Direct Marketing

Omnipresent and unexplained email content

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Pop quiz:

What do the following headlines all have in common?

1. How did cool become such a big deal?
2. Why it’s hard to sound like Jimi Hendrix
3. A comprehensive guide to yellow stripey things
4. Why whales got so big

(The third one, by the way, was for an infographic on the differences between wasps, bees, yellow jackets, hoverflies and dirt daubers.)

Think you have it?

Ok, let’s compare answers. Here’s what I had in mind:

Each of these headlines promises to explain a part of your world that is so obvious that it’s actually not understood. Something you’re well aware of, but you’d never really thought about before. Something that gets you saying, “Yeah, that’s right! Why is that?”

These kinds of topics can easily be modeled to write interesting emails. For example, applying them to various health markets, we get:

1. How did essential oils suddenly become such a big deal?
2. Why it’s hard to avoid belly fat past 35
3. A comprehensive guide to different types of erectile dysfunction
4. Why your joints don’t self-repair like other tissue

(Health markets are in fact a very good match for this kind of topic. We all have a lot of experience with our bodies, and yet much about them remains a mystery.)

In short: find something omnipresent but still unexplained (at least to non-specialists). Put it in your subject line, and then write a short email surprising people and opening their eyes with the answer. And then, tie this into whatever you’re selling.

Easy.

Peasy.

By the weasel, this is one of about two dozen email topic ideas I will be sharing in my upcoming book about email marketing for health products.

If you want to find out what the other ones are (they’re very exciting), you’ll need to read the book. You can sign up here to get it when it comes out:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

How to use Disney movies to sell health info courses

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Below you’ll find a Pinocchio-themed email I wrote a year ago for a new course on essential oils.

This email is short (I wish I could always write such short emails).

And yet, it has all the elements that I normally put in to promote a health product:

1. Something cute/funny/interesting
2. Something informative/useful
3. A related call to action

Here goes:

SUBJECT: Essential Oil Pleasure Island

In Disney’s fantastic 1940 film Pinocchio, there’s a place called Pleasure Island.

Pinocchio winds up there on the advice of a sly fox called Honest John.

At first, Pleasure Island appears to be every boy’s dream.

You can do whatever you choose: play pool, smoke cigarettes, even get drunk.

However, the place hides a horrible curse.

The stray boys who end up there eventually turn into donkeys and are sold into slave labor.

That’s exactly what happens to Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick, while Pinocchio manages to get away with only some donkey ears and a tail.

This is the cute part — simply telling a cautionary tale that’s clear, easy to understand, and is likely to draw a smile. Continuing:

Now I’m sure this Pleasure Island can be a metaphor for many things in life.

But if you’re curious about essential oils, then I just want to warn you about the many “Honest John” characters out there on the Internet.

They’ll tell you to do whatever you want with essential oils: drink them, massage them onto your skin undiluted, even cook with them.

Beware.

There’s a price to pay for listening to that misleading advice, usually in the form of a rash or a burn or an allergic reaction.

This is the informative part. Nothing super heavy here, but useful to essential oil newbies — the target audience for this course.

The fact is, safe and reasonable use of essential oils might not seem as exciting at first, but it’s a lot more sustainable and useful in the long run.

My new EO Pioneers course tells you how to avoid Essential Oil Pleasure Island, or if you’ve already landed there, how to get away without donkey ears or a tail.

If you don’t want sly foxes leading you by the nose, here’s more information on this new course:

www.unusualhealth.com/essential-oil-pioneers/

Finally, this is the call to action. Again, nothing complex here — simply a brief explanation of what the course is about, and how it can help you if you’re new to essential oils (along with a bit of call-back humor).

And that’s all it really takes.

As easy as 1-2-3.

If you want more examples of how I’ve used this simple template to sell supplements as well as health info courses, you might like to sign up for a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

The Bohemian Rhapsody trick for creating a big opening

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The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn — and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side

I just watched Bohemian Rhapsody.

The film is a pretty straightforward retelling of the story of Queen, with of course, a focus on Freddie Mercury.

It traces the band from their time meeting behind a local concert hall and follows them for the next decade or so, all the way to the climactic concert at Wembley Stadium, where they performed to an ecstatic audience of close to 100,000.

In fact, that’s how the movie opens up.

While the rest of the script is chronologically linear, the opening is all about Freddie waking up, trimming his mustache, making his way through his mansion (populated by dozens of filthy cats), being driven in a Rolls-Royce to the stadium, and then warming up as he walks up to the stage.

The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to capacity roars on from the other side.

It’s a good way to start a movie.

And the same holds for starting emails.

You need to capture people’s attention straight away.

And even though you probably have a linear script in mind for what you’d like to say, that’s probably not the best way to present the information.

The good news is, it’s not hard to spruce up a regular ol’ email and make it into a sexy email.

Just go in once it’s written, find the highlight of the email, and splice it in up top.

You can keep the rest of the email as is.

This isn’t cheating in any way — you’re simply giving people a preview of the interesting things to come, and a reason to keep reading.

Once you have people’s attention, you can then take them to your important and serious message.

Such as for example, my upcoming book on email marketing for health products.

It’s not out yet.

But if you would like a free copy when it does come out, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

Announcing Profitable Health Emails

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I’m putting together a book tentatively titled Profitable Health Emails.

It’s going to collect what I’ve learned so far about email marketing, and what I’ve used to help companies such as RealDose Nutrition, Australian Digestive Excellence, and Vitality Now make some money.

I’m expecting to finish the book by January 2019.

In case you’d like a free copy when it’s done, you can sign up for it here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

When infotaining emails fail

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In 1975, the great copywriter Gary Bencivenga joined an upstart direct marketing agency.

They soon put out a gutsy ad in the Wall Street Journal to hunt for new clients. The headline ran:

“ANNOUNCING A DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING AGENCY THAT WILL GUARANTEE TO OUTPULL YOUR BEST AD.”

There were only two catches:

1) You had to give Gary & co. creative freedom on the kind of ad to write — only legal and factual approval was asked for and allowed.

2) You actually needed better advertising. In Gary’s own words, “If we think your present advertising is excellent, we’ll tell you.”

I thought of this today because I’m looking over the wreckage of several email campaigns I wrote for a client over the past few months.

I put in serious work on these emails, and I thought I did a great job. When I handed them over to the client, he loved them. But apparently, they are underperforming what he was using earlier.

The thing is, I saw the earlier email sequences, and I was confident I could do better. They were dull and too heavy on the teaching, and I was going to make them intriguing and infotaining.

But that’s not enough.

What I should have asked for in addition to seeing the email copy is a breakdown of where the sales were coming from.

Were they all on day 0, and people weren’t even reading the emails?

Did sales trickle in as the relationship was established (which means that people actually liked reading the old emails)?

Was it all about the discounts (and was the copy largely irrelevant)?

Were the emails actually making any sales (the client hinted that they weren’t making any money through email marketing)?

Too late to ask now, because the client seems to have moved on to greener pastures.

However, going forward, I’ll insist on this sales info for two reasons:

1) It will help me decide whether I can in fact write emails that will do better. It’s not just about seeing the copy, but about finding out how that copy performs.

2) If I feel I can beat the emails, this info will give me useful clues about how to best do that.

Maybe obvious. But even old Gary above didn’t think to ask for the results in his gutsy ad — which makes me feel a bit better.

The content is in the list

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For the past week or so, I’ve been stuck writing about aromatherapy diffusers. This is for a book on essential oils I’m about to put out. (Diffusers are the little gadgets that you can use to disperse aromatic essential oils.)

Basically, I needed to write a review article. But I didn’t feel like summarizing thousands of online reviews for hundreds of separate diffusers. To make things worse, many of those reviews are either biased, paid for, or very incomplete. That’s not good enough — I only wanted to make top-notch recommendations to the people who will be reading my book.

So what to do? Well, I didn’t have a good plan, so I kept going back and forth. And back. And forth.

Fortunately, an idea hit me. I decided to write an email to my aromatherapy list, and ask for their experiences. I explained exactly what I was doing — putting together a list of diffusers that work well in practice, rather than just on paper. I explained the trouble with online reviews, and asked for personal feedback.

And to sweeten a deal, I offered a bribe. I’ve asked questions of my list before and the response hasn’t been overwhelming. So I took a page out of Ben Settle’s book, and offered something in exchange for getting people to take action (specifically, I promised them a free copy of my upcoming ebook once it’s finished).

The response has been great. I got lots of interesting feedback, including stuff I would never have found otherwise. Writing the section on diffusers suddenly became easy. I’ll also be able to use the same content (tweaked a bit) for an upcoming email, as well as for an article on my site.

And there have been some unexpected benefits as well.  I got more engagement from my list. I got some in-depth information, which makes it easier to imagine the people who read my emails as real persons instead of just email addresses. Plus I got more people interested in my book than I would have otherwise.

So to sum up:

The content is in the list. Whenever you are stuck for how to proceed with writing a piece of content, canvass your list. Ask for opinions on a specific question, or even better, ask for personal experiences on a specific topic. And give people something valuable in exchange for responding.

A subject line that’s good enough for Groucho Marx

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“Mrs. Briggs… I’ve known your husband for many years, and what’s good enough for him is good enough for me.”

I’ve recently written several autoresponder sequences that culminate with a discount for the product on sale. However, it’s no good to just announce this in the subject line by saying “15% off coupon inside”.

Why not?

Because it’s boring.

Because everybody does it that way.

Because it only focuses on the hyper-buyers, and drives away everyone else.

Because with a little bit of work, it’s possible to get the same message across, while creating curiosity, building a relationship, and thereby actually increasing response.

So how do you do it? Here are a few ideas:

#1 Tease. Announce that you’ve got an incredible offer in the subject line, without saying explicitly what it is. Then carry this on throughout the email as long as possible without pissing the reader off. Example: “A free fermenting offer you probably can’t refuse”.

#2 Testimonial connection. Include a testimonial in the body of the email and find an entertaining way to tie into this in the subject line. Example: “A discount that will disappear like a late-night snack”.

#3 Pop culture reference. Find a movie, TV show, celebrity, PS4 game, whatever — and in some way tie it in to the offer (or don’t tie it in — it’s more important that it’s entertaining than that it ties in perfectly). Preferably, choose a bit of pop culture that won’t seem dated six months from now. Example: “A discount that’s good enough for Groucho Marx”.

How to sell investment newsletters using razor-and-blades

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In one form or another, you’ve probably heard of the Gillette principle:

Give ’em the razor, sell ’em the blades”

This idea is also called the razor-and-blades strategy, and it’s often attributed to King Gillette, the guy who invented Gillette razors.

Only the story doesn’t really appear to be true. Gillette originally priced his razors at $5, a princely sum — a third of a workman’s weekly wages at the time, and roughly equivalent to about $150 in today’s money.

It was only after the patents on Gillette’s safety razors expired, and the competition swooped in offering cheap imitations, that Gillette the adopted its now-famous model.

But where is he gonna get the blades???

However it originated, the razor-and-blades model was a good idea. It increased Gillette’s profits back then, and it’s been a mainstay of a bunch of other industries — printers-and-toners, consoles-and-games, Kindles-and-ebooks.

And that’s not all. In a slightly different form, razor-and-blades is also a part of the information publishing world.

For example, when companies like Agora are selling their financial advisory newsletters, they don’t focus their marketing on the newsletter itself. Instead, they focus it on a sexy bonus — which is given away for free — when you subscribe to the newsletter. Typically, even if you unsubscribe from the newsletter, you get to keep the bonus.

As an example, look at the End of America. This was a massive promotion for Stansberry Research, an Agora subsidiary. After spending an hour convincing you how American society is about to collapse because the dollar will soon be devalued, this promotion offered several related bonuses.

The End of America promotion keeps changing to adapt the bonuses to current needs and fears. The version I saw offered ones like “The Four Investment Assets You Do Not Have To Report To The U.S. Government” and “The Gold Investor’s Bible”. You got these intriguing titles free, once you subscribed to Porter Stansberry’s investment newsletter.

I thought of this today because I’m working on a sales letter for a crypto investing membership program. The essence of this membership program is tried-and-true wisdom about investing, culled from books written by the likes of Warren Buffet, along with a review of the current state of the crypto market. Good stuff, but not too stirring.

So I recommended a razors-and-blades model to the guy behind the course. In his case, I think something along the lines of “Top 3 Crypto Investment Opportunities For Q4 of 2018” could work well.

This doesn’t have to involve a lot of work. For example, for this membership program, the current market reviews this guy does already have this “Top 3” information. It simply needs to be pulled out, labeled with a sexy title, and given away to anyone who’s interested in trying the membership course.

Interesting guarantees, part 1

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“You’re going to like reading this post. I guarantee it.”

Guarantees are a penny-a-dozen throughout marketingworld. And even double-your-money-back guarantees aren’t so unusual. Typically though, they are reserved to fairly small offers.

Today however, I came across a version of a double-your-money-back guarantee that’s pretty enormous. I heard about it on a conference call put on by Justin Goff and Ian Stanley. Both of these guys are very successful marketers and copywriters, and they were on the call sharing their experience and answering questions about marketing.

At the end of the call, Justin made a pitch for his Beat Your Control Seminar. This is a $25k affair where he will share his 18 “control beaters” and work with businesses to improve on their marketing funnels.

And that’s where the massive guarantee comes in. Justin’s promise is that he will beat these companies’ controls within 48 hours, and make them an extra $100,000 to $5 million this year. If he doesn’t, he will write them a check for double the money they spent to attend — a $50,000 guarantee.

Now I’m not sure whether Justin is really so experienced that he can beat every control out there. Or whether it’s a marketing strategy. Or whether he is simply ok losing that money with a few customers because he will recoup it with others, especially down the line.

Perhaps he’s simply counting on the quality of information that he’s sharing, and on his skills as a consultant, so that for anyone who attends his seminar, the promise and the guarantee will become irrelevant.

I remember reading something similar about Gary Bencivenga. When he joined an upstart marketing agency, they ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal that said they will run a test — either they beat your control or they will refund your ad spend costs. Apparently they got a ton of business from that ad, but nobody was interested in running the test — they just wanted to hire Gary’s agency outright.

A similar offer from 40 years ago.

Anyways, Justin’s guarantee was big and specific and impressive enough that I wanted to record it, in a similar way that I recorded an interesting offer last time. I’ll keep recording interesting guarantees and offers going forward. Which brings to mind something else Gary Bencivenga wrote:

So, Top Gun, what “red shirt” should you be looking for in your marketing campaign? What do you think is the one thing that could most easily double your response? A breakthrough headline? Hot new premium? A lapel-seizing lead for your letter?

Decide what it is, then start looking for it today. And don’t close your eyes until you find it.

Creative offers, exhibit 1

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I was talking to a friend yesterday and explaining how I’ve been doing well with sales copywriting.

“So what’s the trick to success?” he asked.

“Honestly, I said, “it’s to work with a client who’s got a great offer that people love. Even mediocre marketing will sell a great product easy, while brilliant marketing won’t sell a bad offer.”

I guess I must have internalized that from Gary Halbert, who put it this way:

Know this: Strong copy will not overcome a weak offer but…

In Many Cases, A Strong Offer Will
Succeed In Spite Of Weak Copy Written
By Marketing Morons!

In this vein, I decided to start collecting creative and interesting and effective offers that I come across.

The first of these is from Matt Stone AKA Buck Flogging. Starting with his 180 Degree Health blog, Matt has had a a bunch of successful online businesses over the past decade.

(I’ve been on Matt’s various email lists for a while, and aside from Ben Settle, I think he has some of the best emails, even though he only emails when he wants to pitch something. Unlike Ben, though, Matt isn’t a copywriter by trade. He simply honed his skill by tireless writing of books and blog posts and emails and managing the herds of people who interact with him daily.)

A couple of years ago, Matt made a course where he shared his approach to starting an online business and having it make money. Interesting — due to Matt’s history of success online — but pretty standard so far.

Here’s the creative bit about this offer comes in. Matt made the price of his course flexible. How flexible? It was one day’s wage, whatever that may be for you.

The list price was $300. But right in the email where he was announcing the course, Matt sent a bunch of coupon codes for discounts from 10% off to 90% off. He even had a “BANGLADESH” coupon code, which I presume reduced the cost down to a dollar or so.

Could this possibly work? I remember getting this email and being almost instinctively carried away to buy the course on the spot. I didn’t, because I figured I simply wouldn’t use it at that time.

However, I did buy the next year’s version, in part because I remembered this email from a year earlier. And during that version of the course, Matt shared that this particular offer, and this particular email, were one of the most successful he ever ran. So I’m filing it into my drawer of creative (and successful) offers as example no. 1.