Email Marketing

What I’ve learned from weeks of heavy promiscuity

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Over the past several weeks, I’ve been highly promiscuous.

Not sexually, thank God.

But with my email address. I’ve been giving it out left and right, up and down, to people who want it and to those who don’t.

Predictably, my inbox is blowing up. And it’s been a mildly enlightening experience.

Because whenever I check now, I have between 5 and 10 new emails, all of which fall into one of two predictable categories. In fact, it’s just how I imagine it is to be a hot girl on Tinder. Desperate or creepy guys are constantly writing you, and they have one of two things to say:

1) “Yo I’ll cook you some romantic shrimp pasta and then we can play jenga and then have the freakiest sex you ever had in a room with a great view.”

That’s in the early stages of the courtship.

When (if?) this heavy-handed benefits play doesn’t work out, it’s time for stage 2:

2) “Yo why you don’t respond to my messages? I thought you said you like shrimp pasta. I’m still free this Friday. I can come pick you up.”

Like I said, this is basically what ALL of the emails I’ve been getting look like.

They either scream heavy-handed benefits (Real subject line: “8 second trick to get the benefits of 4 hours of meditation TONIGHT”)…

Or they are pitching a sale, and are bummed when you don’t respond (Real subject line: “It’s not too late…”).

It’s like all these desperate or creepy email marketers don’t realize I’m a hot girl with lots of options (metaphorically speaking).

Here’s a better approach.

It’s something I read from Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief yesterday. Says Kevin (I’m paraphrasing), let’s face the fact that email marketers and their readers are in an open relationship.

You probably get emails from lots of different people besides me.

I’m not judging, though.

Because to be honest with you, I’ve just sent this exact same email (all right, now it’s a blog post) to several other people besides yourself.

No neediness. No drama. No recrimination.

Open relationship. Keep this in mind and you’re likely to write much better and more effective emails.

Anyways, before I sign off, let me get back to Kevin Rogers.

I don’t have any particular relationship with the guy.

But I thought you might like to know he’s putting on an event called Copy Chief Live.

Basically, it’s a conference that brings together copywriters and big direct response clients (Agora Financial, etc.) who want to hire copywriters.

So if you wanna feel like the hot girl on Tinder, but in real life, then this event might be worth a look. I’d love to go myself, but unfortunately it’s the only time I can’t make it.

In case you want more info before the price goes up later this week, here’s the link:

https://copychief.live

4 daily email newsletters you might like

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I’m subscribed to several dozen daily newsletters.

Reading most of them is a chore.

In part, that’s cause they all come from Agora or Agora-like companies.

And they either deal with stock tips and gold rush advice…

Or health information about diseases I haven’t heard of, at least yet. (Macular degeneration, when you arrive, I will be ready.)

I slog through these emails each day because email marketing is my job.

But among these dull but important emails, there are a few email newsletters, which arrive daily or even multiple times a day, that I actually open up and read with some personal interest. Here they are:

#1. Simon Black

“America is going to shit and you better have a plan B for when it happens”

That’s the summary of International Man, run by Simon Black.

The thing is, Simon writes interesting emails. There’s always some little history lesson, written as a simple story. I find myself intrigued and educated.

Word to the wise: Simon’s subject lines are pretty dull and too matter-of-fact. Try opening up his emails even if the subject line doesn’t catch your attention.

#2. Newsmax

I mentioned Newsmax a few days ago.

It’s a giant newsletter about news from a conservative standpoint.

All of the stories in Newsmax will get your blood pressure up, whether you vote left, right, or not at all.

Plus, you will get links to some of the most shameless sales letters running on the Internet right now.

#3. Ben Settle

Ben settle didn’t invent daily emails. But he did a lot to make them popular.

He did this by being surprising and polarizing.

Even after many years of reading Ben’s emails, I still open and read them each day.

#4. James Altucher

I only started reading James Altucher several months ago.

He is multimillionaire former hedge fund manager and failed entrepreneur.

He writes long blog posts that get sent as emails as well.

His emails are personal, funny, and interesting.

But James also seems to be backed by some Agora company.

So the interesting and personal stuff that he writes is interspersed with cutthroat sales copy for getting rich off marijuana penny stocks. Just so ya know.

#5. That’s actually it. The above 4 are the only daily newsletters I enjoy reading.

​​But while preparing to write this email, I typed “daily emails” into Google. And I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I had never heard of before:

– Uptown Messenger (about where to buy drugs in New York City?)
– the Skimm (possibly about the milk industry)
– PRSUIT (of missing vowels)
– Londonist (about things to do in London, where I don’t live)
– and something called “A Season of Grief,” which apparently sends you inspiring daily emails to help you cope with a death in the family

I can’t wait. I’ll keep you updated. But before you go, there’s one more:

#6. Your recommendation.

Do you follow any newsletters (daily or not) that you actually enjoy reading? (Besides mine, of course.)

If you do, please let me know.

This is not just an engagement tactic. I’m planning on putting together a weekly (not daily) newsletter about email marketing soon.

So you’d be helping me out. And I’d give you due credit in the first edition of that upcoming newsletter.

Just click here, and if you’ve got a hit tip for me, send me the juice.

Flushing your email marketing down the toilet

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A few days ago, I read about a girl who was forced to flush her hamster down the toilet.

She was traveling with the hamster — her emotional support animal — on Spirit Airlines.

From Miami to Baltimore, Spirit Airlines allowed the hamster on board.

But for the flight back to Miami, Spirit changed their minds when the girl was checking in at the airport. No rodents on the plane, they said.

The girl tried negotiating, or booking other flights, or renting a car.

But nothing worked out.

Finally, according to the girl at least, one Spirit Airlines agent helpfully suggested she either let the hamster run wild in the parking lots surrounding the airport…

Or flush the poor beast down the toilet.

And so, frustrated and worn out and needing to get home to take care of an urgent medical issue, that’s what the girl did.

The lesson being:

There’s simply no arguing when a behemoth corporation, which has control of your life, says no to your small, individual, even reasonable requests.

I bring this up because marketers, copywriters, and anyone else who relies on email as a marketing channel, might face a similar situation soon.

That’s because of some big technical changes that are coming in the newest versions of Apple’s iOS operating system.

Some of these changes, having to do with telemarketing, will be kicking in as soon as this September.

Others, which will be more relevant for email marketing, will be phased in over the next several months.

And in the worst case, this could mean that the traditional online sales funnel — you sign up for a free lead magnet, I send you some promotional emails — will no longer work.

Not just on Apple devices.

In general.

Now maybe you’re skeptical this is really real.

Or you want to know what the actual technical details are before you make up your mind.

Or you are already scared, and want to start taking some action steps to prepare.

In any of those cases, I can point you to the latest episode of David Garfinkel’s Copywriter’s Podcast, where I heard about this issue just this morning.

David’s podcast has the full details, as well as a free opportunity to help you prepare for this transformation.

So if you wanna take a listen and maybe even prevent your valuable email marketing from getting flushed down the swampy and slimy bathroom toilet at Apple International Airport, here’s where to go:

http://copywriterspodcast.com/index.php?podcast=925

Stalker girlfriends and email personalization

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I saw a sexy email marketing question today:

“How do you personalize your emails?”

The email marketer who was posing and answering this question did his darndest to offer value.

“Insert the first name”

“Use dynamic content”

“Recommend personalized products”

All reasonable suggestions.

And if you’ve got an email list, it might make sense to try them.

But you know what?

Odds are really good that this is not something you should be worrying about.

For one, clients aren’t dumb, and you won’t fool them long by inserting their first name into an email.

For another, it’s very possible to screw up personalization and to just appear creepy instead of helpful or friendly.

It reminds me of a story that I’d read about a late-20s guy who was in a relationship dilemma.

He had a new girlfriend and things seemed to be going great.

And then one night, she mentioned something like, “You know, like that time you broke your arm in high school.”

Trouble is, he had never mentioned anything about breaking his arm to the girl.

And after a bit of questioning, she broke down and admitted she had been stalking him for years, including befriending all his friends as well as his sister, just to get close to him before they were even introduced.

You don’t want to be this crazy stalker girlfriend.

So what’s an alternative?

Well, we all have this thing in our heads — unless we are sociopaths — where we mirror each other.

So if I tell you something personal, you feel like there’s a personal bond there. It’s almost like I knew you and I had personalized the email with your info.

So let me tell you something personal.

I was 10.

And along with my dad, I was taking a day trip to a sleepy little coastal town in Sweden.

We were walking on an abandoned street when I saw a colorful storefront.

In the window, a rubber mask-like thing was smiling at me. It was an elephant, with large ears and a lengthy trunk.

“Look at that mask!” I told my dad. “Can we get it?”

My dad took a step back and looked at the shop. He had more life experience than me.

“It’s not a mask and you don’t need it yet.”

“Why? What is it?”

My dad sighed. And then he explained a few things about life to me.

That day was the first time I saw a penis extender.

Anyways, if you’re looking to stretch out and extend your ad budget and you want an effective way to convert more leads to buyers, then I might have something to help you out.

It’s a guide I’m putting together, detailing how I write advertorials that sell (even very generic) ecommerce products to cold Facebook leads.

In case you’re interested in getting notified when it’s out, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The 2019 Nobel Prize in email marketing

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Two years ago, a bunch of smart guys got the Nobel Prize for discovering how the circadian rhythm works.

As you might know, that’s our body’s internal clock.

It’s what keeps you awake during the day, sleepy at night, and in a zombie state after you change time zones.

These scientists wanted to figure out how this happens.

They found that there’s a protein that builds up in our cells during the night…

And gets depleted during the day.

It’s kind of like an hourglass. During the night the sand gets put in at the top, and during the day it runs out. When it runs out, you’re knocked out.

This is pretty similar to the classical view of email marketing.

“You don’t want to mail sales pitches too frequently,” the conventional argument goes. “If you do, you’ll deplete your ‘goodwill hourglass’ and people on your list will unsubscribe.” It sounds reasonable, just like the circadian rhythm story.

But it’s contradicted by a new discovery.

Just look at the work of email scientists like Matt Furey, Ben Settle, and Travis Sago.

Their attitude is not, “How often can I sell something to my list?”

Instead, they focus on selling something every day — and having their list love them for it.

It’s a super powerful change in perspective.

Worthy of a Nobel Prize in email marketing.

If you have an email list, then this “sell every day” approach opens up grand vistas of untapped profits.

And if done right, it also creates better, longer-lasting relationships with your customers and your audience.

But this won’t be much use to you unless you have an email list. Filled with people who are in your target market. And hungry for what you sell.

There are lots of ways to build such a list. If you want to know a fast way, here’s one option:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The truth about daily emails

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I’ve been on a learning kick lately, reading and watching and slurping up everything I can find by a guy named Travis Sago.

I won’t list his resume here.

Suffice to say he’s an Internet marketer who’s been around for I guess close to two decades.

​​He’s made many millions of dollars.

What’s more, he’s done this profitably (ie. without building up a giant organization, but just him and a couple of elfin helpers).

So if you are a person like me, who doesn’t dream of starting a 100-person company, but who does dream of having a 7-figure income by dabbling in marketing, then you might find what Travis has to say interesting. So I’ll share one Travis thing with you.

It’s one of his 6 secrets for successful email campaigns.

Says Travis:

“Make your email campaign an EVENT”

Now maybe this sounds trivial to you.

But I think it’s a crucial lesson for a lot of businesses today who are hopping onto the daily email bandwagon.

As you might know, I’m also a big fan of Ben Settle. I believe Ben is responsible for the bandwagonification of daily emails. The way he was able to do this was by writing daily emails himself — promoting his own methodology, building his own brand, and refining his ideas and strategies. In other words, there’s definitely a lot of value to writing daily emails.

They help you get positioned as a leader in your market…

They distill your own selling and marketing approach…

They help you create valuable content.

But here’s one thing that they are not likely to do:

They don’t make sales.

Not lots of them anyways. Not in my experience.

For sales, you need an EVENT, just like Travis Sago says.

And to be fair, this is something Ben Settle teaches and lives as well. He’s constantly running events and promotions. And even his core offer — his paid monthly newsletter — is basically an event that comes to an end at the end of each month.

Still, a lot of people who only follow Ben on the surface, and who are bouncing along merrily on the daily email bandwagon, miss this important point.

And that’s why, if you are writing daily emails, and you aren’t getting the results you want, maybe try creating some EVENTS.

As for me, it’s back to work, toiling away at an upcoming event. While that’s not complete, you might like the following free offer — even without an EVENT to promote it:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

I screwed up yesterday

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Yesterday, I was sending out an email to my aromatherapy list when the Internet died.

Normally, I write my daily email in a text editor.

I then paste it into ActiveCampaign, tweak the formatting, and then click “Send.”

Yesterday, however, between the pasting and the clicking, the Internet died.

I restarted the router, finished sending out the email (so I thought), and got on with my merry day.

It was only later I realized I’d screwed up. Because the Internet had died at the proper moment, the email body didn’t get saved in ActiveCampaign.

So I managed to send out an email with a tantalizing subject line, “This essential oil treatment only works for 25% of people”…

… But the body of the email talked about something entirely unrelated (it was the template copy, from an email I had written two years ago).

​Most importantly, the email wasn’t promoting what I wanted
it to promote (Essential Oil Quick Start Guide, my book on aromatherapy).

Shamezul.

What to do?

Well, I simply waited. And then today, I sent out another email saying, “I screwed up yesterday.”

I explained what had happened.

And I pasted in the correct email body from yesterday’s email below my explanation.

Many people opened this “penance” email.

Some read it.

And a few might even buy through it, as tends to happen when I include the right link.

Now, you might wonder why I’m mentioning all this. It’s to illustrate a principle I first heard from email marketing guru-in-chief Ben Settle. Says Ben (I’m paraphrasing):

“Nothing bad ever happens to you when you write emails”

In other words, everything can be turned and twisted into a good email.

So far, I’ve gotten new email content out of negative Amazon reviews, doubts about my credibility, and accusations thrown at me on Facebook.

​And as you’re currently reading, out of a story of how I botched my actual email sending.

All of which illustrates that it’s not hard to come up with fodder for daily emails, once you get in the groove.

Of course, you can’t send out an “I screwed up” email every day. You’ll need some other email ideas to keep things interesting for your audience.

If you want my ideas for the kind of email content you could be sending out to your list day after day, you might be interested in my upcoming book on email marketing. For more info or to sign up for a free copy, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Selling “male enhancement” with one easy, simple trick

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A few years back, I paid $500 for an online course called The Energy Blueprint.

This is offered by a guy called Ari Whitten, and it deals with increasing your energy levels and reducing fatigue.

The reason I actually plopped down the $500 was instructive. You see, out of the flood of marketing that Ari was putting out to promote his course, only one tiny bit caught my attention.

In one of his lead magnets, Ari gave a practical tip for increasing your energy. Says Ari,

“Drink a glass of water the first thing when you get up.”

“That’s it? How lame,” you might think.

I certainly did. After all, I do a ton of reading about health, and “drink water” is neither new nor exciting advice. And yet, Ari managed to sell it in such a way that this one small, not very impressive tip got me to buy a $500 course.

So what’s going on?

I thought about this in a lot of detail today.

That’s because I’ve been talking to a potential client.

He sells information in the “male enhancement” space and he wanted my thoughts on the lead magnet to use for a new product launch. (By the way, a lead magnet is the video or PDF that you give away to get potential leads onto your email list.)

So I thought about Ari Whitten’s easy, simple water trick, and how it worked on me. I broke it down into 3 crucial parts, all of which operated in tandem to convince me to actually buy his course.

Anyways, I shared the structure of Ari’s “water lead magnet” with this potential client.

And I’ll also be sharing it in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.  In fact, I think this kind of lead magnet works best for health offers — “male enhancement” included.

I’m planning on selling this book when it’s out. But if you sign up for it now, you can secure yourself a free copy. To do so, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The salutary effect of paying for traffic

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Right now, I’m running a paid Facebook ad campaign.

It’s promoting a lead magnet for my aromatherapy website, titled The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams.

I don’t know much about running ads on Facebook, but it seems like I’m getting leads for pretty cheap. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be the highest-quality leads — many people who opt in never even download the lead magnet.

But that’s ok.

Because the very fact of paying for traffic is having a salutary effect on me.

I got that phrase from negotiation master Jim Camp, who talked about “the salutary effect of cold calling.” When you cold call, Camp used to say, you have no expectations, and you have a great opportunity to eliminate all your neediness (one of the main pillars of Camp’s negotiation system).

Well, paying for traffic doesn’t have the same salutary effect.

But it does make me want to write emails every day to these leads. What’s more, it makes me want to write emails that get read and get people stirred up. In other words, I’m no longer just writing for the sake of being able to say I’ve done it. Instead, I’m writing to make sales.

That’s both because I’m spending money on traffic now (rather than counting on an indefinite stream of leads from Google)…

And it’s also because it becomes a game — can I make back the money that I will spend on ads, so I can do this all over again on a bigger scale?

Speaking of games, I’m running another ad campaign, and that’s on Amazon.

I’m promoting the aromatherapy books I have .

And once I finish up my new book, about being a successful freelancer on Upwork, I’ll put it up on Amazon, and promote it through ads as well.

However, before I do that, I will probably take advantage of Amazon’s free promotion period. This means, for a few days, once the book is published, it will be available to download for free.

In case you want to get notified when this happens, sign up below, and I’ll keep you in the loop:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

A lesson from Widows: How to tell you’re winning a negotiation

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I just saw the surprisingly good Widows.

There are many scenes in this movie that would make for good email — or blog — fodder.

One that sticks out is the following:

Jamal Manning is a former crime boss who’s looking to get respectable, so he’s running for alderman in Chicago’s 16th district.

And in this scene, he visits the reverend of the largest congregation in his district, trying to get support.

The reverend speaks first:

“Election’s in less than a month. If I was a doctor, I’d be telling you to get your affairs in order. Three weeks from now, you won’t need a doctor. You’ll be asking someone like me to give you last rites.”

Manning is getting impatient. He thinks the reverend has already decided to endorse his opponent.

“I didn’t say that,” says the good reverend.

He then suggests he’s still keeping his options open.

Finally, Manning can’t take any more. He blurts out:

“I’m gonna cut to the chase here, reverend. I’m in the driver’s seat. I just don’t have a set of wheels. All I need is your endorsement and your contribution to help me get across the finish line.”

And there it is.

The phrase that tells you you’ve been negotiating right, and are near to crossing the finish line.

Did you catch it?

“I’m gonna cut to the chase.”

That’s not my wisdom.

Instead, it’s straight from the late negotiation expert Jim Camp, who said his students always love to hear that phrase. “Cut to the chase” means the other side is getting worn out and they are ready to agree to just about anything.

So how do you get to that point?

Well, you do what the good reverend did.

Which is something that doesn’t just apply to local politics or crime movies.

In fact, it’s another tenet of Camp’s negotiating method.

And it’s even something that’s been adapted to writing more effective sales emails by that devoted Camp disciple, Ben Settle.

You can try to glean what I’m talking about by closely reading the script above.

Or you can get a copy of my upcoming book when it comes out, where I will cover this topic in much more detail, and give several examples of emails where I’ve used this same strategy.

The choice is yours. If you want the second option, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/