Direct Marketing

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/

Teach a man to fish, and he will pay you for framed photos of the lunkers you have caught

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Over the past days and months, I keep mentioning an old talk given by IM guru Jeff Walker. At one point in the talk, Jeff says something that sounds perverse:

“Teach a man to fish… and he will ask you for a fish sandwich.”

This only sounds perverse until you realize Jeff is speaking from experience.

Specifically, he’s talking about all the business owners who bought his Product Launch Formula, realized it would take too much work to implement, but also realized the value it would bring to their businesses. These many business owners came back to Jeff and said, “Can’t you just do this for me, Jeff? I’ll pay you.”

Also over the past days and months, I’ve seen a lot of discussion in my inbox about the problem of moving the free line. Giving away your best stuff for free, instead of charging for it.

And I can imagine there really is a problem. That is, if you just sit there, wishin’ and hopin’ for people to pay you for more of what you just gave them for free.

After all, who wants to pay for the same thing that they just got for free?

On the other hand, like Jeff says, people might be ready to pay for something very much like what you just gave them, only stuck in between two slices of white bread.

That’s what Jeff did, and he did it the smart way.

First, he sold his audience a fishing guide, called The Product Launch Formula. And then he sold it to them again, repositioned as a fish-sandwich-making franchise, which he called Product Launch Manager.

I also did it. But I did it in an unsmart way. I only sold my thing once, instead of three times.

Specifically, I showed people how to fish, in different ponds, rivers, and seas, and I did this for free.

Then I made a video presentation about the best fishing strategy I have personally found. I gave that away for free as well.

Then I made a framed collection of the most impressive lunkers I’ve personally caught using that strategy, and I put that up for sale.

In case my fish metaphor is running away with me, let me bring this back into the marketing plane:

I’m talking about my Most Valuable Email presentation, which I gave last Wednesday. That free presentation was based on a bunch of emails I have sent to my list over the past few years.

At the end of that presentation, I sold a swipe file of some of my best emails, which I had written using my Most Valuable Email strategy.

A surprising number of people took me up on this offer.

That’s because I turned those emails into something new and (additionally) valuable, by doing the work of collecting all those emails… by bundling them together… and by adding in relevant explanations, some red and yellow highlighting to point out the MVE strategy in action, as well as any fun or interesting context.

So there you go:

Beware moving the free line.

Or don’t. And simply make an attractive new offer.

Speaking of which:

If you registered to watch my Most Valuable Email presentation, then I sent you a recording. You have until end of day today, Pacific time, to watch it and take me up on the offer at the end.

I will be taking both down both the presentation and the offer at 12 midnight PST tonight.

​​Based on the positive responses I’ve gotten to the presentation, and the surprising number of people who took me up on the Most Valuable Email Swipes offer, I’ve decided to bundle this up as an attractive new offer and sell it down the line.

And if you didn’t register for the MVE presentation, then you will have to wait for that attractive new rerelease. Nobody gets into this particular aquarium after the doors close.

And of course, I still have to end this email today with an offer.

If you want to catch more fish, I mean, make more sales, in the ponds and streams of your email list, then I might be able to help. You can start the process by filling out the form below. Just don’t ask me for a fish sandwich. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Social justice for blockheads, the hardhearted, and the congenitally lazy

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This morning I spent a few minutes performing a routine medical procedure to get my blood pressure up. In other words, I read an article that popped up on a news aggregator, from some site I had never heard of, called Stakedy. The headline of the article ran:

“Social justice for the bald man”

The article was a quick series of arguments backed with proof. Baldness causes social stigma and pain for bald men, who spend billions of dollars trying to repair their wounded self-images. Of the top 100 most beautiful actors in the world, exactly zero are bald. Baldness is a genetically caused medical condition. For all these reasons, discrimination against the bald should not be allowed in a progressive society.

The article concluded with the following:

“Do we need laws to fine people for such discrimination? Do we need quotas for bald men on movie sets? Do we need to demonize women who won’t date a bald man for fear that she will have a bald child? What we need are some bald social justice warriors.”

As I finished the article, I both grinned and I frowned.

I grinned because I looked forward to the furious comments, both pro and con, that were sure to follow in the comments section of that news aggregator site.

I frowned because in spite of myself, I took a side. I started preparing my own serious and impassioned arguments and getting ready to enter the fight, at least in my head.

Sure enough, in the comments, there was plenty of dismantling, dismay, disappointment, and disgust.

“What’s next? Social justice for the short and for the shortsighted?” “You can’t save everyone…” “I’ve been bald since 1989 and I think…”

And then there was the top comment. It quietly said:

“Stakedy is auto-generated by AI. (It’s hard to figure out how, it’s some crazy blockchainy thing.) The fact that people don’t recognize that and try to argue the merit of the article here makes me scared.”

So what to say?

I could get back on my favorite hobby horse, and say that “good enough” AI is coming, or is in fact here.

Some people insist that copywriters and marketers will be spared if they are smart enough, if they are empathetic enough, or if they are simply willing to work hard enough. Who knows, maybe these people will be proved right.

​​Or maybe they will be proved wrong. Maybe we will all soon be campaigning for social justice for our particular stigmatized and endangered groups…

But you know, that’s just my hobby horse. And you can’t ride too far on one of those.

So instead, let me saddle up a big and serious Clydesdale for you:

Humans have these predictable, robot-like emotional buttons that can be pressed.

One button for attention.. another for affinity… a third for acquisitiveness.

These buttons are so predictable and so easy to press that now even a machine can do it.

So shouldn’t you be doing more of this pressing, in your own marketing and copy, in some smart and empathetic way?

I’ll leave that question hanging in the air.

And I’ll just say that, if you want my help performing this routine medical procedure on your audience, now, while there’s still time, before we’re both out of a job, you can contact me here:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Nigerians get in for free, others like me have to pay $1,200

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Today I was planning to write an email about marketer Travis Sago, and how he says that, if you have the right offer and you put it in front of the right people, you can sell for 4-figures+ just by sending a description of the offer in an ugly Word document.

And no, this is not a pitch for Ian Stanley’s hot new “Word Doc Millions” course.

Instead, the key is that bit about having the right offer (pretty important)… and the right people (hugely important).

So that was the email I wanted to write today. I thought I could illustrate it by talking about the presentation I gave last night, and the little offer I made and successfully sold at the end, without even an ugly Word doc.

But then this morning, something happened and foiled my plans completely.

I woke up. Opened up my email. And within about 6 minutes, I had PayPaled $1,200 into the unknown, for an offer I had never heard of before, and which honestly worried me a little.

There wasn’t an ugly Word doc to sell this offer either.

Instead, there was an ugly sales page, though there wasn’t really any selling done on it, not even a headline. Just a bunch of photos of random people… reverse type… and what seems to be an intentionally slapdash description of what you might get.

What’s worse, a part of the offer is that, since “Nigeria is the next hot bed of talent” for the direct response industry, Nigerians get this offer for free while everyone else has to pay.

“Is this for real?” I asked myself. “Or is this some kind of prank?” It actually made me a little anxious about the money I was sending out.

And yet I did it. It seems to be okay. I got a confirmation email, from David Deutsch no less.

So let me get back to Travis Sago and tell you about this offer:

It’s just a bunch of Zoom calls, put on by copywriter Aaron Winter.

Never heard of Aaron?

Neither had I, until a few years ago, when I joined Dan Ferrari’s coaching group.

Dan, as you might know, was the star copywriter at The Motley Fool. Then he left and started writing a bunch of controls for other financial clients, including Agora Financial.

I wrote about Dan in Commandment IV of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters book. That commandment was based on an insight Dan extracted from the first sales letter he wrote in the health space (as far as I know), which tripled response over the control and sold out the entire supply of Green Valley’s telomere’s supplement.

So Dan is really what you might consider an A-list copywriter.

And Aaron Winter was Dan’s copy chief at The Motley Fool… and Dan’s partner (and still copy chief) at Dig.In, the marketing agency they started after they left to work for themselves.

Dan’s coaching group was the moment in my copywriting career where I went from scraping by to making good money as a copywriter. I learned a lot and continue to learn a lot from Dan. And Dan learned a lot and continues to learn a lot from Aaron.

But Aaron never had a blog, newsletter, or book. He never offered any kind of public training.

Until now.

Are you getting an idea of how this works?

The right offer… in front of the right people… and 6 minutes later, a $1,200 sale.

Well, unless you’re Nigerian. Then you get in for free.

At this point, you might expect me to link to the ugly sales page for this Aaron Winter offer. But if you really are the right prospect for this, you will have to jump through a few hoops. As a first step, I’d suggest getting on the email lists of some of the Dig.In people, such as Dan Ferrari or Ning Li.

As for me, I have to put an offer in front of you to wrap up this email.

No ugly Word doc here either. But there is an ugly Google Forms page, my consulting intake form.

If you want my advice and guidance in putting together the right offer and getting it in front of the right people, you can get started below.

Albanians get in for free. Everyone else has to pay. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

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

“Research is the enemy of creativity”

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Yesterday, I mentioned an embarrassingly titled book I bought, “Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)”

The book is written by a brand marketing guy, George Lois. On the face of it, it’s all about pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, following your bliss, and other cliches that advertisers who work for prizes, rather than for sales, resort to.

Take for example Lois’s advice no. 50, which says:

“Research is the enemy of creativity, unless it’s your own ‘creative’ research (heh-heh)”

Nonsense, right?

Like direct response giant Gene Schwartz said, copy is assembled, not written. And it is assembled out of diligent, detailed research, deeper and more penetrating than the other guy is willing to do. No research, no sex, at least when it comes to copy that gets real results.

But really what Lois is talking about is the kind of research that’s common in brand advertising:

Focus groups.

Ask people who have no skin in the game, who aren’t being faced with decision whether or not to buy your product, what they think of your ad. “Is it good? Is it bad? Do you like it?”

It’s completely reasonable that research like this won’t give you useful feedback.

Not unless, as Lois says, you get creative.

He tells the story of Aunt Jemima pancake mix.

The makers of Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Quaker Oats, never wanted to create a matching Aunt Jemima syrup, in spite of Lois’s insisting that it would make tremendous $$$ business sense.

So Lois got creative.

He sent out a survey to a bunch of pancake mix consumers, asking a series of questions.

One of the questions was which syrup these people used. There were 10 brands to choose from, among them Aunt Jemima syrup.

And get this:

89 out of 100 pancake eaters selected Aunt Jemima syrup as their preferred choice, even though it was entirely imaginary at that point, just something in Lois’s head.

Result:

The head honchos at Quaker Oats were finally convinced, and put out the syrup. Within a year, just as the survey predicted, Aunt Jemima went on to become the number one brand in the billion-dollar-plus syrup business.

Is this scientific advertising?

Hardly.

Is it a useful idea which could potentially be worth a lot of money to you?

Well, consider this:

Direct marketer Justin Goff recently sent out an email exactly about this topic.

Justin said that he and his pardner Stefan Georgi often poll their audience about what offers to create next.

But they don’t go the focus group route.

“What should our next offer be? Do you like the sound of ‘Copy Accelerator By The Beach’? Would you buy ‘8.F.F.G.M.S.’ if that stood for ‘8-Figure Facebook Group Marketing Secrets’?”

No, none of that.

Instead, Justin and Stefan make a list of a few specific offer ideas. They ask people which one they want best.

This bit of research, Justin says, matches up very well to actual results of how well an offer sells when they do create it.

In this way, a simple creative poll can be worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to Justin and Stefan.

So there you go. An idea that you can use, starting today.

Or an idea that I can use, starting right now.

Because there are a few live presentations or trainings that I’ve been thinking of creating. They might be paid, or they might be free. They might be a single lesson, or multiple, depending on the topic.

Based on this limited info, and the short descriptions below, which one would you like the best?

If you would like to vote, sign up to my email list. And when you get my welcome email, tell me your preference among the four choices below. If you vote honestly, you will have the best chance of seeing a training about this topic from me in the near future:

1. A presentation about horror advertorials, the front-end funnel that I’ve used to help clients sell millions of dollars of dog seat belts, door stops, and detergent-replacement balls

2. A presentation about the most valuable email I regularly send to my daily email subscribers — the one type of email I would resort to if I had to stick to only one type for all of time

3. A presentation about creating a feeling of insight in your prospects, as a way of overcoming resistance and driving people to spontaneously want your offer, without you doing any overt selling

4. A presentation about natural authority — the rare, most penetrating, and longest-lasting form of authority, which is not built on either expertise or overt status or association

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.

Daily email battleship

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One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.

For context:

During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.

Gary was an A-list copywriter.

Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)

In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…

Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.

But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?

Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.

Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.

But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.

For example:

One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.

The Big Black Book​​ was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.

And yet, get this:

Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.

Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.

So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?

That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.

Get it?

​​Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.

Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.

Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.

This brings me to my offer to you for today:

It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.

This is how you play:

Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.

I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.

And then:

1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”

2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.

3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.

And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.

This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.

In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.