Direct Marketing

No response

by

Here’s an idea that I’ve found to be true:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content all the way through, it’s much easier to get great testimonials, ones you can actually feature because they say something substantive, and because they have a real shot of converting others as well.

I bring this up because last night, a copywriter named Pete, who’s been on my list for a while and who has already bought a few of my previous offers, signed up for my 3rd Conversion training, all about consumption and digestion.

When I asked Pete why, and what he’s hoping to get from the training, he replied:

===

Reason I joined is, because I’ve done a few workshops in the past few months that I’ve repurposed as content to sell.

Some people bought, but when I send emails to them to get feedback I get no response.

Which I’m assuming is because they haven’t gone through it.

If they thought it sucked, I’m certain I would hear about it. As negative people usually have something to say lol

===

I’m not sure if people who think an offer sucked usually have something to say about it. I know I like to keep my mouth shut and just go elsewhere.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Pete’s case, and there’s no reason to think so based on his message.

But I do know what I told you above:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content, it becomes much easier to get great testimonials, or at least feedback and response of some sort.

And as an example of that, I can tell you that last month, Pete bought my Most Valuable Emails and the stripped-down version of Simple Money Emails. When I wrote to him to deliver the courses, he replied:

===

I stayed up last night to binge read everything in MVE…

And all I have to say is, you’re not charging enough, dude.

After going through Copy Riddles and now MVE, and I’ll likely do the same with SME…

Everything you sell is solid.

Always grateful when I see one of your emails roll in.

===

Today, I’m not selling either Copy Riddles or MVE or SME, though of course if you’d like to give me money for those, you can.

Today, I’m simply trying to tell you it’s the last day to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training.

On the training, I will cover a small number of techniques, ones I’ve used and ones I’ve had used on me, to get people to actually go through your paid courses and ebooks and programs, ideally to the end.

I’m only charging $100 for this training. It’s probably not enough, but I’m doing it because frankly I want to organize this knowledge in my own head.

Doing it live, in front of an audience of people who are genuinely interested and can profit from it, is a good motivator for me.

In other words, money and sales are not main reason why I’m putting this training on.

That said, money and sales can be the main reason why you might want to join me on this training.

Everything in your business — from your ads to your emails to your sales pages (hello testimonials) — becomes much easier if people get value from what you deliver.

And in order for them to have any chance of getting value from what you deliver — beyond just the thrill of spending money on something — they have to consume and digest what you’re selling them.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

How and why I started this newsletter

by

For some reason, many people seem fascinated by the obscure origins of this newsletter.

“How did you get started? What was your initial motive? Is it true that you were once a Pinterest star?”

If none of that interests you, I can’t say I blame you.

But if you are curious, here’s my origin story, in all its Peter Parker awkwardness:

1. In 2015, with my savings dwindling and with the thought of going back to an office job being absolutely repulsive to me, I anointed myself a “direct response copywriter” and started selling myself as such to anybody who had $5 to spend.

2. I soon decided to focus on email copywriting, because my Spidey-sense told me this would be a “thing.”

3. After a couple months and a dozen random clients, a suspicion started to creep into my mind. “Maybe I should learn a little bit about email copywriting if I’m going to be selling it?”

4. So I signed up to Ben Settle’s email list, because frankly there was not all that much free and ongoing information at the time about email besides Ben.

Each of Ben’s emails seemed to follow the same format: a teasing promise, maybe dressed up with some pop-culture reference, and a link to sign up to Ben’s $97/month Email Players print newsletter.

5. For years, I didn’t sign up to Email Players, though I was tempted by Ben’s teasing. At first, I didn’t sign up because why pay $97 a month for a newsletter?

“I never pay for information,” I told myself. Instead of paying, I preferred to go on working for years without getting any improvement in my results.

Later, when that changed, I still didn’t sign up for Email Players because of Ben’s policy of telling people not to sign up unless they are fit to be an Email Player, and his threats that if you ever sign up and quit, you can never come back.

6. Eventually, in 2017, Ben’s teasing and mind games wore me down. I signed up to Email Players. (I also finally read the free issue of Email Players that Ben gives away on his site, and which I had gotten years earlier, when I signed up to his list.)

7. I started using some things Ben teaches in my client work, and I got good results. But I was still struggling personally to make consistent good money as a copywriter because client work was unreliable.

8. Ben started selling a new course which was called something like Client Cash Machine, all about how to get clients. I bought it, rationalizing the $297 price by saying that if I got a bit of extra client work as a result, it would pay for the course.

9. A few weeks later, Ben’s client-getting course arrived. I opened it with trembling fingers. It was a flash drive with the audio version, and a printed-out transcript.

10. An hour or so after that, I had gone through the course. It said, in a nutshell, “Start an email list and write it daily.” Disappointing. I knew that already. It was all over Ben’s emails for free, and I had hoped Ben would tell me something exciting and new.

11. Still, some time later, I followed Ben’s advice and finally started an email list, with the distant future goal of getting clients, and with the immediate goal of fooling around in my own sandbox each day, putting into practice things I was learning from books and courses, and demonstrating my growing skills to anybody who would bear witness.

12. Ta-da! A successful personal brand, authority in the field, and a 6-figure-a-year income, just from writing one daily email, or actually more like writing 3,000 daily emails.

THE END.

I’m telling you this riveting story because I’m putting on a training this Thursday. It’s called 3rd Conversion. It’s about getting your buyers to consume and digest the information you sell.

If you read my story above carefully, it can give you lots of clues about effective strategies to increase consumption and digestion.

If you want me to spell out actual lessons, you can get that on Thursday’s training.

This 3rd Conversion training can be useful to you if you’re after long-term customers and fans… rather than one-off transactions with buyers who hand you a bit of money once and then never benefit from what you sold ’em… never buy from you again… never build up your brand by writing up an email like I’ve just written about Ben Settle.

And in case you’re wondering:

My training on Thursday won’t just be about rehashing Ben Settle’s strategies, and using Ben as a good example of effective consumption and digestion techniques. Because Ben can also serve as a cautionary tale.

Like I’ve written before, I ended up unsubscribing from Ben’s Email Players after a few years — even with Ben’s threats of never being allowed back in. The reason again was consumption and digestion. I felt Ben’s newsletter had simply become a chore to read, so I took my money and my custom elsewhere.

The 3rd Conversion training will happen this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to sign up for 3rd Conversion now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Announcing: 3rd Conversion

by

This coming Thursday, October 24, I will put on a live training, called 3rd Conversion.

The ticket to get inside is $100.

3rd Conversion is intended for forward-thinking online business owners and info marketers… those who have realized that selling to one person, ten times over, is easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable than selling to ten people, one time.

Specifically, 3rd Conversion will show you techniques — ones I’ve used with my own products, and ones I’ve had used on me — to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers… by getting buyers to consume and enjoy the info products they bought.

But why? Why worry? Why worry if people consume and enjoy your info products?

Because if people consume and enjoy what you sell them, they are more likely to benefit from it… and they are more likely to come back for seconds, and thirds.

And the third time you sell a buyer something something — the “3rd Conversion” — you cross a kind of threshold.

The research shows, and I got no reason to doubt it, that at this third conversion, for the first time, the customer finally becomes more likely than not to keep buying from you, over and over, year after year.

On Thursday, I’ll give you specific techniques to get to this magic point yourself, and turn your own one-time buyers into long-term customers, by making your info products more consumable and enjoyable.

You don’t have to decide to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training right now. I’ll keep talking about it until Thursday, when I will close the cart down.

But if you’re the kind of forward-thinking person that I think can benefit from this information… and if you already know that you want this info, because you care about getting more customers for the long term… and if you think $100 is a fair price for the promise I’m making… then here’s where to get your ticket for the show on Thursday:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Why so stubborn?

by

My life for the past two decades has been shaped in many ways by information I’ve come across on one single website.

I’ve made health decisions, career decisions, and even decisions about personal beliefs, all thanks to this one website, or rather, to resources I’ve found via this website.

That website is Google no just kiddding.

That website is Hacker News, a kind of precursor to Reddit, which, unlike Reddit, has managed to keep its quality by refusing to go after quantity.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve found myself not going on Hacker News as much as normal.

So this morning, right after correctly guessing the Wordle of the day (in five guesses, Which worldle informs me is “GREAT”), I purposefully went to see what’s new on Hacker News.

And as often happens, I was rewarded. Because one of the top posts on Hacker News today is a link to an article with the headline:

“The feds are coming for John Deere over the right to repair”

In a nutshell:

x1. Tractor maker John Deere has made its new computerized tractors largely unrepairable by customers. This means the tractor has to go back to the factory for repairs. This is nice for John Deere, but expensive for customers, both in terms of time and money.

x2. As a result, John Deere customers have been complaining… the market for used tractors has been booming as farmers seek an alternative to buying new John Deere tractors… and now, even the federal government is after John Deere, for possibly violating Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, about deceptive or unfair practices in commerce.

And yet, in spite all this, John Deere continues to refuse to make its tractors easily repairable by the buyer.

Which really begs the question, why?

Why be so stubborn, and work against what both the market and the very powerful federal government want you to do?

The only answer that comes to my limited mind is:

Because locking in customers in this way is good for John Deere.

In fact, if you look at the stock price of the company since the early 2010s, when customers first started complaining about John Deere’s unreparaiable tractors, the company’s stock price has been, not on a steady rise, but on what looks to my non-expert eyes like an exponential increase.

I bring this up because last year, I asked folks on my list what continuity or subscription offers they buy – the info product version of what John Deere is doing, locking in customers for more than a single purchase.

I got a bunch of responses to that email last year. But I did nothing with those responses, not until a couple days ago. That’s when I went back to the responses I got, summed them up, looked for patterns and exceptions. Some patterns:

x* Out of the 40 or so continuity or subscription offers my readers reported paying for, the majority were primarily personality-based, rather than primarily promise- or interest-based.

x* Out of those personality-based subscriptions, the majority were primarily paid newsletters of some sort, with the rest being paid communities or memberships built around a guru.

x* The prices for personality-based newsletters seem to depend largely on the format. Digital newsletters were priced lower (around $50-$70/month) while print newsletters were priced higher ($97-$199/month).

And then the exception, which caught my eye:

x* One digital newsletter — in fact, just an email sent once a month — bucked the price trend above by selling for $99 a month. In fact, this subscription is not even buyable in a one-month increment — the shortest subscription you can get is three months, with extra inducements also available for 6-month and 1-year subscriptions.

I found this interesting because this subscription seems to be working. Not only was I clued into it directly from readers who pay for it, but I remember hearing a friend mention subscribing to it since.

So let’s get to the deal:

I’d like to update my database of continuity or subscription offers that my readers susbcribe to.

After all, things may have changed in the past 12 months, since I last collected such data.

And so my offer for you today is, hit reply and tell me which subscription or continuity offers you pay for.

It could be a paid newsletter, community, membership, magazine, book-of-the-month club, whatever.

In return, I’ll reply and tell you which digital newsletter I had in mind above, the one delivered by email that bucks the pricing trend, and still seems to do well.

Plus, I will also tell you what one particular thing I thought was very clever and effective on the sales page for this offer, which I think helps this offer convert, even though it’s just a stupid email, which costs a whopping $99 a month.

Do we got a deal?

My piratin’ days

by

ARRR, I be quite old, much like a giant tortoise. And to prove it, I can tell you I was there when the Internet was first becoming a thing.

Quite naturally, I was also there when a friend in high school first told me you could get music, for free, on the Internet.

For reference, this was back when the only way to listen to the music you wanted, when you wanted, was to hand over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD.

“No!” I told my friend in disbelief when he told me about this piracy stuff.

“Yes!” he said. “Any kind of music you want. You just type the name of the song into AltaVista, and you look for mp3 files.”

So I tried it. I remember that the first song I searched for and pirated was The Beach Boys’ I Get Around. It took about three days to download.

Now here’s the head trip:

A short while later, I actually ended up handing over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD, The Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits, Volume 1.

I did this even though I had already pirated several Beach Boys hits off the Internet… and even though I could probably get the other ones too, with just a bit of searching.

Now let me make it clear:

1. This email is not an invitation to pirate and salve your conscience by saying you will somehow pay for it later, when you have more money. Piracy, romantic though it may sound, is well known to lead to scurvy and hangings, among other unpleasant consequences. It’s a miracle I survived my piratin’ days and lived to tell the tale.

2. This email is also not an invitation to give away your catchy songs for free, in the hope that people will eventually pay for the album. In fact, my point is kind of the opposite of that.

My point is that format is positioning.

I don’t remember exactly what made me pay for the Beach Boys CD.

I probably rationalized it to myself. I could listen to the music on my stereo instead of the crappy computer speakers… there were songs I might not find online, and they took so long to download… I could take the music with me and play it in the car or at a friend’s house.

There was probably a bit of all that. But really, I imagine my decision was mostly irrational.

The album had a colorful, attractive cover. I had the modern equivalent of $30 burning a hole in my pocket. Plus, I had been well trained over the years to buy CDs, and this was in fact a CD for sale. So I bought, and I was even happy about it.

Here’s my takeaway for you:

If you have free content, you can legitimately repackage it and sell it for good money, even to the people who have gotten much of that stuff for free in another format.

And if you’re selling stuff but not making as much money as you like, then the same lesson applies. Change the format, and you can double, triple, decuple, or even vinguple the prices you charge. People will buy, and even be happy about it.

Because format is positioning.

And if you want my help putting this lesson into practice, well, then read on. Today is the last day I will be making the offer below, because tomorrow we weigh anchor and set sail:

===

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

The biggest secret to building a big audience

by

I’ll tell you about the biggest secret in a second. But I feel I should sneak up on it a little, so it has more impact.

So let me ask you:

Have you ever heard of Leroy Smith? The former pro basketball player, with the story in his past?

Smith attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from 1981 to 1985, and he played for the UNC team.

After that, Smith turned pro and played for various prestigious basketball teams, including Hemel & Watford Royals, the Westchester Golden Apples, and Kumagai Gumi Bruins.

Yes, those are all real basketball teams. I did not make them up.

In many instances, Smith led these no-name, fourth-tier teams that nobody cares about in various important categories, including scoring, rebounds, and blocked shots.

No? None of this sounds familiar? You haven’t heard of Smith or his accomplishments?

Honestly I’m not surprised.

Really the only reason anybody today has heard of Smith, and that includes me, is that back in 1978, Smith got picked for his high school varsity team over his childhood friend Michael Jordan.

Smith and Jordan were both 15 at the time. But Smith already stood at 6’7, or 201 cm, while Jordan was only 5’10, or 180cm.

When Michael Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Smith was there in the audience. Jordan said of Smith, “He’s not any bigger, his game is about the same.”

Meanwhile, Jordan became Jordan. It helped that he had a rhinoceros-sized chip on his shoulder.

“It all started when Coach Herring cut me,” Jordan said. “It was embarrassing, not making that team.”

Jordan spent his sophomore year working hard on basketball. He became more skilled and confident. More importantly, he developed the habits of obsessive self-improvement and discipline and training.

These habits, combined with a growth spurt that saw him add another 8 inches in height, landed Jordan not just on the high school varsity team… not just on the college basketball team… not just in the pros… but made him into the greatest basketball player of all time.

“Business,” I hear you saying, “talk business, Bejako! Michael Jordan is all well and good, but don’t you realize my time is money…”

Fine. Let me hurry my analogy along. I’d like to present to you an idea I heard from marketer Travis Sago:

“The biggest secret to building a big audience is knowing how to monetize a small one.”

Travis’s point is that if every visitor you could drive to your sales page was worth a thousand bucks to you… would you really have a traffic problem?

Would you have any trouble buying traffic?

Would it be hard to get other people as affiliates for your offer?

Would you need to get motivated to write and send another email, knowing that 10 or 12 people – “only 10 or 12 people!” — will click through to your sales page?

I doubt it.

Maybe a thousand bucks per visitor to your sales page sounds ambitious or even unrealistic.

Fine. But if you’re constantly looking for new traffic, or if you think that more traffic will solve all your problems, then I bet you have some room to develop the habit of obsessive list monetization.

Figure out how to monetize your current list better… and not only will it become way easier to kick off that audience growth spurt… but when the growth spurt happens, you’ll have a shot at a Michael Jordan-like career, instead of a Leroy Smith-like career.

And on that note, I’d like to remind you of my ongoing hand-raiser campaign. Here are the details on that, from my email yesterday:

===

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

If you’ve skimmed the cream off your list via daily emails…

by

Earlier this year, in March to be specific, I wrote an email about turning skim milk into butter. That email was based on a question from a reader, who wrote:

===

I have a question about your Simple Money Email course.

I’ve been writing an email to my list six days a week (or occasionally five) for the past month and a half or so, since about the beginning of February. At first, sales came in, but since about the beginning of March, they’ve declined by a lot, by over 50%. Will your course help me to figure out what’s going wrong so that I can set things to rights?

===

The answer in short is “probably no.”

If you’ve never emailed your list regularly, then what you have yourself is a pail of rich whole milk, with the cream at the top. You simply go in there, use a ladle to skim the cream off the top, and with a bit of additional processing, you get yourself some delicious Kerrygold.

But once you’ve pretty much skimmed all the cream off top, the butter creation becomes harder.

It’s still possible to occasionally turn skim milk into butter — I had one guy on my list for 775 days, reading 775 emails, before he decided to buy something from me.

But it’s never as easy as right at the start.

And assuming you’ve been doing a decent job of cream collection, no kind of magical spoon, skimmer, or ladle will really make that much of a difference after a while.

So what do you do?

You got a couple options.

One, you can add new whole milk to your pail — ie. add new people to your list.

Two, you make other use of the skim milk that you have. There’s no law saying you can only sell your list just one thing, in just one way. Or stretching the analogy, there’s no law saying you can only ever make butter from your pail of milk, as opposed to also making cheddar, ice cream, and quark.

Back in March, when I first wrote about this, I promised I would one day talk more about cheddar creation, specifically, about churning up new offers that don’t involve creating whole new products.

Well, that day has come.

As I wrote yesterday, I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

Do you have a back catalogue of info products?

by

Do you have a back catalogue of previous products — courses, ebooks, recorded workshops — that sold well once upon a time?

If you do, I have an offer you might like.

I teased this offer at the bottom of my email yesterday. Based on the responses I’ve gotten so far, I’m making this appeal more broadly and loudly.

The gist:

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners reissue some hits from their back catalogue. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

GOLD

by

“We thought it was finished. I really believed that. Oh, they might play the odd song, with a reference to the seventies, perhaps, but that’s it.”

Those are the words of Björn Ulvaeus, one of the members of the Swedish pop foursome ABBA.

Maybe you’ve heard of ABBA? They were kind of a thing fifty years ago, back in the 1970s. But ABBA broke up in ’82. By the end of the 1980s, they had largely fallen into oblivion.

That’s how things go. Fashions change, audiences move on, content is disposable.

It would have ended up the same with ABBA. Except…

A team of record company execs at PolyGram saw some possibility there.

They worked to issue a compilation of ABBA hits, collected and organized specifically for the relatively new CD format, along with a loving set of new liner notes, and extensively promoted by the company.

The result, which came out in 1992, was ABBA: GOLD.

And GOLD is right:

The album has gone on to sell 32 million copies worldwide. It’s become not only ABBA’s best-selling album, but among the 25 top-bestselling albums of all time.

Every couple of years, the record company — first PolyGram, then Universal — finds an excuse to reissue the album, and make a few more million sales.

First there was a “Remastered Reissue” in 1999, to mark the 25th anniversary of ABBA’s EuroVision win…

In 2002, there was a 10th anniversary reissue…

In 2008, a new remastered version came out along with the release of Mamma Mia (the movie)…

In 2014, there was an edition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Eurovision win…

And then, in 2022, there was still another reissue, to mark the 30-year anniversary of the initial release of the album.

There were regional versions, too — Spain, Australia UK… plus VHS and DVD versions… all totaling in the millions upon millions of sales.

But it’s not just money.

GOLD is most probably the only reason that anybody knows ABBA today… why hits like Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia and Waterloo are still super popular, and can be heard in cafes, dance clubs, karaoke bars, and wedding receptions… why entire new generations know and love ABBA songs (or know and hate, but the “know” is the important part).

And if you don’t believe me:

Try to remember some hits by The Sweet or Nazareth or Gentle Giant. All were big acts around the same time as ABBA. But they weren’t lucky enough to get their own GOLD compilation album — or at least it wasn’t properly promoted — and that’s why nobody today has heard of them.

GOLD, by the way, was the start of a giant sea change in the music business.

Lucian Grange, one of the record execs behind ABBA: GOLD, and now the CEO of Universal Music Group, has bought the back catalogues of Elton John, the Beatles, The Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, on and on.

Was a time when, if music wasn’t new, who wanted to listen to it? At best, it was relegated to the “Oldies” radio station.

Today, that’s all changed. Back catalogues account for 70% of the entire music industry. We’re all listening to music recorded 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, whether we want to or not.

Maybe there’s a lesson there? Maybe?

Maybe you can take your proven hits from years or decades past… collect and organize them… add in some new liner notes… and reissue them to great success? And then, keep reissuing… remastering… and taking any and every occasion to bring in a few more million in sales?

So lemme ask you:

Do you have a back catalogue of previous products — courses, ebooks, recorded workshops — that sold well once upon a time?

If you do, hit reply. I have an offer for you that you might like.

Readers demand to know: Did Vivian buy?

by

This morning, I got an email from a loyal reader, Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who wrote:

===

I, and maybe other readers, have only one question left:

Has Vivian, after all these emails, bought MVE? Your audience deserves to know. Don’t leave us high and dry, the suspense is killing us.

===

If you have not been reading my emails over the past couple days, here’s a quick recap:

1. Last week, I sent out a survey. One respondent, named Vivian, replied that she found it very difficult to find info that could help her with “coming up with interesting ideas and presenting it in a concise and compelling way,” in order to create more effective email campaigns.

2. “Where am I falling short?” I asked myself. After all, I have courses that promise exactly that outcome. So I decided to put on a big promo event, in honor of Vivian, to sell my Most Valuable Email program in a better way than I’ve been doing so far.

3. After some furious late-night thinking, I realized a big promo event won’t work for me (it would burn my previous buyers). So I scaled it back to a smaller promo event, which I called the Shagri-La MVE offer.

This brings us to today. So the big question:

Did Vivian buy this offer for which she was responsible?

Did she invest to learn the MVE trick and to place herself in an exclusive group that has access to this rare and precious knowledge?

Or did she coolly and quietly ignore this offer, which was created in her honor?

The answer is…

[Quiet please…]

[Drum roll…]

[Spotlight on the center of the stage…]

[I open the envelope to reveal:]

A big, fat NO.

No, Vivian did not take me up on my Shangri-La MVE offer.

In fact, from what I can see, though open tracking is infamously unreliable, Vivian hasn’t even opened any of my emails around this promo that she kicked off.

What’s the cause of it?

Who knows.

Maybe I’m continuing to fall short. Or, like I heard from another loyal reader, Fotis Chatz, who once styled himself as the “world’s most handsome email marketer,” maybe it had nothing to do with my marketing or offer.

Maybe Vivian just doesn’t identify with me personally… or maybe she only ever buys from FB posts or webinars, and not emails and sales letters.

Again, who knows. I’ll have to live with this cruel uncertainty.

On the other hand, the good news is is that 22 other people did take me up on the Shangri-La MVE offer.

That means I managed to get 22 more people to find out the Most Valuable Email trick.

If put into practice regularly, this trick cannot fail to turn these folks into better marketers, and in time get them lots of sales, a more engaged list, and a good-old time writing daily emails.

That’s honestly what I hope for whenever I manage to put a copy of MVE into a new pair of virtual hands.

As for me, this promo means I got 22 people to be a little closer to me.

Of the 22 who took me up on this offer, the majority were previous buyers, a group that I protect and cherish.

Also, a good number who had never bought anything from me before took me up on this offer.

Every time I make a sale to somebody new, I make it drastically more likely they will buy something from me a second or third time. Like I wrote a couple days ago, my 18-month average customer value is something like $360 and climbing, and that’s not accounting for any affiliate sales I have made.

I expect the same will happen here.

Finally, since 5 people who bought this offer paid in full, that means this little promo has been worth somewhere between $3,266 (what I have in my PayPal and Stripe as of today) and $6,534 (what I will have once all the payments from the payment plan come in).

No, that’s not P. Diddy money. But I’m happy with it, considering MVE is a 2-year old course, promoted already hundreds of times.

Beyond that, I think $3,266-$6,534 is a respectable return for 3 emails over 2 days, and for creating a couple of bonuses, which took me about two hours in total.

I’ll leave you to draw your own marketing conclusions from this post-mortem of my Shangri-La event.

Or maybe, rather than figuring out the marketing takeaways from my little campaign, you can simply use it as inspiration for putting into practice all the good ideas you already have at your disposal, and doing the work that you know you want to get done.

You don’t have to be perfect, and you can still do quite well.

By the way, if you’re not as productive as you like… if you’re not putting all those good ideas available to you into practice… if you’re struggling with perfectionism… or if you’re simply not doing what needs to be done… I have a resource that might help.

I mentioned this resource earlier this year, in an email back in June.

I wrote at the time that the ideas inside this resource have been working for me, where things like meditation, and NLP, and willing myself to “create my own reality,” had failed.

It’s now four months later, and the ideas inside this little resource continue to work for me.

If you’d like to find out what this resource is, what those ideas are, and see if they can work for you too:

https://bejakovic.com/stillworking