Cooling out course buyers

A reader named Tom (not sure he wants me to share his last name) replied to my email yesterday with a thoughtful comment that could make somebody good money:

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I was reading today’s email about the customer who wanted the refund, and I started wondering if maybe there was a simple fix that could have saved you, him, and the people you were promoting for a lot of hassle.

Direct response teaches all these ways to build trust, harness momentum, overcome objections, frame value, reverse risk, etc, but I don’t see anywhere near as much focus on post-purchase persuasion – the buyer’s remorse mitigation bit where you tell them “you made a good decision – you weren’t duped.”

This is especially important for anything relatively high-ticket that needs a lot of persuasive leverage to get to over the line, and I think for those guys the hand holding and reassurance is not only more necessary, but probably has a lot of surplus value.

I think of it as “warming down” from a very emotionally charged, high-energy conversion ramp. As a copywriter you get so used to pushing the buttons and architecting the momentum that it’s easy to lose sight of what an emotionally and cognitively demanding experience the conversion process can be for the prospect (as in it uses emotional and cognitive resources, not that it’s high friction).

For me at least the takeaway is that the post-purchase excitation window is one of the most vulnerable and high-intensity moments of the entire arc, and that stepping in at that point (in the right way) can be one of the most valuable forms of nurture out there. By properly architecting a post-purchase nurture/wind down sequence, even for affiliate sales, you can 1. avoid refunds/months of avoidable back-and-forths 2) feel better about the sale (happy customers etc), 3. build trust, rapport and good will in a way that increases engagement, sales, and LTV of your list.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’m not stating the painfully obvious, but as I read today’s email that jumped out, and I thought I’d try and articulate it.

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As you might or might not know, since I’ve only mentioned the fact about 14 million times, I’m about to publish a book about the commonalities between con men, pickup artists, copywriters, etc.

I bring this up 1) to build a bit more buzz about the book and 2) because Tom’s use of the term “warming down” to describe a process for avoiding a post-purchase blowup.

Con men, who have more skin in the game than most copywriters, particularly more than freelance copywriters who work on one-off projects, call this process “cooling out a mark.”

Con men know that when you get somebody’s money, there’s still work to be done, so that the mark doesn’t go to the police. Crazy thing is it can be done. A mark in a good con doesn’t go to the police because he doesn’t even realize he’s been conned.

I’m not advising you to fleece, scam, or con people. I am advising you to take common human psychology seriously.

Like Tom writes above, we — marketers, copywriters, online business owners — have all learned how to amp and rile people up emotionally, up to the point where a sale is made.

We might think that, since we sell good products, ones as advertised, a sale is really all we need to do. Once people are faced with the good product — ta da!

Except what you sell, good or bad, is secondary, while what your customer feels and perceives is primary.

Tom gives some good ideas for how to “cool out” your course buyers so they don’t end up regretting the emotional spike that led them to a purchase.

I’ll give you one more idea, which is simpler and more universal.

It’s simply to keep writing daily emails, in which you inevitably keep promoting the same offer in new ways.

Ongoing daily emails resell people on what they bought, encourage them to actually dip in and consume it and benefit from it, and show you’re not a con man who is simply presenting a sexy front so you can swipe people’s money and then run to the horse track to gamble it all away.

So this entire email is really for the people who already subscribe to my Daily Email Habit service. If you needed one more reason to write daily emails, or to benefit from Daily Email Habit, or to believe in me as somebody who is looking to help you, then you’ve got it.

And if you’re not a Daily Email Habit subscriber, but you can see the value of sending daily emails, then here’s how to do it more quickly and easily:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

“… which is really important yada yada”

Yesterday, I made available my 3rd Conversion training for 36 hours. It’s about how to get people to consume and implement your info product, so they actually get value out of it beyond just the thrill of a purchase, and so they tell others about you, and buy more stuff when you create it.

Today, I got a question about 3rd Conversion from a course creator:

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I have just rewritten all my course slides and gearing up to rerecord them and to then release V2.

One of the things I’ve done is finish every lesson with a hook for the next lesson.

So something like “but what we haven’t covered is this and that which is really important yada yada. That’s what we’ll look at next, see you there.

Is this the sort of thing your training teaches? But many other tips like that?

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I don’t wanna razz this course creator because what he describes is endemic, and I too have been guilty of it.

But if you care about creating long-term customers from one-time buyers, and you want people to consume your info product, and get value from it, it takes active thought and work.

Just piling up a bunch of solid info, and at the end of it effectively saying, “…and there’s more, and it’s really important yada yada,” is typically too little, too loose, too late.

That’s not to say that “handing people IOUs,” as I like to call it, is never a good idea. But:

1. There are better places to hand out IOUs than at the end of a lesson

2. There’s more important stuff to do at the end of a lesson than to hand out an IOU

I’ve only made 3rd Conversion available once before, as a live training last November. To the people who took me up on that training, I also gave a free bonus document that I called, “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion, 1st edition.”

This “Encyclopedia” includes 19 techniques for encouraging consumption and digestion, along with descriptions and illustrations of each technique, some of which I went over during the live training, some of which I didn’t.

I can tell you that technique #14 talks specifically about giving out IOUs… while technique #17 and #19 are about more important stuff to do at the end of a lesson, at least if you want to encourage consumption and implementation.

If you’ve already gotten 3rd Conversion from me, you will find the “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion, 1st edition” as a bonus in the course area.

And if you haven’t yet gotten 3rd Conversion, you still have a few hours to get it and the bonus “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion,” until 12 midnight PST, tonight.

This will be the last email I send about it.

If you need some help making up your mind, here are a few comments I got from people who attended the 3rd Conversion training live.

#1. From Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

#2. From Folarin Madehin, freelance copywriter:

“The 3rd Conversion call was great, John! But I already expected that going in. I know you said to look at the training as more than a checklist, but that’s what was most on my mind, lol. ‘Here’s a list of stuff I can check to make products more awesome!'”

#3. From Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

#4. From Shakoor Chowdhury, digital marketer:

“I gotta also say the way you [a list of stuff I’ve done in the past to get people to consume my courses and trainings] makes you an effective teacher and I think there is a lot to be said about the way you teach compared to traditional schooling which teaches us nothing because there is no incentive to listen and no incentive to use it or use our own initiative to ’test ourselves’ like you have done…”

“I normally get bored easily, but you were able to keep my attention throughout the entire training with minimal distraction, mainly through [some of the techniques I used inside the actual 3rd Conversion training to encourage people to consume it]… perhaps the ’tiktok generation’ has some hope after all.”

#5. From Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter:

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

If you’d like to get 3rd Conversion before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Don’t rely on copy for this

Yesterday, I got an interesting course creator question from Gasper Crepinsek. (For context, last week I promoted Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery, which is delivered as a 30-day email-based course.) Gasper wrote:

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How do you go about writing cliff hangers to the next email (that open curiosity loop)?

We already have a pretty high completion rate on the course but I want to make it even bigger. And this seems like a way that could potentially help.

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This reminded me of a time I heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos during a Q&A. Somebody in the audience asked, “What kind of copy would you write to address the objection, “I need time to think about it?'”

Parris, who is as skilled and as knowledgeable a copywriter as there is, said he wouldn’t rely on copy to do this. Instead, he said he’d use the structure of the offer itself – a deadline, a limited number of spots, etc.

And so it is with my answer to Gasper’s question.

Gasper is ultimately how to tease content in a sexy way ie. how to write sales bullets.

I have an entire course about how to write sales bullets. It’s called Copy Riddles. It’s great. If you want to learn how to tease people so they pay you for the information you’re selling, then Copy Riddles is the way to go.

But when it comes to the much harder task of getting people to consume how-to info they’ve already paid for, or to complete a course, or to watch a training all the way through — and to actually get value out of it — then I wouldn’t rely on sales bullets, or on open loops, or on copy in general.

Instead, I’d rely on the structure of the course or info product itself.

I created on a training last year all about this.

It’s called 3rd Conversion, and it’s about turning one-time buyers into long-term customers by getting them to consume and digest your info products.

I’ve only offered 3rd Conversion once before, as a live training last November.

But if you like, can get your own copy of 3rd Conversion right now.

Taking a page from Parris’s book, there’s a deadline, tomorrow, Sunday at 12 midnight PST to act. After that, 3rd Conversion goes back into the vault to wait for the next four-planet alignment.

If you need some help making up your mind, here are a few comments I got from people who attended the 3rd Conversion training live.

#1. From Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

#2. From Folarin Madehin, freelance copywriter:

“The 3rd Conversion call was great, John! But I already expected that going in. I know you said to look at the training as more than a checklist, but that’s what was most on my mind, lol. ‘Here’s a list of stuff I can check to make products more awesome!'”

#3. From Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

#4. From Shakoor Chowdhury, digital marketer:

“I gotta also say the way you [a list of stuff I’ve done in the past to get people to consume my courses and trainings] makes you an effective teacher and I think there is a lot to be said about the way you teach compared to traditional schooling which teaches us nothing because there is no incentive to listen and no incentive to use it or use our own initiative to ’test ourselves’ like you have done…”

“I normally get bored easily, but you were able to keep my attention throughout the entire training with minimal distraction, mainly through [some of the techniques I used inside the actual 3rd Conversion training to encourage people to consume it]… perhaps the ’tiktok generation’ has some hope after all.”

#5. From Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter:

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

If you’d like to get 3rd Conversion, before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

The Secrets Of Growing Up

I’m in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia, lying on the bed of my AirBnb as I write this.

A moment ago, I was looking around the room, determined to find something to write about. But what?

The strange ceramic crucifix on the wall, which looks like a starfish?

The mysterious unlit match on the ground?

The flowering white orchid by the window?

None of it was good enough.

So I got up off the bed and started rifling through a basket of tourist brochures and city maps in the corner of the room.

It turned out there were a bunch of old books in the basket as well. Among them was what I was looking for:

A 1996 gem called, “The Secrets Of Growing Up: Advice For Boys.”

The cover shows a manic- and aggressive-looking ruffian of about 14, pumping his fist in triumph.

I flipped through the book. A few section headings jumped out:

“What is petting really?”

“From the first tiny hairs to a real beard”

“Can muscles be sinful?”

I broke out in a light sweat, remembering the horror and awkwardness of my teenage years. These days, whenever I wish that I were younger again, I have to remind myself how bad things were back then.

But really, The Secrets Of Growing Up is such a quaint throwback.

There’s a section describing musical styles for boys to consider: techno (“the more BPM, the better”)… grunge (“the terms ‘punk’ and ‘grunge’ mean the same — garbage”)… and hip hop (“the rapper pays much attention to his artfully rhymed texts”).

I guess The Secrets of Growing Up was a useful book in its time?

It must have been. It was published in German originally, then translated to a bunch of different languages and republished in countries across Europe, including Croatia.

But who would possibly need or want or buy such a book today?

There was a time when there were real secrets, or at least taboo topics. Access to information was limited, scattered, restricted.

That’s not true any more.

Over the past few decades, and culminating today with Perplexity and ChatGPT, whatever you want to know or do, you have the information available instantly, for free, wherever you are.

But will you actually bother to seek out the information?

Will you actually consume it when it’s served up to you?

And most of all, will you act on it, and benefit from it?

I’m telling you this in case you KNOW how to write marketing emails… and if you already KNOW the value of doing so.

If that’s the case, do you need another email copywriting equivalent of “The Secrets Of Growing Up?”

My guess is no. And if you suspect I’m right, I’d like to point you to my Daily Email Habit service.

It’s not more information on how to write emails.

In the words of marketing agency owner Eric Mann, who signed up for daily email habit a few weeks ago:

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Thanks for the DEH – without it and the fear of missing out on getting one more day in a row – I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing this at all.

The content isn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined, I assume because I read so many daily emails from so many great copywriters like you and Ben and Daniel T, etc, it almost feels second nature to me now…

It’s the discipline of writing when you don’t have something dripping from your pen – that’s what the DEH solves for me! Thanks again!! 🙂

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If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and get writing for real, today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to use an involvement device to win customers for the long term

Yesterday, I got on three calls with three people who expressed interest in my new daily email prompts service.

The last of these three calls was with a media buyer named Sean (not sure he wants me to share his last name), who works at an agency in Colorado.

Sean has bought pretty much every training and course I’ve put out, starting with Copy Riddles back in 2021.

As were getting started with the call, Sean explained how it started:

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What I really liked about Copy Riddles was that little involvement piece where you have to read the source material and come up with your own bullet that’s close to what the copywriter came up with.

And that involvement advice kept me going through the entire course. It’s probably the coolest course that I’ve done in terms of copywriting. I’ve been dabbling in the copywriting space for 20 years, since I was 15.

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You can do something like this as well.

Instead of just giving people information, add in an involvement device. In other words, give your customers some sort of safe opportunity to actively practice, not just consume.

The reason to go to this trouble is because your customers will end up going through what you sell them, and will get more out of it as a result.

That’s good for them, and it’s good for you. By my entirely made-up math, an involvement device makes it an estimated 13.471x times more likely customers will buy something from you again. And I think Sean’s custom with my little online business is a good example of that.

If you have Copy Riddles, you know how the involvement device in that program works. And if you don’t have Copy Riddles yet:

I’ve never done a Black Friday promotion, and I won’t be changing that this year.

But I will have a “White Tuesday” special offer on Copy Riddles, starting tomorrow and lasting through Tuesday November 12.

Why White Tuesday?

I just thought it was a funny-sounding zag to everybody’s constant zigging with “Black Friday.”

I did try to find some kind of historical event to tie White Tuesday into… but I only came upon a decree from November 12, 1938, in Nazi Germany, excluding Jews from participating in the economy.

This is most definitely NOT the kind of White Tuesday I have in mind.

Instead, I just mean this event to be a fun, little, completely Nazi-free promo, hopefully with an irresistible offer to get you to try Copy Riddles if have been curious about it but have not jumped in yet. But more on all that tomorrow.

No response

Here’s an idea that I’ve found to be true:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content all the way through, it’s much easier to get great testimonials, ones you can actually feature because they say something substantive, and because they have a real shot of converting others as well.

I bring this up because last night, a copywriter named Pete, who’s been on my list for a while and who has already bought a few of my previous offers, signed up for my 3rd Conversion training, all about consumption and digestion.

When I asked Pete why, and what he’s hoping to get from the training, he replied:

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Reason I joined is, because I’ve done a few workshops in the past few months that I’ve repurposed as content to sell.

Some people bought, but when I send emails to them to get feedback I get no response.

Which I’m assuming is because they haven’t gone through it.

If they thought it sucked, I’m certain I would hear about it. As negative people usually have something to say lol

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I’m not sure if people who think an offer sucked usually have something to say about it. I know I like to keep my mouth shut and just go elsewhere.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Pete’s case, and there’s no reason to think so based on his message.

But I do know what I told you above:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content, it becomes much easier to get great testimonials, or at least feedback and response of some sort.

And as an example of that, I can tell you that last month, Pete bought my Most Valuable Emails and the stripped-down version of Simple Money Emails. When I wrote to him to deliver the courses, he replied:

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I stayed up last night to binge read everything in MVE…

And all I have to say is, you’re not charging enough, dude.

After going through Copy Riddles and now MVE, and I’ll likely do the same with SME…

Everything you sell is solid.

Always grateful when I see one of your emails roll in.

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Today, I’m not selling either Copy Riddles or MVE or SME, though of course if you’d like to give me money for those, you can.

Today, I’m simply trying to tell you it’s the last day to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training.

On the training, I will cover a small number of techniques, ones I’ve used and ones I’ve had used on me, to get people to actually go through your paid courses and ebooks and programs, ideally to the end.

I’m only charging $100 for this training. It’s probably not enough, but I’m doing it because frankly I want to organize this knowledge in my own head.

Doing it live, in front of an audience of people who are genuinely interested and can profit from it, is a good motivator for me.

In other words, money and sales are not main reason why I’m putting this training on.

That said, money and sales can be the main reason why you might want to join me on this training.

Everything in your business — from your ads to your emails to your sales pages (hello testimonials) — becomes much easier if people get value from what you deliver.

And in order for them to have any chance of getting value from what you deliver — beyond just the thrill of spending money on something — they have to consume and digest what you’re selling them.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

How and why I started this newsletter

For some reason, many people seem fascinated by the obscure origins of this newsletter.

“How did you get started? What was your initial motive? Is it true that you were once a Pinterest star?”

If none of that interests you, I can’t say I blame you.

But if you are curious, here’s my origin story, in all its Peter Parker awkwardness:

1. In 2015, with my savings dwindling and with the thought of going back to an office job being absolutely repulsive to me, I anointed myself a “direct response copywriter” and started selling myself as such to anybody who had $5 to spend.

2. I soon decided to focus on email copywriting, because my Spidey-sense told me this would be a “thing.”

3. After a couple months and a dozen random clients, a suspicion started to creep into my mind. “Maybe I should learn a little bit about email copywriting if I’m going to be selling it?”

4. So I signed up to Ben Settle’s email list, because frankly there was not all that much free and ongoing information at the time about email besides Ben.

Each of Ben’s emails seemed to follow the same format: a teasing promise, maybe dressed up with some pop-culture reference, and a link to sign up to Ben’s $97/month Email Players print newsletter.

5. For years, I didn’t sign up to Email Players, though I was tempted by Ben’s teasing. At first, I didn’t sign up because why pay $97 a month for a newsletter?

“I never pay for information,” I told myself. Instead of paying, I preferred to go on working for years without getting any improvement in my results.

Later, when that changed, I still didn’t sign up for Email Players because of Ben’s policy of telling people not to sign up unless they are fit to be an Email Player, and his threats that if you ever sign up and quit, you can never come back.

6. Eventually, in 2017, Ben’s teasing and mind games wore me down. I signed up to Email Players. (I also finally read the free issue of Email Players that Ben gives away on his site, and which I had gotten years earlier, when I signed up to his list.)

7. I started using some things Ben teaches in my client work, and I got good results. But I was still struggling personally to make consistent good money as a copywriter because client work was unreliable.

8. Ben started selling a new course which was called something like Client Cash Machine, all about how to get clients. I bought it, rationalizing the $297 price by saying that if I got a bit of extra client work as a result, it would pay for the course.

9. A few weeks later, Ben’s client-getting course arrived. I opened it with trembling fingers. It was a flash drive with the audio version, and a printed-out transcript.

10. An hour or so after that, I had gone through the course. It said, in a nutshell, “Start an email list and write it daily.” Disappointing. I knew that already. It was all over Ben’s emails for free, and I had hoped Ben would tell me something exciting and new.

11. Still, some time later, I followed Ben’s advice and finally started an email list, with the distant future goal of getting clients, and with the immediate goal of fooling around in my own sandbox each day, putting into practice things I was learning from books and courses, and demonstrating my growing skills to anybody who would bear witness.

12. Ta-da! A successful personal brand, authority in the field, and a 6-figure-a-year income, just from writing one daily email, or actually more like writing 3,000 daily emails.

THE END.

I’m telling you this riveting story because I’m putting on a training this Thursday. It’s called 3rd Conversion. It’s about getting your buyers to consume and digest the information you sell.

If you read my story above carefully, it can give you lots of clues about effective strategies to increase consumption and digestion.

If you want me to spell out actual lessons, you can get that on Thursday’s training.

This 3rd Conversion training can be useful to you if you’re after long-term customers and fans… rather than one-off transactions with buyers who hand you a bit of money once and then never benefit from what you sold ’em… never buy from you again… never build up your brand by writing up an email like I’ve just written about Ben Settle.

And in case you’re wondering:

My training on Thursday won’t just be about rehashing Ben Settle’s strategies, and using Ben as a good example of effective consumption and digestion techniques. Because Ben can also serve as a cautionary tale.

Like I’ve written before, I ended up unsubscribing from Ben’s Email Players after a few years — even with Ben’s threats of never being allowed back in. The reason again was consumption and digestion. I felt Ben’s newsletter had simply become a chore to read, so I took my money and my custom elsewhere.

The 3rd Conversion training will happen this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to sign up for 3rd Conversion now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Announcing: 3rd Conversion

This coming Thursday, October 24, I will put on a live training, called 3rd Conversion.

The ticket to get inside is $100.

3rd Conversion is intended for forward-thinking online business owners and info marketers… those who have realized that selling to one person, ten times over, is easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable than selling to ten people, one time.

Specifically, 3rd Conversion will show you techniques — ones I’ve used with my own products, and ones I’ve had used on me — to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers… by getting buyers to consume and enjoy the info products they bought.

But why? Why worry? Why worry if people consume and enjoy your info products?

Because if people consume and enjoy what you sell them, they are more likely to benefit from it… and they are more likely to come back for seconds, and thirds.

And the third time you sell a buyer something something — the “3rd Conversion” — you cross a kind of threshold.

The research shows, and I got no reason to doubt it, that at this third conversion, for the first time, the customer finally becomes more likely than not to keep buying from you, over and over, year after year.

On Thursday, I’ll give you specific techniques to get to this magic point yourself, and turn your own one-time buyers into long-term customers, by making your info products more consumable and enjoyable.

You don’t have to decide to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training right now. I’ll keep talking about it until Thursday, when I will close the cart down.

But if you’re the kind of forward-thinking person that I think can benefit from this information… and if you already know that you want this info, because you care about getting more customers for the long term… and if you think $100 is a fair price for the promise I’m making… then here’s where to get your ticket for the show on Thursday:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Pick one of these 3 niches

Less is often more when it comes to marketing education.

Example:

I’ve heard marketer Travis Sago say he was once selling a biz op training, about providing some sort of marketing service to businesses.

The first iteration of the training didn’t work out well — Travis had to spend too much time helping his students figure out what niche of businesses to go after.

After it was all over, Travis took stock.

He paced and paced the floor of his laboratory, deep into the night.

And then, in the early morning hours, he had an epiphany:

For the second iteration of the training, Travis simply took out the niche selection part.

Instead, he made niche selection a part of the marketing and application process. When you signed up for the training, you had to pick one of three niches to be in.

Result:

Much easier delivery of the training, and much better results for the students.

I bring this up because I have my Daily Email Fastlane coming up on Thursday. This is a workshop about sending daily emails for your personal brand.

It’s the first time I’m ever offering this workshop.

I have learned a lot from Travis Sago, and I plan to learn from him here as well. So I will not be covering how to pick a niche in Daily Email Fastlane.

Instead, for anyone who does not yet have a niche, but is considering writing daily emails for themselves, my advice is to pick one of these 3 niches for your daily emails:

1. Personal interest

2. Previous experience (preferably, something you got paid for)

3. Make money

You can mix and meld these. My daily emails started out as #1 (interest in persuasion, influence, and personal development)… moved into #2 (talking about copywriting and marketing, based on the work I was doing for clients)… and I’ve since introduced #3, how to get adequately rich so you can live life on your own terms. Which brings me back to Daily Email Fastlane.

The above advice about niches holds whether or not you decide to join me for Daily Email Fastlane. If you want to write daily emails and build a personal brand based on those emails, pick one of the 3 niches above.

But if you want my advice on topics that are a bit further down the daily email road, then consider actually joining me for this workshop.

I will talk about 3 daily emailers I have coached. Each of them fits primarily into one of three categories above. And each built a nice lifestyle business, with one daily email at the center of it.

The deadline to sign up for Daily Email Fastlane is this Wednesday, at 8:31pm CET. If you know you want in, and you want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline, here’s where to go now:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

The 10-word hangover jingle that doubled sales

This morning, I was reading Frank Luntz’s Words That Work. That’s how I came across the following ancient marketing anecdote, with a very modern takeaway:

Back in the 1960s, Alka-Seltzer, the upset-stomach effervescent tablet, wasn’t selling well. And advertising wasn’t helping.

Then the company ran a new ad with a new jingle:

“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is”

Result:

Sales almost doubled. Customers were happier. Alka-Seltzer as a business was rescued and was eventually sold to Bayer in 1977, for about $1.4 billion in today’s money.

WTF happened?

Plop plop fizz fizz…

Sure, the jingle was catchy. But that’s not what rescued Alka-Seltzer. Instead, it was simple economics.

Until this ad, most people, hung over on a Sunday morning from the Saturday night’s bender, would plop one Alka-Seltzer into some water, stare while it fizzed up, and then chug it down to feel less awful.

After all, that’s how Alka-Seltzer was sold, and that’s what the instructions on the box said.

It worked ok. Clearly not great though, considering the straits that Alka-Seltzer was in.

Then a doctor at the Alka-Seltzer labs named Dorothy Carter suggested taking two Alka-Seltzer instead of one, in order to “break through the pain barrier.”

Sure enough, two pills made the hangover more bearable. Customers were happier. And so were Alka-Seltzer execs, after the plop plop fizz fizz campaign spread the message to the public, and nearly doubled Alka-Seltzer consumption and sales.

The very modern takeaway, as relevant today as it was in the days of Madison Avenue jingles:

Educate your customers on consuming more of your product. Increase the transaction size, not by telling people they’ll save money, but by telling them how to get better results.

This ancient anecdote and the modern takeaway have nothing to do with my upcoming Daily Email Fastlane workshop.

Well, they have something to do with it, but I will save that for the actual workshop instead of giving away everything in this email.

In case you’re curious about this workshop, here’s what to know:

This workshop will cover the common elements I’ve seen in three uniquely successful daily emailers I’ve coached over the past year and a half.

These daily emailers have stood out to me — in terms of the money they make, the stability of their income, and simply in how much they seem to enjoy their business and their life.

My claim is that, once you know the common elements of three very different, and yet very successful daily email business owners, you can take what has worked for them and have it work for you. You can get to success with daily email for your personal brand, in the fast lane.

Daily Email Fastlane will happen next Thursday, May 23, at 8pm CET, 2pm EST, 11am PST.

The deadline to sign up is Wednesday, May 22, at 8:31pm CET.

In case you’d like to sign up now, so you can be sure not to miss out:

Click here, sign up, get ahead fast, never stop