Email Marketing

Fears of list rot

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Yesterday I launched a new offer, to help you launch a live workshop, delivered on a specific day that’s coming up soon, which I’m calling Most Valuable Offer.

I’ve had a few people sign up already. Among them was one list owner who said that his motivation is that he worries about list rot, and a live workshop could be a way to light a fire under his feet to combat list rot.

I dug in deeper. I asked him if he had seen signs of rot on his list. He explained:

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Not signs necessarily.

It’s more that the handful of times I’ve solicited engagement from my list to gauge interest in a particular product I was going to make, I got pretty good response. Then, when I’d start making it, I’d get too far in the weeds, then eventually, get distracted by life or some other thing, and then set it aside.

So, my concern is that they will start thinking I’m a flake who keeps asking for feedback, and then never coming through with the finished product. Which will lead to that rot.

So, I’m seeing this as that chance to spark that life back into the list by getting this MVO launched & out there.

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One of the chapters I was considering for my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, etc” book was, “assume rapport.”

It’s a common behavior among many influence professionals like pick up artists, sales men, and stand up comedians.

Influence professionals behave how they want you to behave.

They treat you like a lifelong friend because they want you to treat them like a lifelong friend. They trust you because they want you to trust them. They find you endlessly fascinating and charming because they want you to find them fascinating and charming.

There’s a bigger principle here:

We all take our cues for how to behave from other people.

Influence professionals know this, and that’s why they take the lead. As with many things common to influence professionals, this applies more broadly to business and life, in ways that can be perfectly ethical.

In short, the above list owner’s fears of list rot are justified.

If you yourself behave like a flake, people will in time take their cues from you.

They will say one thing and do another. They will be late or not show up at all. They will make excuses or ghost you.

The good news is, the fix is easy, and and you can get started on it today.

The fix is to be punctual, to do as you say and to follow through, to make people a clear offer and ask them for a clear yes or no answer.

The results of that are both instant and long-term.

Instant, as in sales and a spike in engagement.

Long-term, as in a stronger bond with your list, greater trust in you and what you sell, and higher perceived value of your offers.

Like I said, yesterday I offered to help you launch and deliver your own Most Valuable Offer.

You can find the full details below.

If you decide that this offer is not for you, that’s perfectly fine.

If you decide it is for you, comment on the post below if you’re a member of Daily Email House, or if you’re not a member of Daily Email House, send me an email and tell me you’re in.

Here’s the link:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/would-you-like-a-chocolate-chip-most-valuable-offer

If you will never write emails for your business

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I talk a lot about the value of having an email list and writing to the folks on there personally, regularly.

And maybe I’ve convinced you, and maybe you’re out there, writing your little heart out, and getting praise for it, and making sales from your emails week after week.

If so, great! I’m proud of you. Keep at it, and keep profiting. No need to read this email any further.

But…

If you are plenty convinced about the value of regular email marketing… and in spite of it all, you just know for a fact that you will never ever write emails regularly, because you hate writing, or because you’re too busy, or because you don’t like to put yourself out there like that… then what?

Then I got a solution for you. Here’s the promise:

* Reap the benefits of a regular email newsletter — audience loyalty, sales, referrals, higher prices you can charge…

* Without the ecstasy, or, if you prefer, agony, of sitting down and writing yourself…

* Via emails written in a true, quirky, human voice that AI cannot imitate, particularly over the long term…

* Without paying an arm, two legs, and maybe an ear for a competent email copywriter who is actually better than AI.

If that sounds good to you, here’s the deal:

Former Survivor contestant, subsequent RV blogger, and eventual expert email marketer Liz Wilcox offers something called the Email Marketing Membership.

Each week, members of EMM get a fresh new newsletter template, written by Liz, which they can simply drop into their own biz and profit from — no writing needed.

Once upon a time, in the early days of my freelance copywriting career, I actually worked for a business that offers this service to realtors.

That business charges each realtor $725/month.

Later, after I stopped working as a freelance copywriter, I offered this as a DFY solution to a business owner on my list.

I told the business owner I would not be writing the weekly newsletters myself, but would outsource them to a copywriter.

I asked for $2k/month. The business owner agreed to the $2k/month without batting an eye because he saw the value.

But…

Liz doesn’t charge $2k/month for her Email Marketing Membership.

She doesn’t doesn’t charge $725/month either.

Liz charges just $108…

… PER YEAR!

That’s right. As you’re reading this, Liz has opened up the yearly subscription window for her EMM, and it’s just $108 for the full year.

Liz only does this once every Haley’s Comet. The rest of the time, you can sign up for EMM monthly. Monthly is fine, but there are two reasons you might want to sign up now, and for the whole year:

1. Liz regularly puts on and charges for extra trainings on topics like sales pages, course launches, and communities. People who sign up monthly for EMM have to pay for this extra trainings. People who sign up for the year get all these extra trainings free.

2. I’ll add in $108 Bejako Bux, which you can use towards any purchase of any of my offers in the future, if you sign up to Liz’s EMM for the full year, using the link below.

Normally, I add in info products as bonuses when I promote an affiliate offer like this. But I don’t have something that’s a fit here.

Fact is, if you want to profit from an email list but you don’t want to write, then Liz’s handwritten, human, relationship-building newsletter templates, plus her email marketing training have got you covered.

(Hence the $108 in Bejako Bux.)

Final point:

Why so cheap? WHY???

Simple. Liz has 4,000 paying members inside EMM. 4,000!

Liz is living the Kevin Kelly “1,000 true fans” dream, except she’s got not just 1,000 true fans, but 4,000 of them.

Get 4,000 people to send you $105 a year… and you’ve got a pretty good life. And Liz has a pretty good life.

If you want to profit from Liz’s unique business model and from your email list, without doing any of that horrible writing:

​https://bejakovic.com/lizyearly​

P.S. If you take me up on this offer, forward me your receipt from Liz and I’ll get you your Bejako doubloons, I mean, Bejako Bux.

Free welcome sequence for small businesses

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I recently met Liz Wilcox, and I’m gonna spend the rest of this email selling her to you.

Liz is fond of wearing large glasses, where the frame is of different colors for the left and the right eye.

She was once a contestant on the TV show Survivor (Survivor 46).

Today, Liz runs a paid membership for small business owners who want to do something with email marketing, but don’t really know what to to do.

Inside her paid membership, Liz teaches email marketing, has expert speakers come in and teach also (I will be speaking in May), plus, as the the main selling point, she gives members weekly templates and swipes for their business’s email newsletter, so they can get it out in minutes instead of hours or never.

Like I said, Liz’s membership is for business owners who have heard of the power of email marketing, but don’t really wanna write themselves… don’t wanna hire a copywriter either… don’t wanna entrust this to a VA… and yet want to get the benefit of regular communication with their prospects and clients and customers.

So how much would you pay for such an incredible and spectacular email marketing membership, which slices, and dices, and makes julienne fries?

$999/month?

NO!

$99/month??

NO!!!

$19/month???

NO! NO! NO!

Liz charges 9 whole bucks per month for her email marketing membership. And get this. She has… 4,000 members of her $9/month membership. At those numbers, she has the margin to make sure she can provide and deliver great templates, great trainings, and great everything.

But I’m not here to sell you on Liz’s membership. Not really, not yet at least.

All I really wanna do is just point you to Liz’s “Swipe Swipe Baby” lead magnet. It’s an entire templatized welcome sequence, plus three weekly newsletters, which you can plug into your business right now if you want.

When I initially talked to Liz, I asked her what lead magnet of hers I should send folks to.

She said, “I only have one. It’s six years old, and I’ll never create a new one, because it just works.”

And why not? Liz’s lead magnet is in fact the perfect magnet for prospective leads for $9/month membership.

So if you want Liz’s free welcome sequence templates… if you wanna know more about Liz (lots of Vanilla Ice references on her site)… or if you’ve been intrigued by her $9/month membership… here’s the front door, fully free to walk through:

https://bejakovic.com/lizwilcox

Daily email thinking, fast and slow

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In response to my email yesterday, a reader writes in with doubts about daily emailing:

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I think daily might burn out my audience since I speak of very human and heavy topics. I’ve been playing around with a weekly educational email and light launches otherwise.

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Here are some highly personal numbers:

During my sales promo last week, for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, I made over $11k. By the time the payment plan payments roll in, I will make over $13k. For sending 7 emails.

Big whoop, good for me, right? Here’s the number that’s relevant to you:

Exactly 1.01% of my list took me up on this offer.

98.99% of my list said NO to this offer, either indirectly, by ignoring it, or directly, by going to the sales page, looking it over, and deciding against it, or even more muscularly, by unsubscribing from my list.

And yet, somehow, the math, 1.01% conversion rate and all, worked out in my favor.

Economist Daniel Kahnemann had this book. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Fast thinking is intuitive, automatic, and feels really certain. It’s how you know the answer to 2+2 = ?

Slow thinking is plodding, might require pen and paper, and doesn’t feel nearly as sure, even when it’s 100% right. Slow thinking is how you work out what 222*222 is.

My point is that our fast-thinking brains are not designed to deal with the realities of direct response marketing.

Our intuition — our fast thinking — says that nobody wants to read those 40-page sales letters. Nobody will pay thousands of dollars for a course, or tens of thousands of dollars for coaching. Nobody wants to get a sales pitch in their inbox every day — “not in my niche!”

And you know what?

Our intuition is right!

98.99% of the time, or thereabouts.

But it’s in that 1.01% of time where our intuition is wrong, where the slow thinking kicks in, that a successful or even very successful direct marketing business can be built.

This slow thinking stuff applies to daily emailing.

Most people in the world do not want to hear from you daily. Even most people who sign up to your list don’t want to hear from you daily.

My open rate is a little over 30%. Two out of three people who are on my list don’t want to hear from me every day!

And yet, I’ve been living off my very modest-sized email list, for years now, comfortably.

This slow thinking stuff applies to offers too.

Our intuition — our fast thinking — says to try to accommodate as broad an audience as possible with an offer.

But slow thinking eventually figures out the truth. The narrower, the more niche, the more restrictive and specific an offer, the more likely it is to attract the attention of the right people, to sell, and to sell for good money.

This is something I’ve baked into the process I’ll be taking a few people through next month, which I’ve taken to calling the “Road trip to a $1k+ offer that sells 3-5 times each month.”

Meanwhile, if you’re emailing weekly, that’s certainly way better than not emailing or emailing only sporadically.

But if you want to monetize a small but dedicated list, for years, without fail, you will find the path easier and richer by emailing daily. If you want my help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Am I ditching daily emails in favor of communities?

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Yesterday, I sent out an email about how my bank cancelled my debit card while they ship me a new one. I also dramatically stated I’ve been living on 200 euro in cash until my new card arrives.

In reply to that email, I got an offer from long-time reader, fellow Barcelona resident, and occasional coffee buddy named Matthias (not sure he wants me to share his last name). Matthias wrote:

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Hey John, just read your mail. Similar happened to me last month. If you need some cash, let me know, then I can meet you for a quick coffee or sth.

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Also yesterday, at the end of my email, which was really about how my Amazon book sales have cratered after I stopped paying for ads a few days ago due to the cancelled debit card — and dropped from 19 a day (last day of advertising) to just 2 a day (a couple days ago) — I asked readers to buy my book on Amazon, either because they are curious about it or because they want to help me goose sales until can get ads running again.

I have been promoting this book since May. I have written dozens of emails driving readers to the Amazon page for it.

Most of my best and most dedicated readers and customers have already bought this book.

And yet, I still made 11 new sales yesterday, and from what I can tell, all or close to all of those came via my email.

I’m telling you this because lately I’ve been talking a lot about the Skool community I’m running, and in particular the auction I ran last week inside that community.

(Maybe you heard? The winning bid in that auction was $31k. In case you haven’t heard, don’t worry, because it’s a fact I will be repeating several hundred more times before 2025 runs to a close.)

About that community and auction:

After the auction completed last week (with a $31k winning bid, just in case you forgot), I got lots of feedback and impressions from people who witnessed what went down.

One such bit of feedback came from Howard Shaw. Howard’s a Partner at Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years. Howard also happens to read these emails, and he wrote:

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I think what showed during the whole auction was the affinity with your group – which I guess in no small part is down to people ‘knowing you’ from being on your list.

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Howard’s absolutely right.

Communities are great, and it’s been fun to build up something new.

But the fact is, my community wouldn’t exist had it not been for this email newsletter.

Not only in terms of members who form the core of the community, and who joined via these emails… but also in terms of engagement by those folks, which is there in large part because of the relationship that these emails have built up.

Fortunately, I don’t have to choose between having a community and an email list. It’s easy and profitable and fun to have both.

But if the direct marketing gods forced me to choose only one, then for all the reasons I’ve listed above, and for many other reasons besides, I’d choose an email list, and I’d MAIL IT DAILY.

Now, if you want some help with MAILING A LIST DAILY, and sticking with it for the long term, I’ve got just the thing to help you.

It’s my Daily Email Habit service. Speaking of:

Earlier this week, I got on a call with the winner of the auction I ran last week, Nick Bandy. (Nick’s winning bid, for the third and final time, at least in this email, was $31k.)

I grilled Nick about his current job (fractional CMO with a $12k/mo retainer), his life history, his list (about 800 people, all added since this spring) the offers he’s making the people on his list via daily emails, and then some.

At the end of our call, which lasted about two hours in total, Nick said about Daily Email Habit, which he wants to promote to his own list as well:

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That’s why I said Daily Email Habit so enthusiastically. I literally wouldn’t have started any of this if I didn’t buy that. I enthusiastically endorse this. It’s one of the best things I ever spent money on.

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If you wanna find out more about Daily Email Habit, or get going with this enthusiastically endorsed service today, so you can build up your own stock of human relationships with folks who support and drive on everything else you want to do online or offline:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t count on people remembering you

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Cautionary tale:

A few days ago, a dude joined my Daily Email House group. The description in his Skool bio sold that he had recently sold a media company and that he is now building a newsletter business.

I got curious. I wanted to look him up, and find more about this media company and newsletter business.

But the dude’s name is very common. I won’t say it here, but it’s on the commonness level of “Ben Johnson.”

In other words, it’s hopeless to find this guy online with a quick search, and there’s no link in his Skool profile. I shrugged, and had I not needed a topic for today’s email, I would have forgotten all about him.

Yesterday, I talked about how to make a long-term bet on list growth, which is to pick a platform you believe in, and then invest either your time or your money into it.

But there’s quick and cheap stuff you can do also.

Putting a link to your optin page in all your online profiles one of ’em. This probably won’t get you thousands of subscribers. But it might get you a few, and you never know who might be hiding among those few (me, for example).

There’s a bigger point here, which is not to count on other people to do the work of remembering you and seeking you out.

That’s one of the main benefits of an email list.

An email list gives you a chance to be the one who gets in touch with others, when it suits you, as often as it suits you, rather than hoping and waiting for them to think of you.

Of course, if you have more than one channel to reliably get in touch with people on your own terms, even better. which is one of the reasons I have set up my Daily Email House group.

Daily Email House is another way for me to connect and bond more deeply with readers. As you can imagine, I have to give people value and even fun in order to make it worth their while to get and stay inside the group.

If you would like to make this deal with me yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/house

How to get me to pay you $500 in 90 seconds flat

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Today I was on Facebook — don’t ask why — and I saw a post from a dude whose email list I’ve been on for the past two years.

The dude was announcing that he’s shutting down his info publishing business and that he’s making all his courses available in one heavily discounted bundle, which will presumably go away some time soon.

About 90 seconds later, I had entered in my credit card details and paid the dude $500 for this heavily discounted bundle.

Point being:

Discounting works great — IF people already value what you’re selling at the full value.

The dude above has been emailing for years, practically every day.

I didn’t read all his emails, but I read a good number.

He has been building up the case for buying his various courses.

He made the case over and over for the value of knowledge inside… he showed results that people who were applying this knowledge were getting… he kept digging and prodding into soft spots in my flesh, making me suspect that I’m missing out on something really important.

I grew to believe what the dude was saying, and I grew to want what he was selling.

My “no thank you” defenses were good enough to resist his sales pitches while I thought I still had time, while the offer was basically “Get started today OR tomorrow OR the day after if tomorrow doesn’t work.”

But once this became a last-chance matter, and once there was also a significant discount over what these courses had been selling for previously, I saw myself involved in an instant, almost involuntary action to pay the guy $500.

So discounting can work great.

As can launches, promos, and special offers.

But none of them will work unless people in your audience have grown to want the thing you have, and have grown to value it above and beyond the offer you will be making on it.

How do you get people to that point?

Well, I told you above.

Email every day, or practically every day. Make the case, over and over, for people buying what you’re selling. Tease, provide proof, and dismiss alternatives.

Do this over and over, and then, when you make a special deal and you give a deadline for it — you don’t have to close down your entire business, or bundle all your stuff for $500 — people will buy, instantly.

And on that note, let me remind you:

The price for my Daily Email Habit service is going up this Thursday at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to the Martin Shkreli-like $50/month.

Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with consistent daily emailing, so you can gradually move people to wanting what you have to sell, and so you can get them to value it at the price you sell it for.

If you wanna get started today, and start moving people to where you want them to go, before the price goes up:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Help: What email software do you use?

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Maybe you can give me your input and advice:

If you have an email list, either for your own business or for a client’s list you manage, what software do you use to actually send the emails?

I’m asking because I myself am using a service I am not happy with, and I’m looking to switch.

Long-time readers know that I used to use ActiveCampaign for many years.

I switched last year, because ActiveCampaign had jabbed me for a long time with technical glitches, and then delivered a knockout right hook when they started punishing me (via a new pricing scheme) for sending daily emails as opposed to just weekly.

So last year, I switched to Kit.

Kit wasn’t perfect, but at first blush it seemed adequate. There was just one problem:

I noticed that dedicated readers, ones who had been on my list for years, and some of whom had paid me hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of those years, were getting bounced off my list.

I’m sure it’s possible some of these people died, or had been put in jail, or simply got out of business, and their email accounts no longer work.

But the number of people getting bounced off my list has been worryingly large (197 over the past year, since I’ve switched to Kit). What’s worse, a large fraction of these (larger than for my entire list) are people with custom domain email addresses. And like I said, many are previous customers or dedicated readers.

To make me even more suspicious that something is rotten with Kit and bounces, I myself have been bounced off multiple Kit lists, multiple times, even though my own email address is working just fine.

A couple days ago, after my homebrewed system notified me that Kit had silently bounced another batch of 5 subscribers off my list, I contacted their help department as a last-ditch measure.

After some back and forth, Kit’s support team offered me a solution to my problem:

Turn on double-optin on all my optin forms. Their reasoning is that since I don’t have double optin enabled, “there is a huge chance that you have spam subscribers on your list which can negatively impact your email deliverability.”

For the record, my email deliverability seems to be fine, outside of the subscribers I can no longer send emails to because Kit has bounced them off my list.

In other words, Kit’s solution to my problem is no solution at all, at least to my mind.

So, as much as I am not thrilled with the prospect of switching email software again, I will do so.

But before I do, I’d like to find something that will prove adequate for a better period of time. Something that works well for sending daily emails… that has good deliverability… that is likely to be around in 3 or 5 years’ time because it’s backed by a serious business.

Can you help?

If you own or manage an email list, either for your own business or for a client, would you share with me what you use, and how happy or unhappy you are with it?

I normally ask people to reply directly to my emails with just an email of their own. But this time I’ve prepared a form to help me make sense of the replies. If that doesn’t turn you off, and if you would like to help me by sharing your own experiences, either good or bad, the link is below. Thanks in advance:

https://forms.gle/attAKcLJU48bb5eD7

Free training by million-dollar list owner

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This Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Chris Orzechowski is putting on a training called “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

In case you don’t know Chris, he himself is the owner of a million-dollar list. He’s built a 7-figure list-based business selling offers around copywriting and email marketing, both to copywriters and big ecom businesses.

For the record, Chris’s list is currently under 13k people.

A few years ago, back in 2021, Chris made $996k with a list of just 6k people. Business Insider wrote up a profile of him because of this.

All that’s to say, Chris knows what he’s talking about — and the stuff he’s talking about is doable for others too.

I haven’t seen Chris’s training yet, but I know his philosophy of email marketing. It’s to email daily, sending out emails pretty much like the one you’re reading now.

Chris is gonna be kicking off an 8-week coaching program in October, guiding a group of people who wanna build the kind of profitable list business he himself has.

Monday’s “Million Dollar List” training is gonna be a kind of appetizer for that.

Chris says it will be a deep dive into list growth and monetization strategies that have worked for him.

So if you attend Chris’s training on Monday, you might learn something valuable and lucrative, maybe something you apply to your own list and your own biz starting Tuesday morning.

And if you’re interested in getting outside help and guidance in building the same kind of lean, profitable, list-based business Chris has, then Monday’s training will also be a chance to see if Chris is the guy for you.

If you’d like to attend, here’s the link to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Email copy secrets that turned $27k in sales to $540k

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Two years ago, I got up on stage to give a talk at Rob Marsh’s “The Copywriter Club IRL” event in London.

I gave a GREAT talk.

I know, because I was there, and I was glowing with self-satisfaction afterwards.

There was just one problem. Another speaker clearly outshone me.

He was more dynamic (the guy’s a former stage mentalist and comedian).

Plus, while my talk was about my usual psychology & influence waffle, his talk was about how he changed up his email copywriting strategy and went from selling $27k of his flagship info product to selling $540k of that same product, to the same audience.

I myself was sucked in. I mean, I can imagine selling $27k of a single info product to my list because I’ve done it with multiple products. But there’s a big gap from that to $540k. How could email copy possibly make such a difference?

I took furious notes during this talk, 8 pages’ worth.

Of course, I never did anything with the notes, but that’s really on me. I don’t use autoresponder sequences with my list, and specific, archetype-targeting autoresponder sequences were the mechanism that Kennedy, for that is the name of the mentalist-turned-marketer I’m talking about, used to go from selling $27k to selling $544k.

I recently connected with Kennedy in an online mixer group.

We reminisced a bit about London.

And then, Kennedy offered to put on the same training again, online instead of from the stage, for people on my list.

I said, absolutely.

You can sign up for this training for free below, if you like.

It will be live and will happen next Monday, September 22, 2025, at 9pm CET/3pm EST/12 noon PST.

There will not be a replay.

And yes, inevitably, there will be something for sale at the end.

You can choose to buy that offer, when it is made, if it makes sense for you… or you can just choose to come for Kennedy’s high-energy, valuable training, which others paid $450 to hear in London.

If you’d like to sign up, and if you’d like to attend when the time comes:

https://bejakovic.com/kennedy