Direct Marketing News

10 jaw-dropping email deliverability tips you must know in 2023: A complete guide for marketers

by

A new reader writes in:

===

John – just wanted to let you know that deliverability on your emails is pretty terrible.

I’ve marked your emails as not-spam multiple times. They keep ending up in spam though!

I want to read your emails.. ha.. you’re making it difficult for me though, haha. Are DKIM and SPIF set up properly?

===

I’m grateful to this reader, both for fishing my emails out of the spam folder, and for writing me to tell me about my deliverability problems.

I do have DKIM and SPF set up but apparently it makes no difference for some email providers and some inboxes.

Beyond that, I have no interest in tech fixes for email deliverability, any more than I have in SEO tweaks for getting my stuff to rank on Google.

Instead, I prefer the following ultimate deliverability tips:

1. Novelty — writing something new in my emails, which gets people curious what I might have to say tomorrow, and seeking them out even in the spam folder

2. Deadlines — having strict, often 24-hour deadlines, to reward people who seek out and open my emails when I send them out

3. Featuring reader replies like above — encouraging others to reply to me as well

4. Replying personally to people who write me — encouraging more readership and replies in the future

5. Links at the end of almost every email plus a reason why to click — apparently Gmail and other inboxes like lotsa clicking

6. Occasional valuable ideas — again, this makes people want to seek out my emails and open them

7. Sending daily — so my most loyal readers sense something is wrong if they don’t get my email, and they go searching for it, or even write me to ask what’s up

8. Being transparent about what I offer so people can decide easily if it’s not for them and unsubscribe — unengaged readers are supposed to be bad for deliverability

9. Occasionally purging people who don’t open or click my emails

So there you go:

​​9 jaw-dropping, ultimate email deliverability tips you NEED to know in 2023.

And if you’re wondering about the disconnect between my subject line (10 tips) and that list of 9, I’ll make you a deal:

1. Get my Most Valuable Email course at https://bejakovic.com/mve/

2. Reply to this email before 8:31 CET tomorrow, Wednesday Oct 11

3. I will then write back to you with a simple but effective 10th way I’ve found to increase my email deliverability — something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training

4. Of course, if you’ve bought MVE before, this offer is open to you as well. But the same deadline applies.

Just another one of my industry-leading insights in this email

by

A couple days ago, I started receiving a gentle barrage of email notifications like this:

“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
…

I checked where all these “new contacts” were coming from.

It turned out to be a website that promotes itself as a discovery platform for newsletters. And sure enough, on the front page of the site, there was the “John Bejakovic Newsletter” with the following nonsense description:

​===​

“The John Bejakovic Newsletter is not simply another regular publication; it is a vibrant, information-rich tool that provides a unique entryway to the corporate and commercial worlds.”

“Pros: John Bejakovic’s newsletter provides subscribers a tactical advantage in today’s fast-paced business environment by delivering industry-leading insights.”

“Cons: Persistent follow-up emails from John Bejakovic’s newsletter may be sent to subscribers who unsubscribe, and over time these emails may start to annoy you.”

===

​​In case it’s not clear:

This has nothing whatsoever to do with this newsletter you’re reading now.

​​I’m guessing the above fluff was generated by AI.

And I’m guessing the “new contacts” who subscribed to my list were all bots — based on the email addresses, the associated first names that were put in, and the behavior of the contacts after subscribing.

So that’s the bad part, the skeleton that I trotted out of the closet and made dance at the top of my email. Now here’s the good part:

These bot contacts came via Sparkloop. I’ve written about Sparkloop before. It’s a newsletter-recommendation marketplace.

​​Other newsletters (and occasional scam websites, like the above) can find you on Sparkloop and send you newsletter subscribers you pay for.

Or don’t pay for — because Sparkloop allows you to set your own criteria for who is an engaged, worthwhile subscriber, including location or activity or your own intuition.

For example:

I deleted all the contacts that came via that newsletter discovery website, prolly close to 100. This won’t cost me anything, except a bit of time, which I’m trying to recoup by writing this email.

On the other hand, I have been getting a trickle of actual engaged readers via Sparkloop. (It’s only a trickle, because I’m not using the co-reg functionality, but am only accepting leads who were sent to my optin page.) ​​

​​I’m also using Sparkloop to grow my health newsletter, and I’m getting good results there.

Point being, you gotta keep an eye on Sparkloop, because it’s a shiba inu that will eat from the trashcan from time to time.

​​But if you’re willing to keep an eye on it, then it’s as close as I’ve found to an automated way to grow your newsletter with the kinds of leads you yourself want.

If you wanna try Sparkloop out, you can find it at link below. ​​Yes, that’s an affiliate link but it’s not likely to pay me anything — not unless you also decide to use Sparkloop to make some money via promoting other newsletters, which is a topic for another email. ​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sparkloop

Hiring a content writer who can write a fascinating investigative article

by

I’m looking for a writer, somebody who can write a long-form article that will go on the website of my health newsletter.

The topic is, “How Big Tobacco started addicting food companies.”

The starting point for this article is an academic paper that came out last month on exactly this topic.

Your job, should you convince me you’re the right person for it, will be to take ideas from that academic paper… do additional research you might want to do… dramatize… make it all sticky… tell a story… draw out some surprising conclusions… and produce a piece of writing that’s new and fascinating for a real, live, intelligent human being to read and that makes such a human want to share the article with others.

I’m not looking for SEO fluff, but something written for actual people.

​​I’m fine if you want to use any AI tools to research or write this.

​​I don’t have a specific number of words in mind — I’m imagining something around 1k-2k words, though I’m not in any way set on that.

If you are interested in doing this job:

1. Hit reply
​
2. Tell me that you can write a fascinating article on the topic above

​3. Give me proof for statement 2 above. Tell me, or better yet, show me, whatever you think is relevant to persuade me that you are able to do this work and do it well

​4. Tell me what you want to charge for this work (Hint: saying you will do it for free is not a winning strategy)

For now, I am just advertising this to my list. I am willing to go on Upwork in a day or two and advertise there as well. However, I’m hoping to find the perfect person via my list, and quickly.

​​That’s to say, if you are interested in this job, don’t put off writing me — I hope to hear from you soon.

Copy Riddles is back but don’t buy it

by

Last week, I got a nice email notification of a new “Facebook Mention.”

​​Since I almost never log in in to Facebook, the same nice email notification kept coming at me every few days, like a a woodpecker hammering away at an aching tree trunk.

The notification said that email marketer and “profit engineer” Frederik Beyer had mentioned me in a comment. Frederik’s comment read:

===

Clyde Bedell (as my loyal subscribers might have realized) is BY FAR my favorite “lost” old-timer.

Bedell’s book and self-study course are both way better than any paid online products I’ve come across.

With the exception of John Bejakovic’s “Copy Riddles” which stands heads and shoulders above the rest. That one’s only for people who are dead serious about ‘gitting gud’ though. Copy Riddles is not for the shiny object people, that’s for sure.

===

I don’t know Bedell’s self-study course. I do know my Copy Riddles course, and I appreciate what Frederik has to say about it.

As you might know, I retired Copy Riddles back in April. Since then, I’ve gotten lots of people saying nice things, like Frederik above, entirely without prompting, about how much they value Copy Riddles.

I’ve always been proud of this course. It’s felt bad having it rotting on the shelf.

So back in July, I tried to find a buyer who would take the IP for Copy Riddles off my hands and make it his own. A buncha people were interested, but nobody turned out to be the right fit.

So I’ve decided to bring Copy Riddles back. The only thing I can say is I have changed my mind.

Besides, I don’t think my Frank Sinatra-like move of retiring and unretiring Copy Riddles has hurt anyone. The only people who have possibly been affected are the ones who bought Copy Riddles back in April when I announced I’d be retiring it.

The way I see it, no harm done there. Those folks got access to a new way to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe… and for much less than I will be charging for Copy Riddles going forward.

Which brings us to today.

I have brought Copy Riddles back. You can check that for yourself at the page below. But I advise you not to buy Copy Riddles today.

The reason why is that I have dramatically increased the price. I will be selling Copy Riddles at this dramatically higher price going forward.

However, I will have a special, one-time, unique opportunity very soon to get a significant reduction from that new price. I’ll have more to say about that in a few days’ time.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious about Copy Riddles and why people like Frederik say it’s head and shoulders above other paid online products, you can get a teaser here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The good, the coulda been better, the ugly of my Josh Spector promotion

by

Last night, I finished the promotion I was running over the past week, which started when I ran a classified ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter last Sunday.

I had a free offer in the actual ad, Simple Money Emails, and a paid upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, for people who opted in.

I turned off both offers last night, as I said I would, once the deadline passed.

For my own benefit, I wrote up my conclusions about this experience.

If you like, you can read some of my conclusions below. It might be interesting to you if you’re looking to grow your list, monetize your list, run classified ads, or put on quick and simple offers that your readers appreciate and buy.

But as FBI negotiator Chris Voss likes to say, the last impression is the lasting impression. So let’s leave the good for last, and let’s start with the ugly first.

THE UGLY:

I haven’t made back my money on the Josh Spector ad.

I mean, I made a bunch of sales over the past week, but not enough from new subscribers, who came via the classified ad, to cover the $350 I gave to Josh to run the ad.

There’s a fair chance I will make back my money in time. But of course, there’s also a chance I won’t.

I have various hypotheses as to why it hasn’t happened yet. I might write about those down the line, but some include options in the next, coulda been better section.

THE COULDA BEEN BETTER:

I made a nice number of sales of the paid upsell last week — but at only $100 per sale.

The promotion I did last month, for Steve Raju’s ClientRaker, ended up with a comparable number of sales, but at 3x the price.

Had I raised the price higher, I prolly woulda made more money — there’s a lot of elasticity in info products. Maybe that way I would have already recouped my money on the Josh Spector ad.

But maybe it wasn’t the price. Maybe it was the copy, the core appeal.

Simple Money Emails is something I thought about carefully. I planned out that name, and the core appeal. The number of people who took me up on that offer confirms it’s something attractive.

On the other hand, as I’ve written already, the upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, wasn’t something I carefully planned or thought about — at least as far as the packaging goes, because the content is thought-through and very valuable.

I might have packaged up that same valuable content into a different-patterned box with a different-colored bow, and sold 50% or 80% or maybe 100% more.

THE GOOD:

One good thing was that I got a buncha new subscribers.

In fact, I grew my list 7% list over past week. From what I can see from new subscribers who have custom domains, these are high-quality prospects. Whether I manage to convert them in time is probably up to me.

The other good thing was I made a buncha sales to existing readers.

One of those sales came from somebody who joined my list back in 2019 (my guess is I had ~80 subscribers at the time). Several sales came from people who joined my list in 2020… and lots came from people who joined 2021, in 2022, and earlier this year.

Most people who bought 9 Deadly Email Sins bought multiple offers from me before.

The fact they are still with me is encouraging. It means I’m doing something right both with the products I’m selling, and with this marketing, the email that you’re reading right now. It must be engaging enough to keep people around, and reading, and buying, years down the line.

THE AMAZING:

I tell myself I have to have an offer at the end of each email. My offer at the end of this email is my Most Valuable Email course, which is amazing. But don’t take it from me. Reader James Harrison bought MVE last month, and wrote me about it last week to say:

===

Also, a few days ago I finished going through your MVE course. I thought it was amazing. I especially loved what you did at the end, with the MVE Riddles. Not enough courses get their students actively using their brains.

Thank you for all that you do.

===

Maybe actively using your brain isn’t something you’re into. But maybe it is. In that case, if you’d like an amazing way to do it, and to win bigly in the process:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to get Copy Riddles for just $70

by

I sat down to write this email a few minutes ago, but I’m siting in an “airspace” cafe. It’s loud and busy, I got distracted. Instead of focusing, I checked my inbox. “Thank God,” I said, “somebody’s writing to me.”

The subject line read, “Piracy on Copy Riddles.” And the body:

===

Hello John,

My name is Danica and I’m with Acme Dead Pirates Corp, a copyright protection service. We find and pursue takedowns of pirated copies of digital content on the Internet.

While we were searching for piracy for another client, we noticed infringement on Copy Riddles. I just thought you should know that your content is on many pirate websites. Here’s a sample:

===

What followed was a list of sites that apparently have my retired Copy Riddles program at a steeply discounted price. The email ended with Danica’s offer to partner with me and “help you keep your hard earned revenue.”

Since I’m no longer selling Copy Riddles, there’s no hard-earned revenue to protect. And based on what I saw of the pages that claimed to have a map to where the Copy Riddles treasure might be buried (“Call 1.mp3”), I suspect they might be just lying.

But if you’re willing to give it a go, google Copy Riddles, hand over your doubloons to one of these pirate sites and you might be able to get a copy of Copy Riddles, which used to sell for $400, for as little as $70. Dead men tell no tales.

But back to that email I just got:

I don’t know Danica from Eve. It’s possible she represents a legit business. By the way, that business is not really called Acme Dead Pirates Corp. I changed the name because of what I will say next:

Danica’s email reminded me of an earlier email I had written, about online reputation management companies. These companies offer to take down slanderous or embarrassing posts that might have appeared about you on sites like bustedcheaters.com or worsthomewrecker.com.

An investigative journalist named Aaron Krolik found out that a dozen of those reputation management companies pointed to the same 2-3 people. And those 2-3 people were the same ones hosting hundreds of slanderous and embarrassing cheater sites.

In other words, the same people were posting nasty things about you online, then contacting you and helpfully offering to partner with you to take those nasty things down, for a fee of a few hundred dollars.

So consider this a public service announcement about “copyright protection service” cold emails.

Or consider it an example of fraudulent behavior that you might nonetheless want to integrate into your business. I’m not talking about actually scamming people. But the concept of creating your own demand is sound, and it can be done legally and even ethically.

But more on that another time.

For now, if you’d like to get my Most Valuable Email course, before it becomes pirated to oblivion or before I decide to make it walk the plank, look ye here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Plan Horse: Text-based opportunities

by

News item one:

A few days ago, I got a text message that said, “You’re off the waitlist! You can now download Artifact.” So I did.

As you might know:

Artifact is a new service built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who founded Instagram before selling it to Facebook for $715 million. Their new project, Artifact, is something like TikTok, except not with video, but with text content.

News item two:

Just this morning I read that Meta, aka Mark Zuckerberg, is developing a new decentralized social network. Details are scarce, but what is known is that the new network will also be text-based.

Not-a-news item:​​

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than a few days, then you know I am wary of late-breaking internet opportunities. I like to get my late-breaking opportunities from books, preferably books that have been aged and cured for at least a few hundred years.

At the same time, even I find it undeniable that tectonic plates have been shifting for the past few years, with surface effects becoming visible maybe today, and for sure tomorrow.

Facebook is aging. Google search is terrible. AI now produces filler content better than 90% of professional content writers.

That’s what’s been rumbling underground for years. What will the surface effects be?

“Sovereign Man” Simon Black has this concept of a “Plan B” — a strategy for when shit hits the fan, which also benefits you if things just keep inching along as they always have.

I’d like to suggest to you a kind of inverse of Simon Black’s Plan B. We can call it Bejakovic’s “Plan Horse.”

Plan Horse is to find a new opportunity to latch onto, but in a way that you will come out ahead whether the opportunity drops dead or delivers as hoped.

Because you will eventually get to the inn if you just keep taking step after step along the highway. But you will get to the inn much faster and easier if somewhere along the way, while you’re walking, you “find yourself a horse to ride,” as Jack Ries and Al Trout put it in their book Positioning.

So keep reading this newsletter, because if I come across any interesting text-based opportunities, I might let you know about them.

Meanwhile, I continue to promote my Most Valuable Email. This course is really about taking those step-by-steps along the highway, while keeping an eye out for the galloping horse you can jump on the back of, Legolas-style.

Most Valuable Email is based on a fundamental of human communication and persuasion, one that’s been around for millennia. And yet, to many people in the Internet world, Most Valuable Email is a revelation. As freelance copywriter Van Chow said after going through MVE:

===

I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.

===

For a persuasion technique that will work both today and tomorrow, check out MVE here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Daniel Throssell, Daniel Kahneman, and a robot lawyer walk into a bar…

by

A few minutes ago, I got my coffee ready, I set my timer, and I got down to writing this email. As a first step, I checked some news headlines and bingo — I saw it:

“AI-powered ‘robot’ lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court”

Maybe you’ve heard the news already. A startup called DoNotPay is helping people fight speeding tickets.

Before, DoNotPay used AI to write a letter that you could mail in to contest your speeding ticket. But now, DoNotPay will help one lucky defendant in court.

The DoNotPay app will run on the defendant’s phone. It will listen in to the court proceedings. And it will tell the defendant what to say to get out of his speeding ticket in court.

“This courtroom stuff is more advocacy,” said Joshua Browder, the CEO of DoNotPay. “It’s more to encourage the system to change.” Browder says he wants to give access to law to people who can’t afford it.

As you might guess, this noble mission isn’t very popular with lawyers themselves.

When Browder tweeted about his new courtroom “robot”, lawyers jumped on him, and threatened he would go to jail if he followed through with this plan.

And verily, a courtroom robot is not legal in most places. In most places, all parties have to agree to be recorded. But I doubt good will and keeping Browder out of jail is why lawyers jumped all over Browder’s tweet, telling him to stop this project immediately.

Lawyers still have a bit of time.

Right now, courtroom AI robots just handle speeding tickets. And Browder admits even that took a lot of work.

His company had to retrain generic AI for this specialized task. “AI is a high school student,” Browder said, “and we’re sending it to law school.”

Law school… and then what? because Being a good lawyer is not just about knowing the letter of the law.

Specifically, I have in mind a passage I read in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.

Kahneman says there are two fundamental ways lawyers argue.

These two ways are actually illustrated perfectly in the little debate Daniel Throssell and I had last week, in emails talking about newsletters and who wants ’em.

So I will make you an offer right now, which you are free to refuse, in case you’d rather go read Thinking Fast and Slow yourself.

My offer is a disappearing bonus.

It’s good until 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PSST tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 12 2023.

If you’ve already bought my Most Valuable Email course, and would like me to spell out Kahneman’s two lawyer strategies, write me before the deadline and ask.

​​I will write back to you, both with Kahneman’s passage, and the specifics of how Daniel and I each took one of the two approaches.

And if you haven’t bought my Most Valuable Email course, then my offer is the same, except you have to also buy the course before the deadline.

Buy just to get the bonus?
​​
If you find yourself desirous of the disappearing bonus, but reluctant to buy a course just to get that bonus, then I will argue that desire itself is a reason to get MVE.

​​Because this desire is something you too can create in others. It’s something I talk about in the course itself, specifically inside the 12 Rules of Most Valuable Emails, specifically Rule #10.

For more info on this course, or to get it before the deadline:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Wanted: Competent human to do some monkey work

by

Today, I have a job offer for you. Before you get excited, here are a couple of negative striplines to start:

First, this is not copywriting work.

Second, this not an ongoing, or even very large-scale job.

The job is this:

I have a course, Copy Riddles, which was previously delivered entirely by email. I am now converting that course, Copy Riddles, to be delivered entirely inside a members-only area of my website.

So the job involves taking the content of Copy Riddles, delivered in 45 very long-form emails, and making and properly and nicely formatting 45 WordPress pages out of it.

This is time-consuming, monkey work. That doesn’t mean I’m looking for a monkey. I’m looking for a competent human being.

I want this job done well, with minimal management or later fixing from me.

At the start of this job, I will provide detailed guidance on the technical stuff of what there is to do. I have also gone through the monkey work of converting one of these 45 pages the way I want it done, to serve as a reference.

Using these two resources, and a bit of God-given intelligence and reason, a competent person who has the minimal requirements below should be able to complete this job the way I myself would do it.
​
As for those minimal requirements, they include:

1. Experience with WordPress. Knowing how to create a page, and use the built-in editor.

2. Knowledge of basic HTML and CSS. Knowing what a div is, and how to add a class to it.

3. Patience. There are 45 pages to do, and each page involves multiple rote, repetitive, and sometimes finicky formatting tasks.

So far, I have tried to make this job sound as unattractive as it is, and maybe more so.

So now the question becomes, why might you want to take on this monkey work? I can offer you two and a half good reasons:

1. Money. Name your own price, or your own hourly rate. I estimate this job would take me 6-8 hours of mind-numbing work to complete. You might be faster or you might be slower than me. If you can convince me you will do the job well, and if I think your price is fair for the work involved, I will hire you and pay you what you ask.

2. Copy Riddles. I guess that’s obvious since you will be working with the actual content of the course. But I will also give you free access to the course when it is complete, including the bonuses you won’t see otherwise. The last price I sold Copy Riddles for was $350, and that’s the lowest price I will be selling it for going forward. If you are interested in copywriting — and if you are on my list, I imagine you are — then Copy Riddles might be very valuable to you, and more so than the $350 I would charge you for it otherwise.

2 1/2. Access and connection to me. The reason I am not going on Fiverr or Upwork to hire a VA to do this job is that ideally, I would love to find a competent and trustworthy person who also has the ability to write. I’m not making any promises, but there is the odd chance that if you do a good job on this, there will be other tasks, including writing tasks, that I might hire you for, and in the near future.

So if you are interested in this job offer, then:

1. Write me an email
​
2. Tell me why I should believe that you have the minimal requirements 1-3 above, and that you would do this job well

​3. Name your price

When I get your email, I will write back to confirm I have gotten it. No need to follow up with me after that. Once I make a decision and go with somebody, I will also send out an email to everyone who applied so you’re not left hanging.

That’s it. Thanks for reading to the end. Let the Battle Royale begin.

Announcing MVE 2: Judgment Day

by

Today I am opening the cage and unleashing upon the world my Most Valuable Email training.

I expect this beast to set things on fire, crush kids’ bikes, and maybe have the SWAT Team called in against it.

I will have more to say about this training over the past few days. Such as, for example, answering the question:

“But Bejako, didn’t you already release something like this Most Valuable Email? It sounds familiar.”

It should soound familiar. I will deal with that question in more detail soon. For now, you can think of this training as the impossibly shiny, hyper-intelligent, and unstoppable T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, compared to the dumb and brutish T-800 from the first Terminator film.

Also, here are a few organic facts you might like to know:

1. I will be promoting the Most Valuable Email until this Sunday, October 2

2. Well, really, I will be promoting it pretty regularly even after this Sunday, but—

3. If you do decide to buy this training before the clock chimes at 12 midnight PST on Sunday, you will get a 25% discount off the not-too-expensive, not-too-cheap regular price which will kick in on Monday

4. You can get a bit more detail about this offer at the page below, but—

5. This sales page is incomplete.

Yep, it’s incomplete. I will be filling it out over the coming days.

Still, if you trust me and you already know you want this training… or if you’re curious what an incomplete sales page looks like, and want to spy on how I will develop it it over the next few days… then you have one reasonable course of action. Take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/