Direct Marketing

Work alongside me to launch or build up your list?

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I’ve launched a new email list. I’m planning to grow it via paid traffic, starting in the next few weeks.

I’m not a media buying expert. But I did my research, and I did find a media buying expert, someone who specifically builds up email lists via paid traffic. I will be following his process to grow my list.

So my questions to you:

Do you have a list?

Do you want to grow it?

Are you open to using paid traffic to grow it? ($10-$15 a day is fine, that’s what I’ll be starting with.)

Would you like to work alongside me to launch or build up your list… follow the same process I’m following… plus get my feedback and input on your ad copy and lead magnets etc.?

If so, hit reply and let me know.

Announcing: Done-for-you promo strategy (and implementation)

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Last week, I was working on the promo strategy for a direct response business that:

1. Has one core offer, at $4k and $12k tiers

2. Sends daily emails

3. Makes north of $150k per month.

So far, so good. ​​But then it gets less good:

1. Every day, they promote this one same offer to their list, and there’s nothing about the offer that changes or disappears, so there’s no incentive to act now

2. The list is saturated with the one offer, and even though 33k people get the emails, a negligible part of that $150k per month actually comes via email

3. People on the list stop reading after a while since all the emails take the form of, “Hey look at how well this client is doing, buy now.”

The promo strategy I came up with should help with all that.

​​Basically, instead of sending daily emails to promote the same tired offer, using email copy that the list has been trained to ignore…

… the idea is to come up with a time-limited, exciting, one-off offer… a credible reason why that offer is only being made now… and emails that people will actually read and act on.

We’ll see how well it works. But I’m optimistic.

While working on this promo strategy, I had a true Obvious Adams moment.

I like designing these promo strategies. Plus it’s definitely valuable for the businesses who run these kinds of promos.

Of course, results depend on the size of the list is, the relationship with the list, and what’s being sold.

But I’ve seen a promo go out to a list of 5k people, selling a $1k offer, and bring back $35k in sales over 4-5 days.

I’ve seen a promo to 6k people, selling a $6k offer, and bring in $18k over a week.

Hell, even when I’ve run promos to my own tiny list, the one you’re reading now, and sell offers for a few hundred bucks, I typically bring in $12k-$16k in sales in 3-4 days.

So I had a thought. If I like coming up with the strategies for these promos… and if they are valuable… why don’t I offer them to the people on my list?

Let me try it now. If you:

1. Have an email list, and get at least 1,000 opens when you send an email…

2. Have an offer that you have successfully sold before for $500 or more…

… then my offer is to design a promo strategy for you. Basically, I’ll tell you what to sell… when to sell it… and how to sell it, in order to make a bunch of sales over a limited period of a few days, via email.

I’ll tell you how to repackage and reposition what you already have, so you don’t have to create whole new products… I’ll give you the outlines of email copy to get your readers’ emotional pendulum swinging… and I’ll sprinkle in some human psychology to get people on your list to act now.

And then what?

Well, if you write your own copy for your own business, you can take this promo strategy and turn it into a promo within a few hours. I’ll gladly coach you along the way to make sure it turns out well.

Or…

If you have a copywriter working for you, you can hand this strategy to your copywriter, crack the whip, and have the copywriter do it all for you. Again, I will gladly coach your copywriter directly to give you the best chance the promo is a success.

Or…

​If you neither write your own copy nor have a copywriter, I can get a skilled and hungry copywriter for you, working on commission only.

And who knows, maybe I myself will offer to do the entire promo for you, also on commission only, if your situation sounds particularly promising (kind of like business I described up at the top).

As you can imagine, I will not be doing hundreds of these promo strategies — they take time, and I got plenty of other obligations. But I’m willing to do a couple over the next few weeks.

​​If you are interested, then it makes sense to act now. Hit reply, tell me who you are in case I don’t know you, and we can take it from there.

$12k bargain that’s working now

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I just finished an interesting hot seat for a copywriter within the PCM mastermind.

This copywriter is working with a business that’s selling a $4k offer and a $12k offer.

The two offers are largely the same, except the $12k offer is more done for you and comes with a stronger guarantee. Result:

The $4k offer gets about 5 sales each month. The $12k offer gets about 8-10 sales each month.

This reminded me of a Gary Halbert quote:

“Fundamentals never change but current variations of how to best use those fundamentals are something you must always stay on top of. In other words: It’s not enough to know that everybody wants a bargain… you must also know what people currently consider a bargain.”

It’s no big mystery that an offer that’s more done for you is easier to sell, and can sell for significantly more. That’s a fundamental that never changes.

What might be a surprise is that today, people apparently consider $12k a bargain.

And on that note:

I’m considering putting together something new, about unique offers working now.

I’m interested in offers that are 1) actually selling well right now, and that are 2) selling with zero or very little appeal to authority.

The way I figure, that intersection is where the most interesting and effective offers can be found.

Ben Settle could probably sell a closetful of old shoes to his list if he wanted to. That’s not because old shoes are a great offer. It’s because Ben has spent 15 years disciplining and punishing his list to do as he says.

Maybe you don’t want to go through that, or maybe you don’t have the time.

But even if you have authority or a strong relationship with your list, a sexy, unique, effective offer, one that will stand independent of you, will make your life easier and your wallet heavier.

Like I said, I’m considering creating something new about such unique, independent offers.

Can you do me a favor?

Simply hit reply and let me know if such information could be valuable to you in what you do. If it wouldn’t be valuable to you, let me know that as well.

Or of course, if you know an offer that is both 1) working now and 2) selling without authority, then let me know, and I will add it to the list of specimens to feature. Thanks in advance.

The next big business opportunity

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Yesterday I talked to my friend Will, who recently started writing a newsletter for a prediction market.

Prediction market?

You know… go online, and stake a little bit of money on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, or the chance of war between Israel and Iran.

​​If your prediction comes true, you get paid, just like if you had bet on red and that’s how the roulette table ended up.

Will and I were spitballing content ideas for the newsletter. I told him to interview the “super forecasters,” the guys making the most right bets on the marketplace.

Turns out Will had already done that. He said that one of the top guys on the platform was making $70k per month forecasting the future.

So here’s my own forecast:

We will see a successful business opportunity offer in the next 6 months, featuring a “super forecaster” as a guru, telling you how to collect up to $2,333 each day, from the comfort of your own couch, by watching CNN and Fox News.

I realize I am perhaps influencing the future, and helping make it happen, by giving away this idea and sending it out to thousands of readers of this newsletter, many of who are marketers and offer owners.

But I really do think this has a unique shot to be successful.

Many business opportunities out there are clouded by the fundamental unfamiliarity of the core thing.

Commodities trading? VR content creation? Direct response copywriting?

“I don’t know… maybe it’s legit and maybe there’s even good money to be made there, but it sounds complicated. I don’t really get it.”

Compare that to real estate… or vending machines… or yelling at the TV.

Everybody can understand that. That’s why real estate and vending machines are bizops that have been around for a century or longer… and that’s why I think that future forecasting has legs as well.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m giving this idea away instead of running after it myself, since I think it’s so hot. It’s a fair question. My answer is long and distinguished, so I’ll save it for another email.

Meanwhile, if you are reading this newsletter, I can only assume you have already been pre-sold on the business opportunity that is copywriting, or at least on owning fundamental copywriting skills, whether you use them for your own business or for a client.

And so I have a little bizop brochure I’d like to show you. Here’s the top of the brochure, a quote by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, who only works on 2-3 projects each year, but still makes millions:

“So do what Gary says. You [will possess one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter]. And you’ll make lots of money.”

If you want to read the rest of this brochure, and understand what Parris is saying will make you lots of money, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Forget about AI, it’s the Swiss we should be worried about

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I just read a writing-on-the-wall article on Bloomberg:

Earlier this year, a small town in Switzerland banned billboards. ​​And earlier this month, after pro-billboard opponents challenged the ban, the Swiss Supreme Court upheld the right of citizens to “limit visual pollution” and “opt out of unwanted advertising.”

“We didn’t recognize any public interest in having billboards,” said one local politician.

“We want to battle unnecessary consumption with this measure,” said another.

Other towns in Switzerland, including Zurich and the capital Bern, are also in the process of debillboardizing.

I know what you’ll say. Switzerland is just a quirky, small, isolated country, high up in the mountains, where cows rule and the rivers run with chocolate.

But Switzerland is not the first instance of anti-ad terror.

Back in the 2020/1/15 issue of this newsletter, I wrote about French anti-ad groups that were vandalizing billboards, protesting against advertising, and looking to pass new anti-advertising laws. A nurse involved in the protests said:

“When you walk down the street, how can you feel happy if you’re constantly being reminded of what you don’t have? Advertising breaks your spirit, confuses you about what you really need and distracts you from real problems.”

Maybe you think this is just a few crazy and fringe bolsheviks on the march, and that they should really get a job.

And maybe so. But other things that looked crazy and fringe a few decades ago are a reality now.

Today, smoking is controlled, heavily-taxed, and socially shunned. But was a time when smoking was glamorous and could be done anywhere, even in schools and hospitals.

Today, spanking your kid can lead to criminal charges or social services getting called in. But spanking used to be a prerogative of parents and even, as per the Bible, the right thing to do.

Today drunk driving one of the most irresponsible acts a human being can commit, and heavily criminalized. But it used to be a normal part of a good night of fun.

Those are all kind of “done deals.” But think about some deals that are not yet done, but that are in the process of being negotiated right now:

* Eating animals, particularly the cute ones, particularly when you have other non-cute options for good nutrition

* Flying to Thailand and back for a two-week vacation, and producing the monthly carbon emissions of a small 18th-century town, all by yourself, in the span of a few hours

* Drinking any alcohol ever, when Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, and all your friends who listen to them, say that even a sip is bad for you

As the world changes, as science develops, as propaganda spreads, so do our attitudes to things that seem like an eternal fabric of our lives.

And maybe advertising, though it’s been with us for centuries, will become socially unacceptable, and sooner than you might think.

Oh boy. How do I dig myself out of this hole now?

​​After all, this is a newsletter about copywriting and marketing, and I can’t just leave you like this, despairing how it might all come to an end soon.

Easy. Because I think this hole I’ve dug for myself is not much of a hole at all.

Sure, artificial intelligence might eat copywriting soon.

Sure, social crusaders might eventually limit or ban advertising in some form.

And if you think of what you do as writing copy or creating advertising… well, if those futures come to pass, then you will be screwed.

On the other hand, if you think of what you do as simply effective communication… well, then you will be busy and successful, as long as humans are around, and as long as we continue to communicate and influence each other.

The specific applications might change. But the underlying principles will remain. ​​

As I’m sure you know, there are lots of places where you can learn about effective communication.

But there are certain truths about effective communication that you can only learn when you’re communicating with people one-on-one, in the privacy of their home or office, when they have their credit card in hand.

If you’d like to learn more about effective communication, and especially those “credit card in hand” truths you won’t find anywhere else:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Announcing: Best Daily Email Awards

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Over the past few months, I’ve gotten addicted to listening to a Japanese woman’s YouTube channel, on which she puts out collections like, “1963 Billboard Top 100 Countdown.”

These collections feature hit songs I know, and are also a good way to discover something new, or at least new to me.

But the real reason I’m listening to this woman’s YouTube channel, as opposed to a million other YouTube song collections and playlists, is that her collections feel somehow authoritative, vetted.

After all, the included songs were all hits at the time they came out. People loved each of these songs then, even if some of the songs fell into obscurity later. The Billboard rankings prove it.

My own addiction reminded me of something I read in the Robert Collier Letter Book.

At one point, Collier was selling a subscription to the Review of Reviews, a monthly magazine that I guess was similar to Reader’s Digest.

The problem was few people really like committing to a subscription.

The solution of course was a series of attractive bonuses, which could appear and disappear on command.

But how to make a bonus instantly attractive?

One solution was to again defer to authority and vetting by others. The winning bonus was a little book that collected 64 stories that won the O. Henry prize for the best short story of the year.

Result? ​

​​​30,000-40,000 new subscribers with one sales letter, bundling a stupid magazine subscription with this sexy bonus.

You can do the same, by the way.

Maybe your niche already has some objective measure of authority to it — best-selling books, top-ranked ClickBank offers, investors who made the most money.

Or if there is no such objective measure, you can always invent a new prize or award.

You can use this authoritative or vetted status to create an attractive bonus or offer, and of course, to put yourself in the middle of the action.

And with that, I would like to announce the formation of the Best Daily Email Awards.

This is a new yearly award for merit in the daily email format.

Each year, the Best Daily Email Awards are selected by the prestigious and exclusive Daily Email Academy, which you are a member of by virtue of being a reader of this newsletter.

If you would like to nominate a particular daily email for a Best Daily Email Award, simply forward it to me before this Sunday, July 28, at 8:31pm CET.

Any daily email by any brand or person, in any market or niche, is eligible. You don’t need to explain your reasoning for nominating this particular email. The only restriction is you may only submit one entry, and that it’s actually a daily email.

And then, I, as the current acting Director of the Daily Email Academy, will collect the results, and announce the winners at the inaugural prize ceremony next week.

And yes, I’m 100% serious about this. So start forwarding now.

Sideways webinar

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This morning, I was preparing for the PCM hot seat, which is my main task within Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Each week, I get on a call with a different copywriter. I advise the copywriter on a new email promo he or she is writing on a performance-only basis for some client or another.

The guy I’m talking to today has managed to bag a great client — a 41k-subscriber email list, lots of success stories, a high-priced offer, and marketing that’s already working, including a front-end webinar.

This is the first email promo the copywriter will be writing for this client.

So one of my suggestions to him was to minimize his work, and maximize the odds of success for both himself and his client. For example, just take the existing webinar, which is already working, and turn that into an email promo.

That’s hardly a new idea.

It goes back at least 20 years, at least back to Jeff Walker and his Product Launch Formula.

I can’t say for sure, but PFL might be the most successful and influential Internet marketing training of all time? At least if you look at the number of customers, the sales generated by those customers, and the resulting money that Jeff has made from it.

At heart, PFL is based on a very simple idea, and that’s the “sideways sales letter”:

​Take a working sales letter and turn it on its side, so it becomes a series of emails that you can send out as a time-limited promo. Chan-ta-ta-chan! Money in the bank, where yesterday there was none.

Of course, it doesn’t just have to be the sideways sales letter. It can be the sideways webinar, like I told the PCM copywriter today. Or it can be the sideways 1-on-1 sales call. Or the sideways stage presentation. And so on.

If you have a sales message that’s working for you in one long-form format, odds are good it will work as an email promo as well. In the words of Jim Rohn and John Bejakovic:

1. Have something good to say
2. Say it well
3. Say it often
4. Say it in a new format
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Now let me ask you:
​​
Do you have a working webinar?

​​Does the idea of turning it sideways, and making extra sales sound attractive?

​​Do you have zero interest in doing this work yourself?

​​If so, hit reply, and let’s talk. Maybe I can get it done for you.

My Prime Directive for writing this email newsletter

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A few weeks ago, marketer Matt Giaro interviewed me for his podcast.

Maybe because Matt also writes daily emails, or maybe because he’s into direct marketing, but he asked me questions I actually enjoyed answering and had something to say about.

The result is that this podcast appearance is one of my less horrific ones.

At one point, Matt asked me how I think about tying up my emails into the offers I’m making.

I told Matt how I think about that. But then I told him something that I think is much more important.

​​In fact, it’s my Prime Directive for writing this email newsletter.

It has never been to make money.

Maybe you think I’m signaling how good of a guy I am by telling you that. That’s not it. Consider this:

My Prime Directive also hasn’t been to provide value for my readers, or even to entertain them.

Nope.

My Prime Directive for this newsletter is very unsexy, very uninspiring, and a bit inhuman, almost Borg-like.

It’s simply… to keep this newsletter going day after day.

I’m writing this email from the Athens airport, waiting for my flight to Barcelona.

I’ve been in Greece for the past 5 days. It’s a kind of vacation, though each day I found a break in my “vacation time” to write this daily email.

Perhaps that’s because I’m a bit of a obsessive-compulsive beaver.

Or perhaps it’s a perfectly logical, rational decision. In the words of Morgan Housel, the author of The Psychology of Money:

“What I want to have is endurance. I want to be so unbreakable financially in the short run to increase the odds that I will be able to stick around as an investor for the stocks that I do own to compound for the longest period of time. If you understand the math of compounding, you know that the big gains come at the end of the period.”

… and I’d add, it’s not just stocks. This is also true for other assets, such as skills you’re building, knowledge you’re stacking up, content you’re creating, or email subscribers you’re attracting.

That said, just because my Prime Directive is rather inhuman — “resistance is futile, another email will follow tomorrow” — doesn’t mean I can’t on occasion try to make these emails valuable to you.

So let me take this moment to remind you of the old chestnut, which is no less true because it’s preached so often:

The best time to finally start something you have been putting off for an eternity — is today.

It doesn’t have to be an email list you write to daily.

There are plenty of other good investments out there, which you can start investing a nickel’s worth of time, energy, or money into right now.

But if you don’t hate writing… and if you happen to like flexibility and independence… then an email list of engaged readers is a good investment to start today.

And if you want some practical tips about how to do that in a way that meshes with your sense of self, assuming you’re not a natural-born salesman, then the podcast I did with Matt might be worth listening to.

The topic for that podcast was “How to send daily emails that make money without selling.”

The topic came up because I heard from a few people that it never seems I’m selling in these emails.

Of course, that can be because there are times I’m not actually selling anything, like today. (The Borg can subsist for months without food.)

On the other hand, there were also unbroken periods — stretching for years at a time — when each email I sent ended with a CTA to buy a paid product I was selling.

And yet, people somehow didn’t find it salesy… and they wanted to know how I do that.

If you’re curious too, I break it down in the interview with Matt. The link is here:

What a day to fly

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“Oh what the f—”

I arrived to the airport today around 8:45am to be faced with a giant, hideous snake, made up of people and luggage, starting at the check-in counters, folding in on itself a dozen times, and finally stretching its tail some hundred yards into the depths of the terminal.

I immediately made my way for the “last call” line. Even that took almost 45 minutes before I finally made it to the check-in counter.

​​I handed my id to the woman behind the counter. ​​She wasn’t interested.

“I need proof of your booking,” she said.

“What?”

“I need to see proof that you’ve bought a ticket.”

“The proof’s there in the computer,” I said. I helpfully pointed to her computer monitor for her.

She flipped it around so I could see. It showed a booting-up window. It was frozen.

“The computers aren’t working,” she said. “I need proof that you’ve bought a ticket.”

Maybe you’ve heard. There was some giant IT crash all around the world today. America. Australia. Europe. Hospitals. Banks. Airlines.

I produced proof of booking in the end.

​​And in return, I got a flimsy piece of paper, written out by hand, with my name on it and the code for the flight. That was my boarding pass today.

I won’t go into the details of all my adventures today.

Suffice to say, the situation was a huge mess, everywhere, all at once.

As I stood there at the airport, in a crowd of thousands of people, all of us burdened with luggage, all confused, all indecisive and yet unhappy to stay where we were, I thought that this was a little sampler of what Porter Stansberry has been predicting for 15 years or more.

“End of America.” Total social collapse. A world in which things stop working, and we’re suddenly exposed and helpless.

I don’t know if Stansberry’s predictions will ever come true.

But I do know that predictions like that always get attention.

Fear works. So does greed, if you can tie it into the fear, and make a claim like copywriter Gary Halbert once did:

“How You Can Profit From The Coming Stock Market Crash And Financial Blood-Bath That Is Going To Be Caused By Cash-Rich Drug Dealers And Other Criminal Scum!”

The thing is, fear and greed can be good at getting buyers. But they might not be very good at getting repeat buyers, the buyers who actually build a direct response business.

There has to be something more.

And to find out what that something more is, today I’ll invite you to read an essay that has been ringing in my head for years.

This essay explains why the “End of America” sales letter was such a huge success, when hundreds of similar sales messages, all making the same predictions and claims, didn’t even come close.

And this analysis comes from a man who should know, because he got the sales numbers of all these hundreds of sales letters, and he got the copy to compare. Plus, he’s a master copywriter himself, who has coached and guided dozens of other master copywriters.

If you’re interested in copywriting, at all, then this essay is worth a read:

https://www.markford.net/2019/12/09/

Agency clients who don’t stay

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Last week, I was talking to the COO at a health clinic.

The CEO of that clinic — the doctor who heads the clinic — has written a good book, with lots of top endorsements and lots of 5-star reviews on Amazon.

But the book is hardly a best seller. I’m guessing it maybe makes a few dozen sales a month.

“You know,” I said in the voice of a precocious 9-year-old child, “you can run ads on Amazon to promote the book.” I’m smart like that, and I know lots of stuff, so I like to show it off.

“Oh yeah we tried that,” the COO said. “We hired an agency a while back to run ads on Amazon for us. But it didn’t drive that many more sales, and we were paying the agency $1k a month just to keep it going. So we stopped.”

Now, here are a few random facts, which I hope to snap together for you like nuclei colliding and fusing to release a tremendous amount of energy:

1. The core offer for this health clinic is a program that costs $50k a year

2. Rich, successful people tend to read books

3. People who read a book all the way through are prime prospects for an upsell, even a ridiculously elastic one ($5 => $50k)

You see where I’m going with this?

It’s quite feasible that, for this particular business, one good extra client a year, attracted via the help of this Amazon ads agency, would pay for the entire year’s services of the ads agency, and then some.

That would be great for the health clinic, for the Amazon ads agency, and presumably, for the patient who had decided to invest in that expensive year-long program.

And yet, it wasn’t happening.

I’m bringing this up because over the past few weeks, along with talking to health clinic COOs, I’ve also been talking to people who offer services and run agencies of different stripes.

I’ve heard a few of them complaining:

“We can’t make clients see the unique value of our services”

“The clients are never permanent, and I seem like a Chinese acrobat juggling many plates at once”

“Clients are comparing my work to much cheaper freelancers”

A part of this really can come down to having bum clients. Not much to do there, except find better clients.

But what if you have — or have had — clients like the health clinic I wrote about above? Somebody with a solid business… a good product… decent marketing… and still they couldn’t see the value in continuing to pay for your services, which should be plugging up a real gap in their business?

Well, in that case, write me and tell me about it.

I’m curious to hear your story.

And maybe we can figure out a way to prevent this from happening again… and even to profit from those clients who already got away.