Mental Shortcuts

The third-hottest release of 2023 closes after just one night

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Last night, with crowds of paparazzi pushing outside the velvet rope, and a few stars making their way from their limos down the red carpet to the doors of the classy old theater, my Influential Emails show had its grand opening.

The show ran for exactly one night.

And then this morning, I locked and chained the theater doors, removed the “INFLUENTIAL EMAILS” letters from the marquee, and took out an ad in the local paper to announce this show is now over.

As I announced in the lead up and during the grand opening of Influential Emails, this promotion would go until Sunday at the latest, and I might close it down sooner.

Well, that sooner is today, about 12 hours after the initial grand opening. I would have closed it earlier but I was asleep.

The reason why I did this is that made up my mind, before I launched this promo, what a nice sum of money would be to make from it.

I’ve now made that money and more. And so the cart is now closed.

If you managed to squeeze in to the Influential Emails show, I hope you will get value out of it in a way pays for itself, and soon.

If you wanted to get in but didn’t manage to, then all I can say is — if you’re not too angered by this experience, then maybe you will have better luck next time.

And if you were not interested in buying Influential Emails, then I can share the following valuable truth with you:

You can choose who you sell to, and how much of something you sell. There’s no law against it. And it’s ultimately good for business, in many different ways.

Now here’s a little sneak peek behind the scenes:

This promo didn’t really run for 12 hours.

It ran for about 36 hours.

I opened it up a day earlier for a private showing, just for people who were on the waiting list and who had already bought something from me in the past.

I also gave them an inducement to buy within the first 24 hours.

Many did.

That’s how I managed to make more money with this one-and-a-half-day promo than I used to make in a whole month, the first few years of my copywriting career.

Some of the folks who were invited for this private showing had bought pretty much all of my offers in the past.

Some had bought just one of my courses.

And some only bought my little $5 Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

It didn’t matter.

They are all valued and ongoing customers, and I wanted to say thanks with this special opportunity.

All that’s to say, if you have not yet bought my 10 Commandments book, then consider doing so.

It might teach you a thing or two about copywriting. And it might just prove to be a ticket to an exclusive future show, and a walk down the red carpet. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Take your likes to the bank

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A couple days ago, I sent an email about an email trick to get more engagement. To which, I got a response — an engagement!

The response came from Jakub Červenka, who runs an info publishing business in the men’s sexual health niche.

First, Jakub just replied to tell me he liked that email about engagement. Then we got into a bit of an email conversation. Then he told me about the trouble he was having with his Facebook ad agency.

And then he wrote:

===

So I learnt I am decent marketer and cannot let go of this part in my company.

Also, started writing daily emails again recently and looking at the mails I am writing now and I did year ago… it is as if 2 different people wrote them and that makes me happy.

And this is the main reason I am writing this to you, John, I think me improving so much is lot thanks to you. Yours is the only newsletter that I read almost daily and is amongst the 3 that survived my brutal opt-out-from everything. I don’t mean this to sound bad, I bought your Copy Riddles, Most Valuable email, your 2 pump-postcard newsletter and your latest Sales emails training.

I like all your courses, a lot, probably best spend money in copywriting courses, but still I think I learn most from your daily emails – probably due to the fact that it does not seem like I am working, I enjoy reading your stuff and it is small bites daily.

Keep up the good work,

Your grateful student and zealous reader,

Jakub

===

I once had a reader write in to tell me he always skips the quoted parts of my emails, the parts in italics that start with ===.

In case you also skipped what Jakub wrote, I can tell you it was a testimonial, with good things to say about my courses and in particularly about these emails.

And here’s something I’ve noticed about getting nice testimonials like this:

It rarely happens that somebody writes in just because they want to tell me how great they think one of my courses is, or how great I am.

Yes, it does happen from time to time. But it’s kind of like finding a Black Lotus in hundreds and hundreds of packs of Magic The Gathering cards — valuable yes, but also rare.

A little more common is when I explicitly ask for feedback on a course or training, and offer an incentive to reply.

People then reply in a pack. But even then, it’s not an overwhelming number of responses, and not everything I get is a great testimonial I can feature.

Really, the bulk of the good testimonials I’ve gotten, and that I’ve featured in emails and on sales pages, came like Jakub’s message above.

They came as an “oh by the way” that people tacked on when replying to one of my emails that had to do with an entirely unrelated matter. It’s been a steady drip-drip over the years that’s eventually filled up several buckets.

It’s popular to say in the direct response world that only sales mean anything, and that you can’t take your likes to the bank.

Except you kind of can.

True, a great testimonial like Jakub’s above is not cash. I can’t go and buy cans of beans and bags of rice with it today.

But a good testimonial is like a check, and eventually it will clear. Somebody somewhere will eventually be converted into a new and loyal customer because of testimonials like Jakub’s above. We all look to others when making our own decisions.

So my point is, if you work to increase engagement with your emails, you will get more testimonials, and you will be able to take those to the bank, in time.

Of course, for that to happen you do have to feature your testimonials so people can see them.

Sales pages are one place.

But really, emails are the main place, because emails are kind of the headlines for your sales pages.

Which brings me to the my latest Sales emails training, as Jakub put it, aka my Simple Money Emails course.

I’m probably giving away too much in these emails and I’m probably killing some sales for my courses like Simple Money Emails.

Maybe I will fix that in time.

For now, if you want to see how I’ve used emails to make (up to) tens of thousands of dollars in sales per day, and still kept readers coming back tomorrow, then Simple Money Emails will show you, and will show you how you can do it too. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Take a look at this

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Maybe you’ve heard that last month, marketer Todd Brown assembled a gathering called Copy Legends:

A bunch of top copywriters, in a mansion in Palm Beach. Sitting around a big table. Talking openly for a day, while cameras and microphones record it all.

What did these legendary copywriters have to say?
​​
Well, for example, during a discussion of headlines, Copy Legend Kyle Milligan, who used to be a copy chief at financial publisher Agora and who made a name for himself by analyzing sales letters on YouTube, said the following:

===

I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They’re looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention.

Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says ‘look at this’ and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time-tested methods there is.

If you don’t know what else to do for an opener, go with ‘Take a look at this.’ It’s like old faithful.

===

Kyle’s comment got a lot of people nodding their legendary heads around the Copy Legends table.

I found this amusing.

Because it’s a kind of anti-proof element for the whole concept of Copy Legends. As Todd says himself in the headline for the Copy Legends sales page, that concept is:

​“NEW Copy Techniques Working Like Crazy Today”

As in, they didn’t exist yesterday, and they will probably change by tomorrow.

It makes good sense to position an offer like this.

Like Kyle said around the Copy Legends table, people want that promise. They want whiz-bang tactics. And they will pay good money for such whiz-bangery, even though the really effective methods, as Kyle said at the actual Copy Legends event, are things that keep working year after year, decade after decade.

Todd Brown will soon release upon the world his Copy Legends recordings.

I won’t be buying it. But I certainly won’t tell you not to buy if you are after “new copy techniques.”

On the other hand, perhaps you are looking for timeless, time-tested copywriting techniques.

​​Technique that worked 50 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago… and that will continue to work into the future, because they are based on fundamental human psychology and the competitive research of history’s greatest copywriters.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then… take a look at this:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

It’s not funny if they’re laughing

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I got a testimonial. I’m very excited. I want to share it with you.

I know, I know. You can’t wait.

But there’s a point to the testimonial, beyond just the self-promotion. Trust me.

New reader Kameron Bryant, who just got my Simple Money Emails course yesterday, asked me for the link to Monday’s storytelling presentation, which is a disappearing bonus if you get Simple Money Emails right now.

After I sent the link over, Kameron wrote:

===

Thanks for sending over and I’m loving the course.

In my eyes it’s more than a course. I see it as a money making email road map.

I’ll be re-reading for the foreseeable future.

Thanks

P.S

I’m a newbie in the email copy space and the testimonial from the guy who said he finally felt comfortable getting client work is what pushed me over… and he was right.

===

Now, there is no doubt I am telling you this in a kind of blindingly obvious way to promote Simple Money Emails. But if you want or need a marketing lesson as well, consider the following bit of science:

There was a study in Australia once upon a time. They made university students listen to a recording of a comedian, along with the laugh track provided by an audience.

In one scenario, the students believed the audience on the recording is students from the same university.

In another scenario, the students believed the audience are members of the far-right One Nation party.

In a third scenario, the students just got the recording of the comedian, without the audience laughter.

Result?

The laugh track made the comedian 400% funnier in the “just like us” case… 0% funnier in the “despicable them” case.

As the authors of the study put it, “It’s not funny if they’re laughing.”

Same goes with sales:

People who are just like your prospect is the strongest form of social proof, stronger even than getting a thumbs-up from a Tony Robbins or a Bill Clinton or whoever is the star in your industry.

That’s the lesson you can draw from the last line of Kameron’s testimonial above, beyond the fact that you should buy Simple Money Emails.

But back to self-promotion:

Tomorrow at 4pm CET/10am EST/7am PST, Kieran Drew and I will host a free presentation on storytelling.

The presentation is free as in, you gotta have Simple Money Emails to get in for free. If you have SME before the presentation starts, you get the presentation link and the subsequent recording. Otherwise no.

This is the last email I will send before tomorrow’s presentation. So if you’d like to get in, the time to move is now.

The sales page is at the link below, where you can find testimonials from a book editor… a career coach… a freelance copywriter… an in-house copywriter.

I haven’t yet added the testimonial by an online entrepreneur, Kieran Drew himself, who wrote recently that Simple Money Emails is the the best email writing course he’s ever taken.

If you’d like to join us tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

My alternative to shameless teasing

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A couple days ago, I gave a copy critique to a successful course creator. Let’s call him Liam.

Liam is writing a welcome sequence for his newsletter. He has decided to not promote anything in his first seven emails, but rather just to offer solid advice and inspiration — the dreaded “value” autoresponder.

While I certainly don’t condone the nasty practice of not selling anything across seven welcome emails, I figured Liam’s mind was made up on this point, so I didn’t argue it. But I told him that, even if he is not selling his main course in these emails, he can certainly seed it.

Liam already does this already to an extent, by teasing his course in a PS and saying something like, “… if you liked this, you’ll find more good stuff like it in my course XYZ, which I’ll tell you more about soon.”

Teasing like this is fine. It works, and it can work great, the more shameless you’re willing to get with it.

But there’s an alternative to shameless teasing.

​​It makes for more natural content. It’s more sly. And yet it can be even more effective than teasing itself.

Would you like to know what I have in mind? ​​What I told this successful course creator? What I practice myself to good effect from time to time?

I’ll tell ya:

It’s simply to use yourself and your products as your case studies when illustrating a point that the reader should take away.

How exactly do you do that?

Well, look at what I’ve done in this email. I could have made the same point — use yourself as a case study — by talking about some legendary and dead marketer like Gary Halbert… or by referring to a scene from a movie like Brokeback Mountain Part 2.

Instead, I did it by about talking about ME ME ME, or more specifically, the way ME interacted with a client and the advice me gave him.

Which brings me to my offer today:

I do not offer one-off coaching critiques. Well, I did with Liam, but that was a special case, and not something I offer otherwise. Forget about that.

What I do offer is medium- to long-term, one-on-one coaching. It involves both email copywriting — you got a free tip on that today — and more broadly, easy marketing and money-making levers that I spot in your business, the pulling of which is often more lucrative and long-lasting than making any copy tweaks.

My coaching is expensive, and I only take on people rarely, when I feel they have a good chance of profiting and quickly.

If you are interested in getting my critical eye, help, and guidance applied to your business, then hit reply. Tell me who you are and what you do, and we can start a conversation to see if it might be a fit.

The psychology of misdirection

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Today I meant to write an elaborate email about the sales page for my Simple Money Emails course.

But against my better judgment, I got roped into chauffeuring a friend of my father through stop-and-go traffic in the middle of the city.

While my blood pressure has largely returned to normal, the 45 minutes that that unnecessary drive ate up cannot be replaced. So the SME email will have to wait until tomorrow.

As for today, let me tell you something acute that one of my readers wrote in with a few days ago, after I wrote about my 10 jaw-dropping email deliverability tips. My reader wrote:

===

#5 – Links at the end of almost every email
I noticed that most of the time it is either an offer or an affiliate offer. Very rarely do you link elsewhere, unless you invite engagement like right now.

===

That’s very true. I almost always link to something I am selling at the end of my email. I never link to, say, the Red Cross website or to a cute ferret video.

On the one hand you might say that’s only natural — it’s what most daily sales emails look like, because their goal is to make sales.

But at the same time, I don’t have a huge list, and I don’t have surprising new offers every day. In other words, I am not necessarily sacrificing sales by not plugging the same well-trodden offer in each of my emails, day after day after day.

Plus, I remember a time when I first got onto Ben Settle’s list, circa 2012.

After a few weeks, I dismissed Ben because each of his emails at the time followed the same format: promise + tease + CTA to sign up to his print newsletter. I gradually got bored and I unsubscribed.

It took a conscious effort a few years later to get back on Ben’s list and start listening to him again, and I only did that because there still wasn’t anybody else talking about email regularly.

So when you put those two things together, you get the following heretical conclusion, heretical at least in the direct marketing world:

I can see good business sense in occasionally linking to stuff that won’t make you any money, but that can benefit, surprise, or delight your audience.

As Rich Schefren said once about the length of his own emails, you want to keep people guessing. You don’t ever want to give them a reason to dismiss you out of hand, before they’ve even had a chance to see your message.

I figure there must be some optimal rate of “public service emails” that keeps the interest of a large number of readers, while still allowing sales emails to predominate, and while maintaining or even increasing total sales. I don’t know what that rate might be, but I’m guessing somewhere around 10%-15%.

All that is really a long open to the following close:

When I decided to write this email today, I asked myself what was the most valuable resource that I don’t sell, but that I could share with readers on my list.

One thing popped up in my mind immediately.

It’s a book. I discovered it a few weeks ago. It talks about the psychology and neurology of misdirection.

Misdirection isn’t a great term, by the way — because what it really is is the control and focus of attention, along channels that serve the purpose of, say, a magician… or, say, a marketer or copywriter.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been devouring this book and taking pages of notes on it.

I was planning on hoarding all this knowledge for myself, and profiting from it all by myself.

But you gotta keep people guessing.

At the same time, to make myself feel better, I tell myself not one person in a hundred on my list will actually get this book, and even fewer will actually read it and apply it. But in case you’re curious, here’s the naked, non-affiliate link of a valuable resources that I do not sell:

https://bejakovic.com/misdirection

Why I ignored your social proof

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I remember an email once in which marketer Ben Settle wrote,

“Ignore social proof when buying.”

I reckon that was a sweetly pointless message, since in his very next email, Ben sent a testimonial to convince people to buy his offer.

Yesterday, I sent out an email with a job posting for a content writer. I got lots of responses, and witnessed lots of selling strategies and offers.

As I read through these applications, I floated up and above my own body, and observed my own reactions. Here’s one surprising revelation from that out-of-body experience:

A few people sent me testimonials for themselves or their work, or fancier still, they included a link to testimonials on their site.

I just frowned at this. “What good are testimonials to me?” I said. “I know exactly what I’m looking for, and either I see it here in the application, or I don’t.”

I thought about this afterwards.

It’s a rare situation when we know exactly what we want.

Most of the time, we are vague on what we want, how that should look, and even why we want it. So we ping the environment for clues. That’s why social proof is so good in so many situations.

Yes, like my job listing yesterday shows, there are situations when it makes no sense to provide social proof, and where it might even work against you. But such situations are vanishingly rare.

​​It probably doesn’t make much sense to worry about it, not unless you’re applying for a job where the customer or client hyper-clearly spells out what he is looking for.

So my only advice today is to flip the above story inside out, and to repeat what Ben Settle said:

Ignore social proof when buying.

​​Instead, make up your own mind.

And if you do ever read a testimonial or endorsement, treat it for what it is — somebody leaning over to you at the roulette table and whispering in your ear, “I suggest betting on red. It worked for me last week and I won a bunch o’ boodle.”

​​It might be sound advice… but only if you’re playing with money you can afford to lose.

That’s my public service announcement for today. Tomorrow, like Ben did a while back, I’ll probably send you a testimonial, one to sell my Copy Riddles course.

But that’s tomorrow. Today, I’ll just point out that there are lots of very clear and very good reasons you might want to join Copy Riddles even if this were the first time I were offering this training, even if it had zero social proof, and in fact even if you knew little to nothing about me personally.

All those reasons are spelled out on the first two and a half pages of the Copy Riddles sales letter. If you’d like to read that so you can make up your own mind, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

A VERY busy man writes me a note

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Last week, I got an email with the subject line, “A note from a VERY busy man.”

“Oh God,” I thought.

Before I clicked to open the email, I saw that the very busy man’s name is Tom O’Donnell. I looked Tom up.

​​It turns out he is a business consultant, a specialist in negotiation, a polyglot (Serbo-Croatian, Vietnamese, Turkish), and a former event manager involved in “producing events for people such as the Queen of Norway, the Princess of Sweden, Arthur Miller, the Dalai Lama, three Presidents of the United States, four Vice Presidents and others.”

“All right,” I said. “So maybe Tom really is VERY busy. Then why is he writing to me?”

Here’s Tom’s note:

===

It is possible that you do not actually know me although I am a subscriber to your newsletter. I am a VERY busy man who is frequently too busy to slow WAY down and listen to outside ideas and take counsel from others (to my regret) but one exception I have made is to purchase every thing you offer and I have sat here today and realized how valuable all of it is to me (I can’t speak for others.).

I had been trying to learn copywriting as a way to increase my ability to sell and influence others so I had discovered your riddles course and enjoyed it, then the daily newsletter, then the MVE, then the postcards, and today I purchased the Amazon book and subscribed to the bookclub and I have been sitting here in Minnesota, USA as you sit and work in Spain and I wanted to thank you for the work and effort.

Your material and the people you recommend (like Ben Settle) are becoming my approach to how I conduct my life. I am 76 years old and have had some fine coaches and models but discovering you was truly mind-changing. Please keep it up. As you once wrote about Ben Settle (let me paraphrase) “Ben Settle is an acquired taste.” In you, I have discovered what I need. Thanks and PLEASE keep it up.

Tom ODonnell

p.s. Use this any way you choose.

===

I am choosing to use Tom’s very flattering note by featuring it in this email, with gratitude.

But you might wonder whether there’s any point you can possibly take from this email besides the fact that I am a swell guy, at least according to Tom.

There is a point you can take away. In fact, this email is a illustration of an important technique I had spotted last year, and started practicing since.

This technique I believe is very valuable — perhaps VERY valuable. From what I see, it’s also very underused.

In case you are interested, you can see this technique explained and described below in an email I wrote last year.

By the way, I often cringe when I read my old emails, but this particular one happens to be a favorite. In case that’s got you curious:

https://bejakovic.com/send-me-your-praise-and-admiration/

I failed in my quest for the gift of the gab

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Yesterday I tried to win the gift of the gab. I didn’t manage it.

What surprised me was that I found I had really hoped for it. I was almost desperate to get it.

Background:

I’ve been vacationing in Ireland for a week. Yesterday was the last full day. It was supposed to be the climax — going to Blarney Castle outside Cork, to kiss the Blarney Stone.

Legend says that anyone who kisses the stone will be blessed with the “gift of the gab” — the skill of talk, palaver, flattery, “the ability to deceive without offending.”

But the kissing didn’t happen for me. The line to kiss the stone was impossibly long, down the stairs, out the castle, into the gardens.

My friend Sam and I had spent too much time idling around the Blarney Castle grounds, inspecting and enjoying the fern garden, the bee observatory, the lake with the gold treasure at the bottom of it, the horse paddock with no horses, the impressive botanical garden, the wish-granting magic stairs.

What a waste of time.

Because the line for the actual castle was building up in the meantime, putting a bigger and bigger barrier between me and the gift of the gab.

My point:

We all want something external, outside ourselves, a talisman, a magic spell, a divine approval, something to believe in as cause and guarantee for our success, and as a motivator to action.

Regarding my failed quest for the gift of the gab:

The last time I was in Ireland, 10+ years ago, was because I was competing at the European University Debate Championships, even though I had only taken up debating months earlier.

In the decade since, I met two of my long-term girlfriends — relationships that lasted multiple years — when I ran up to an unfamiliar girl on the street and started gabbin’ away.

And today, I have this gabbin’ email newsletter, which is read regularly by some thousands of people, and which provides me everything I ever wanted in life, at least as far as business goes.

Meaning, I shouldn’t really be desperate for a magic stone to grant me the ability to chat, chatter, and use words to connect with people.

And yet, yesterday I found myself scheming to get back to Cork at the very next opportunity, book a hotel near the Blarney Castle, and be the first person in line in the morning to kiss the stone and get that magic gift of the gab.

So I’m writing this email to tell myself as much as to tell you that power and responsibility aren’t in the Blarney Stone or really anywhere else you need to travel to. As Tolstoy wrote, the Kingdom of God is within you.

It can be valuable to remember that.

On the flip side, there’s no denying that something external to believe in will sell, and will sell big. It’s the allure of a new mechanism, as copywriters like to call it.

But let’s get off the ethereal plane and descend to a more mercenary plane:

Specifically, the plane of my Most Valuable Email course.

I’ve made sure that course contains a mysterious and magical mechanism, the “Most Valuable Email trick.” It’s a big part of the reason why many people have bought this course.

But as I make clear on the MVE sales page, what’s really most valuable is the process of applying this Most Valuable Email trick to yourself, which makes you a better marketer and copywriter every day, and which as a side-effect produces interesting and influential and even sellable content.

Or in the words of Spanish A-list copywriter Rafa Casas, who bought MVE right when I put it out:

===

Thanks for the course. It’s true that it can be read in an hour, but it needs more resting time and practice to get the full potential out of it. Which is a lot.

===

So if you want to develop and nurture and even cherish the gift of the gab that’s already in you, and learn to sell daily without offending, here’s the full info on Most Valuable Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

I got burned by a deadline, don’t let it happen to you

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This past Tuesday I got an email with the subject line,

“We’re funding your newsletter growth”

The body of the email explained that Beehiiv, the Substack competitor I use for my new health newsletter, was offering to match any money I might put into its Beehiiv Boosts service, up to $2,500.

Boosts are basically a coregistration service for various Beehiiv newsletters – you subscribe to one newsletter, you immediately get a bunch more paid recommendations you can subscribe to with just one click.

I had already used Boosts before. I knew it worked fine and delivered quality subscribers.

So taking advantage of this new “deposit matching” offer to the max was a no brainer. I understood fully that it translated into 1,000-1,250 extra subscribers for free.

To seal the deal, later in the day I got an email from my friend Will Ward. Will wrote:

===

Hey you are using beehiv for your [health] newsletter right? This seems like a pretty good offer. Am considering switching over to max out the matching.

Are you on the $99 / month plan?

===

I smiled and nodded to myself with satisfaction. I’m all over it already, Will.

The next day, Wednesday, I went to check the deadline for this matching offer — by when do I have to deposit the money to get Beehiiv to match my deposit?

My eyes got wide, then shot forward out of my skull, and snapped back into their sockets.

It turned out the deadline had already passed. The offer was only good until end of day, Tuesday. I hadn’t noticed this in the one and only email about the offer.

As that realization sank in, that self-satisfied smile left my face.

“Well,” I said to myself, “I never really wanted this offer anyhow.”

I even meant it in that moment. Of course, it wasn’t true. It was just my brain trying to cover up a screw-up with a tolerable emotion rather than anger or frustration.

The fact is, I got burned by the deadline. But it doesn’t have to happen to you.

Because three hours still remain before I will retire my Most Valuable Postcard #2, at 8:31pm CET tonight.

The reason why I’m retiring this offer, in case you’re curious:

As the name of it suggests, MVP #2 is really just the remains of my short-lived subscription offer, the Most Valuable Postcard, which I ran last summer.

MVP #2 should be a standalone course, with clearer positioning, with its own sexy name, with a bit more bulk, and with an extra zero or two in the price.

So I will retire it. Maybe I will bring the content back in the future, changed slightly and priced much higher.

But if you would like to get it before it disappears, at the current very affordable price, you can buy it today, of your own choosing, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/