwich Village apartment.

His girlfriend Sara was in the kitchen peeling a hard-boiled egg.

Hall had a pencil in his mouth. He played a chord on the piano. He took the pencil and scribbled down a few words on a piece of paper.

Oh here she comes… She’s a maneater… and a commitmentphobe.

“Terrible!” Hall said. He crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor.

Sara walked into the living room. She swallowed the first half of her hard-boiled egg. “What’s up?” she asked.

“So frustrating,” Hall said. “This new Maneater thing. I have the intro. ‘She’s sitting with you but her eyes are on the door.’ Right? A little story. Everybody can picture that.”

Sara stuffed the other half of the egg in her mouth. She raised her eyebrows to indicate to Hall to keep going.

“But then I get to the chorus,” Hall said. “It’s really the payload of the song. It’s what I want the listener to take away. But I can’t find a good way to wrap it up. ‘She’s a maneater and a… dirty nasty bitch? A cruel seductive girl? A womanhater?’ I can’t figure out how to end it with something people haven’t heard before.”

Sara finished chewing the egg and swallowed. She walked to the crumpled-up paper, picked it up off the floor, and looked over the lyrics.

“Drop that shit at the end,” she said. “Go, ‘She’s a maneater.’ And stop.”

Hall frowned. Then he really frowned. “You’re crazy.” he said. “That’s messed up.”

Sara rolled her eyes and walked back to the kitchen. Hall stared at the piano. He closed his eyes. He played a few notes. And he started to nod his head.

In the end, Darryl Hall dropped the shit at the end, as per his girlfriend’s advice. Hall & Oates recorded the song a few days later.

Maneater became a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on December 18, 1982. Out of the five number one hits that Hall & Oates had in their career, Maneater became the one that stayed at no. 1 the longest. Going by the 172 million views the song has on YouTube, it remains their biggest hit today.

“I thought about it,” Hall said once when speaking about Maneater and about his girlfriend’s suggestion. “I realized she was right. And it made all the difference.”

Announcing… an email training with a new name

by

We all make mistakes. I made one yesterday.

That’s when I made an offer for a new training I called Invisible Email Manipulation.

But as I lay in bed last night, bed sheets pulled up to my eyeballs, staring at the ceiling in the dark, I realized…

It was the wrong name.

For one thing, Invisible Email Manipulation is a mouthful.

But more important, Invisible Email Manipulation doesn’t sum up what’s unique about these emails. Or the unique stuff this training will reveal.

Unique? Yes, unique. But not necessarily new. As somebody smart figured out approximately 25 centuries ago… there’s nothing necessarily new under the sun.

These emails I write are not sales copy. At least not in the way that sales copy looks when it goes to a cold, skeptical audience.

At the same time, these emails are not plain content either. Even when I don’t sell.

Instead, these emails are an alloy of DR ideas and content — along with a few of my own subtle ingredients. It’s a mixture that gets results that neither of sales copy nor content could get alone.

And as I realized last night, and as you might know already, there’s a name for this style of writing. The name comes from Dan Kennedy, who brought to light and identified so much in this industry.

Dan calls it “influential writing.” As distinct from “copywriting.” And that distinction informed my new name for this training:

Influential Emails.

The ultimate goal of Influential Emails is to get you writing influential emails for yourself… or your brand… or your clients.

Because if you do, good stuff happens. Such as the following:

1. You influence your prospects, and you get them to open up their minds to new ideas you want them to believe.

2. You create positioning and authority and even traffic by words alone. Even if you got no status to start… or no markers of expertise… or no bright feather boa to draw attention to yourself.

3. You sell stuff, while sidestepping the stubborn reactance more and more of us feel when we notice a smiling persuader reaching his hands into our personal space.

Maybe you don’t believe me influential emails can do all this. Or maybe you just don’t believe that Influential Emails can do all this for you.

I’ll try to change your mind in the coming days with a few more emails. The offer to join Influential Emails will be open until next Sunday.

In the meantime, you can find the sales page below. It’s still very minimal. Like the initial release of Google Chrome… it will magically upgrade itself to full functionality throughout the next week.

But if you want to check it out… or you want more details on what’s included in the offer behind Influential Emails… or if you’re even ready to sign up now… then try this link:

https://influentialemails.com/

You never get a second chance to make a last impression

by

FBI negotiator Chris Voss has a tip for you:

If you ever have to call the family of somebody who’s been taken hostage by machete-wielding drug traffickers in the Philippines… then save your “how are you” for the end.

In other words, call up the mom of your hostage on the phone. Say, “Hey Mrs. Robinson. It’s Agent John Bejakovic here with the FBI. About your son… I’m afraid I got nothing new to report.”

Give the mom a second to process the info.

And then say, “Mrs. Robinson… how are you and your family coping with this whole situation?” Because…

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

So says Chris Voss. But it’s not just him. We know today, from decades of experiments on human guinea pigs, that our brains evaluate experiences based on two brief moments only.

The first is the emotional highlight. That can be impossible to control.

But the second is the ending. That’s easy to control.

So it’s your choice. You can first ask Mrs. Robinson how she’s doing… then give her the underwhelming update. “Nothing new!” She will think you’re useless, like all those other FBI idiots.

Or you can switch up the order. Give the update first and end with, “How are you, really?” And Mrs. Robinson will leave off feeling human, like maybe you really care about her welfare and the welfare of her son.

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

Now about marketing:

A lot of clients I’ve worked with like the idea of warming up a list.

“Let’s not sell anything for a while! Let’s just build a relationship! Let’s give ’em value! They will love us for it!”

I gotta tell you, from personal experience:

You better make your relationship-building material something miraculously good and new. And you better end each email real strong.

Otherwise, you will just leave a dry and chalky taste in your prospects’ mouths. And the next time they get an email from you… they will think twice about biting down on your value-laden content.

But here’s an easy trick, in line with Chris Voss above.

Instead of leaving your prospects with your attempt at value… leave them with an offer.

“The last impression is the lasting impression.”

Make an underwhelming stab at value… and you’ll leave your prospects feeling let down as they walk away.

But make an offer… and your prospects will leave with some tension, mystery, and the feeling of an unexploited opportunity. They might not be ready to buy then and there. But you will make them engaged and ready to listen to you the next time.

And like I said, this all comes from personal experience.

I usually don’t sell in these emails. It’s a moral failing. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Sure, not selling has forced me to get real good at writing emails. How good exactly?

Good enough that I had an Agora publisher find my email archive, and then contact me out of the blue and offer me work.

Good enough that I’ve had a genuine guru in the industry, somebody who’s made tens of millions of dollars for himself and hundreds of millions of dollars for others, reach out to say he loves what I’m doing and that we should connect.

Good enough that, on the rare occasion that I have something coherent to sell, like my last month’s Copy Riddles run, I do fantastic.

But even with all that, my emails are still not good enough to keep up a sustainable relationship with my audience. Not long term. Not without selling all the time.

Because sooner or later I slip up. The “value” I deliver ends up a little dry and chalky. And I can see the effect. Over time, I lose people, their attention, and their engagement.

Selling something all the time would fix that. It would give folks who read my stuff a certain excitement and juice that a regular content email simply cannot replicate. Not every day.

Maybe you don’t believe me. So let me give you a demonstration. See if it convinces you.

I’m putting on a new training. It’s called Invisible Email Manipulation. It features me, in a top hat, pulling back the curtain on some of the main tricks I use to write these emails.

Like I said, I’ve been forced to get very good at writing these emails to keep people engaged… in spite of having nothing to sell most days.

I find I keep going back to the same few tricks, over and over. That’s because my tricks are powerful, and because they are different from the tricks other copywriters are using.

Maybe you’d like to learn my tricks, so you can apply them to what you or your clients are selling. If so, here’s what to do:

1. Write me an email and…

1. Let me know that yes, you are interested in Invisible Email Manipulation and…

2. Let me know one thing you did NOT like in the last copywriting training, course, or program you bought. I’m trying to position myself as being different. And no better way to do it then to be different from crap people don’t like.

So if you are interested, write me and let me know.

In return, I’ll send you the what/when/where/how/how much of this training. Plus, if you write me in the next 24 hours… as a reward, I’ll give you a discount code for 40% off the price everyone else will have to pay.

How to develop your voice even if you don’t have one

by

I came across the following question today:

So this is one thing I’ve been trying to explore and develop.

I can write and convey ideas or messages, but it mostly comes out pretty dry (I’m a pretty boring person overall).

But I often read that punchy and upbeat copy, where you can really hear ‘voice’ and character come through.

Has anyone got any tips or articles or videos or professional quote makers they can recommend to develop this side of my writing?

Or should I just focus on writing dull informative stuff?

I’m also a pretty boring person, so this is a question I used to worry about as well. But I don’t worry about it any more. It seems to have taken care of itself. I asked myself how.

​​Here are a few ideas that came out — maybe they will be useful to you:

1. Write more. Swagger comes from lots of walking, up and down the same street.

2. Write faster. You’ll find stuff on the screen that makes your eyes pop out. “Where did that come from?”

3. Show and then tell. Punchy and upbeat copy is less about how you say it than about what you say. And it’s less about what you say than what happens in your reader’s head as a result.

4. Copy other writers for a while. I once read that Henry Miller would type up entire books by his favorite authors.

5. Self-consciously work on developing your voice. Invent your own phrases. Your own twists on cliches. Your own spelling. Most of it will be stupid. Most.

6. Infuse your own interests into your copy. Comedian Andrew Schulz: “Who cares if they relate to it? Make them relate to it.”

7. Get enthusiastic before you write.

8. Limit your editing. This is the second half of #2 above, for after you’ve finished writing.

9. Write more casual than you think is ok. You can always edit later.

10. Inject more drama. This goes back to #3 and #6 above. Your voice, like your writing in general, is more about what you say than how you say it.

And here’s a bonus #11:

Consciously do stuff that you know is wrong. For example, listicles like I’ve just written — they violate the Rule Of One, right?

​​Right. You probably won’t follow any of my ideas above, or even remember them come tomorrow. Even so. The more sacred a writing rule is, the more important it is to break it on occasion.

But here’s a rule that’s too sacred to break:

If you’re writing sales copy, you have to have a call to action. Otherwise the whole message was pointless. And in that spirit, my CTA to you is to sign up to my email newsletter about marketing and copywriting. If that’s something you can relate to, here’s where to go.

My unflattering email critique to my earlier self

by

[I gave myself a harsh email critique recently. It’s for an email I wrote exactly two years ago, which gets a “C” at best. If you want to see why, here’s the original email in bold, along with my comments in brackets:]

SUBJECT: The email that broke the camel’s back

[I’ve found that “play on a popular phrase” rarely works as a subject line, at least to my personal newsletter list. So I would say, force yourself to come up with 10 new subject lines, and use the best of those. But if you insist on the subject line above, then make it more specific and intriguing. Something like, “The sticky sweet email that broke this camel’s back.”]

A while back, I subscribed to the Farnam Street email newsletter.

I’d seen a headline in the New York Times about Shane Parrish, the guy who writes Farnam Street. The headline read:

“How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter”

Interesting.

So I subscribed, without knowing too much about what the content I would be getting.

[Only people who really love you will read past this opening. Everybody else will leave. As James Altucher says, you have to bleed in the first line. Options:

– “How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter.” Lead off with this and then explain what it’s all about.

– “And that’s when I unsubscribed.” Lead off with the end of the story (below) and then work your way back to explain how it all went wrong.

– Make it into a metaphor. “I only dated the Farnam Street newsletter for a few weeks. In that short time, we had several nasty fights…”]

The first email arrived with a ton of links to important, helpful articles on the Farnam Street blog. I scanned through, but I didn’t read anything.

A second email hit me a few days later, with more helpful content.

Then a third.

And a fourth.

There was nothing wrong with any of these emails. And the content was apparently good — after all, Shane Parrish got a feature written about him in the New York Times.

But none of it clicked with me. It was too earnest, too virtuous, too positive.

[Ideally, make this section more concrete. Give examples of specific emails, and make each example funny or stupid. If you can’t do that for any reason… then make this section shorter. Your copy should never be both abstract and long, which is what’s happening here.]

Finally, I got an email with the headline “Introducing your new favorite holiday tradition” (it was around Christmastime).

I opened it up. It was about a “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” to exchange books and then spend the evening reading them together with friends and family.

That’s when I unsubscribed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no beef with Farnam Street or their email newsletter. I personally didn’t find the content interesting. On the other hand, a lot of other people obviously get a lot out of the same emails that I unsubscribed from.

[This is a missed opportunity to be a bit funny. You can make fun of the Icelanders and their nerdy tradition… of Shane Parrish and his virtue signalling… or of yourself and your cold Grinch heart, two sizes too small.]

I only bring up my experience with Farnam Street emails to illustrate a point:

It wasn’t that last email that made me unsubscribe.

That was just the straw, or the email, that broke the camel’s back.

All the previous emails had already primed me to open up the “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” email and say to myself, “Oh, hell no.”

This is something to remember in case you do a lot of email marketing.

It’s very hard to assign blame (or praise) to an individual email.

Odds are, it’s the entire email sequence that’s driving readers away — or winning them over.

[This point is worthwhile. But it could be developed further. An easy way to do this would be with another, positive example. “I was on Ben Settle’s list in two separate bursts, for 3 years in total, before I subscribed to his paid newsletter. The last email I read before I subscribed had the subject, “The Myth of Security”… but you can be sure it wasn’t that email alone that made me subscribe. It was those 3 years of cumulative reading.”]

Of course, there are things (unvirtuous and unearnest things) you can do to stack things in your favor early on in the relationship, while you still have your reader’s attention and good will.

If you’d like to find out what some of those unvirtuous ways are, you might be interested in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. For more info or to sign up to get a free copy (once it’s out), here’s where to go:

[A couple of points to wrap this up for you and for myself both:

1. Even though this email is weak from a copywriting standpoint, that’s ok. Sometimes these daily emails come out a little undercooked, other times they are dry and flavorless. But the more you write, the more of them turn out fine.

But even if not, so what? A weak daily email still has value. It strengthens your relationship with your list… it cements the central idea in your mind… and it can form fodder for your future emails, two years down the line. So keep writing, or if you haven’t started yet, then start.

2. When you tease something at the end of your email, make sure you write down what you had in mind for the payoff. I’d like to know now what info I was teasing back then… but two years later, I have no idea any more. Time to head over to Farnam Street and see what advice Shane has about improving my failing memory.]