Direct Marketing

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.

What’s working on Substack right now

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I’m currently subscribed to 27 Substack newsletters. Not all of those mail me anything regularly. But the ones that do have largely become my source of news, randomly interesting articles, and pop culture contact.

Since I write an email newsletter myself, every day, which you are reading right now, I’m very curious about the Substack phenomenon.

Could this be an opportunity for me? Should I start a persuasion-themed Substack newsletter?

Should I reposition myself as a Substack marketing expert?

Should I simply start publishing serialized fantasy literotica, inspired by Greek and Roman history, under some flowery pseudonym, and host it on Substack?

More on all those questions in a future email.

For today, I just want to share a bit of what’s working on Substack right now.

I recently signed up to Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter. That’s where Simon publishes his analysis of the media and publishing industry, including digital formats like Substack.

Owens’s most recent article says that across the media landscape, companies are struggling to corral new paid subscribers.

It’s not just Netflix, which I wrote about a few days ago. Other traditional and online publishers, from The Atlantic to Quartz, have either reached the limits to the growth of paid subscribers, or are actually seeing their paid subscriber numbers shrinking.

But as Owens says, “the longer you spend in publishing, the more you realize everything is cyclical.”

And so it seems the trend today in various publishing businesses is to loosen up the content behind paywalls… rely less on paid subscribers… and rely more on…

Ads.

Guess who’s back? Ads are back.

You’ve probably seen ads if you are signed up to any big-name email newsletter like The Morning Brew. The Morning Brew was bought a couple of years ago, for $75 million, on the strength of its advertising reach alone.

The Morning Brew has millions of subscribers. But even smaller newsletters, like Josh Spector’s For The Interested, which I wrote about recently, is making a healthy $48k per year, just by showing ads to a fairly small audience of 18k subscribers.

And what about Substack?

​​Well, Owens’s newsletter is hosted on Substack. And since the guy analyzes what’s working in media right now, you might conclude his own Substack might be a clue to what to do.

Owens does have a subscription option, but it’s only to be able to ask him questions. There is no content that is hidden behind the subscription. ​​

On the other hand, you can buy a 200-word ad in his weekly newsletter for $400.

Owens’s newsletter has fewer than 5k subscribers. Is $400 a lot of money just to reach some fraction of 5k people?

Apparently not, because the ad slot was filled in each of Owens’s recent issues. And perhaps it genuinely pays for the advertisers — Owens says that of his 5k subscribers, many are executives at big name media outlets or tech companies.

So what’s the point of all this?

No point. I’m just trying to give you a different perspective on how you can make money, even if you’re a hardcore direct response business, with a classic-themed daily email like this one.

The world is always changing. Exciting opportunities are popping up all the time. And the only thing that’s constant is the demand for ancient-Greece-themed fantasy literotica.

In other news:

I am not opening up my own daily emails to advertising, at least not yet. But if you’d like to read more articles like this one, and maybe see how I make money from my daily email newsletter, without ads and without a subscription, then you can sign up here.

How to get all of Ben Settle’s best stuff for free

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A lot of value in today’s email. Let me set it up with a response I got to my email yesterday:

Not gonna lie, ever since you did that presentation about Daniel Throssel’s emails I’ve noticed you’ve been writing in a similar style.
But more subtle which is your approach.

This email had no value at all. But who cares? I was still reading all the way to the end. and I actually really liked it.

Hope the furnishing all goes well in Barcelona!

Let me tell you a personal, and very valuable story:

Many, many years ago, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s daily emails for the first time.

And right off, I was annoyed. Ben would send out emails claiming to be filled with “value,” which were just pitches for his Email Players newsletter, or testimonials which he slapped in and claimed were valuable in themselves.

What a crook.

Eventually though, all that shameless self-promotion wore me down. I got curious.

So I subscribed to Email Players see what Ben’s real secrets were.

I got his Email Players Skhema, the how-to workbook that comes with the subscription. I read through that.

I also finally remembered I had a free copy of the first issue of Email Players, which Ben gives away on his site. I read through that also.

And then I read the first month’s issue, which revealed the “secret” Ben had been teasing for weeks.

And you know what?

The damnedest thing happened.

It turned out Ben wasn’t lying all along.

His emails were packed with value. More often than not, the most valuable stuff in the paid newsletter was right there, in his emails, sometimes explicitly stated.

I didn’t see that before just because Ben’s emails are structured as infotainment. The value wasn’t bolded, highlighted, and explained as it would be in a textbook. It took what Ben likes to say “reading between the lines” or at least a slightly more careful reading than I was giving his daily emails, or to any emails for that matter.

Was there stuff in the paid Email Players print newsletter that wasn’t in Ben’s daily emails?

Sure. And by not paying for Ben’s newsletter, you will miss out on that.

At the same time, by a close reading of his emails, you will get the best stuff. You will also find stuff Ben doesn’t reveal in his newsletter, or probably even in his books, stuff that he wants to keep for himself.

So that’s my response to the claim above that my email yesterday had no value at all. And if you don’t see how that’s a response, well…

In any case, here’s another thing I learned from Ben Settle. It’s to end your emails with “Okay, on to business.”

If you want to get my best stuff for free, both stuff I’ve learned from Ben Settle, and from my own experience, working with 8-figure direct response businesses, and managing large and very profitable email lists myself, then you can sign up to my very valuable daily emails here.

“Awful Awful Waste of Money”

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Some time ago, I got tempted into buying Dan Kennedy’s book, “The Phenomenon: Achieve More In the Next 12 Months than the previous 12 Years.”

Does that make me possibly the stupidest person on the planet?

Probably. After all, check out one review on Amazon, which I read before I decided to get the book:

Awful Awful Waste of Money

I seriously think this is the biggest waste of money and quite possibly the biggest waste of time I have ever spent. This is nothing but a pitch for Dan Kennedy and everyone of his student’s products. There isn’t a single how to trigger the Phenomenon. This is an even worse type of push that Tony Robbins does where he at least gives a little info before trying to sell you on spending 10K for a seminar. Do not pay for this.

And yet… I did pay and I got myself a used copy. For one thing, because I love DK’s stuff. For another, because the promise just sounded so appealing I couldn’t resist.

Result:

There is nothing new in The Phenomenon. In fact, the book is mostly not written by Dan, but by a bunch of his coaching students hyping themselves up. And like the review above says, there’s no how to.

Well, there is a checklist of “rules” right at the start. I jumped on it yesterday, my greedy opportunity seeker eyes shining in the dark. Rule #1 said:

“There will always be an offer or offer(s).”

My head sank to my chest. “That’s the one thing I didn’t want to hear,” I said to Dan, who couldn’t hear me.

This rule is certainly something I have known for years. It’s one of the pillars of Ben Settle’s email system, which Ben inherited from Matt Furey and ultimately Dan himself.

Whenever I’ve worked with clients on their email marketing, I’ve always insisted we put an offer at the end of each email.

For one thing, you’re never going to make money without an offer.

For another, engaged readers actually like buying, or at least having the choice to buy.

And yet, I don’t consistently have an offer in my own emails.

Sure, I promote trainings like my Copy Riddles on occasion, and I will do so again in the future. (The next run of Copy Riddles will be in June.)

But I have no default offer I can always go to, even when I’m not in the middle of doing a launch of relaunch of a product.

So it turns out Dan’s Phenomenon book is hardly a waste of money or of time, even though it’s mostly slapped-together self-promotion.

And yet,​​​ I remain possibly the stupidest person on the planet.

After all, if I had a client like myself, I would have either forced him to include some kind of offer each day in his emails, or I would have fired him long ago.

So take it from Dan to me to you:

If you are doing email marketing, or really any kind of marketing, make people an offer. With each of your messages. It might turn you into a phenomenon.

But what about me?

Still no offer.

I have to have something. So I decided to offer…

C​onsulting.

Now, I fully expect absolutely nobody to take me up on this offer, at least today.

That’s because I’ve gotten pretty good at coming up with offers over the past couple of years, working both with clients and on my own projects.

And “consulting” is an awful offer. It’s vague — what exactly does it mean? There’s no sexy name. And who would possibly want it?

Like Agora founder Bill Bonner said, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, wet pajamas stuck to his back, face to face with the awful truth — “We’re out of newsletters.”

Well, likewise, nobody wakes up at 3am thinking, “I gotta have some more consulting.”

I’ll fix some of those problems in the coming days and emails.

I’ll sharpen up the offer. I’ll tell you what exactly I can consult you about, and why it would make good sense for you to pay me to do so.

I’ll tell you some case studies of clients who have hired me for consulting, and what they got out of it (and what they didn’t).

Maybe will even come up with a sexier name than “consulting.”

But all that in future emails.

For now, if you do want my guidance or advice on marketing and copywriting problems, and you want it before others get to me, then fill out the form at the link below, and you will hear from me soon:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Announcing my hot new course

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Today I would like announce my spectacular new course, Barcelona Ballers.

Barcelona Ballers is ​​all about how to find a beautiful, lavish, and yet affordable long-term rental in Barcelona in just 14 days or less. Here’s just a tiny bit of what Barcelona Ballers will show you:

* The 3-second “incognito” trick to gets real estate agents tripping over each other to talk to you. Barcelona realtors are infamous for being unresponsive. But with this push-button tweak, you can triple the number of agents who respond to your inquiries.

* How to use a threatening “I know where you live” message to whip real estate agents into shape if they are slacking off. Not for the faint of heart. Only use this for an apartment you really, 100%, do-or-die want to see.

* The simple 12-word-sentence to get apartment owners desperate to rent their place to you. Why humiliate yourself? Turn the tables and make owners sell themselves to YOU.

But wait, there’s more.

Barcelona Ballers is proven to work. After all, it worked for me, just last week. But to make sure it works for you also, Barcelona Ballers also comes with a spectacular 100% satisfaction guarantee:

If you are not lounging in your dream Barcelona apartment within the next 14 days, I will allow you to stay in my spare bedroom, for free, for as long as you choose to continue your apartment search.

And if you happen to be a direct response marketer or copywriter, I will sit next to you, every day, coffee in hand, and critique your email copy, so you make more sales or book more client work.

In this way, I will help you increase your income and expand the number of apartments in Barcelona you can afford to rent. I will keep this up as long as it takes, until you can find a balling place and start living that Barcelona Baller lifestyle.

But before you start whipping out your credit card, breathe in deeply, and then exhale. And now listen to what I have to tell you.

A few days ago, I read a valuable post by Josh Spector. As you might know, Josh is an intriguing online figure.

For the past six years, he has been writing an email newsletter, For The Interested, with inspiration and advice for “creative entrepreneurs.”

FTI now has over 18,000 subscribers. In it, Josh shares only “value” — no infotainment, no stories, no personality. Only hardcore how-to.

And yet Josh does very well.

The only income numbers I could find for Josh is that he made $48k in the last year just from tiny classifieds at the end of his newsletter.

But based on a few interviews Josh has given, I suspect this is no more than 5%-10% of the income generated by his newsletter and related offers. In other words, multiply $48k by 10 or 20, and you might get an idea of Josh’s true income numbers.

But back to Josh’s post. It shared 8 questions. Josh says asking himself these 8 questions every month is what made his success possible.

Sounds too simple? Let me give you an example, and then you can make up your own mind. Josh’s question #6 is:

“What have you learned to do well in the past year?”

If you look around much of the marketing world, you will see the value of asking yourself this question.

For example, right now, a half dozen big-name email marketers are all trying to outdo each other to sell Ian Stanley’s new course on Google Doc sales letters.

Ian had success over the past year or two, launching his own offers using a sales letter in a Google Doc.

To start, it was probably a hack or an improvisation. In time, Ian realized he had a neat little system that works pretty well.

So he packaged up his experiences and insights with Google Docs sales letters… put a bow and a card on it… and got a bunch of other people to sell it for him.

I’d like to say that you too can do the same.

But the fact is, there’s no point in me saying it.

If I did, the vast majority of people would start listing reasons why this simple idea wouldn’t work for them. Oh I’m just starting out… oh I don’t have an audience… oh I haven’t learned to do anything cool or unique yet.

On the other hand, the right people don’t need to have me say it at all. Those few people are fired up right now, just from the realization that yes, there must be something, however small and niche, which they have learned to do well in the past year, and which they could package up and sell to others.

If by chance you fall into this second group, you will get even more fired up from the other 7 questions that helped Josh achieve his success. For the full list, check out Josh’s valuable post below:

https://joshspector.com/creative-entrepreneur-questions/

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it a couple years ago. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and pour the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Make money opening emails from your favorite marketing influencers!

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A couple days ago, I got an email about an event called “How To Make Money Sharing Videos”.

Just to be very very clear: I am not promoting this event, and I am not in any way encouraging you to join it.

But I have to admit it did get me intrigued.

How exactly do you make money by sharing videos?

Maybe you can guess. If not, I’ll tell you the answer in just a sec. But first, let me tell you a curious little story this reminded me of.

Last year, after listening to Dan Kennedy talk about opportunity marketing in his Opportunity Concepts seminar, I started being on the lookout for all things business opportunity.

And so I came across an intriguing ad, which ran repeatedly in bizopp magazines and tabloid newspapers in the early 90s. The headline ran:

Get Paid To Watch Your Favorite TV Shows!
Profits Up To 10,000.00 A Day Possible!

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I panted with my tongue hanging out, “how do I get paid? I like Seinfeld for example, how much can I make with that? I want to know! Or what about Peep Show? Does that pay even better?”

The ad doesn’t say. You had to mail in a “Get Paid Application Form” plus $21.95 to find out.

And depending on which week’s Weekly World News you were reading, you had to mail in your check to different-named businesses in:

Colorado City, AZ (Nov 6, 1990)
Bellingham, WA (Sep 24, 1991)
New York, NY (Nov 19, 1991)
…

In other words, it’s very likely that this offer was a scam. A new fly-by-night mailing address each month… a bunch of angry and ashamed new customers… and then on to the next place before anyone could catch whoever was behind this bizopp.

Sorry to break it to you, but this probably means you cannot get paid, as the ad promised, to “sit back, relax, and watch television.”

Still, the marketing and persuasion idea back of this scheme is sound. You can use it even if you are running a more legit business.

For example, that “sharing videos” thing is really about affiliate marketing. The videos you would be sharing are webinars for affiliate offers.

Of course, that’s not what the very top of the sales funnel sells you.

Instead, it sells you something more simple, more easy, more familiar. Something you are already doing and probably enjoying.

It’s only once your interest and greed are aroused, once you click through, opt in, watch the webinar, do you find out the cold, hard truth.

So what about making money by opening emails? The promise in my subject line?

The cold hard truth is, open those emails, read them, apply any good and free ideas you come across. Or even pay for some good ideas that those emails advertise, and then apply those.

Do this consistently, and you’re sure to make money in time.

Maybe that’s not what you were hoping to hear.

Maybe you’re disappointed and hurt to hear that, while it’s certainly possible to make good money online, it will take some work, some time, some effort and maybe even creativity on your part. It will never be fully automated, and there’s no secret shortcut to get around that.

If you find that truth repulsive, then my newsletter is not for you.

But if like me, you are a panting, hanging-tongue bizopp seeker at heart… but in time you learned to control yourself and even put in some work… then stick around. I might have some good ideas to share with you.

Also, you might like my Most Valuable Postcard.

This offer is not open right now — I got all the subscribers I wanted during the launch two days ago. But there is a waiting list.

So if you’d like to get on the waiting list, and be the first to find out when I reopen MVP for subscribers, then sign up to my newsletter. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply, and let me know to add you to the MVP waiting list.

 

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part II

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Last autumn, I wrote an email with the subject line, “A critical look at Daniel Throssell.”

It was about how I experienced, first-hand, the crazy levels of engagement that Daniel gets with his emails.

In that email, I also said I’m reading Daniel’s newsletter every day to try to decode exactly how he does it.

My original plan was to do this formally. To sit down, look at a bunch of Daniel’s emails, take notes. To read critically, not just as a consumer of marketing, but as a marketer, trying to squeeze out what exactly Daniel is doing, and how I might start doing the same.

That formal sit-down never happened. Well, not until a couple weeks ago, after Daniel wrote me to say:

I had this kinda weird idea to pay you to do an analysis of my storytelling and email style. You know I highly rate your marketing analysis skills above almost anyone out there.

I’m curious to see if you would identify anything I’m doing that I haven’t even consciously realised myself that I was doing. Nothing super formal, just spending a few hours writing down any random thoughts/notes/analysis you have about how you perceive I tell my stories and use them to achieve my goals.

Would you be interested in that?

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might know I rarely miss an opportunity to turn down a paying gig. It happened this time too.

I told Daniel that no, I wouldn’t want to do this, not for money, because I really don’t know what I would end up delivering. It’s not like I’d be writing a sales letter, with a clear and defined thing I could hand over at the end.

But I did tell him I’d do it for free, if I could make a little presentation out of it, and if he would also promote it to his list.

Daniel agreed.

So I sat down. I looked at a bunch of his emails. I scratched my forehead and I took a bunch of notes. Result:

Some of what I spotted Daniel doing is straightforward copywriting, just done really well.

Some of it is ideas he teaches in his Email Copywriting Compendium.

And then, some of it is stuff I hadn’t thought about before.

Specifically, I noticed three techniques Daniel uses regularly.

These three techniques aren’t in his Email Copywriting Compendium… they aren’t standard copywriting advice… and yet, they made certain of Daniel’s emails have the most impact on me and stick in my mind the most.

If you like, I’ll tell you what those three techniques are.

I’ll also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and spell out exactly how you too can use these techniques, starting today, to make your emails more fun, more unique, and more effective.

Like I said, this will be part of a presentation I will put on. The presentation will happen live, next Monday, May 16 at 8pm CET.

You can register for this presentation below. Just click the link at the end and fill out the form on the next page, and I’ll send you a email with the Zoom meeting info and a calendar invite.

If you cannot attend this presentation live, you can still register because I will send out a recording BUT—

If you can at all attend live, I encourage you to do so. That’s because I’ll give you a surprise gift on the call, something I think you will like. This surprise gift won’t be a part of the recording.

So if email is how you make money… or if you’re a fan of Daniel’s style… or if you just have ears to hear and eyes to see that what he’s doing with his newsletter is wildly effective… then here’s your ticket:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation