Copywriting

A chance meeting of star-crossed lovers, in the business district, next to a fancy hotel

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I was walking this morning through a business district, next to a fancy hotel. I saw a very beautiful blonde girl walking quickly across my path.

She was wearing a white top, which was too short for her, and a white skirt, which was also too short. She slowed down for a moment to adjust her skirt and pull it down into place. I guess she was excited about something coming up, because her eyes lit up with a smile and she picked up her quick pace again.

Suddenly, she spotted me staring at her.

​​Her face got stern, she focused her eyes on the ground in front of her, and she adjusted her skirt again.

She walked on out of my peripheral vision, and I resisted the urge to turn around and look after her.

​​I could hear her pressing a buzzer — I guess the staff entrance to the hotel. In a moment more, the door opened, and she slipped inside. She was gone, and we were both safe — her, from my calf-like staring, and me, from the daunting prospect of having to go and talk to her.

But wait, there’s more.

I mean, not with this girl, even though, who knows, maybe she was THE ONE.

But staring at girls is not all I did this morning. I also read an article about writing. It was written by a certain Jay Acunzo and was titled “Nothing Is Boring: How to Tell Gripping Stories About the Seemingly Mundane.”

Acunzo’s article gives you a simple three-part structure for writing engaging stories from mundane life events.

I will not tell you what the three-part structure is. That’s because I’ve already spent enough time in the past month talking about story templates, and because the conclusion of all that work was, story templates are best forgotten.

But I will share just one bit from Acunzo’s article, which is really all you need to know:

“All it takes to tell a meaningful story from the mundane details around us is some tension, however fleeting, however subtle. These tiny differences make all the difference in the world.”

So did the tension in my little story above grip you?

​​Well, maybe grip is too strong a word.

But maybe you did feel a certain contraction and then relaxation as you were reading.

​​Maybe you felt enough tension to turn this short story from just a random collection of personal facts into something that was sufficiently stimulating, that you enjoyed having communicated to you. And really, that’s the main point. As the original A-list copywriter, Claude H., put it,

“People will not be bored in print. They may listen politely at a dinner table to boasts and personalities, life histories, etc. But in print they choose their own companions, their own subjects. They want to be amused or benefited.”

In case you’d like to be regularly benefited, and occasionally amused, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

A fun and easy email about “appointment marketing”

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I’m in this bantering WhatsApp group with a few friends that I studied with. In the group, we exchange stupid jokes and tabloid headlines, and we reminisce about times spent drinking together.

I’m very happy to join in all that.

But sooner or later, the conversation turns to Netflix and the shows people are watching. Whenever this happens, I sit there, a frozen smile on my face, with nothing to contribute, quietly desperate inside, waiting for the storm to pass.

I stopped watching TV a long time ago, and I completely missed out on the streaming revolution. I never got into any of the millions of streaming shows.

I wish my friends never got into them either, so I wouldn’t have to sit on the sidelines during the latest rounds of, “It was soooooo good, you should check it out!”

So it was with some malicious glee today that I read an article on Vulture, about Netflix’s recent troubles.

The article came out late last month, on the heels of news that Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years. Netflix’s stock price dropped 35% as a result, erasing over $50 billion worth of value in one day.

“Good,” I cackled to myself, rubbing my hands together. ​​

But you know what? I might not watch Netflix, but I do care what they do as a company.

Because like Ben Settle has been pointing out for years, we have entered the age of entertainment. Today, not only your education or selling, but even your entertainment, needs to be presold through entertainment and still more entertainment.

And who better to learn from than the hottest entertainment provider today? That’s why I figure Netflix’s hits and misses are both worth studying.

The Vulture article gives an interesting analysis of what has been going wrong at Netflix. The article deserves digging up and reading in full. Here I will share just one fun and easy thing with you.

Netflix innovated binge watching. All episodes of a show were dumped to the public at the same time.

That means you can spend a weekend in bed, eating Nutella out of the jar, and watching episode after episode of Bridgerton until nausea sets in, either from the show or from Nutella.

But while binge watching got Netflix a cult of rabid fans to start, it has its drawbacks, which are now surfacing.

One drawback is obvious. The lifetime of a binged show tends to be short.

The second drawback is less obvious. Many people like the opposite of binge watching, something the Vulture article calls “appointment TV.”

For example, knowing (once upon a time) that Seinfeld is coming on at 9pm every Thursday isn’t just about having a ritual for a Thursday evening for an entire year.

It also creates expectation and excitement.

It allows viewers to bond with their friends who are also watching the same show.

And maybe most important, it allows people the pleasure of sharing and converting others, getting you free publicity, and money money money.

So what exactly am I telling you to do?

Absolutely nothing.

​​In fact, if you remember anything from this email, remember my disappointed face whenever I hear the conversation turn to Netflix recommendations… and remember my fiendish cackling whenever I read about Neflix’s troubles.

Because I figure that for anything like “appointment marketing” to work, it takes more than just a regular schedule.

The content itself must be fun and easy. Even a hint of work or seriousness is probably deadly.

So in the interest of having you go on Twitter to share the latest Bejako email… or tell your friends that my newsletter is soooooo good and they havetocheckitout… I will stop myself here. And I will go peek in my WhatsApp group, maybe for some political memes to make me chuckle.

And on the next episode of Bejako…

Well, that episode will air tomorrow, at around 8pm CET, in your inbox, in case you sign up for my fun and easy email newsletter.

The World’s Most Valuable Postcard

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I have an offer to make you today. But first, let me give you a quick personal update:

I arrived to Barcelona yesterday for my fourth time here. As every other time, the city looks spectacular.

This morning I went out for a walk. I passed the giant, black, leaning monolith that is the Museum of Natural Sciences. I walked down ultra-wide promenade streets. I saw a mix of people — on electric scooters, human-powered bikes, or just stumbling along on foot, barely awake, trying to stick to a straight line. Apparently 7am is very early here.

I went to the beach and I saw workers setting up a stage for a music festival… a barefoot woman walking her dog in the sand… and an old couple, tossing a large ball at each other in some kind of aggressive exercise. As I headed back to my apartment, little kids with oversized backpacks started to appear everywhere.

Now let me ask you:

Could you see any of that in your mind right now?

As you might have heard, a picture is worth a thousand and one words.

I don’t know if that’s an exact exchange rate. But it’s definitely true that, if you’re looking to persuade or influence, you should use all your skill to create a vision in your prospect’s mind. As one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century, Robert Collier, put it:

“Thousands of sales have been lost, millions of dollars worth of business have failed to materialize, solely because so few letter-writers have that knack of visualizing a proposition — of painting it in words so the reader can see it as they see it.”

Of course, rather than painting a picture in words, you can literally give somebody a real picture and cut out a lot of the work you and they have to do. They will see exactly the image you want them to see, instead of having to translate your words into mental images.

And with that, let me get to my offer:

Instead of me constantly sending you word postcards in email format, would you like it if I sent you a real postcard? With a real picture on the front? From Barcelona? Or from somewhere else?

Like I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been moving around for the past two years. I’ve lived in Thessaloniki, Greece… in Medellin, Colombia… today I’m in Barcelona, tomorrow who knows. You could get a postcard from me from any of my future destinations.

You might wonder what I’m on with this postcard stuff, or if I’m being serious.

I’m being absolutely serious. And as for what I’m talking about:

A few months ago, I had an idea for a new offer. It’s stuck with me and it’s became more insistent. Today it’s time to try it out.

I call this offer the Word’s Most Valuable Postcard. For the full details, along with word pictures that might convince you or dissuade you from taking me up on this offer, take a look here:

https://mostvaluablepostcard.com/

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

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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

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part II

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Last autumn, I wrote an email with the subject line, “A critical look at Daniel Throssell.”

It was about how I experienced, first-hand, the crazy levels of engagement that Daniel gets with his emails.

In that email, I also said I’m reading Daniel’s newsletter every day to try to decode exactly how he does it.

My original plan was to do this formally. To sit down, look at a bunch of Daniel’s emails, take notes. To read critically, not just as a consumer of marketing, but as a marketer, trying to squeeze out what exactly Daniel is doing, and how I might start doing the same.

That formal sit-down never happened. Well, not until a couple weeks ago, after Daniel wrote me to say:

I had this kinda weird idea to pay you to do an analysis of my storytelling and email style. You know I highly rate your marketing analysis skills above almost anyone out there.

I’m curious to see if you would identify anything I’m doing that I haven’t even consciously realised myself that I was doing. Nothing super formal, just spending a few hours writing down any random thoughts/notes/analysis you have about how you perceive I tell my stories and use them to achieve my goals.

Would you be interested in that?

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might know I rarely miss an opportunity to turn down a paying gig. It happened this time too.

I told Daniel that no, I wouldn’t want to do this, not for money, because I really don’t know what I would end up delivering. It’s not like I’d be writing a sales letter, with a clear and defined thing I could hand over at the end.

But I did tell him I’d do it for free, if I could make a little presentation out of it, and if he would also promote it to his list.

Daniel agreed.

So I sat down. I looked at a bunch of his emails. I scratched my forehead and I took a bunch of notes. Result:

Some of what I spotted Daniel doing is straightforward copywriting, just done really well.

Some of it is ideas he teaches in his Email Copywriting Compendium.

And then, some of it is stuff I hadn’t thought about before.

Specifically, I noticed three techniques Daniel uses regularly.

These three techniques aren’t in his Email Copywriting Compendium… they aren’t standard copywriting advice… and yet, they made certain of Daniel’s emails have the most impact on me and stick in my mind the most.

If you like, I’ll tell you what those three techniques are.

I’ll also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and spell out exactly how you too can use these techniques, starting today, to make your emails more fun, more unique, and more effective.

Like I said, this will be part of a presentation I will put on. The presentation will happen live, next Monday, May 16 at 8pm CET.

You can register for this presentation below. Just click the link at the end and fill out the form on the next page, and I’ll send you a email with the Zoom meeting info and a calendar invite.

If you cannot attend this presentation live, you can still register because I will send out a recording BUT—

If you can at all attend live, I encourage you to do so. That’s because I’ll give you a surprise gift on the call, something I think you will like. This surprise gift won’t be a part of the recording.

So if email is how you make money… or if you’re a fan of Daniel’s style… or if you just have ears to hear and eyes to see that what he’s doing with his newsletter is wildly effective… then here’s your ticket:

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

Hot opportunity inside

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Today’s email will:

1. Amuse you
2. Tell you something personal and possibly shocking about me
3. Give you a valuable marketing idea you can use right now
4. Outrage you and give you a chance to feel superior
5. Share some saucy gossip about people you might know, at least online
6. Clue you in to a hot opportunity
7. Remind you of something valuable that you probably know but aren’t doing
8. Allow you to feel like you are making progress simply by reading
9. Give you a chance to think differently
10. Provide you with an experience of insight

Confession: Today I had absolutely no clue what to write. So I went back to a big list of good marketing ideas I’ve been collecting for years, and I found the following:

“Shortcut: Write out all the benefits you can think of before seeing the product. Then keep the ones that the product can satisfy.”

That’s from Milt Pierce, who according to according to A-list copywriter Bob Bly, was “the greatest copywriter you never heard of.”

Bob says that Milt was also one of the greatest copywriting teachers of the 20th century, which might be why I’ve heard versions of the above idea from a bunch of other A-list copywriters, including Parris Lampropoulos, Ted Nicholas, and John Carlton.

So for today’s email, I took Milt’s idea, came up with 10 possible benefits, and kept the four I could possibly deliver on.

But you might be wondering how I’ve delivered on #6, “Clue you in to a hot opportunity.”

The fact is, I heard Milt share the above advice in a special program, the “Gene Schwartz Graduate Course on Marketing.” This “Graduate Course” was more like a seminar of top copywriters and marketers, including Parris, Jay Abraham, and Ken McCarthy, going back and forth on the topic of Gene Schwartz and the marketing and copywriting lessons they squeezed out of the man.

The “Gene Schwartz Graduate Course” used to sell for hundreds of dollars. Then for many years, you couldn’t even get it at any price. But today, it’s yours free — well, “free” as in you gotta buy something, for $12.69, but then you get the Gene Schwartz course as a free bonus.

So what do you gotta buy?

If you check my list above, you won’t find “Charm you with a sales pitch” among today’s benefits. So for that, and for the full info on this hot opportunity, take a look below:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

A pagan priest’s trick for persuading without being seen

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Lately I’ve gotten a little overwhelmed listening to marketing and copywriting courses, which is something I do during the off-moments of my day. So for a change, I found a course on YouTube about the early Middle Ages. I’ve been playing that when I make my salad or hard-boil my eggs or whatever else it is I am doing for lunch.

Today, I listened to a lecture about early Medieval Britain. And the lecturer read out a passage about a pagan priest, who supposedly argued to his king that the kingdom should convert to Christianity.

Now, if you are doubtful that a pagan priest would argue himself out of a job, I share your doubts.

​​Nonetheless, I thought the priest’s supposed argument was moving and even beautiful:

“The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.”

A sparrow, flying swiftly through a bright and warm banquet hall, as a metaphor for life.

​​How the hell do you come up with something like that? Do you just have to be a poet?

I thought about this for a moment.

I’m sure being a poet helps.

But I realized something rather obvious. This image, of the bright and warm banquet hall, and maybe even a sparrow flitting through it, was something a king of Northumbria would know very well. It would be a daily experience — well, if not daily, at least nightly, on the weekends.

So the point I want to share with you is to make your metaphors something your prospect will know well, and will resonate with.

That’s not my idea. It comes from the book Metaphorically Selling by Anne Miller.

You might think this idea is so basic that it hardly needs mentioning.

But Miller gives the example of a business woman, speaking to an audience of other business women, who peppered her talk with metaphors taken from baseball and football. Unsurprisingly, the talk bombed.

Miller’s advice is to “snapshot” your prospect.

To observe. To do research. To find out his or her life and background. Even things that aren’t related to the problem you are offering to solve.

And then to use that, and not just to inform your sales arguments. But also to shape the metaphors you come up with, so you can subtly persuade your prospect, without him even noticing it. Kind of like a soft bed, which makes it both pleasant to fall asleep, and impossible to tell when it actually happened.

If you found that persuasive, you might like my email newsletter. Or you might not. If you want to try it out, you can sign up here.

Factual vs. emotional

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As I so often do, this morning I sat down at my writing desk, took a sip of my coffee, lit my pipe, put on my eyepatch, and started re-reading, for the 114th time, David Ogilvy’s self-promotional ad, How to Create Advertising That Sells.

As you probably know, Ogilvy’s ad is a collection of 38 bits of wisdom that Ogilvy learned by creating “over $1,480,000 worth of advertising.” Number 23 on the list is this:

23. Factual vs. emotional. Factual commercials tend to be more effective than emotional commercials.

However, Ogilvy & Mather has made some emotional commercials which have been successful in the marketplace. Among these are our campaigns for Maxwell House Coffee and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like Mr. Ogilvy is saying, “Certainly, emotional ads have been known to work… but it takes a true expert, someone like me, to pull it off. Otherwise, best stick to facts, facts, facts, or your advertising will pass like a ship in the night.”

That goes against a lot of copywriting advice you hear today.

Today, the main advice for copywriters is to agitate, scare, excite, outrage. Pile on the power words. Don’t tell people facts. They don’t care. But stir their emotions and they will buy.

So what gives? Was Ogilvy just writing at a different time? Or do different rules apply you promote Hershey’s Milk Chocolate in Life Magazine than when you promote, say, ProstaStream supplements on Clickbank?

Well, I can tell you a little personal story.

The single piece of copy that has paid me the most money to date, per word written, was a 317-word email I wrote a couple years ago, in 2020. It was full of facts, to support the idea that using hand sanitizer won’t get your hands as clean as washing your hands with soap and water. We were selling “paper soap” — little dental-floss sized dispensers of one-time soap flakes. And thanks to that fact-filled email, we sold, literally, a ton of paper soap.

“Yeah,” I hear you say, “but that was a unique moment. There was a lot of fear around corona, and everybody was in the mindset to keep their hands clean or die. You were just tapping into that.”

You’re right. And in a way, that’s the point.

Facts alone are like pebbles by the side of the road.

They’re not very impressive. Not very threatening. Not very useful.

But take some of those facts, and put them inside your prospect’s shoe. Suddenly, you have him squirming, and twisting, and looking to get rid of that discomfort and pain. And not only that. You have him taking that discomfort and pain with him — unlike power words and emotions, which are like a cloud of smoke that disappears in a few moments.

The bigger point is that, ideally, all aspects of your copy, or anything else you write, should do double or triple duty. Facts are no different.

Sure, facts provide concreteness and believability. But choose the right facts, and you will stir emotions also. After all, who really cares that, at 60 miles an hour, the loudest thing in this Rolls Royce is the electric clock? There must be something else going on there.

And now here’s a fact:

Every day, over 1,050 people are signed up to get emails with little bits of marketing wisdom like what you just read. If you’d like to join them, click here and fill out the form.

Copy Zone thesis #89

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If there were a church near me, I’d go and nail an announcement to the door that says:

I’m nearing the end of Copy Zone, my guide to the business side of copywriting. Managing clients… getting them if you don’t got ’em… upleveling to as high as you want to go, that kind of thing.

Copy Zone consists of 114 points, rules, or maybe theses, to keep going with the religious theme I have set up my offers.

I’ve finished all but a handful of these 114 theses. And for those that remain, I have notes and clear plans for what I want to say.

But here’s the puzzling and conflicting thing to my troubled mind:

I started working on Copy Zone over 3 months ago. This final result, soon to be finished, will be 85% what I initially wrote up for myself in a batch of notetaking in the first couple weeks, when I started working on this.

And yet it’s taken me over three months, and will take a bit more time, to actually get to the end.

That’s not because the actual writing has been so hard or has taken so long.

Instead, it’s because I had doubts about the overall structure… the presentation I was making… the emphasis I wanted readers to rememeber and walk away with.

So I ended up rearranging, making tweaks, changing the structure multiple times… while keeping much of the content the same.

Will it be worth it?

​​And even if the current version really turns out to be a 100, wouldn’t it have been better to put out something that was an 85, but to do so three months ago?

Who knows. It’s a fair question. and maybe It’s a lesson I will draw for myself in the future.

For now, I just want to share a different point with you:

Don’t get desperate if your copy, or anything else that you’re writing, sucks.

Don’t go all Nikolai Gogol on your half-finished sales letter and set it on fire, or delete it on your hard drive.

It might be tempting. I know I’ve felt the urge. But the fact is, even if what you’ve written looks awful right now, 85% of it can be salvaged.

So take a bit of time — or worst case, take three months — and rewrite what you’ve got. There are sure to be good ideas in there. Your entire package just needs to be sharpened, polished, molded or otherwise physically transformed. But the substance is there.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos once talked about how he writes a sales letter. After the first draft’s done, Parris said, he always thinks he’s lost it. People will find out he’s a fraud.

Then he rewrites the bullets he’s written. They’re still bad. But Parris squints a bit, tilts his head, and thinks to himself, maybe, maybe I can get away with this?

Third and fourth rewrite, the bullets are starting to look pretty damn good.

And the next thing you know, Parris has got himself a new control sales letter, which ends up paying him hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in royalties.

Ok, on to business:

Do you want to get notified when Copy Zone is out? You can keep waiting for that announcement on the church door. Or just sign up to my email newsletter.

What’s the best font for making sales?

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A couple days ago, I saw a little study titled, “Best Font for Online Reading.”

Spoiler: there’s no clear answer.

One font, Garamond, allowed the fastest reading speed on average.

But that’s just on average. Not every person read fastest with Garamond. Another font, Franklin Gothic, proved to be the fastest font for the most people, though the average reading speed was lower than Garamond.

So is it time to change your sales page font to Garamond? Or Franklin Gothic?

Or maybe even to Open Sans — the font that came in last in terms of reading speed?

There is an argument to be made for having people be able to read your copy faster. If they get through your copy more quickly and easily, they get your sales message more easily, and they make it to the order button faster. And money loves speed, right?

On the other hand, there’s an equal argument to be made for having people read slower. The more time and effort somebody invests with you, the more likely they are to trust you (one of those mental shortcuts we all engage in), and the more likely they are to justify that investment and trust by buying in the end.

So like I said, no clear answer.

But this did bring to mind a story Brian Kurtz likes to tell about a time he hired Gary Bencivenga.

As you probably know, Brian was the VP at direct response publisher Boardroom. And in that role, he hired some of the most famous and most brilliant copywriters of all time, Gary among them.

Anyways, Brian’s story is about two sales packages, one fast, one slow, both written by Gary Bencivenga, both promoting the same product.

To me personally, this story has proven to be the most fundamental and important lesson when it comes to copywriting or running a direct response business.

Brian’s little story won’t tell you what kind of font to use, or what kind of copy to write, fast or slow. But maybe it will make that choice a lot clearer in your mind.

In case you want to read Brian’s valuable sales and copy study, you can find it at the link below. But before you go read that, perhaps you might like to sign up for my slow but trustworthy email newsletter. In any case, here’s Brian’s article:

https://www.briankurtz.net/how-you-sell-is-how-they-will-respond/