Email Marketing

How a hardened criminal won over a nation in 16 minutes

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I just watched the most remarkable interview.

It was done on one of the local TV stations in Croatia, by one of the country’s most respected TV anchors.

The interviewee was one Olivera Ćirković:

The face of an unrepentant criminal

Yes, Olivera is a statuesque and handsome blonde. But there’s much more to her than just looks.

Back in her native Serbia, she was the child of a wealthy family, a straight-A student, and even a professional basketball player for Red Star Belgrade.

More interestingly, she is also a former jewel thief who has organized dozens of heists and has stolen millions of dollars worth of valuables.

And she’s also somebody who has done prison time on at least 3 occasions, and who made a daring and successful escape her last time in the hoosegow, earning herself the unusual credential of being the only woman ever to escape from a Greek prison.

Now, Olivera is a published author (an autobiography, predictably), with an eye to a big Hollywood movie deal about her life.

And yet:

All of these exceptional things are not what is most unique or impressive about this real-life Pink Panther.

Instead, it is her attitude and her way of speaking and carrying herself that is pure gold (or diamonds).

In fact, during this 16-minute interview, she managed to visibly charm and win over the normally serious and hardened TV anchor.

And by what I’ve heard from my secret contacts on the streets of Zagreb, she seems to have done the same with just about everyone who saw her on TV.

What’s Olivera’s secret?

Well, I can think of at least five separate things.

And I’ll be expanding on them in full detail in my upcoming book on email marketing.

You see, this book will contain a section about the mindset and attitude that you should have when communicating with your audience through email.

This attitude section won’t be relevant for all situations. But if you’re planning on sending out daily emails, particularly in a first-person, hello-from-the-CEO style, then there’s a lot you can learn from Olivera and her natural charisma.

Anyways, if you want to Pink Panther your way to a free copy of my book, you’re in luck. All you need to do is sign up at the link below, and I’ll send you a copy when it’s out:

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

Omnipresent and unexplained email content

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Pop quiz:

What do the following headlines all have in common?

1. How did cool become such a big deal?
2. Why it’s hard to sound like Jimi Hendrix
3. A comprehensive guide to yellow stripey things
4. Why whales got so big

(The third one, by the way, was for an infographic on the differences between wasps, bees, yellow jackets, hoverflies and dirt daubers.)

Think you have it?

Ok, let’s compare answers. Here’s what I had in mind:

Each of these headlines promises to explain a part of your world that is so obvious that it’s actually not understood. Something you’re well aware of, but you’d never really thought about before. Something that gets you saying, “Yeah, that’s right! Why is that?”

These kinds of topics can easily be modeled to write interesting emails. For example, applying them to various health markets, we get:

1. How did essential oils suddenly become such a big deal?
2. Why it’s hard to avoid belly fat past 35
3. A comprehensive guide to different types of erectile dysfunction
4. Why your joints don’t self-repair like other tissue

(Health markets are in fact a very good match for this kind of topic. We all have a lot of experience with our bodies, and yet much about them remains a mystery.)

In short: find something omnipresent but still unexplained (at least to non-specialists). Put it in your subject line, and then write a short email surprising people and opening their eyes with the answer. And then, tie this into whatever you’re selling.

Easy.

Peasy.

By the weasel, this is one of about two dozen email topic ideas I will be sharing in my upcoming book about email marketing for health products.

If you want to find out what the other ones are (they’re very exciting), you’ll need to read the book. You can sign up here to get it when it comes out:

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

How to use Disney movies to sell health info courses

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Below you’ll find a Pinocchio-themed email I wrote a year ago for a new course on essential oils.

This email is short (I wish I could always write such short emails).

And yet, it has all the elements that I normally put in to promote a health product:

1. Something cute/funny/interesting
2. Something informative/useful
3. A related call to action

Here goes:

SUBJECT: Essential Oil Pleasure Island

In Disney’s fantastic 1940 film Pinocchio, there’s a place called Pleasure Island.

Pinocchio winds up there on the advice of a sly fox called Honest John.

At first, Pleasure Island appears to be every boy’s dream.

You can do whatever you choose: play pool, smoke cigarettes, even get drunk.

However, the place hides a horrible curse.

The stray boys who end up there eventually turn into donkeys and are sold into slave labor.

That’s exactly what happens to Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick, while Pinocchio manages to get away with only some donkey ears and a tail.

This is the cute part — simply telling a cautionary tale that’s clear, easy to understand, and is likely to draw a smile. Continuing:

Now I’m sure this Pleasure Island can be a metaphor for many things in life.

But if you’re curious about essential oils, then I just want to warn you about the many “Honest John” characters out there on the Internet.

They’ll tell you to do whatever you want with essential oils: drink them, massage them onto your skin undiluted, even cook with them.

Beware.

There’s a price to pay for listening to that misleading advice, usually in the form of a rash or a burn or an allergic reaction.

This is the informative part. Nothing super heavy here, but useful to essential oil newbies — the target audience for this course.

The fact is, safe and reasonable use of essential oils might not seem as exciting at first, but it’s a lot more sustainable and useful in the long run.

My new EO Pioneers course tells you how to avoid Essential Oil Pleasure Island, or if you’ve already landed there, how to get away without donkey ears or a tail.

If you don’t want sly foxes leading you by the nose, here’s more information on this new course:

www.unusualhealth.com/essential-oil-pioneers/

Finally, this is the call to action. Again, nothing complex here — simply a brief explanation of what the course is about, and how it can help you if you’re new to essential oils (along with a bit of call-back humor).

And that’s all it really takes.

As easy as 1-2-3.

If you want more examples of how I’ve used this simple template to sell supplements as well as health info courses, you might like to sign up for a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing:

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

The Bohemian Rhapsody trick for creating a big opening

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The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn — and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side

I just watched Bohemian Rhapsody.

The film is a pretty straightforward retelling of the story of Queen, with of course, a focus on Freddie Mercury.

It traces the band from their time meeting behind a local concert hall and follows them for the next decade or so, all the way to the climactic concert at Wembley Stadium, where they performed to an ecstatic audience of close to 100,000.

In fact, that’s how the movie opens up.

While the rest of the script is chronologically linear, the opening is all about Freddie waking up, trimming his mustache, making his way through his mansion (populated by dozens of filthy cats), being driven in a Rolls-Royce to the stadium, and then warming up as he walks up to the stage.

The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side.

It’s a good way to start a movie.

And the same holds for starting emails.

You need to capture people’s attention straight away.

And even though you probably have a linear script in mind for what you’d like to say, that’s probably not the best way to present the information.

The good news is, it’s not hard to spruce up a regular ol’ email and make it into a sexy email.

Just go in once it’s written, find the highlight of the email, and splice it in up top.

You can keep the rest of the email as is.

This isn’t cheating in any way — you’re simply giving people a preview of the interesting things to come, and a reason to keep reading.

Once you have people’s attention, you can then take them to your important and serious message.

Such as for example, my upcoming book on email marketing for health products.

It’s not out yet.

But if you would like a free copy when it does come out, you can sign up here:

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

Announcing Profitable Health Emails

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I’m putting together a book tentatively titled Profitable Health Emails.

It’s going to collect what I’ve learned so far about email marketing, and what I’ve used to help companies such as RealDose Nutrition, Australian Digestive Excellence, and Vitality Now make some money.

I’m expecting to finish the book by January 2019.

In case you’d like a free copy when it’s done, you can sign up for it here:

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

When infotaining emails fail

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In 1975, the great copywriter Gary Bencivenga joined an upstart direct marketing agency.

They soon put out a gutsy ad in the Wall Street Journal to hunt for new clients. The headline ran:

“ANNOUNCING A DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING AGENCY THAT WILL GUARANTEE TO OUTPULL YOUR BEST AD.”

There were only two catches:

1) You had to give Gary & co. creative freedom on the kind of ad to write — only legal and factual approval was asked for and allowed.

2) You actually needed better advertising. In Gary’s own words, “If we think your present advertising is excellent, we’ll tell you.”

I thought of this today because I’m looking over the wreckage of several email campaigns I wrote for a client over the past few months.

I put in serious work on these emails, and I thought I did a great job. When I handed them over to the client, he loved them. But apparently, they are underperforming what he was using earlier.

The thing is, I saw the earlier email sequences, and I was confident I could do better. They were dull and too heavy on the teaching, and I was going to make them intriguing and infotaining.

But that’s not enough.

What I should have asked for in addition to seeing the email copy is a breakdown of where the sales were coming from.

Were they all on day 0, and people weren’t even reading the emails?

Did sales trickle in as the relationship was established (which means that people actually liked reading the old emails)?

Was it all about the discounts (and was the copy largely irrelevant)?

Were the emails actually making any sales (the client hinted that they weren’t making any money through email marketing)?

Too late to ask now, because the client seems to have moved on to greener pastures.

However, going forward, I’ll insist on this sales info for two reasons:

1) It will help me decide whether I can in fact write emails that will do better. It’s not just about seeing the copy, but about finding out how that copy performs.

2) If I feel I can beat the emails, this info will give me useful clues about how to best do that.

Maybe obvious. But even old Gary above didn’t think to ask for the results in his gutsy ad — which makes me feel a bit better.

A subject line that’s good enough for Groucho Marx

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“Mrs. Briggs… I’ve known your husband for many years, and what’s good enough for him is good enough for me.”

I’ve recently written several autoresponder sequences that culminate with a discount for the product on sale. However, it’s no good to just announce this in the subject line by saying “15% off coupon inside”.

Why not?

Because it’s boring.

Because everybody does it that way.

Because it only focuses on the hyper-buyers, and drives away everyone else.

Because with a little bit of work, it’s possible to get the same message across, while creating curiosity, building a relationship, and thereby actually increasing response.

So how do you do it? Here are a few ideas:

#1 Tease. Announce that you’ve got an incredible offer in the subject line, without saying explicitly what it is. Then carry this on throughout the email as long as possible without pissing the reader off. Example: “A free fermenting offer you probably can’t refuse”.

#2 Testimonial connection. Include a testimonial in the body of the email and find an entertaining way to tie into this in the subject line. Example: “A discount that will disappear like a late-night snack”.

#3 Pop culture reference. Find a movie, TV show, celebrity, PS4 game, whatever — and in some way tie it in to the offer (or don’t tie it in — it’s more important that it’s entertaining than that it ties in perfectly). Preferably, choose a bit of pop culture that won’t seem dated six months from now. Example: “A discount that’s good enough for Groucho Marx”.

Stuck on the emotional rollercoaster with nowhere to go

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On May 28 of this year, many visitors to the Cedar Point amusement park, “The Rollercoaster Capital of the World,” got a special thrill.

They boarded the Millennium Force “giga coaster” — the biggest rollercoaster in the world at the time of its debut in 2000 — expecting a fast and gut-wrenching ride. Full of expectation, they started climbing the initial 300-foot ascent, and were preparing themselves to rush down the other side at 93 miles an hour.

Instead, what they got was a long wait. Halfway up the climb, the power went out. A car somewhere hit a utility pole, knocking out one third of the rides at Cedar Point. The folks on the Millennium Force sat up there in the air for two hours, cooking in the 90-degree heat.

Now a few days ago, I made a case against indoctrination emails, meaning emails that aim to build good will without trying to sell anything. My argument in that post was that people don’t read all your emails, so when they do actually read your emails, it makes financial sense to give them a chance to buy from you.

Today, I have a second argument against indoctrination emails (and other emails that don’t sell). This second argument has to do with the situation of being stuck on a rollercoaster, ready to scream and laugh — but not actually going anywhere.

“WOOHOOO!!! A way to resolve emotional tension!!!”

The rollercoaster I’m talking about is an emotional rollercoaster. In my experience, the best emails stir emotion. This emotion can be curiosity, frustration, anger, disgust, fear, greed, outrage, inspired benevolence, whatever.

Why emotion in emails? If you want people to open your emails day after day and to read them, you have to give them an emotional jolt, and do so frequently. I don’t have a much better way of explaining it than saying it’s simply what people want. I guess emotion gives color to an otherwise drab day.

(Interesting and useful information is great once or twice. But without a little emotional color mixed in, useful information quickly becomes a burden rather than a gift.)

Of course, emotion also makes sense from a different perspective. That’s because when people get emotional about something, it’s much easier to get them to take action. Meaning it’s much easier to get them to buy.

And here’s the thing. Getting people to buy when they are emotional isn’t just good for you. It’s good for them. The act of buying resolves the tension that the emotion stirred up. And it replaces it with a sense of purpose, hope, and resolution.

If you don’t believe me, think about the feeling you yourself had the last time you made a sizeable purchase online. I know I’m usually relieved that the indecision of shopping has been resolved, and I’m optimistic about what my new purchase will alow me to do.

So emotion + selling = good. But emotion without selling is like being stuck high up on a rollercoaster, not moving and not being able to finish the ride. At first it might just be puzzling, after that it becomes annoying.

What’s the alternative? Well, one option is to send out bland and boring emails that don’t stir anybody up. A better option, in my opinion, is to get people a little emotional, and to then give them a chance to buy a product or service that allows them to complete their rollercoaster ride.

My checklist for email copywriting

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In 1935, Boeing demonstrated its new plane, nicknamed the Flying Fortress, to military observers.

The demonstration was a mere formality, because the plane, a four-engine behemoth, exceeded the army’s requirements in every way.

Except for one problem. During the demonstration, the plane took off, climbed steeply, stalled, and crashed, killing the two pilots inside.

An examination determined that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash was due to pilot error. It seemed that the Flying Fortress was simply too much plane for one man to fly. Nonetheless, the air corps purchased a few Flying Fortresses and tried to figure out what to do.

Their solution was very low-tech. Instead of changing anything about the plane, or insisting on more training for the pilots, they simply came up with checklists to handle the complex procedures for each operation: takeoff, landing, cruising, bombing…

Thanks in part to these checklists, the Flying Fortress eventually wound up playing a key role in World War II, and became the third most produced bomber of all time.

I thought of this story today, because I came up with my first checklist for email copywriting.

Even though I’ve written hundreds of sales emails by now, I haven’t systematized the process, and sometimes, I find myself crashing and burning for no good reason. Today, I became aware of how the process goes when it goes well, and I want to write it down to make sure I don’t ever forget it ever again.

So here it is, along with an example (one of the emails I was working on today, for a home fermenting kit):

STEP 1. Get an idea for an angle or topic

I normally do a lot of research for the emails I write. This includes going through the sales letter, testimonials, transcripts I did with people from the company, examining the product itself, digging around on forums online, etc. As I do this, I write down possible topics and angles for emails.

For this particular project, I also went through a few hundred customer surveys. A lot of customers mentioned that they were interested in fermenting because they wanted to lose weight.

My first idea was simply to try to connect fermented foods to weight loss. While I had a good testimonial on this topic, the science seemed fairly vague and tenuous (more on this in step 2 below). However, a related and relevant topic — antibiotics and weight gain — seemed very solid, so I decided to go with that.

STEP 2. Search around for more details

If I know a lot about a topic, or I have a personal story I can share, I can skip this step.

However, I can’t simply riff about antibiotics and weight gain. It’s not a topic I know enough about, so I needed to do more research. In particular, I wanted to find some kind of supporting scientific study that actually made the connection. And ideally, I also wanted to find a story to kick off the entire email.

I have a few go-to places for both kinds of resource. For scientific research, ScienceDaily seems to have reliable summaries of recent research. For stories, articles that appear in The Atlantic and The New Yorker tend to be good sources. Beyond this, a bit of googling will usually solve all research problems.

For this particular email, I found a study from Johns Hopkins University that effectively said, “the more antibiotics, the more weight gain.” The story I found was about a woman who went to the doctor to get rid of her hormonal acne, but wound up with an extra 14 pounds, thanks to the antibiotics he prescribed her.

STEP 3. Write up different subject lines

Keeping In mind the topic I want to cover, and the details of the research I want to include, I start to write a bunch of different subject lines.

At this point, I have a fairly large stack of index cards with good headlines that I can use as templates or inspiration. These aren’t “classic” direct response headlines (eg. “They laughed when I sat down at the piano”).

Instead, they are the titles of articles I’ve found myself clicking on over the past sevreal years (eg. “De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds”). Most of these are general-interest articles that originally appeared on the front page of Hacker News, so they are vetted for being curiosity-inducing.

I force myself to write down 10-15 of these subject lines, even if I think they sound stupid. Then I just pick the one that I think sounds the best, ties into the content I want to share, and ideally, gives me a bit of edge I can use in the email (I can’t describe this any better right now).

For this particular email, the subject line I ended up with was “Antibiotics are shockingly good at causing weight gain”.

STEP 4. Write the body of the email

At this point, all that’s left to do is to tie the pieces together. That means starting off with the story, developing this a bit (in the example I’ve been using, that means talking about the supporting science study), and then tying this in with the product I’m promoting.

I won’t include the entire completed email here. But it looks something like this:

Smooth sailing thanks to a checklist

The “Rule of One” applied to email copywriting

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In the 2006 version of Casino Royale, there’s a classic James Bond pickup scene.

Bond is talking to the beautiful wife of one of the bad guys. After a bit of flirty banter, Bond looks her straight in the eye and says, “What about a drink at my place?”

He stares at her. She stares at him. The tension builds.

“Your place,” she says breathlessly, “is it close?”

“Very,” says Bond.

Now imagine if Bond couldn’t play so cool. Instead of throwing out that one proposal, imagine if he threw out three:

“What about a drink at my place? Or maybe some nachos? How about breakfast tomorrow in case you’re busy now?”

Even with his ice-cold stare, odds are he wouldn’t get the same response.

“Bond. James Bond. You can call me Jim. Or James. Whichever is easier.”

A while ago, I was reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is the best book I’ve come across  on how to present ideas clearly and in a way that people will remember. One of the things the Heaths say is, “Say one thing. If you say three things, you end up saying nothing at all.”

Michael Masterson and John Forde’s “Great Leads” emphasizes the same concept, which they call “The Rule of One – One Big Idea.”

In fact, the book opens up with the story of two speeches that were given by two Agora copywriters. One speech focused on one idea, the importance of clarity in writing. The other was something like “12 rules I follow when writing copy.”

The audience thought both speeches were terrific. But at the end of the night, people were only talking about the single idea in the first speech.

I’ve recently been working on some emails for a cool product. The product helps people make their own fermented food. And the emails I’m writing are specifically for people who’ve stated that they want to ferment for health reasons.

I’ve been going around in circles writing these emails. I need to get across a few ideas. One is that fermented foods are important for your health. The second is that fermenting can be a hassle. A third is that store-bought fermented foods aren’t a great choice compared to fermenting food yourself.

The problem is I’ve been trying to do this in the same email. This breaks the “Rule of One.” No wonder I’ve been re-reading the emails and thinking they are somehow weak and unconvincing.

The fix is simple. Pick one idea. Develop it in detail. Present it clearly. And then do the same for the other ideas, but in separate emails.