Email Marketing

You, your own copywriting secret weapon?

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Here are two flexible factoids, and a suggestion you might find valuable:

1. A-list copywriter Gary Halbert said curiosity is the most powerful human motivating force.

2. Another A-list copywriter, Parris Lampropoulos, keeps a “Didn’t know that!” file. This is where Parris puts new and interesting facts he comes across during research for copywriting projects.

​​But Parris has spent hundreds of hours doing research on dozens of big projects… so when he comes across something new and interesting to him, you can bet it will be new and interesting to his audience.

So I’d like to suggest you do something similar.

Invest $3 in a notebook… or invest two seconds to create a file on your computer desktop. Write “Hm, I didn’t know that, or, that’s interesting” across the top.

​​And you’re pretty much done. From then on, as you come across something that fits that heading, you just add it to your notebook or file.

The longer your list grows, the more interesting and valuable it will become, by process of elimination.

Eventually, you will have a list of things that stimulate curiosity for almost everyone in your audience. And if Gary H. is right, you will have the most powerful tool in motivating people to action.

​​In effect, you make your own curiosity and capacity to be surprised into your copywriting secret weapon.

I do this exact same thing, and it’s been valuable to me. In fact, it’s how I write these emails each day. Which brings me to my self-serving reason for telling you about this:

A reader named Glenn wrote in to challenge me on some sloppy self-promotion I committed recently.

Glenn pointed out that in the email I sent out announcing my bullets course… I didn’t feature a single Gary Halbert-style bullet.

Fair point.

My answer to this is that emails like the one you’re reading are basically the modern version of sales bullets. The only difference is you’re not restricted by space (like in a sales letter or print ad)… or by having only one shot to make the sale (like when paying for cold traffic).

Other than that, bullets and sales emails are the same.

​​You find some information that your audience might want. You condense it and sexy it up.

​​If it’s really cool and interesting information, you can choose to give it away in your copy… or if it’s meh information, then you might choose to tease it endlessly in your email or bullet, and hide the payoff in your product for sale.

In other words, if you can learn how to write sexy sales bullets… you will be a long way to being able to write emails people will want to read day after day. Particularly if you add in something new and interesting to tell your reader, which is what your “Hm, I didn’t know that” list is all about.

Anyways, that’s part of my pitch for joining my bullet writing course, which kicks off this Monday. If you’re interested in joining, then the first step is signing up for my email newsletter, which you can find here.

How to avoid email copy that’s like a sack of wet eggs

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A UK supermarket named Morrisons became the target of Internet bullying yesterday after shoppers tweeted photos of a bizarre item on sale there.

“This is the most wretched and cursed item I have ever witnessed,” one person wrote.

The item in question is a purse-sized plastic bag of hard-boiled, peeled eggs, swimming in a preservative liquid. Each bag says it has only 5 eggs, but actually has more than 40 — and you can catch ’em all for just 1 GBP.

Morissons tried to joke away the sacks of wet eggs on its shelves. But what can you say? The bags look wretched and cursed. No amount of twitter fiddling can fix that.

These days, along with the Daily Mail, where I read the above story, I’m also re-reading William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

One idea that Zinsser beats into your head is that “writing is rewriting.”

No. I don’t agree.

You can rewrite to make your writing tighter… to clean it up… to do away with cliches or vague words.

But if you start out with a sack of wet eggs, no amount of rewriting will get you a final product that’s anything but wretched and cursed.

You have to have something to say at the start. And more importantly, you have to have the right mood to sell it. Matt Furey, who pretty much invented the daily email format, put it this way:

“It isn’t just the words that do the selling. It’s the emotion behind the words. Remove the emotion and you don’t have great copy. So it makes sense to me that you spend as much time learning how to raise your level of vibration as you do learning marketing and copywriting strategies.”

Speaking of daily emails:

I’ve got an email newsletter, and I email daily. No cursed or wretched items here though. At Bejakovic supermarket, we make sure all our emails are fresh and appetizing. If you’d like to try a sample, you can sign up here.

Huruhuru secrets of writing advertorials

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Earlier this month, news broke that a beer company in Canada accidentally named itself “pubic hair.”

Actually what they did is they nam​​ed their brewing company Huruhuru, which they believed means “feather” in Maori and which they thought sounded cooler than a kiwi egg sandwich. But it turns out no.

​A man named Te Hamua Nikora, who looks somewhat like a Maori Rodney Dangerfield, explained on Facebook that huruhuru actually means pubic hair in his language. He also added, “Some people call it appreciation, I call it appropriation.”

What to say?

This is the kind of spanking you can get when you get too clever and want something new and never-heard-before.

I bring this up because I was asked a related question yesterday. I was giving a consult call about my style of writing advertorials (a first for me) and one of the people on the call asked:

“Any online resources or people we should follow that are really sharp on the advertorial side of things?”

I’m sure there are people out there, probably somebody like me looking to make a name for himself, who will tell you all kinds of tips and tricks and best practices for writing advertorials.

But the fact is, advertorials are a long-form piece of copy, intended to sell to cold traffic. Almost everything about how to do this this was figured out over 50 years ago. In other words, rather than looking for huruhuru secrets of advertorials, just go back and read all the standards of the direct response canon.

That’s not to say there is never anything new under the sun. It might really be true, as Incomparable Expert Jason Leister has written, that the direct marketing industry was a historical anomaly, “a period of arbitrage where trust was JUST high enough and information distribution was JUST new enough that things worked.”

What I mean is that a lot of profitable copywriting today isn’t going out to cold traffic any more, but to warm. And that kind of copywriting is a genuinely different beast, with different rules and best practices. But that’s a different kaupapa, for a different wā.

Are you warming up to me? If you’d like to hear from me more regularly, and see how I write to a warm audience, then sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Converting ecommerce buyers to info buyers with a hot new claim

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Yesterday, I sent a surprisingly profitable email to a list I manage. Most of what follows about this is conjecture and hearsay, but it might prove valuable to you anyhow.

First, a bit of background:

The email list in question is made up of buyers of various household gizmos and as-seen-on-TV doodads.

Reusable paper towels made out of bamboo fibers…

“Bioceramic” orbs to do away with laundry detergent…

Anti-mosquito sonic bracelets.

When I imagine the kinds of people who buy this stuff, the phrase “magic button” appears before my eyes.

In other words, these are people who want their problems solved for them… and who are willing to pay a premium to get the solution in the form of a physical product.

That’s why I haven’t had much success promoting information products to this list. Clickbank bestsellers? Not interested. In fact, I’d all but given up on info products — until yesterday.

Yesterday, I didn’t really have a good offer to promote. So I went on Clickbank, searched among the “green products” category, and selected the best seller, an information product about “reconditioning” dead batteries.

I sent this out to my list, not expecting much. But like I said, it did business. In fact, out of the dozens of affiliate offers I’ve tested out, this came out second or third.

What made these “magic button” buyers plop down good money to get information? In other words, what convinced them to pay, not for a done-for-you solution, but for just blueprints to a solution?

Of course, my email talked about the money a typical family could save by reconditioning car batteries. But it did one better.

It also claimed that, with this battery resurrection knowledge, you could actually make money. You could get free, worn-out batteries, recondition them, and then put them up on Ebay for a nice profit.

So here’s where the conjecture part starts:

I feel that, thanks to the current moment of uncertainty and lost jobs and lots of people sitting at home, bizopp or make money online offers are not just blowing up… but are going mainstream.

This is supported by things I’m hearing from people who publish real estate investing products. They all say their businesses are growing like never before.

Like I said, conjecture and hearsay. But if you are a copywriter, or a business owner, it might be worthwhile taking the claim that your offer helps people make money — and bolting it on to your other, standard, proven claims.

If I’m right, and God knows that happens a good 50% of the time, then this bizopp appeal will work even in mainstream, magic-button markets. Markets that would never have responded to make money offers or paid for information, only a few months ago.

Speaking of which:

Have you heard about my email newsletter? I send out daily emails. Things to help you get better at copywriting and marketing. And to make money. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

Two multi-millionaire marketers go into a cigar bar…

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Today I was listening to the newest edition of Steal Our Winners, and Internet marketer Rich Schefren told a quick story.

He said that around 10 years ago, he started writing daily, slice-of-life, Matt Furey-style emails, much like what you’re reading now.

And then, at a cigar bar, he ran into Mark Ford. Mark is a big-name copywriter and one of the main guys behind the direct response juggernaut Agora.

“Look, this is the poor man’s Agora,” Rich said to Mark about those daily emails. (Then, as now, Agora was sending out emails every day, real serious editorial stuff.)

“Actually, I like this better than what we do at Agora,” said Mark. “And let me tell you why.”

The gist of it was, Rich’s slice-of-life emails were sometimes short, sometimes long. Sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a page.

That kept the reader guessing.

The reader could never say, “Oh I don’t have the time to read this now.” That meant each time an email hit him, he couldn’t dismiss it.

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what Mark Ford said. It makes good sense to keep your reader guessing, and not just about the length of your emails.

I could tell you more.

But in the interest of keeping this post short, well… all I can say is, if you want more, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a successful novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I’m reading it now. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood, specifically as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Specifically, Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and sip the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Repealing prohibition on multiple daily emails

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Prohibition in the U.S. ended in 1933 with the repeal of 18th Amendment. After that, states could make their own laws about the sale of alcohol.

Some states couldn’t wait to get soused.

But others kept up with prohibition. Oklahoma, for example, kept going with prohibition until 1959.

Today, there are still over 500 “dry” municipalities across the U.S. One recent study even found that prohibition, horrendous as it sounds, might be a good idea. According to this study, crime went up by about 10% in areas that went from dry to wet.

The point being, just because you can stop, doesn’t mean you should. And I’m not talking about prohibition, see? I’m talking about marketing, specifically email marketing.

Over the last few years, it’s become commonplace for companies to send a daily email. But there’s nothing magic about the number one.

You can send your customers more than one email a day. For example, most Agora imprints send at least two emails each day, with one being mostly content and the other mostly promotion.

So two is ok. What about more?

Email marketing guru Ben Settle combines his content and promotion in each email. That’s why he can get away with sending, for example, five emails this past Monday, and over 10 over a recent 3-day promo window.

Old direct marketing wisdom says to keep repeating something until it becomes unprofitable.

Of course, too many emails can become unprofitable. Maybe you do burn out your list after a time. More likely, you get to a point you’re better off spending your time doing something else than writing an additional email — perhaps working on building your list, or creating a new offer.

But most businesses never get to that point of declining email profits. Maybe your business is one of them. In that case, it might be time to start writing an additional daily email — and getting sloshed on all those extra profits.

Of course, this all assumes you make money from your daily emails. I don’t. That’s why I only send one a day. It usually has to do with marketing or copywriting, like what you just read. If you’d like to get my one daily email as it comes out, here’s where to go.

Higher open rates = lower sales?

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“They like to talk to salesmen, something. They’re lonely. I don’t know. They like to feel superior. Never bought a fucking thing.”
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

I’ve been writing a lot of emails in the ecommerce space lately. This is for a client who’s constantly launching new products.

A few days ago, the client wrote me with a question:

“I’m curious with all the recent launches, which have looked most promising from an open rate and revenue standpoint?”

I could tell him right away which of the products were most successful in terms of revenue. But I wasn’t sure about open rates. So I decided to dig into the data.

It turns out the relationship between open rates and sales in our case has been negative. In other words, the more people opened up our emails, the less money we made. I even ran a little regression on it. On average, each extra percent of opens cost us $100 worth of sales.

How could that be?

Well, for one thing, we keep promoting different products, and at different price points. Higher-priced products might have less overall interest, but can result in more sales.

But there are other possible explanations, too.

For example, different subject lines will select for different segments of the market.

Maybe one subject line gets you a lot of opens. But like in that Glengarry Glen Ross scene above, maybe you’re just reaching a bunch of bored leads, who like to click on sensationalist ads, and who have no intention of buying anything.

Whatever the explanation is, the message is clear:

All those millions of blog posts by email marketing experts telling you how to increase your open rates could actually be hurting your sales.

A. B. C.

Always be checking your sales numbers. Sales numbers are for closers. Open rates? They’re for bums.

Speaking of open rates, I write a daily email newsletter with very high open rates. If you’d like to get on it so you can bring those numbers down, here’s where to subscribe.

Teaching emails that make sales

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I talked to my aunt last night. She’s a kindergarten teacher, and she mentioned that she’s going back to work corralling screaming 5-year-olds.

I haven’t been following the local corona news, so this was a surprise to me.

Sure enough, starting next week, all kids up to grade 4 will be back in classrooms throughout Croatia. “Enough is enough,” frustrated parents must have been saying, and the government eventually caved in.

But here’s the thing that got me wondering:

If spending each day with your kids at home gets tiring for the majority of parents… can you imagine how tiring a teacher’s job must be?

Not one kid… not two… but 25 or more? And not for the next few years until your kids become more independent… but for life, each year the same thing?

And on top of this, teachers don’t even get paid well.

I think it was Matt Furey who first brought this fact up in connection with marketing. He used the fact that teachers don’t make any money to warn against over-teaching in your emails.

Instead, Matt’s advice was to motivate, inspire, and entertain.

I can definitely agree with this. But I would add that teaching can work and it can work well.

The key though is to educate your prospect about his problem, and the specific nuances of why he hasn’t been able to solve it so far.

In other words, don’t tell your prospect HOW to solve his problem… tell him WHY he hasn’t been able to solve it until now.

And then of course, you still have to do some selling. But if you’ve done the teaching bit right… the selling should be easy, because your solution will fit like a hand into your prospect’s problem glove.

I realize I’m contradicting my own advice with the past few sentences. That’s why this email won’t make any money. Not a noble thing, if you ask me. Hopefully, you will be smarter and more disciplined about spilling your teaching — and doing some selling – in your own emails.

How to blend SEO and daily emails

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For the past yea​r and a half, after writing a daily email to my list, I’ve been going on this site and pasting up the email content as a blog post. ​​There are over 420 such posts by now.

These posts don’t have much value to me. Google doesn’t send truckloads of traffic to them… and the readers who do stumble in are very particular (mostly, they wanna read about Tom Selleck and his non-existent boner pill, as advertised in Newsmax, which I wrote about last February).

So from now on, I will try something different:

It’s a combination of what I was doing until now (pasting up emails as blog posts) and standard SEO (writing 2k-word articles and kowtowing to Google, which I don’t have the time or drive to do).

​​If you’re curious about how this will look, just sit tight. I’ll have the first of these “new SEO” posts ready in a couple of days, and I’ll share it with you then.

In the meantime…

My point is not just to announce that my website will soon look different (you probably don’t care). But I think this merger of SEO/daily emails is an illustration about something you might find valuable.

I’m talking about a fundamental insight about how to come up with new ideas, approaches, and solutions. You might call this creativity — but a better word might be connectivity. It’s a simple, light, almost mechanical process that a monkey can do. Here’s legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz on the topic:

“What is creation? Creation is a lousy word. It’s a lousy word that confuses what you really do to perform a simple little procedure. Creation means create something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth. Okay, only God can do that. We can’t do that: We’re human.

“​​So let’s throw creation out, and let’s talk about connectivity. What you are trying to do is connect things together. You’re trying to practice connectivity. You’re trying to get two ideas that were separate in your mind and culture before, and you are trying to put them together so they are now one thought. You want something new to come out, but new doesn’t mean it never existed before, it means never joined before. New – in every of discipline – means never joined before.”

BTW, all this means I won’t be pasting my daily emails on this site any more. But I will continue writing them and sending them to my newsletter subscribers. If you want to read these emails, you can subscribe for free here:

https://bejakovic.com/copywriters-hero/