Leads

Guy rebuffs my attempt at cross-promotion

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A report from the trenches:

I’m working on growing my health email newsletter, which I launched a few months ago.

One part of what I’m doing is reaching out to other newsletters to offer to cross-promote. I’ve been contacting newsletters of a similar size to mine, who share some common elements with mine:

– sent out weekly
– news-related
– “proven” — make an emphasis on providing references or sources
– is made up of actual paragraphs of text that people read, rather than just a collection of links

I’ve had a few people take me up on my cross-promotion offer. But one guy, whose weekly newsletter is for people who want to “stay on top of the current issues and that like to read more than just bulletpoints,” was not interested in my offer. He wrote me to say:

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I don’t think this partnership would work out, basically because I’ve done it before and the clicks were very, very low. Also, I don’t think there’s a great overlap in the content of our two newsletters.

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As Dan Kennedy might say about that first reason, if we all stopped doing something if the first time was a fail, the human race would soon die out. There’d be no more babies born.

But what about that other reason? About content overlap?

It’s very sensible to only sell competitive duck herding products to competitive duck herding enthusiasts.

But most offers are not that one-dimensional.

The “world’s greatest list broker,” Michael Fishman, was once tasked with finding new lists to promote an investment newsletter.

Michael suggested a list of buyers of a product called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. The publisher of the investment newsletter said, “We’ve tried golf lists before, they don’t work for us.”

Michael said, “No problem. It’s not a golf list. Think about who would buy a book called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. I don’t care if it’s Big Money Pro Flower Secrets. Anybody who would respond to that language is somebody whose door we want to knock on.”

Point being, if you have something that’s not as narrow in appeal as duck herding, there are many dimensions along which you can expand your market, beyond the obvious topic or content or promise of what you’re selling. ​

​ By the way, Michael Fishman is somebody worth listening to. I’ve read and watched and listened to everything I could find online by the guy. I make a habit of occasionally searching the Internet to see if anything new has cropped up.

If you want a place to start, here’s a great interview that Michael Fishman did with Michael Senoff of Hard to Find Seminars:

https://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Michael_Fishman_Interview.htm

The royal way to grow a list

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Yesterday, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camila went for a drive to Bolton Town Hall in London. Birds chirped, armed guards looked on tensely, and crowds of well-wishers and paparazzi pushed around the fences, trying to catch a geek of the aged couple.

Nothing really remarkable there. It’s just another pebble in the mountain of news coverage about the British royal family over the past year.

The news coverage continues, because people look at the royals as a symbol of something ancient, enduring, quintessentially British.

That’s kind of amazing if you think about it.

Charles III is the fourth English monarch from the house of Windsor, which is only 105 years old. Before that, it was called the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in reference to its original German domains. The name was changed during World War I. The image of a bunch of goose-stepping Germans running the UK was too threatening.

How did the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha get to rule the UK? Well, they replaced another German house that ruled the UK, the House of Hanover.

The history of Europe, and really of the world, has seen this pattern over and over. Conquerors and adventurers, foreign princes and stranger kings, appear from somewhere far away and take control of a large and well-trained population.

I read about this in David Wengrow and David Graeber’s Dawn of Everything. The two D’s say the key is that a population has been well-trained and disciplined to obey rule. Who rules doesn’t matter very much at all.

You might be starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and worry that I’m about to preach anarchy, or talk about political revolution.

Quite the opposite. I’m preaching monarchy, and talking about long-term business stability.

Via your list. Specifically, via growing your list with the best prospects, the kind who will buy and read and do what you tell them to do.

I listened to a Dan Kennedy seminar yesterday. Dan said how his best customers were always the martial arts guys — because they had been trained and selected over years to be disciplined.

I remember when pick-up coach RSD Tyler did a list swap with the dreamy fitness coach Eliott Hulse. Eliott said how the buyers he got from the RSD list were fantastic customers, because Tyler’s whole message was self-improvement and taking responsibility and putting in the work.

I’ve even experienced this same phenomenon myself. Back in 2021, I did a list swap with Daniel Throssell. I couldn’t believe how many sales I got from new subscribers who came from Daniel’s list. And that’s with a hidden sales page I had at the time, and without pitching anything myself. It was simply because Daniel has trained and prepared his audience so well.

So there you go. If you want the best leads and future customers, do it the royal way.

Find a market — or an audience — that’s already been disciplined.

It sure beats the hard work of taking an unruly mass, devising new laws, and trying to beat those laws in over the course of generations.

Ok, so much for monarchy.

Now, let’s talk old-time religion. Specifically, my 10 Commandments book. To find out more about that, or maybe even to spend $5 and get some valuable discipline in return, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Don’t write emails like this

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Do you start your emails with a question?

Do you try to identify with your reader, or get him to identify with you, by waffling on about his life, or worse, about the type of person you think he is?

Do you guess at your reader’s problems, but because you’re not really sure what those are, do you frame your guesses as questions to buy yourself some wiggle room?

If you’re anything like the several people I know who write vague and fluffy email copy that fails to draw readers in, it may be because you’re not saying anything hard and clear at the start of your email, and instead you engage in watery attempts at empathy.

Ok enough of that. Everything I’ve just done in the four sentences above — don’t do it. Especially at the start of your email.

Last night, I sat down and finally finished a batch of email copy critiques that had been lingering on my todo list.

There were lots of good ideas in each email.

But there was one recurring problem I saw. Maybe it was my fault, because I’ve been encouraging people to write about “symptoms” their audience is experiencing.

What I got instead was a cloud of throat clearing at the start, disguised as empathy copy.

The fact is, writing is not talking.

People will forgive a lot of when they look you in the face and hear your voice.

They will not forgive nearly as much when they are sitting alone on their couch with their phone in hand, with the TV on in front of them, with the next-door neighbor’s dog barking, with their own stomach growling. They won’t forgive:

– Abstraction that really doesn’t say much
– Aimless repetition
– A 2-3 min period to “warm up”
– Groping in the dark in the hope of finding something to say
– “Vibing”

Don’t do any of that. Especially at the start of your email.

Instead, say something hard and clear.

If you want examples of what hard and clear looks like, look inside my 10 Commandments book. Not among any of the actual A-list commandments. But in the way I start each chapter, which is really just an expanded email. As a reader named Tom wrote me:

I’ve been reading a lot of books around copywriting; but as a jumping off point, 10 Commandments was the best I’ve read so far.. So many good pointers on techniques to use and people to pay attention to.

But on a deeper level, your writing is exceptional. The first two books I started on were by Olgivy and Makepeace, but I was looking for something to bridge the gap in to the current era, as I couldn’t imagine myself ever actually engaging with their copy as a prospect.

I really appreciated how up-front, engaging, but still subtly very technical your style is. I’m planning to try to reverse engineer exactly what do, because I couldn’t put 10 Commandments down, and by the time your dropped the first CTA, there was no choice.

So…

Would you like to stop fluffing around? Are you sometimes stumped for a non-vague way to start your emails? Do you—

Ok, enough, once again.

For examples of hard and clear ways to start your message:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Don’t start your sales letters like this

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“This was not a guy you wanted to mess with before lunch. He was large and threatening… Half his face was covered with a kind of breathing apparatus… He spoke in a strange, mechanical voice. And to make it all the worse, he was as cool as a gherkin and seemed prepared for any eventuality. That’s why his minions followed him blindly, and even his allies feared him. Who was this dangerous man? All we know is his name. He was called Bane.”

So begins Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

​​With the above spoken-word monologue, the narrator introduces the main villain, Bane.

It’s only after this intro that we get into the rest of the movie, where Bane and Batman work out their relationship problems in sewers and on rooftops.

Maybe you’re puzzled. Don’t be. You’re not going crazy. This of course is not how The Dark Knight really starts.

The real movie starts in a plane, where Bane pretends to be a hostage. Except of course he’s not. ​​His minions come in a bigger plane, use a crane to lift up the first plane, blow a hole in the tail section. Whatever. You’ve probably seen the movie. And even if you haven’t, the point is simply this:

Hollywood blockbusters do not start with a narrator talking you into the story. Instead, they start with a dramatic scene, which introduces the characters and sets the mood.

There’s a valuable lesson in there. Here’s why I bring it up:

A lot of copy I see starts in the narrator style above. “I have a problem. It’s really bad. I’ve tried all the solutions but nothing is working. It is making my life miserable.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picking on anybody. I used to write like this myself until I learned better. Even now, it’s still easy for me to slip into this narrator style. And at least I’m talking about the problem.

The trouble is that many people who make good direct response prospect won’t respond to this copy. They have either seen too many such ads and they won’t get sucked in… or they don’t (yet) identify with the problem you are calling out — and they won’t get sucked in.

The solution comes straight out of Hollywood. Don’t talk. Don’t tell. Instead show. Start your sales letter — or advertorial or whatever — with a dramatic scene. “This happened and then there was an explosion, and I winced in pain.” By the way, there’s got to be pain. Or at least anxiety, anger, or envy. We’re talking direct response copywriting, after all.

Want more copywriting lessons? Or just more fake Hollywood intros? Sign up for my daily email newsletter.

The first frame is the worst frame

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I have a fish I’d like to sell you today. It’s not a freshly caught fish.

​​It’s actually been sitting around for 18 months. But trust me, this particular fish has hardly spoiled with time.

​​Today it’s just as tasty and nutritious, well almost, as it was 18 months ago, the day that it was caught.

So are you interested? How much would you pay for this fish?

A lot?

A little?

A negative amount? Would you actually pay me to keep this fish away from you?

One day last week, I got a newsletter email from a marketer. The email started off with something like, “I don’t have a lot of time today. So I’m resending a really good email that I wrote a long time ago.”

​​And then below that, there was the 18-month-old email, looking at me with its dead, clouded, fishy eyes.

Actually, I just assume that that’s how the old email was looking at me. I didn’t even check. As soon as I saw that intro about not having time and about resending an old email, I clicked away.

The point of my message today — the freshly caught fish I am actually trying to sell you — is not to say you should never reuse old emails.

My point is simply to be mindful of how you frame your message. Because often, the first frame that our minds jump to is the worst frame.

I’ve seen beginner freelance copywriters try to sell themselves. They do so by framing their message with an explanation of how they are new in the industry and how they have no experience.

I’ve seen business owners try to sell their products. They start off their sales letters by telling the unremarkable life story that brought them to the moment of sitting down to write that sales letter.

In all these cases — the re-warmed 18-month-old email, the self-defeating self-promotion, the boring and pointless sales letter — the problem is the natural human desire, or perhaps need, to explain ourselves.

Don’t explain yourself. Nobody cares. And it’s hurting your message.

Instead, think of how to frame your message so it has the best chance of influencing your reader.

Trumpet your own authority. Or soothe your reader’s ego. Or if you’re truly selling a fish that was caught 18 months ago, then say this thing is delicious and nutritious — and stop yourself there.

But enough fish-mongering. If you’d like to read my emails regularly, and see how I never apologize for the content I send, then sign up for my newsletter here.

How copywriters can avoid ham-handed segues that get them eaten alive

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Here’s one of the greatest (and for copywriters, most instructive) scenes in Hollywood history:

“Now then, tell me,” says the doctor behind the glass. “What did Miggs say to you? Multiple Miggs in the next cell. He hissed at you. What did he say?”

The young FBI agent on the other side of the glass adjusts a bit in her chair. “He said, ‘I can smell your cunt.'”

“I see,” the doctor says with a slow blink. “I myself cannot.”

That’s from the first meeting of Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter and FBI agent Clarice Starling, in The Silence of the Lambs.

Hannibal Lecter is a genius psychiatrist who happens to be a serial killer. ​​

Clarice is a young FBI trainee. She’s been sent to get Lecter’s help on a case of serial murders.

In those first few moments of the meeting, Clarice does lots of things right:

She makes a damaging admission (“I’m a student”). She flatters Lecter (“Maybe you can decide whether I’m qualified to learn from you”). She makes the embarrassing admission about Miggs. And she shows interest in the drawings of Florence on the walls of Lecter’s cell.

“All that detail just from memory, sir?” she asks.

“Memory, Agent Starling, is all I have instead of a view.”

So far, so good. And then comes the rupture:

“Well,” says Clarice with a nervous smile, “perhaps you’d care to lend us your view on this questionnaire, sir.”

Lecter tilts his head and smiles. Like he’s talking to a 3-year-old girl who just fell and scraped her knees.

“Oh no no no no no,” he says. “You were doing fine. You had been courteous and receptive to courtesy. You had established trust with the embarrassing truth about Miggs. And now this ham-handed segue into your questionnaire. Ts-ts-ts… it won’t do.”

And that’s exactly what can happen to you, and what will happen, unless you take care.

Because your prospect reads your value-laden content or watches your entertaining video. And then comes the pitch.

“Oh no no no no no,” your prospect says with a sympathetic tilt of the head. “It won’t do.”

If you don’t believe that that’s how it is, then let me make a damaging admission of my own.

A while back, an A-list copywriter sent out an email.

I’d been on his list for years, but he never ever emailed anything.

And here he was, writing, and with an interesting personal story. He got me sucked in.

And then, with a ham-handed segue, he switched to an offer for a course he was selling.

I’ll tell you this. I wasn’t as cool and courteous as Hannibal above. I might have cursed at my laptop. And that’s even though I make my living doing the same thing as this guy… and though I should be immune to being pitched.

So my point for you is this:

Indirect selling works. But you have to be better than Clarice was in that opening scene.

Your indirect lead is not just about building a bit of relationship, good will, and rapport.

In the indirect-selling bait, before you get to the switch, you have to do something critically important.

What exactly?

You can find out about that inside my Most Valuable Email training. Because the above email is an email that uses my Most Valuable Email trick.

If you want an explanation of how and where this email uses the Most Valuable Email trick, you can find that in the Most Valuable Email Swipes, which is something I give you along with the core training of the course. Look up #10 in that swipe file, and you will see the trick in action. Plus as a benefit, you will learn how to avoid ham-handed segues that get you eaten alive.

To get it now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The real heroes are dead

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“As a soldier, Rick Rescorla served in Vietnam, where he earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and also a Purple Heart. When he returned home, Rescorla landed a job as Head of Security for Morgan Stanley. And as you’ll soon see, in many ways, he was the best investment Morgan Stanley ever made.”

I’ve gotten interested in writing financial copy. So as the first step, I started watching financial promos while I eat lunch.

I got going yesterday, with a Stansberry VSL. The hook is the story of a U.S. Army vet named Rick Rescorla… who, the VSL tells you, could end up having an “enormous impact on you, your family, your money, your savings and investments.” And then it leads to the bit about Morgan Stanley and its best investment ever.

“This story sounds familiar,” I said.

“An Army vet… going to work on Wall Street… as Head of Security… where did I read this before?”

I typed a few words into Google. And yep, there it was. First result.

For many decades, the recommended bathroom reading material for copywriters was The National Enquirer. At least so claimed Gene Schwartz, who said:

“That’s why I say that the required medium for you is all the junk magazines in the United States. I would go out tomorrow and get a subscription to The National Enquirer and read every single word in it. That’s your audience. There are your headlines. There are your people and their feelings.”

But the Rick Rescorla story didn’t come from the National Enquirer. So I’d like to give you a different magazine recommendation as new required reading.

I’m talking about The New Yorker.

It’s a snob magazine. If you’re writing sales copy, it’s unlikely to reflect your audience or their feelings.

And yet I recommend it.

Because the New Yorker and its writers manage to dig up obscure stories… find the fascinating implications… and create drama through substance rather than form.

Stansberry’s Rick Rescorla hook came from The New Yorker.

And it’s not the only one.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you know I’ve written about Dan Ferrari’s Genesis sales letter. It tripled response over the control and sold out the entire stock of Green Valley’s telomere supplement.

Dan’s sales letter kicked off with a snapshot. A secret meeting of Hollywood stars and Silicon Valley millionaires… gathered in a Malibu Beach cliffside mansion… to listen to a Nobel-winning scientist reveal her breakthrough research on doing away with death and old age.

That story was true. And it also came from The New Yorker.

“All right Bejako,” I hear you saying. “You almost have me convinced. Two examples is good. But where’s your third example? Don’t know you all copywriting proof comes in threes?”

You got me. I only have the two examples above to give you.

If that’s enough of a pattern for you to work with, then start scanning The New Yorker and checking if some of their stories could be used for your hooks.

And maybe you will be my third example one day… or maybe I will be, because it’s what I’ll start doing.

In any case, if you’d like to read why Rick Rescorla was the best investment Morgan Stanley ever made, follow the link below.

But before you go, consider signing up for my email newsletter, which serves you up with a daily idea or recommendation for improving your marketing or copywriting.

And now, here’s the tight, fascinating, and moving New Yorker article about Rick Rescorla:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/11/the-real-heroes-are-dead

Conflict produced this legendary ad — do you know it?

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“We’ve spent a fortune,” screamed the red-faced exec, “but this damn thing still won’t sell! What the hell am I paying you people for?

The gray suits around the table hung their heads.

The time was 1911.

The executives at Colliers Publishing had heard an incredible idea. It came from Harvard University President Charles Eliot.

Eliot said any man could get a world-class education in 15 minutes a day, just by reading a few books. All the books could fit onto a 5-foot shelf.

So the Collier’s people asked Eliot which books exactly… and Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf was born.

Collier’s ran ads in their own magazine to get leads for the Five Foot Shelf. The ads talked about the joy and satisfaction of owning and reading great books. They featured the Harvard coat of arms.

​​And yet the damn thing wouldn’t sell. It looked hopeless. But it turned around, by accident.

Advertising man Bruce Barton had to fill some empty advertising space. So he flipped open one of Dr. Eliot’s great books and landed on a picture of Marie Antoinette in a rickety peasant cart. He ripped the picture out. And he scribbled the headline above it:

“This is Marie Antoinette riding to her death. Have you ever read her tragic story?”

According to Barton, Marie Antoinette outpulled the old “joy and satisfaction” ads 8-to-1. She kept running successfully for years, and helped sell hundreds of thousands of copies of the Five Foot Bookshelf.

This shows the power of a dramatic snapshot. This is a great way to start your sales letters, advertorials, and even emails.

Of course, that’s not the only good thing Barton’s ad has going for it.

The whole thing is full of copywriting and marketing tricks which worked in 1921… and continue to work in 2021. It might be worth taking a look and seeing how many you can spot.

And if you’d like to do that, I’ve tracked down a copy of Bruce Barton’s original Marie Antoinette ad for you. You can find it below. And if you’d like more occasional trips down 1911 marketing lane, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

It was a bright cold day in April…

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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

I frowned. I bared my teeth. Two hours had passed since I sat down to write.

But I still hadn’t finished the email. All I had was a bunch of research and half-starts.

How much more time would I waste? Suddenly, ice water ran down my back. The deadline, I thought. It’s so soon.

Now I’ll be honest with you:

Writer’s block is not something I ever suffer from.

But I do suffer from writer’s fiddling… writer’s lack of focus… and writer’s doubt, which turns into writer’s backtracking.

I’ve found a few ways to manage these writer’s conditions. They don’t always work.

But thanks to a reader named Lester, I’ve now found a new way also. It works for writer’s block, too.

The technique comes from a marketing guy called Roy Williams. Williams gives it to you in three easy steps:

1. Randomly force upon yourself a dramatic opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about. [My tip: Google “weird opening sentences in books” and take the first result that comes up.]

2. Look for the defining characteristic of that statement.

3. Think about what you want to sell. Use the defining characteristic of the statement as the angle of approach into your body copy.

That’s it? Yep. I tried it. It works.

But here’s the thing that really gets me:

Williams performs this act on stage. He asks for a bunch of strange or shocking opening sentences. Then he brings a bunch of business owners up. He asks them what they would like to sell more of. And then he uses the process above to come up with cool ads for those business owners, right on the spot.

People think it’s magic. They even accuse Williams of planting stooges in the audience to set up the act.

But then Williams explains how to do this trick. It’s just what I told you above. It’s something anybody can do. But Williams says, nobody ever does it.

That’s the thing that really struck me. Because it reminded me of something I read early on in my marketing education. Fortunately, it came so early that it actually made an impact. Here’s the intro to it:

I’ll tell you something: This issue of my newsletter is going to make a lot of my readers very uncomfortable. Why? Simply because I know the difference between winners and losers and, in this issue, I’m going to put the choice right dead square in your face. I’m going to give you an extraordinarily simple set of instructions and, if you do what I say, your chances of becoming extremely prosperous are going to be magnified by a factor of at least 1,000!

But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions. I know that already from past experience. And I even know already the reasons you’re going to give for not doing what I suggest. These are the same reasons everybody (including me) nearly always gives for not doing something which will make our lives better.

Does that make you frown or bare your teeth? Well, if you’d like to read more, and find out how to 1000x your chances of becoming extremely prosperous, before the clocks strike thirteen, here’s the rest of that thing:

https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm

(And if you want to subscribe to issues of my own newsletter, for free, you can do that here.)

This 9-figure copywriter just made the sales letter discovery of a lifetime…

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Dear friend,

Normally, I don’t write about these kinds of off-limits “insider strategies” of rich and famous copywriters.

But these aren’t normal times…

And the discovery that came out of this top-secret research…

Is simply too important, and has too much money-making potential, to be ignored.

Now in the rest of this email, I’m going to be sharing exactly what this discovery is…

The science behind why it works…

And how you can begin using it TODAY to write killer copy, to make yourself more sales in less time.

Also, in just a few moments from now…

I’ll show you how a tiny mistake in your sales letter lead could be costing you 80% of your sales…

Plus you will discover the “super fun” tactic one elite copywriter, whose sales will soon hit the billion-dollar mark, has found to make his prospects keep reading… and ultimately BUY.

***

All right. Let me emerge from modeling the lead of Stefan Georgi’s Gluco Secure sales letter. (And yes, Stefan is the 9-figure copywriter I referenced in the subject line.)

I’ve been writing my own sales letter lately, to promote the official launch of my bullets course. And in the top-secret research for that, I discovered the following:

Stefan Georgi says one of the biggest jumps he made as a copywriter came by mastering bullets.

“They make great headlines,” says Stefan, “plus they are super fun to write.” But that’s not all.

Stefan says that many copywriters forget to fascinate in the lead of their sales letter.

​​The lead. You know — the part that determines 80% of your overall sales.

​​Stefan doesn’t like the chance that he’s going to lose 80% of his readers right up front. So he adds camouflaged bullets at the end of his leads. (Like I did right before those asterisks above.)

​​​​These lead bullets are a kind of sales insurance to intrigue readers and pull them deeper into your copy. ​Stefan explains:

“Because even if my lead is a bit off, or if my big idea isn’t hitting as hard as I thought it would, throwing in those intriguing bullets at the end drastically increases the chances of the prospect sticking with me. And, the longer they stick with me, the more invested they become, and the more likely they are to ultimately buy.”

“Ultimately buy.”

Ultimately, I don’t have anything to offer you to buy today. But I will soon.

It will be my bullets course. That’s where, if you like, you can learn how to write A-list bullets that go at the end of your sales letter lead… or in your headline… or anywhere else you want to get your reader’s attention and interest.

But not today. Today, if you want to read Stefan’s thoughts on bullets, or discover the other big mistakes he sees in sales letter leads, here’s where to go:

https://www.stefanpaulgeorgi.com/blog/big-lead-mistake-5-forgetting-to-fascinate/