Email Marketing

What we can all learn from princes William and Harry

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A few hours after I write this, the Queen’s coffin will be placed on a gun carriage and will lead a procession down a packed Mall, along Whitehall and then into Parliament Square before entering the Palace of Westminster.

Walking in the procession behind the Queen will be her son, the new king, Charles III.

But perhaps more remarkable, Charles’s two sons, William and Harry, will also be walking in the procession.

That’s remarkable because for the two princes, this act will bring back painful memories of when they, aged 15 and 12, walked behind the coffin of their mother Princess Diana in 1997.

What makes this act still more remarkable is that princes Harry and William are embroiled in a bitter personal feud with each other. (I don’t know the details of the feud, and the Daily Mail article I just read didn’t elaborate. So I guess I never will know.)

Whatever the case may be, I think this all just highlight the importance of unity.

Unity of family… unity in moments of crisis… unity when different, individual, tiny elements come together to form a bigger and more powerful whole.

Because after all, isn’t unity really the essence we all strive for, in life in general, and in email marketing in particular?

In particular, I have just read about the first ever email marketer, a man named Mr. Pease.

Mr. Pease sold a product called “Pease’s Horehound Candy,” a kind of cough drop. And since he lived in the first half of the 19th century, he clearly didn’t use email, not the way we know it today.

But Mr. Pease’s remarkable marketing was the essence of what email is about. It would work today as well as it did in early America.

So what did Mr. Pease do to advertise his cough drops? ​​From chapter 8 of P.T. Barnum’s book, Humbugs of the World:

Mr. Pease’s plan was to seize upon the most prominent topic of interest and general conversation, and discourse eloquently upon that topic in fifty to a hundred lines of a newspaper-column, then glide off gradually into a panegyric of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.” The consequence was, every reader was misled by the caption and commencement of his article, and thousands of persons had “Pease’s Horehound Candy” in their mouths long before they had seen it! In fact, it was next to impossible to take up a newspaper and attempt to read the legitimate news of the day without stumbling upon a package of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.”

Mr. Pease got very rich selling his horehound candy with his humbug news item advertisements.

And that’s what I hope will happen for you as well, if you only follow his very smart, very durable, very unified marketing approach.

The good news is, in many ways you have it easier than Pease did. For example, Pease had to pay for advertising space each time he wanted to get his message out. But email today is pretty much free.

Of course, Pease did have some advantages that you today do not have.

Such as, for example, a ready-made and large audience of newspaper readers.

Or the fact that those newspaper readers read their newspaper with a curious and trusting mind, rather than with skepticism and disinterest.

Or the fact that those readers didn’t have Twitter, where they could start campaigns to mock or even shut down Pease’s company because of its misleading advertising.

But fear not!

Because there are simple, quick, and quite specific methods to overcome those problems in your email marketing today.

And if you have a business, and more specifically an email list, and you would like to make like Mr. Pease and market your way to great wealth, then may I advise you take a look at the fine offer below.

What, you want me to tie this offer into the topic of unity, or to princess William and Harry?

Not today. That’s not what I learned from Mr. Pease.

But if you do want potentially business-changing guidance with your email marketing, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

My takeaways from yesterday’s informal survey now that I’m out from under a mountain of virtual mail

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I’m way behind schedule today because I spent much of the day buried under a virtual mountain of virtual mail. And each time I clawed my way to the surface, gasped for air, and pulled out a stray bit of virtual paper from my throat, another batch of virtual messages landed on top of my head and buried me again.

The context:

Yesterday, I asked my list what the most recent podcast they listened to is. I also offered a little bribe to get people to respond.

An arenaful of people took me up on my offer and wrote in with their most recent listened-to podcast. As a result, I found out some interesting things about my readers:

1. They listen to more business-related podcasts than purely fun or general-interest podcasts. It was about a 60-40 split.

2. The podcasts that came rolling in were extremely diverse. In spite of all the responses I got, there were very few duplicates.

3. The one marketing podcast that did pop up multiple times was the Chris Haddad Show, in particular the episode with David Deutsch.

4. The general interest/purely fun category was broken up into three main groups: 1) self improvement (by far biggest), 2) comedy (second biggest but relatively small), and 3) truly off the wall stuff. A few examples of the last category:

“I’ll be honest — it was Words In The Air, a spoken-word poetry podcast that’s completely useless to you”

“Something to Wrestle with by Conrad Thompson and Bruce Prichard. It’s an insiders view of the WWE from the days of Hulk Hogan, through Stone Cold, up to today.”

“Recently, while on a five hour drive… My wife made me listen to this podcast where women tell their birthing stories. It was horrible.”

There are two takeaways I can make from this. Maybe they will be useful to you also:

The first is that if you keep writing daily emails long enough, then people on your list begin to be a composite of you and your interests.

After all, points 1,2, and 4 above describe me and interests pretty well (except for the birthing thing).

​​As for #3, I’ve listened to an episode of Chris Haddad’s podcast once, though that was the episode in which my name and my 10 Commandments book were mentioned.

My second takeaway is that Ben Settle might be right.

Ben said somewhere, probably in one of his emails, that he never surveys his list about what products to create next. He doesn’t ask people or about their tastes either. Or their preferences.

​​The only worthwhile survey question, says Ben, is what people bought last.

That was why yesterday I asked for just one podcast, and the most recent one you listened to. I believe this produced a much more honest and insightful survey than had I asked, “What are some of your favorite podcasts?”

Anyways, I now have a lot of good info for when I do decide to make a podcast push.

That won’t be right away. I still want to put out some new offers first.

I also plan to convert some of the offers I’ve launched already into offers I can promote all the time.

All of which means, I might not be offering my Email Marketing Audit much longer.

If you have your own email list, and it’s making you some money, then my quick and easy audit could be worth a lot more to you than I charge for it.

You can find out more about it at the link below. And if you are curious about it, then I can repeat yesterday’s message:

The perfect moment is now. The moment never was this good. It might never be this good again. So to get started while this window of opportunity is open:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way

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Yesterday evening, I got an odd email from a reader. The subject line read:

“About your email subject lines”

There was nothing in the body of the email. There was just an attached file, “7 Tested and Proven Email Subject Lines that Get Your Emails Opened.” Among them:

1. How to survive _____
2. The biggest mistake _____ make
3. The fastest way to ______

I have this Chateau Heartiste policy of keeping my replies to readers no longer than what the reader wrote me. And since this reader didn’t even include a hello, I couldn’t, according to my policy, reply to ask him why he was sending me this guide to subject lines.

Was he displeased with my subject lines in general?

​​Was he impressed with my subject line yesterday? ​​Did he think it fit one of these molds in some way?

​​I guess I’ll never know.

But since this reader did send me tested and proven subject line ideas, I squeezed a bunch of them into my subject line today.

After all, why not? I don’t think it will make a molehill of difference. Here’s a story on that matter:

Last year, I wrote an email with the subject line, “More real than real.” That email was about some slightly esoteric stuff. I purposefully didn’t want a DR-style subject line for it, one that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

A bunch of people wrote in response to that email to tell me how much they liked the story and the lesson I was sharing.

I also got a response from a smart and successful marketer. He warned me that he almost missed my email, which he thought was valuable once he read it, because my subject line didn’t catch his eye at all. He even rewrote my subject line to show me how it’s done.

And then, the next week, he wrote in with a similar message, again pointing out that my subject line is suboptimal and that he almost missed another valuable email from me. As far as I can tell, he continues to read my emails to this day.

I am not pointing fingers or making fun of anybody.​ I’m just pointing a finger at something obvious:

A lot of standard copywriting wisdom, which was extracted from cold-traffic tests, isn’t particularly relevant to warm daily emails, which people mainly open because they’ve learned that you have something fun or interesting to say. In warm emails, the “headline” is really your name, and not your subject line.

Maybe you say I can be cavalier about this, because I still don’t sell regularly in this email newsletter, and I certainly don’t A/B test my subject lines here.

Fine.

But I have been in situations where I was actively selling in email, and where I was actively testing. I’ve managed two 70,000-person email lists, which were made up of buyers, and which produced millions of dollars of sales, thanks to emails I wrote. And yes, thanks to subject lines I wrote.

And you know what?

I once ran a little test to find out how our email open rates influenced our sales.

​​Result?

Experts were shocked. Literally. I mean, I, an email marketing expert, was shocked.

And that’s why I want to warn you about the biggest mistake that email marketers make when it comes to subject lines. And that’s to follow “Tested and proven subject lines that get your emails OPENED.” If you want to read the real secret of why this is a big problem, here’s the fastest way to do that:

https://bejakovic.com/why-ecommerce-list-owners-should-beware-high-open-rates/

About that Dig.This.Zoom course

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Today is Tuesday, which means it’s time for the next Dig.This.Zoom call.

I’ve written about this course a few weeks ago.

​​I paid $1,200 to listen to mysterious, reclusive, but highly successful copywriter Aaron Winter talk over 12 consecutive Tuesdays. Well, I paid to listen to Aaron and also to participate in the “nebulous community benefits” promised.

But the fact is, I’m finding myself falling behind with this course. I’m even dreading tonight’s call a little.

One reason is the time difference. Where I am, it will be 10:30pm by the time tonight’s call starts. That’s a time of day when I’m really only suited for a warm glass of milk and a bedtime story, if there would be anyone out there kind enough to read me one.

The other reason is that, from what I’ve seen of these calls so far, they are very loosely structured, very jokey (and I’m quite humorless, at least at 10:30pm), and each week’s content seems to mainly be one or two big metaphors.

I’m telling you all this because several people have written to ask me what I think about the Dig calls, and whether the course is worth getting now that the price has been slashed to $600 — if you don’t get the calls live and if you don’t get to participate in those “nebulous community benefits.”

I can tell you this:

Aaron is apparently setting up an affiliate program, so all the folks who signed up initially can promote these new $600 recordings.

I thought about it for about 2 secs. And then I decided I won’t be selling these Dig calls as an affiliate.

After all, if I am struggling to get value out of this thing myself, how can I congruently sell it to you? And you know what they say about daily email newsletters. It only takes one sip of spoiled milk to turn you off the stuff for years.

Perhaps at this point, you are getting ready to take a big sigh of relief. Perhaps you were debating whether to invest your $600 in the Dig tapes. And here I am telling you not to buy the stuff.

Except I’m not telling you anything of the sort. Because here was my response to everyone who contacted me asking whether to buy or not:

1. Apparently a big part of this is a recruiting play for the Dig agency and the people associated with Dig. So if you are looking for a full-time gig, it might be worthwhile just for that opportunity, even if you don’t get those “nebulous community benefits” — whatever they will turn out to be.

2. There are worthwhile ideas and insights in the course, but it’s as much what you bring to it as what’s in the actual content. If you are smart and ambitious, you can probably get a lot of value out of this training. But then again, if you are smart and ambitious, you can probably get a lot of value out of most anything.

So I am not endorsing the Dig tapes. And I am not issuing a fatwa against it either. You will have to make up your own mind. If you are curious, here’s where you can get the full details:

https://dig-lolz.myshopify.com/

And if you decide not to buy the Dig tapes, or even if you do, you might want to read my email tomorrow.

​​I will tell you the most valuable thing I have personally gotten from this Dig.This.Zoom course so far. All for free. If you want to read that, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

Email tweaks that typically triple sales

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My recent batch of book recommendation emails stimulated more responses than I usually get. One person who wrote in was Camille Clare, who, along with her husband Dustin, founded shelter.stream.

​​Shelter is a kind of high-class Netflix. It’s a streaming service, which only features architecture and design films and series.

Last month, with the goal of increasing subscriptions for Shelter, Camille took me up on my Email Marketing Audit. And not only that.

As soon as we finished the consult last month, I could see Camille actually put my recommendations to work. (I’m signed up to her list.)

So when she replied to one of my emails a few days ago, I asked Camille how her own tweaked emails are doing. Here’s what she wrote:

“Emails are going great! Just so you know, since your feedback, we have tripled our sales via email. So that’s pretty awesome and thank you :)”

Tripled sales… within a few weeks… thanks to some small-to-modest changes in email strategy.
​​
That’s too good of a testimonial not to share right away, without the usual infotaining jiggery-pokery. Because for the moment, I am in a rare position:

I only started offering the Email Marketing Audit last month. And since Camille is the first consulting client to get back to me with her results, I can honestly say that “tripling sales is a typical result following my consult.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean my Email Marketing Audit will also triple your sales within a month, like it did for Camille.

But if, like Camille, you have a great offer… if you have a source of high-quality leads… and if you’re doing email marketing already… then my Email Marketing Audit could be worth much more to you than my consulting fee.

Of course, that’s assuming you actually implement what I suggest.

But in case you’re ready, eager, and determined to make more sales via email, you can start the process here:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

The heavy cost of heavy emailing

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From last Wednesday to last Sunday, I sent out 11 emails to promote the most recent run of my Copy Riddles program. Five of those promo emails came on just the last day.

Here’s some sobering feedback I got about that from copywriter Dave Montore, who signed up for both Copy Riddles and the Inner Ring coaching:

Thanks for the warm welcome, and thanks for sending more emails than usual for this one.

I’d have missed sign up due to the holiday weekend if I hadn’t noticed three emails from you in one day yesterday.

Good lesson for anyone who thinks they’re “bothering” their list.

Dave replies to my emails fairly often. He’s actually bought some of my other offers in the past. And yet, like he writes above, he might have missed this most recent offer had I emailed less, particularly the last day.

“Yeah,” you might say, “but at what cost did you buy this one great case study? How did the rest of your list tolerate all that heavy emailing? I bet many of them were piii—”

Well, before you go there, let me admit those five emails I sent out the last day did get a total of 5 unsubscribes. That’s about 0.4% of my list. Over the entire 11-email promo campaign, I had a total of 10 unsubscribes. That’s actually less than my long-term average.

And in spite of kicking off this campaign with a tongue-in-cheek email, inviting the wrong kind of readers to send me their hate mail and mp3s of their trollish grunting, I got fewer than one such response.

​​That’s to say, nobody, not one person, wrote in to tell me how I’m selling too hard or how I’m sending too many emails or how I should check out Andre Chaperon or the Hubspot website for ideas about how to really do email right.

On the other hand, I did get dozens of fun, smart, or respectful replies from people who enjoyed my emails, or had questions about the offer, or who actually took me up on my offer and wrote me with a certain amount of pride to tell me so.

Still you might say, nothing new here. Email done right makes sales. The worst that happens is that people who aren’t a good fit end up unsubscribing.

Yes, there is nothing new here. You got me there.

The only reason I am telling you this is because, ever since I’ve started offering my Email Marketing Audit back in May, the first conclusion I’ve made with all the clients who took me up on the Audit has been:

Email more.

Many business owners email once a week. They make some sales with that one email. And then they start to think, gee, how can I do better? Are there some subject line tricks or some deliverability hacks for improving the results from this one email?

My argument is always:

If you are making some sales with one email a week, try sending two. You might not double the money you make. But I’m pretty sure you will make more than you make now, and I’m 100% sure will make more long-term than if you focus on tiny tweaks to that one email.

So that’s free advice.

Of course, there is more to email marketing, done right, than simply creating heavy email showers.

But that kind of advice and guidance and advice is something I charge for.

So if you are a business owner, and you have an email list, and you want me to do an Email Marketing Audit of your email funnels and copy, you can get started here:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Copy Riddles now open for yes-men, yes-women, and others

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“I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.”
— Samuel Goldwyn

Today, I am reopening my Copy Riddles program for only the second time this year.

If you don’t know what Copy Riddles is about, you can read about it at the link at the end of this email.

Or you can just sit tight.

Because over the coming days, I will send you many emails, explaining what Copy Riddles is and why you might want to join.

I will start today, and I will only end on Sunday night at midnight PST, when the doors to the Copy Riddles theater will close again, to lock out any stragglers. The actual show will begin next Monday.

Now, in the parts of the direct response Internet that I haunt, it is customary to announce a heavy promotional campaign like this by saying something like:

“If you don’t like it, unsubscribe. Or just ignore my many emails until the storm passes. Or if you’re smart, follow along quietly, even if you have no intent to buy, because these emails make me a lot of money, and you might learn a thing or two.”

Predictably, sending out a message like this results in fewer spam complaints, a tighter bond with your list, and better behaved subscribers, who in time begin to border on yes-men, saying, “Yeah yeah, tell those people off in case they can’t appreciate effective marketing.”

But I don’t want any yes-men around me. Or yes-women.

I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their spot on my email list.

So if any of my emails over the coming days rubs you the wrong way… or if you think I’m selling too hard, or I’m name-dropping too much, or I’m not giving sufficient value in my emails… or if the total tonnage of my promotional material just begins to annoy you by its weight… then make sure to write in and let me know.

I promise to read each suggestion and complaint, and to respond, perhaps even publicly.

So with that announcement done, let’s get this campaign started. Here’s the Copy Riddles promotional trailer, I mean, the text sales page, for your viewing and marketing pleasure:

https://copyriddles.com/

An unsubscribed reader wants back into the fold

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Today, a reader named David wrote me to say:

John!

Where have you gone? Haven’t seen you in my inbox in over a week … hope all is well in … Barcelona? That’s where you’re at now, right?

Anyways. Hope to see your emails again soon.

David

I’m telling you about this for two reason:

1. When you do a good job writing daily emails, you occasionally get responses like this.

​​I’m not sure why David stopped getting my emails a week ago. (ActiveCampaign says he unsubscribed, but I trust ActiveCampaign less and less with each passing month.)

​​Whatever the case may be, I put David back onto my list and wrote him to say thanks for checking in on me.

2. My other reason is that today is the day for my Most Valuable Email presentation.

The presentation will happen in just a few hours from now. I still have a lot to do, both to prepare for this presentation and for some other secret stuff.

​​This means I don’t have the usual leisure to write one of my sometimes long, sometimes mindbending emails.

But that’s okay. Like David’s comment above shows, if you do a good enough job with your daily emails most of the time, you buy yourself some goodwill and trust…

Even when you apparently stop emailing for a while…

Even when (as happens to me from time to time) you write a dud…

Or even when, like today, you try to construct a quick email around a comment or a testimonial.

Anyways, I will be revealing my Most Valuable Email strategy for writing those possibly mindbending emails in tonight’s presentation which build goodwill and trust.

But if you haven’t registered for that presentation yet, then it will be too late to do so now, as this email goes out.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that, while checking my previous email exchanges with David, I found the following testimonial he had sent me:

Downloaded your A-list 10 commandments book … had never really heard of the “problem mechanism” idea you talk about towards the end. Or at least had never had it presented the way you presented it … which is what I love about your insights. You present persuasion and influence techniques in a format that is not just easy to understand, but equally as easy to apply. Needless to say, I used that concept and it worked out very nicely for me.

My 10 Commandments book is not specifically about email or about my Most Valuable Email strategy.

But you can find illustrations of that strategy throughout the 10 Commandments book. Specifically in Commandment I… Commandment III… Commandment IV… Commandment VIII… and Commandment IX.

Oh, and also in Commandment VII. Which might be why David says that this idea finally clicked for him, even though he may have heard it before. ​​

Anyways, ff you have my 10 Commandments book already, you can check inside it now and see what I’m talking.

​​And if you don’t have the book yet, you can get it, for less than a dollar per commandment, right here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The six-word email, with examples

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I’m sitting on the couch as I write this, next to the open balcony doors, in my underwear, eyes bleary, hair looking like a lawnmower went over it, in a press to write a personal and yet valuable email to you before.

Before what?

Before it’s time for me to rush out of the house and go pick up my rental car and then drive up the coast for the day. The idea is to give myself a chance to burn in the sun, on a beautiful beach I will visit for the first time in my life.

But what to write about?

Fortunately, I wrote down a concept for today’s email almost two weeks ago:

“The six-word email, with examples”

That concept is based on an idea from Hollywood.

​​Your story should fit into six words, say Hollywood screenwriting . Here are a few examples from Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work, a series from Scott Myers’s Go Into The Story blog:

1. Human Spy on an Alien Planet

2. Loner cop. New partner. Police dog.

3. Infatuated boy. Dream girl. Find condom.

“Fine,” I said to myself when I read this idea. “Let me put it into action and try it out.”

So ​​I made a list of 10 possible email ideas, each just six words. And then, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly sending them out. Example:

1. Emails without offer: stupid. Hence, consulting.

2. Results of my “rape” subject line.

3. What’s working on Substack right now?

And of course today’s email is another example of the six-word email.

Because it’s not that the email has to actually be six words itself. But rather, the core idea should be simple and easy to express, in just six words.

In some of my example emails above, I ran on too long and covered up the core message with too many words.

I won’t make that mistake today.

So let me just say, if you think you have no time to write daily emails, then do what I did.

Make a list of 10 six-word email concepts. Flesh them out a bit in an interesting and insightful way, and then send them out.

And if you say you don’t know how to come up with interesting six-word email concepts… or a way to quickly and easily flesh them out in an interesting and insightful way, then you might like:

A free presentation I will be putting on in the next week. It’s called the Most Valuable Email.

The details of this presentation will come tomorrow. If you’d like to read those details when they come out, or even sign up for my Most Valuable Email presentation, you can do that by getting onto my email newsletter. Sign up for it here.

My ship is sunk

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Yesterday, I invited you to play a little game called Daily Email Battleship.

It was supposed to be a fun way to exchange recommendations for daily email newsletters.

What I didn’t realize is I was getting myself into an unfair fight.

After all, there is only one of me. And my opponents were many.

So last night, after my email went out, alarm sirens started blaring on the HMS Bejako. My sonar system, warning me of incoming torpedos, started beeping faster and faster.

A muffled explosion went off underneath my inbox, and then a second, and then a third.

I looked out towards the horizon. It was dark with opposing battleships. I readied myself for a desperate fight.

But in spite of my valiant defenses and best evasive maneuvers, in the end my flotilla was torpedoed, overwhelmed, and finally sunk by the sheer onslaught of daily email recommendations from readers.

I’m being a tad dramatic.

If you joined me for Daily Email Battleship yesterday, thanks for playing. I will get back to you in person as soon as I get from under water a little.

And I will also be checking out the many interesting recommendations I got. I will share any standouts with you in the coming days and weeks.

Still, I gotta admit I was surprised.

Because in spite of getting something like 80+ different newsletter recommendations, there were plenty of successful people and businesses, sending out interesting daily emails, which were not named by anybody who played Daily Email Battleship with me.

Some of these were email lists I have mentioned in this very newsletter.

Others are one-man bands which have been featured as testimonials in big guru emails.

Perhaps the fact that nobody mentioned any of these newsletters is chance or omission.

But more likely, it’s just an inspiring reminder about the modern world.

Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are on the planet right now.

And the fact is, you can have a business today, and do very, very well, with a tiny audience of just a few thousand people, or even fewer.

A few thousand people is like an eye dropper’s worth of humans in the great ocean of humanity.

But if you can somehow collect that eye dropper’s worth of people… and if you can create something of value and interest for them… and then sell it to them, in a way that’s enjoyable enough that they even look forward your selling, day after day… then you can do very well, while staying under the radar and above the sonar of almost everybody out there.

So that’s my possibly inspiring reminder.

Here’s another:

I have an email newsletter. And if you’d like to learn some hard-won email marketing lessons I learned on board the HMS Bejako, and while serving as a sailor in various other business’s marketing navies, you can sign up for my newsletter here.