Emails

Keep taking your marketing cues from email Beyoncés

by

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?

by

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

by

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:

===

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.

===

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

by

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

by

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

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

by

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?

===

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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