Direct Marketing

“Worse is better” marketing

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A-list copywriter Carline Anglade Cole doesn’t put a lot of effort into many of her email subject lines. On Thursdays, she sends out an email with the subject line “Carline’s Copy Thought.” Tuesdays are “Trade $ecret$ Tuesdays,” and Fridays are “Flashback Fridays.” And the next week, it all repeats.

Mark Ford, the multimillionaire copywriter and marketer who helped make Agora a billion-dollar company, went through a period where each email he sent out had the same one-word subject line. “Today.” That was it. Over and over.

Is this just a shocking example of laziness that top marketers practice when promoting their own stuff?

Or…

Could it be a case of “worse is better”? Where doing less gets you better results than doing more?

Well consider this. I always open Mark Ford’s emails, even if they say “Today” for the 10th day in a row.

On the other hand…

Today I got an email from an A-list copywriter. I won’t name him, but I’ll tell you I often open his emails. But I didn’t open his email today. I read the subject line and I said, “Oh, I know where this is going. I don’t need to read it.”

The fact is this:

Even people who are perfect prospects for what you’re selling will often dismiss your message instantly. They will use any little excuse to say, “No no, this is not for me, not now.” Even if your offer could hugely benefit them. Even if it’s exactly what they need.

Why are people like this? I don’t know. My guess is it has something to do with why taking out the trash is so hard.

Of course, one way to deal with this is the usual direct response light show, with flashing neon promises and blaring warning sirens.

But if you’ve got enough credibility with your audience, then you can do what Carline and Mark do. And you might actually get better results. And if you’re not convinced yet that “worse is better” can get you better results, let me give you an example with some hard numbers:

Marketer Rich Schefren once offered an upsell he called “Mystery Box.” Once you bought Rich’s front-end product, a video popped up with Rich holding this box and saying something like,

“Do you trust me? I promise you that what’s inside this box is worth 100x the $49 price I’m asking for it. Get it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree with me, you can always get your money back.”

Rich says his typical upsell converts at around 30%-40%. The mystery box? No excuses to say no? That converted at 75%.

​​Twice the sales. For less effort. Might be worth a try in your business as well.

And since you’ve read this far, let me ask you a question:

Do you trust me? I promise you that the free offer that’s waiting at this link is worth 100x the price I’m asking for it. Try it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree, you can always get your entire investment back.

Stupid email from: tricks

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A few weeks ago, I got an email with the subject line, “Once in a lifetime sit in….on this?? 😳.” The email was from “Your Official Invit.”

“Hm,” I said. “Who is this Invit and what does he want?” I opened the email.

It turned out to be from Clickbank, promoting their Platinum Summit event. I don’t remember ever getting any emails from Clickbank before.

Then a few days passed and I got an email from “A story you’ll love.” Again more trickery. It was really Clickbank again.

Then more emails. From “Your first sale.” From “Your boss.” And from “Future John.” Clickbank. Clickbank. Clickbank.

I finally unsubscribed.

I’ve never seen these stupid email from: tricks done well. And by done well, I mean done so it didn’t piss me off and so it made me want to buy whatever they were selling. Or even just read the email.

And so I thought I would certainly never try this myself.

But, maybe… maybe I will change my mind.

Because it turns out it can be done well. I saw Dan Kennedy do it well.

Dan of course never sent emails. But he did send sales letters and package inserts from characters like Viva The “Broken English” Cleaning Lady and Oscar The Obnoxious Elephant. The Oscar one starts out with a cartoon of a scowling elephant with boxing gloves on. Then there’s a headline which reads:

John, A Nasty Note From Oscar The Obnoxious Elephant
You might want to read carefully. You’ve already won a prize. Not that I think you deserve it.

This works. Not because it comes from Dan Kennedy. But because it’s entertaining and builds up the relationship instead of tearing it down (not that there ever was one, Clickbank).

I’m not sure I will ever figure out how to do this with made-up characters in email.

But maybe, if in the future you see an unfamiliar email from Casper The Clickbank Camel… consider it might be this guy right here.

Oh. But I forgot. You’re not subscribed to my email newsletter. If you’d like to fix that, so you and Casper can stay in touch, then here’s where to go.

Killing me softly with free stuff

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Last week, while snooping on marketers who sell copywriting courses, I landed on the page of a well-known guy in this space.

He’s got a copywriting course for sale normally. But right now, you can’t buy it.

Instead, you have to sign up with your email for a free mini-course. Which I did, in the hope of getting to see the actual course sales letter.

Instead, I got a bunch of lessons, telling me to do stuff. Videos to watch, and checklists to read, and templates to fill out.

“I don’t have the time,” I tried to argue, “and I really just want to see the sales page.”

No matter. Each day, the emails kept coming. More well-meaning teaching in my inbox, which I didn’t have the time or willpower to absorb.

Eventually I stopped opening them. And then today, I got a follow up:

“I have another free mini-course for you…”

I felt like Lauren Hill when she sings, “I prayed that he would finish… but he just kept right on.”

Now in all fairness, I was never really a prospect for this copywriting course. But even so, I think the following still holds:

A free course, and in general, any free “hard teaching,” is like an earthquake. One is kind of exciting, if it’s small and only happens rarely.

But two or more? Especially if they’re big? You start to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and panting, because you’re still having flashbacks from the last one, when you felt powerless and out of time.

So if you are trying to shake up your prospects with well-meaning content, full of specific steps they have to read and do… stop it. Be a little kinder.

Send them some other stuff. Which won’t overwhelm or cause PTSD.

What kind of other stuff?

That’s a good question.

But you know. I won’t bother you with that here. However, I might talk about it, at some future time, in my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars

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There’s a video on YouTube that shows Dan Kennedy’s cave. It’s where Dan does his writing, and where he receives clients for consults.

Dan’s cave is underground. That said, it’s as bright and cheery as an underground cave can be. The walls are packed with rare Disney memorabilia, exotic money, and clocks. And then there’s a sign that reads:

“Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

This connected in my mind to something Jay Abraham said.

(By the way, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Jay Abraham, including the video I re-watched today. I can imagine he’s said this same thing in many places, but it never registered in my head until just now. It’s another example of why it’s worth going back to stuff you’ve already read or listened to.)

Anyways, Jay was saying how you don’t want to just give stuff away for free. First off, you want to make people understand how valuable your free gift is. Second, you want to set expectations. Jay gave some off-the-cuff copy to show what he means:

We’ve spent five years and 50,000 hours studying this. We’ve come to conclusions that, to our knowledge, no one else has. We’ve spent a year and a half refining it. We’ve now put it into a form where you can grasp it and you can act on it. It will instantly impact your performance. It’s the result of looking at billions of dollars of successful transactions.

It would mean a lot to us to share this with you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you. But there is an expectation, and it’s a very respectful one:

If we do that, we’d like if you, first of all, take the time to seriously read it and reflect on it and then take action. And we’re hoping it will help you appreciate what we do so that there will be an inclination to want to do business with us later.

It’s this last bit that finally clicked for me. Jay is basically saying, free stuff ain’t free. And you should let people aware of this. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be needy. But do state the fact.

Speaking of which:

I’ve written almost 900 of these blog posts, each of which is first sent out as an email to my newsletter subscribers. By my estimate, they are the result of ~9,000 hours of cumulative work and experience.

This includes tens of thousands of dollars in copywriting coaching… dozens of courses and even more books on the topics of copywriting and marketing… and the experience of 6 years of working on client projects, with many 7-figure and several 8-figure direct response businesses.

I’m saying this because it means a lot to me to share these posts with you. I hope you get value and entertainment out of them. I also hope they will, as Jay says, give you an inclination to do do business with me later.

Speaking of which:

If you want to do business with me, the first step is to get my free (well, debatable) email newsletter. Click here if you’d like to sign up.

The trouble with selling to late 50s white guys with money

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Brian Kurtz sent an interesting email today about list selection, with the following thought:

The question I wanted an answer to, in living color, although a black and white copy would do:

‘What was the promotion that got the name.’

I believe the logic behind this kind of list research applies to all media today even though most of the lists you use online don’t have data cards attached to them.

Lists are people too… and finding out as much about them — how they think, how they respond, how they read, what they read — are components you can find out before you ever send a promotion to them.

Like Brian says, this is still relevant today, as long as you’re selling anything to anybody.

Because the standard advice is to do a bunch of research on your customers or prospects. Who they are. What problems they have. What language they use.

Not bad. And certainly much better than just pulling your advertising out of your own head.

Better still is knowing what these people bought. (If they bought one copywriting course, there’s a good chance they will buy another.)

But what’s best is what Brian says. Find out “how they think, how they respond, how they read, what they read.” You get that from the type of advertising these people bought from — or didn’t buy from.

Some people respond to hype- and intrigue-filled direct response copy. Others respond to quick and brandy TV-style commercials. Others still might not respond to either, but will respond to independent recommendations, or stuff that they find through their own research.

Because lists are people too. And two people can have the same demographics… the same buying history… and yet still be very different, in the kinds of things that get them stirred to action.

James Hetfield (of Metallica) and George Clooney (of ER) are both late 50s white guys with millions of dollars in the bank. They are also both Tesla owners.

And yet, I imagine it might take a whole different appeal to move George than to move Papa Het — and vice versa. It’s something to be mindful of, if you run any kind of advertising, and if you don’t want to go bankrupt.

This blog does not exist

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Or rather, this blog might not exist very much longer.

Perhaps you’ve seen the trend online. Websites with names like thiscatdoesnotexist.com… thispersondoesnotexist.com.

You go there and see a photograph of a cat or a woman. Who does not exist. Who was conjured up, in pixel-perfect lifelike detail, by some kind of computer jiggery-pokery. When you refresh the page, the computer mind creates another fake cat or fake woman for you to be confused by.

Well today, I saw more progress in this direction, thismusicvideodoesnotexist.com. It’s just what it sounds like. The music is generated by computer. So is the video. And it’s watchable, much more watchable than a lot of shit made by humans.

As you probably know, there’s been a surge in AI copywriting tools over the past year or two. Some industry insiders look at these new tools and say, “Hahaha, never-ever will this work.”

I’m not so sure. But I’m even less sure it will matter one way or another.

I had this idea a while ago, a science-ficition scenario. Artificial intelligence gets good enough to generate content — TV shows, music, books.

But good enough for what?

Good enough for each of us. Each of us gets a custom stream of entertainment, based on our previous preferences… based on how our eyes dilate… based on whether we keep watching.

Each of us is served with the perfect content, just for us, just for that moment. Familiar enough… with the right amount of surprise to keep us fascinated and perfectly pleased.

In my sci-fi scenario, you won’t be able to communicate your interests to anyone else. Nobody else will share your tastes so exactly. Why would anyone listen to your perfect song or watch your perfect movie… when he has his own perfect song and movie available, without even a click of a button, just served up, non-stop, 24/7?

Anyways, that’s the future I’m thinking of. And with this video site, it seems like it’s on its way. When it arrives, we will have bigger social problems than a lack of work for copywriters.

Fortunately, we are still not there yet.

That means you can still talk to your friends about a great movie you saw, and that they might like. And you can still make money persuading people to buy stuff that they didn’t know they wanted five minutes ago.

Speaking of which, and motivated by my post from yesterday:

I’d like to point you to a little book I wrote on the topic of copywriting. It collects 10 lessons from 10 of the most successful people to ever put shocking secret to paper.

It’s not a big book… but at least it exists. For now. To find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Friendzone: How to escape it in sex and sales

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When I was a freshman in college, I and all the guys I knew were in love with a girl named Leila.

Leila lived in the campus apartment next to mine. She had big brown hair and big brown eyes and was all-around pretty. On top of which, she had a bubbly and yet moody personality. I guess this was catnip to incompetent, inexperienced, unassertive 19-year-old boys like myself.

One day, it turned out Leila had finally chosen somebody from the herd.

​​The winner was a meek, clean-cut, marathon-running physics major from the next building over. I saw him and Leila around campus a few days in a row, talking intimately, walking by themselves, whispering in the dark.

Leila enthused to her friends how smart this guy was, and how serious, and how she liked his self-respect.

And then, a week later, it was all over. Through the college grapevine, I heard why Leila cut the guy off.

“He just never made a move,” she said.

Yesterday, I kicked off my bullets course. More people signed up for it than I expected. Enough that I could look for patterns and trends, both to make the course better and more interesting for the people who joined… and just for my own curiosity.

So it turns out the members of the trial run of my bullets course are:

1. Geographically spread out, with a predictably big focus on the U.S.

2. Almost exclusively men

3. About an even split between business owners and freelance copywriters

None of this is particularly surprising or interesting. But the following is:

Two out of three people who signed up for my course joined my email list in just the past three months.

For reference, I’ve been writing these emails for the past two and a half years. During that time, I’ve had a steady trickle of new signups.

Many people who signed up for this newsletter in 2019 and 2020 still read these emails. Some regularly. And yet, there’s that stat above. Two out of three people who signed up for the course only joined my email list in the past three months.

I guess there might be complex reasons for this. But I want to give you a simple explanation, which is probably good enough. And that is:

Recency matters.

In sex and in sales, it takes some time to build a basic relationship, demonstrate competence, and excite desire.

But this time is often less than you might think. And after somebody expresses interest… and once you’re past this giving-you-a-shot period… more is not better.

People cool off. They might still like you… but they put you in the friend zone. The way to avoid this is simple. Just make a move.

And now the big question:

Would you like to go on a date with me? If you want to give me a shot, you can join my email newsletter. But be warned. I will make a move and try to sell you something in the first few months.

Perhaps that scares you or turns you off. No problem. But if it makes your heart beat a little faster… then here’s where you can sign up.

An inspiring case study plus Dan Kennedy’s best stuff for cheap

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Today I want to share an inspiring business case study with you, plus how you can get Dan Kennedy’s best teachings for cheap.

First the case study:

I’ve followed the writing of a guy named Glenn Allsop for years. Glenn writes about SEO and business opportunities. He’s very smart and very dedicated and very willing to share just about everything on his blog.

And Glenn just came out with a big new post titled, Generating Six-Figure Profits from $40 SEO Audits.

It’s just what the title says — amazing when you consider that an SEO audit is something most people can’t give away, much less make a business out of.

There’s a ton of valuable ideas in Glenn’s post, and if you’re offering any kind of service (copywriting, design, video…) it’s worth reading in full. But today, I want to share just one thing that I found most striking out of the whole case study.

Because really, why would a highly successful guy like Glenn waste his time doing tiny $40 jobs, even if it did result in decent profits? He has other business ventures that could earn him much more.

But here, from Glenn’s article, are a few things that came out of all this $40 work:

I’ve advised CMOs at billion dollar brands. Audited the official site of a major European football league (one of the big five). Directly connected with the owners of multi-million dollar per month affiliate sites, and spoken with the founders of dozens of TechCrunch-featured companies.

A $40 audit started our interaction, but then so many more things came as a result of these. Especially when people see how I look at their websites and point out things they just hadn’t thought of.

This brought to mind something I heard Rich Schefren say he heard Dan Kennedy say:

“Put your best stuff in your lowest-priced stuff.”

Glenn took this to an extreme, by actually doing per-hour, custom work for people. You may or may not want to do that. If you don’t, you can still create some kind of low-priced offer — a book, a course, a 10-minute sample of what you do — and make it absolutely amazing.

You never know who will take you up on your bargain-basement offer… or how much money they will be willing to spend with you after. That’s how Dan Kennedy got a lot of his clients, according to a recording I heard of him recently. And that’s why, if you want the best stuff that Dan has to offer… you will find much of it available for a few bucks a piece, right on Amazon.

Perhaps that’s not what you were hoping to hear. In that case, I can tell you you won’t like my email newsletter, because it’s filled with obvious value, rather than “secrets” or urgent opportunities.

However, if you are a reader, and you’re patient, then my email newsletter might suit you better. If you’d like to give it a try, here’s where to join.

You, your own copywriting secret weapon?

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Here are two flexible factoids, and a suggestion you might find valuable:

1. A-list copywriter Gary Halbert said curiosity is the most powerful human motivating force.

2. Another A-list copywriter, Parris Lampropoulos, keeps a “Didn’t know that!” file. This is where Parris puts new and interesting facts he comes across during research for copywriting projects.

​​But Parris has spent hundreds of hours doing research on dozens of big projects… so when he comes across something new and interesting to him, you can bet it will be new and interesting to his audience.

So I’d like to suggest you do something similar.

Invest $3 in a notebook… or invest two seconds to create a file on your computer desktop. Write “Hm, I didn’t know that, or, that’s interesting” across the top.

​​And you’re pretty much done. From then on, as you come across something that fits that heading, you just add it to your notebook or file.

The longer your list grows, the more interesting and valuable it will become, by process of elimination.

Eventually, you will have a list of things that stimulate curiosity for almost everyone in your audience. And if Gary H. is right, you will have the most powerful tool in motivating people to action.

​​In effect, you make your own curiosity and capacity to be surprised into your copywriting secret weapon.

I do this exact same thing, and it’s been valuable to me. In fact, it’s how I write these emails each day. Which brings me to my self-serving reason for telling you about this:

A reader named Glenn wrote in to challenge me on some sloppy self-promotion I committed recently.

Glenn pointed out that in the email I sent out announcing my bullets course… I didn’t feature a single Gary Halbert-style bullet.

Fair point.

My answer to this is that emails like the one you’re reading are basically the modern version of sales bullets. The only difference is you’re not restricted by space (like in a sales letter or print ad)… or by having only one shot to make the sale (like when paying for cold traffic).

Other than that, bullets and sales emails are the same.

​​You find some information that your audience might want. You condense it and sexy it up.

​​If it’s really cool and interesting information, you can choose to give it away in your copy… or if it’s meh information, then you might choose to tease it endlessly in your email or bullet, and hide the payoff in your product for sale.

In other words, if you can learn how to write sexy sales bullets… you will be a long way to being able to write emails people will want to read day after day. Particularly if you add in something new and interesting to tell your reader, which is what your “Hm, I didn’t know that” list is all about.

Anyways, that’s part of my pitch for joining my bullet writing course, which kicks off this Monday. If you’re interested in joining, then the first step is signing up for my email newsletter, which you can find here.

Taking over abandoned but rich online oil wells

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Jay Abraham likes to tell a sexy story about two marketers. The story is true and it goes something like this:

Two marketers started selling fake diamonds through ads in the same local newspaper.

One marketer wrote a brilliant ad, got a high response, and made a bunch of sales. After ad costs and fulfillment, he was left with a profit of a few thousand dollars.

​​”What a waste of time,” this marketer said. And he moved on to bigger and better opportunities… ones where he could make tens of thousands or maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, using the same approach.

Then there was marketer two. He only wrote a passable ad, and got a lower response than marketer one. He was left in the red after ad costs and fulfillment.

But when marketer two sent his customers the fake diamond, he also included a letter. The letter said something like,

“Behold your beautiful fake diamond! See how it shines and sparkles! And if you by chance find it sparkles a bit less than you expected, perhaps it’s the modest size. But worry not. Send back your beautiful but modest-sized fake diamond… and we will credit it to your next purchase of a magnificent and ginormous fake diamond. Just enclose a check for an extra xyz dollars to…”

In other words, marketer two created a back-end of upsells and followup offers. Result? A business that made something like $25 million in its first year.

(By the way, I only found out later that marketer one, the brilliant but short-sighted copywriter, was Gary Halbert.)

I thought of this story today because I’m seeing something similar right in front of me.

For the past two years, I’ve been writing copy for a client in the ecommerce space. Over the past year alone, they have abandoned about a dozen hot funnels. Yes, including fake diamonds.

Each funnel had an in-demand product… copy that was working… a large, hungry, accessible audience eager to hand over their money.

So why abandon ship? Because fulfillment got tricky… or shipping got expensive… or ad costs went up and made the funnel unprofitable. So on to the next opportunity, the next oil well that can be exploited with just a bucket and a rope, for as long as it lasts.

I had the idea this morning of taking over some of these abandoned but rich funnels. But my first thought was, how could I possibly succeed where my client had failed? After all, they have a gaggle of ad buyers, a herd of ad production people, and money and resources and connections I can only dream of.

So how could I succeed? Perhaps, by having a back-end of upsells and followup offers. By tapping this oil well a bit deeper… and using strategies that go beyond a bucket and a rope.

Maybe that’s doable… but it also sounds like a lot of work. Which brings me to the point.

Last autumn I wrote about my idea of a “cash buyers list.” In a nutshell, I am looking for people who are willing to partner with me in some way on investing in online properties, whether that’s product funnels or blogs or sudoku solver software.

And if you have interest in partnering with me on some tried-and-proven ecommerce funnels… and you either have money, or relevant skills to contribute, then get in touch. Maybe we can create a new case study together for Jay Abraham to talk about for years to come.