Copywriting

“Email Marketing: A Lecture by Rowan Atkinson”

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Here’s a quick checklist of elements that make for engaging, effective, and influential emails:

1. Conflict, outrage. We seem to take a constant delight in seeing or participating in a fight. The more real it is, the more engaging it is. The more status the fight participants have, the more engaging it is.

2. Surprising connections between unrelated things, or surprising distinctions in things that seemed simple and unified.

3. Metaphors, analogies, and “transubstantiation.”

4. Angst. All good copy is rooted in angst. As Dan Kennedy likes to say, “The sky is either falling or is about to fall.”

5. Imitation and parody.

6. An engaging character. As Matt Furey didn’t but should have said, “For the email marketer, nothing transcends character.” The email of personality, rather than the email of “value.” Email is not about sharing valuable information. It’s about writing about normal things in a valuable and interesting way. It’s about accuracy of human observation and precision of the observation.

7. All right, enough of this. Let me come clean:

Everything I’ve just told you actually comes from a video titled “Visual Comedy: A Lecture by Rowan Atkinson.”

Atkinson you might best know as the clumsy priest from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I watched Atkinson’s Visual Comedy guide a few days ago, expecting to be entertained. And I was that. But I found the video surprisingly full of deep analysis of what actually makes for visual comedy. It was like a prehistoric episode of the Every Frame a Painting series, if you’ve ever seen that.

And not only was this video insightful.

I realized that much, or maybe all, of what makes for good visual comedy can be ported very easily to email marketing.

For example, point #1 above is really about slapstick. As the Visual Comedy video says, “We seem to take a constant delight in seeing people hurt and humiliated. The more real it is, the funnier it is. The more dignified the victim, the funnier it is.”

And that Matt Furey non-quote in point #6?

​​It actually comes from Charlie Chaplin. “For the comedian, nothing transcends character.”

If you like, I’ve linked the entire Rowan Atkinson video below. You can watch it and try to figure out which techniques of visual comedy I mapped to each of my email marketing points above.

Of course, there’s more in this video than just what I’ve written above. The list of connections between visual comedy and email marketing is long and distinguished, and doesn’t just stop at 6″.

As just one example:

Maybe the most valuable part of this video is the detailed discussion of what exactly makes for an engaging character in visual comedy. I found almost all of this applied to email marketing directly, without the need for even the smallest bit of translation. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s a lesson I should apply myself.

So to wrap up:

​If you’re a goofy and thoughtless person who enjoys laughing when somebody slips on a banana peel…

​Or if you’re a deep and serious thinker who is interested in uncovering the hidden structure of things most people take for granted…

​Then I believe you will get value out of this video. Or maybe you’ll just get some pointed human observation. You can find it below. Before you click to watch it, you might want to sign up for my daily email newsletter, and get more insightful things like the essay you’ve just read.

“So cringe”: Content creators get rich without anyone knowing who they are

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I sat down just a few minutes ago, my hotdog + espresso soup at the ready, and I watched 8 minutes of:

* A hot girl putting a live fish down her sweatpants

​* A man walking up the side of a 30-foot light pole

​* A motorcyclist’s head falling off

​* Pigtails being cut by office scissors and meat cleavers

​* Cheating wives and husbands caught in the act and running for cover

​* A leech up somebody’s nose

The backstory is all these videos were produced by Network Media, a video content mill that’s gotten 200 billion views on Facebook and Snapchat over the past two years.

200.

Billion.

Let me repeat that number so that it perhaps has a chance to sink into your brain. If each of those video views were a hotdog, that means that you and everybody else on the planet would have eaten 25 Network Media hotdogs each over the past two years.

Network Media was started by Rick Lax, who looks a little like a young Mickey Rourke.

Lax ​​has a law degree.

But Lax’s primary passion was never law. It was always magic.

Lax wasn’t popular as a kid. To make things worse, he never could quite make it at the highest levels of the magic business.

He was apparently hurt to be excluded even from this community of misfits.

So Lax went outside the magic establishment, and started posting videos on Facebook, iterating, optimizing, and cranking out content. At first, his videos showed magic tricks. Later, they showed random stuff Lax figured out to be popular.

It got so Lax’s Facebook videos were easily getting 100 million views each.

Lax started to monetize his videos with Facebook’s “paid creator” ad share as soon as that became available. Immediately, he started making six figures a month.

What’s more, Lax realized the demand for his bizarre videos, which applied his insights from magic, was endless. So he brought on more people, often broke actors and singers, who were making minimum wage before Lax found them.

Lax turned many of his anonymous content creators into millionaires. By late 2021, Lax’s Network Media was pulling in $5 million a month across all its different videos.

I’d like to tell you more of Lax’s story, but I’ve just finished my hotdog + espresso soup and my time is up. So I’ll make you an offer instead.

Check out article below. It’s where I learned about Rick Lax and his $5M/month viral video business. The article contains lots of titillating facts, plus some useful techniques.

In fact, if you read the article below, you can find out why almost all of Lax’s video feature something surreal, such as tampons in the fridge or a dirty hairbrush as part of a cooking video.

​​Maybe that will even explain why I’m eating hotdogs in espresso sauce as I write this email.

So my offers is, read the article below, find out the technical term for this “tampons in the fridge” technique, sign up to my email newsletter, and then write me an email to tell me the name of this technique.

In return, I will share with you something else interesting, valuable, and related. It’s something that I might share with my entire list down the line, but that I will share with you first, and for certain, if you only take me up on my offer.

In case you want to do that, here’s the link to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/lax

The IOU theory of copywriting

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I read once (in a book) that credit, aka debt, came way before money. In other words, an IOU — a little slip of clay tablet commemorating the three sheep you gave to me — is a more powerful economic idea than gold coins.

I also read once (in an email) that copywriter Gary Halbert said the most powerful human motivating force is not self-interest… but curiosity.

Is there a connection between these two powerful facts?

Clearly. Because I personally think of curiosity as an IOU.

You give a couple of IOUs to your reader right in your headline. “I promise to pay you some valuable information,” each IOU says, “just give me a bit of time.”

As long as you’re in the reader’s debt, as long as he’s holding one of your IOUs, he sticks around. He wants to get paid.

The good thing is that you can give your reader a new IOU before paying off an old one. That way you can keep him around. But be careful.

If you start handing out too many IOUs… if the debt you’re incurring is too outrageous… if the repayment period is too long… then your reader is likely to get frustrated.

“This guy is never gonna pay up,” he will say. “This is just worthless paper.” He will throw away all your IOUs into the river, and along with them, your sale.

In other words, don’t overdo your debt of curiosity. But do do it.

And if you want some technical pointers on how to do curiosity in your sales copy, why, I’ve got just the thing.

It’s hidden right there inside Commandment III of my book on A-list copywriter commandments.

In case you haven’t checked this book out yet, but are a bit curious, here’s the link:

https://www.bejakovic.com/10commandments

Two marketing legends try and fail to pronounce my name

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A few days ago, reader Sam wrote in to tell me a curious fact:

On a recent episode of the Chris Haddad podcast, Chris and IM guru Matt Bacak spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to pronounce my name.

Matt: “B-E-J-A-K-O-V…”

Chris: “Buh-Jack-Oh-Vick? I think that’s how you pronounce it?”

[No, it’s not. But I can’t blame anybody for not knowing for what to do with this salad of letters.]

The context is that Chris, the very successful marketer and copywriter I wrote about yesterday, asked Matt, a legend in the direct response field, which copywriting books Matt recommends to people.

Matt had two recommendations.

The first was Evaldo Albuquerque’s 16-Word Sales Letter.

The second was Johh Buh-Jack-Oh-Vick’s 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

I was chuffed to hear that Matt and Chris were discussing my book.

But it wasn’t a complete surprise.

About a year ago, Matt had written me an email telling me how he recommends my book to people inside his mentoring program. At the time, I was a little too denso to do anything with Matt’s endorsement.

So if you really need a marketing and copywriting lesson in today’s email, then my message to you is:

​​Don’t be like me.

In other words, ​when doing marketing for yourself, treat yourself as you would a client, including being aggressive about collecting and using testimonials.

If you are a freelance copywriter or marketer of any stripe, I can almost guarantee that’s the most valuable thing will hear today.

​​But perhaps you don’t believe me.

Perhaps you want more copywriting and marketing advice, so you can compare which one is the most surprising, new, and useful for you.

​​If so, I have ten more copywriting and marketing commandments to share. Inside of a little book publicly endorsed by Matt Bacak. You can find the entire collection here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Getting comfortable copybragging on Facebook

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Speaking on a podcast a while back, marketer and copywriter (though not freelance!) Chris Haddad had the following harsh truth to share:

“If I was a freelance copywriter, I would be posting on Facebook about copy all the time. And I would be posting all of my testimonials and all of my successes. Because that’s the gig. And if you can’t do it, you need to go out and do something else.”

Chris was saying how back in the day, what made him successful as a freelance copywriter is he was willing to go out and shout, “Hey I’m Chris Haddad and I’m fucking great.” But that kind of bragging causes a discomfort in his seat these days. It’s also one of the reasons Chris didn’t offer any copywriting training for the longest time.

What if you’re the same?

What if you have a fear of the spotlight, and you cannot imagine bragging about yourself on Facebook?

​​And what if, unlike Chris, you haven’t yet reached the levels of success that allow you to say, you know what, I’ll do something else instead?

Well, I think you’ve got several options. Such as creating your own product in a non-marketing niche… or writing a daily email newsletter in the hope of establishing your credibility without bragging… or taking a page out of Sasha Fierce’s book.

Yes, Sasha Fierce.

Maybe that rings a bell. Maybe no? It’s the alter ego that Beyonce created for herself in her early days. Here’s Beyonce:

“Usually when I hear the chords, when I put on my stilettos, like the moment right before when you’re nervous… then Sasha Fierce appears, and my posture and the way I speak and everything is different.”

Psychologists agree. By conducting experiments on children and the weak-willed, they have shown how inventing an alter-ego for yourself (or at least asking yourself, “What would Chris Haddad do?”) works wonders in changing your perspective, your resolve, and your behavior. ​​Search online for the “Batman Effect” if you want to know more about this.

But for now, maybe it’s time to start inventing a braggartly Facebook alterego for your copywriting business. It might not be what you like to hear. But as Chris says, that’s the gig.

Are you expecting me to finish this email by bragging myself?

No, I will save that for tomorrow’s email. I do have something to brag about, and it even involves Chris Haddad in a way. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. Sign up to my email newsletter if you’d like to read that when it comes out.

​​​​For today, if you’d like to hear all of Chris’s tough love insights into what it takes to be a successful freelance copywriter, then brace yourself, and then take a listen here:​

#1 copy critique I give inside the Inner Ring

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Yesterday, I held the fourth call of the Copy Riddles Inner Ring.

The Inner Ring is a little coaching group. I created it as an upsell to Copy Riddles.

In the Inner Ring, I critique people’s bullets.

The problem is, the bullets of the Inner Ring folks are getting too good. With each new week, there’s less and less biting and merciless criticism I can give.

If you think I’m trying to presell you on the Inner Ring, then stop thinking. I won’t run this offer again.

I made that decision a few days ago, for my own reasons. I might talk more about those down the line.

For today, I want to share a share a little diamond with you. It’s small but very valuable. I found it thanks to the Inner Ring. And it’s this:

There’s just one bit of feedback I keep giving people, week after week.

Even as their bullets become more intriguing… as their mechanisms become sexier… as their warnings become scarier… there’s one thing I keep repeating.

And that’s to make their copy 100% clear.

That’s my advice to you too.

Make your copy easy to read. Make it easy to understand. Take out fluff that clutters your message. Clean up stains that allow doubts to creep into your reader’s mind.

How do you do that? How do you make your message 100% clear?

There are many ways to fleece that feline. Today, I want to point you to just one. It’s an automatic, push-button tool that gets a lot of cat fur off quickly.

For example:

I started out this email with a first draft. That draft was at a 6th-grade reading level.

Thanks to this tool, I whittled it down to an 5th grade level. Then to a 3rd-grade level. And then, with a lot of work, to a 2nd-grade level.

You are still reading this email. Maybe you even found it persuasive. If you did, clarity is the reason why.

So if you aren’t using this tool yet, consider doing so. It’s valuable and it’s free.

And if you this tool, consider using it more. All the way to its full, second-grade potential. Here’s where to find it:

https://hemingwayapp.com/

The “knitted eyebrows” copywriting technique

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If you ever wished you had the nerve to engage in more risk-seeking behaviors such as unprotected sex or high-stakes roulette, here’s some good news:

Scientists have found a quick, cheap, and easy way to help you out.

According to a study published by researchers at the University of Ohio a couple years ago, all it takes is acetaminophen — ie. Tylenol, Panadol, etc.

The scientists found that a 1,000-mg dose of acetaminophen increased risk-seeking behaviors in a batch of 545 college students.

​​In other words, acetaminophen not only reduces physical pain such as headaches… but it seems to also reduce psychic pain, at least the psychic pain coming from fear and uncertainty.

So the next time you find yourself nervously turning away from a suspect sexual partner… or refusing to bet it all on red at the Casino in Monte Carlo… just pop a couple Tylenol, and you will be good to go.

You might think I’m being foolish or trivial. And perhaps you’re right.

​​But there is a point I’m trying to get to, if only my fingers would follow my brain.

I’ve read somewhere, and the Tylenol study above supports it, that we humans have grafted modern brain processes onto old physical hardware.

For example, when we have the intellectual or emotional experience of, say, trusting somebody… this is connected to physical sensation of warmth in our bodies.

​​The link goes both ways — trust inspires warmth, and warmth inspires trust. (Again, some scientists have run experiments to prove this.)

Similarly, other human emotions such as fear, disgust, anger, and joy, can and do trigger — and are triggered by — physical cues.

“Ugh why is this relevant to me,” I hear you saying, as your eyes roll to the back of your head.

Well, if you’re in the business of writing some frightening or infuriating or energizing sales copy, your first move might be to reach for adjectives. Like “frightening.” Or “infuriating.” Or “energizing.”

​​But that’s for kids.

What grownup copywriters do is pay attention to their own bodies.

Dry swallowing… gritted teeth… a fully expanded chest.

​​These are just some of the hundreds of physical cues you can include in your copy, and play your readers’ emotions like a keyboard.

​​Or if you want them to focus and read on, just talk to them about their eyebrows knitting together. And on that note, if you’d like to focus and read more essays like the one you’ve just read, then sign up for my daily email newsletter.

I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group, so read this email

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I have a good friend visiting me now. We met many years ago, in college, at the the “clothing-optional” LSD experiment known as the University of California at Santa Cruz.

A few days ago, my friend and I were discussing how UCSC has gained a lot of status since we graduated. That’s thanks to its location right next to Silicon Valley, and the huge amount of tech money that the school has been getting as a result.

This isn’t the only lucky and appreciating investment I’ve made in education.

Another school I went to has since relocated to a richer city. As a result, my diploma became more prestigious and valuable without me doing anything.

And of course, there’s the Dan Ferrari coaching group I was in a few years ago.

Starting in the summer of 2019, I was in Dan’s coaching group for a little over six months.

At the time, Dan was already a super successful copywriter, with a big string of controls for Agora Financial and for The Motley Fool.

But somehow, Dan’s fame has increased significantly since.

​​His name has become much more known in industry.

​​He even appeared as no. 1 in some arbitrary listing of the world’s best active DR copywriters.

​​And I’ve personally noticed people treat me with growing deference whenever I mention I was in Dan’s coaching group — they assume I must have learned some of Dan’s black magic.

So what explains Dan’s growth in status over the past few years?

Some part of it is just time and compounding — Dan has just stuck around and kept working and getting better. He’s also had new wins in the years since. I also have my own pet theory why Dan’s prestige has risen so high over past few years, but that’s another topic, for another time.

For today, I just want to share something that Dan once wrote in one of his once-every-79-years, Halley’s Comet emails:

“Your abilities as a marketer are only capped by how hungry you are to leave a mark.”

What I take from that is the value of high standards, both for ends and means.

​​In other words, if you want A-list skills, and maybe even the results that come with those skills, then it’s good to set high standards for what you find acceptable.

Over the past few days, I’ve been telling you about six different characteristics that make for a positive attitude. So far, I’ve covered 3. The fourth I want to tell you about is exactly this, high standards.

People who develop high standards — for example, athletes recovering from injury, refusing to accept anything but complete recovery, where they can compete and win again — are more positive about the journey, and are more likely to reach the destination than those who are willing to settle for 50%, 30%, or 10% of what’s possible.

Perhaps that makes immediate sense to you.

Or perhaps you feel a bit of resistance to this idea. Perhaps, like me, you think there is value in having modest standards, ones you are sure to achieve.

Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, then I can tell you we still have two more characteristics of positive mindset remaining. And both of those will be particularly relevant to you in case the idea of shooting for the moon sounds like you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

In case you’re interested in reading that when I write it, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.

How a copywriting tortoise can compete with dozens of hares

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A true but ridiculous story:

​​One summer, through no real fault or merit of my own, I lucked into a job as a well-paid management consultant. I did it even though I have no background or qualifications for such a position.

I was walking down the street, around the corner from my apartment, and I noticed a plaque on the wall with an impressive-sounding company name.

“I wonder what they do,” I said to myself. “I’ll check when I get home.”

It turned out the company built software for banks. So I sent an email to their public-facing email address, saying how I have a background in economics and software development (true enough), and that I’m interested in working with them during the summer.

An email came back two minutes later. It was from the CEO of the company. “When could you come into the office to talk?”
​​
He hired me a couple of days later, at what was then a royal sum of money for me, to do some management consulting about how he should run his company.

Second story:

Back in 2019, a call went out among subscribers to Ben Settle’s print newsletter. A publishing company in the real estate space was looking for “A-list copywriters” to write VSLs.

For more info, interested applicants were to write to the CEO of the company.

I really wanted this job, but it took me about a week to finally write to the guy.

During that week, I’m sure 50 to 100 other would-be “A-list” copywriters wrote in to apply the same job with their best-crafted pitches.

But that’s not what I did.

Instead, I spent that week researching this publishing company, and writing two new leads for their current hot promotion.

I heard back from the CEO as soon as I sent my leads in. He was impressed I’d done that up-front work, and he liked the copy I’d written.

A few days later, he hired me for a big project. He later hired me for a second project. Not long after that, I got several referrals from him, which also resulted in lots of new work.

I’m not telling you either of these stories as specific strategies for winning projects. ​​When it comes to copywriting clients, I’ve never had much success with cold emailing. And I don’t recommend just doing free work whenever somebody asks you for it.

The point I want to get across is simply this:

In any collection of 50 smart, hard working, gung-ho hares, I’m unlikely to stand out and win the prize. I’m just not very fast, or very ambitious.

On the other hand, in a race involving just me, a slow and lazy tortoise, my odds are much better.

Maybe your totem animal is equally uncompetitive. So instead of working to make yourself into a better competitor, my suggestion is to look for ways to make the competition a non-issue.

One last tip:

While I haven’t had much success with cold copywriting work, I have gotten two good clients that way.

​​And while I don’t recommend doing free work whenever somebody asks you for it, I have also done free work for prospective clients with great success, including some I cold emailed.

I talk about that in much more detail in a training I call Niche Expert Cold Emails.

​​This training doesn’t cost any money, but you do have to do something to get access to it. In case you are interested, here are the full details:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/​​​​​​​​

Cold email to future email marketing work in 10 days

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11 days ago, a marketer named Jon Williams wrote in to take me up on my Niche Expert Cold Emails offer. I sent Jon the promised training video. Yesterday, he wrote back with the following result (edited slightly):

Hi John!

That didn’t take long at all.

I just got your reply with a better email if possible technique for cold outreach and it gained me some future email marketing work as a kind of white label service for a guy in my hometown of all places lol.

How it worked out:

I downloaded his video making guide and got onto his list. I actually just wanted the guide and was all good with it as it helps me out making educational videos to attract more clients.

Anyhow, I noticed I didn’t actually get the link to download the template.

Worse than that, the email went to spam folder immediately.

After checking, I found it and emailed a reply to him directly saying it went to spam and after running in a quick diagnostic, I found out what was causing that error & told him how to fix it, for free.

(I know it’s a little different than your technique)

He was thrilled to hear about that because he’s needed to fix it and just hadn’t taken the time to fix it before I replied to his email.

After he’d emailed me back a working link the conversation just went from there when he asked “do you specialize in email marketing?”

We just had our first a conversation / intro call yesterday over zoom!

Here’s an ugly truth from my lean-and-hungry freelancing days:

Back when I was hunting for clients, I tried cold emailing on a few different occasions.

Each time, I found it a frustrating waste of time and effort.

But like Jon’s story above shows, cold email can sometimes produce good results, and it can even do so quickly.

The key in my experience is not to get invested in any one lead. Either in terms of your emotions… or in terms of the work you put in to reach out to them.

I know that goes against a lot of cold email “wisdom” out there.

​​”Wisdom” says you should separate yourself by researching your lead’s family history and his dog’s name… writing a short novel, for free, featuring the lead’s ancestors and his dog… then publishing the novel on Amazon under your cold email lead’s name… then emailing a screenshot of your ghostwritten book along with any earnings the book has made and a message that says, “If this message happens to reach you, can we please please for the love of patience please get on a call?”

On the other hand:

I’m also not suggesting you just spam every potent client with the same canned cold email, regardless of how drunkenly clever you make it. I tried that also. It doesn’t work either, or at least it never did for me.

So how exactly do you make cold emails work?

One possible strategy is described up there in Jon’s comment.

Another two strategies are what I talk about in the Niche Expert Cold Email training. These are the only two cold email strategies that led me to client work (both led to sizeable clients).

​​And if for some reason I absolutely had to win a client today via cold email… or alternately have an anvil dropped on my head like Wile E. Coyote… then these two strategies are what I would reach for and use.

So here’s the deal:
​​
Niche Expert Cold Emails is a free training I put out last January.

But it’s really only “free” as in “direct-response free.” Meaning you still gotta do something to get me to send it to you.

​​But if you do want this training, and you want to see what you would have to do, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/