Upsells

$90k upsell to a $39 magazine subscription

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I found the following via Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine site. You gotta pay for that site, and I happily do. It clues me in to wonders like the following:

For the past dozen or more years, select subscribers to National Geographic magazine (one-year print subscription: $39) have been getting a unique sales letter in the mail.

The sales letter, which comes with an attractive brochure, is making a pitch for a $90k upsell — and apparently selling out the offer year after year.

I bet you’re curious what this $90k upsell could be. I mean, it’s quite a leap from $39. ​​What could possibly be worth it?

I’ll tell you.

The offer is called “Africa by Private Jet.” It involves:

* 20 days
​
* 7 different countries

​* A private Boeing 757, refitted to accommodate just 51 expert travelers instead of the standard 233 budget sardines

​* Visits to the best big game, big ape, and big culture locations across Africa

​* Professional scientists as tour guides, an on-staff physician, and an expedition chef

​* An inaugural dinner with Jane Goodall in London (first stop of the trip) and a farewell dinner in Rome (last stop)

​* A safe, fascinating, hassle-free adventure; a feeling of importance and superiority; interesting dinner party stories for a lifetime; all backed by the good name of National Geographic Society

The sales letter made me want to go.

And it reminded me of Ken McCarthy’s Advanced Copywriting for Serious Info Marketers seminar.

One of Ken’s many messages in that seminar was that if you think a bit, you will find higher-ticket offers — which cost 2x, 10x, 100x, even 2,307x of what your front-end costs — and your best or very best customers will still happily buy.

There’s no shortcut to that bit of thinking.

But perhaps a good starting point is to conjure up an absolutely incredible experience or transformation you yourself would like to enjoy — and then just take others along with you on that trip.

Anyways, my offer today has little to do with the above National Geographic story, except the following:

Before he got to talking about upsells, Ken McCarthy spent the majority of that Advanced Copywriting seminar teaching what he believes to be the “most important, do-or-die copywriting skill.”

He first teased people in the seminar, and had them guess what they thought this skill might be. People guessed:

Stirring up curiosity?

Coming up with a big idea?

Sounding believable?

Nope. Ken had a mechanical skill in mind. And he said this one mechanical skill covers 90% of what it takes to be a copywriter. If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Dr. Bejako the sadistic dentist goes to work on the “mystery box” bonus

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Long-time readers of this newsletter might know I’m a big fan of screenwriter William Goldman. Goldman won two screenwriting Oscars, one for Butch Cassidy and another for All The President’s Men.

​​He also wrote The Princess Bride.

​​And of course, Goldman wrote Marathon Man, which starred Sir Laurence Olivier in the role of the sadistic dentist Dr. Szell (“Is it safe?”).

I thought of Dr. Szell because I’ve never before been compared to a dentist, but it finally happened today.

​​Author and copywriter Angie Archer, who not only took me up on my Most Valuable Email offer, but was one of the first to take me up on the free but valuable, time-limited offer included inside MVE, wrote me to say:

This feels like a trip to the dentist.

I know it’ll be good for me, but…

Here, before I talk myself out of it, is [Angie taking me up on my ‘mystery box’ offer].

You might not know what a “mystery box” offer is.

It’s an idea I got from marketer Rich Schefren. Rich once offered a “mystery box” upsell for $29. He didn’t say what was in the box, only that the buyer should trust him, and his claim that the box is worth at least 10x the asking price.

Rich’s “mystery box” upsell converted at a crazy 78% — 2x or 3x what a typical upsell will do. What’s more, Rich says the offer got zero negative chargebacks, and ended up forming a segment of his best customers.

So a mystery box might be worth experimenting with in your own marketing. You just gotta be firm, and not give in, and not tell people what’s inside the box.

That’s what I won’t tell you what my MVE “mystery box” offer is. I will just say it is very valuable, more so than the price of this course, and that it’s something I probably won’t keep up for very long.

So if you are interested in taking me up on the Most Valuable Email and the free but valuable, time-limited mystery box offer it contains, it might make sense to act now.

​​The launch period is coming to an end in a few hours time, at 12 midnight PST tonight. After that deadline, the price will go up. If you’d like to get in before then:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Evergreen “wireless” fears

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Did you ever hear of “radio face”? It was a curious affliction that swept through households in England in 1925.

​​The background:

Radio had started to spread in the early 1920s. It became more and more popular to have one at home. As a result, radio programming started to explode like corn over a fire.

By 1925, many people found themselves leaning in to the loud speaker… straining to hear each crackling word of the news or the radio drama.

Finally, a companion who was ready to entertain all day long!

Radio seemed perfect. Until, that is, some of the female listeners noticed a worrisome thing. From an article I read:

“The strain of trying to catch every word of wireless broadcast constantly puckers the lines around a woman’s forehead, and draws more lines around the sides of her mouth.”

As a result, many women in England started to live in fear of “wireless wrinkles.”

“Concentration at the Earphones Brings Wrinkles to the Brow.”

Who knows, maybe they were right?

In any case, this made me think how evergreen the fear of “wireless” has been. You could use it in 1925… and also in 2021.

For example, over the past couple of years, I’ve written a lot of copy for a team of ecommerce guys.

One of the longest-running front-end advertorials that we’ve had going is about the fear of “wireless pickpockets.” The offer is an RFID blocking card you put in your wallet, to keep these wireless pickpockets from swiping your money… and giving you wrinkles from all the frowning you would do afterwards.

A few years ago, Stefan Georgi and Justin Goff ran a webinar, offering to critique copy. I submitted the “wireless pickpockets” advertorial.

Stefan and Justin looked at the advertorial tweaking the copy wouldn’t produce much improvement… but Justin had some tested-and-proven advice about the rest of the funnel:

* Add a lot of reason why copy for the first upsell — even though it was just more of the same RFID card.

I passed that golden info on to my clients. But as far as I know, they never implemented it. So maybe it will be useful to you instead, in case you or your clients also run some kind of ecommerce offer.

Anyways, Justin and Stefan put out two more webinars over the past few weeks. If you haven’t watched them yet, I might write more about them in the coming days… and tell you about any golden info that I find inside.

Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a cool newsletter. It’s called The Pessimists Archive. It’s where I found the above story about radio face and wireless wrinkles.

The whole newsletter is really just interesting newspaper cutouts from decades past. It shows you how many things never change… how many fears and appeals stay the same… how predictable human reactions can be, even century after century.

And you know what? This can be valuable if you are the type to track trends and profit from them.

​​So in case you want to check out news from the past that’s still news, here’s the link to the Pessimists Archive:

https://pessimistsarchive.substack.com/