Psychology Behind Advertising

“Experts are scoffing”: How to manufacture proof out of thin air

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This past January, I kicked off the Insights & More Book Club. Every two months, we read a book specifically because it’s likely to be insightful and offer a change of perspective.

After I announced ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, the first book club book, Insights & More member Folarin Madehin wrote me to say:

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I don’t know if you know about this already, but here’s one relevant thing that came to mind… I think will interest you (certainly fascinated me):

The mass community response to the archeology community response to the Netflix show Ancient Apocalypse.

Here’s an article that reps the archeologists’ side. [link to an article on Artnet]

Here’s a twitter thread that reps the “masses” side. [link to a thread by the show’s producer]

Basically–the ‘experts’ say “thing wrong!” … and the ‘masses’ say “experts say thing wrong? Proves thing right!” … and of course–the show producer does a great job aligning himself with the masses and using this to his marketing advantage.

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So there you go. That’s how to manufacture proof out of thin air. “If they’re trying to suppress it, it must be valuable, and it must be true, regardless of what it is.”

Tonight, as this email goes out, I and the other members of the Insights & More Book Club will have our bimonthly book club call, to discuss the second book we’ve been reading, ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, and to just have an exchange of ideas and questions in a kind of easy and low-pressure mastermind.

After tonight, we will get going with the next Insights & More book. For reasons of proof and intrigue, I won’t publicly reveal the title of that book, but I will tell you it maps to ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛.

I only open up the Insights & More Book Club to new members every two months, as we are starting a new book.

I figure it doesn’t make sense to have somebody join mid way, when they won’t have time to actually read the book.

Right now, and for the next four days, as we are starting a new book, the doors to the Insights & More Book Club are slightly ajar.

If you’d like to join, you will have to be on my email list first.

Expert marketers and copywriters scoff and say my list is all fake. But maybe you can make up your own mind. To try it out, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Discipline in print

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Last night, I got a 4-word reply to my email about how quickly memory fails. A reader with a pseudonymous email address replied with just the following aimless question:

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John How r u?

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I got out my 3-ring binder of previous reader replies. I flipped through the pages in search of this reader’s email address. Sure enough, at the bottom of page 22, I found it. This reader had written me before. On January 24 of this year, in response to an email about teaching people to value your offer, this reader had written me to say:

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Who the fuck do you think you are?

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Now I remembered. I even wrote an email about that reply back in January.

Back then, I decided to keep this guy or gal on my list because 1) I don’t get many abusive replies from readers, and I’m more amused than bothered when it does happen and 2) I thought this reader might provide me fodder for an email in the future. That’s just what happened.

I proactively unsubscribed my “How r u” reader last night. Again, not because I was annoyed or bothered by the pointless reply.

“How r u” reader simply became a noble sacrifice to demonstrate an immensely important and fundamental point about all marketing, and in particular, about email marketing.

I honestly cannot overstate the importance of the following point. Even more so if you’re somebody like me — far from a born marketer, salesman, or promoter, and coming from a rather permissive and lax family background.

The point is this:

A key to all marketing, and perhaps the key to email marketing, is to train your audience.

Once upon a time, when I was very naive, I thought marketing was simply about getting the word out about what you have. “Whole frozen turkey, 16 lbs., $25.91. Walmart.”

Later, I figured out that marketing actually changes people — creates new desires, habits, beliefs. “Welcome to Marlboro country.”

But for some reason — again, I’m far from a born marketer or salesman – it took me a long, long while to connect the fact that 1) if you are creating marketing and 2) since marketing changes people then 3) you should consciously create marketing that changes people in a way that suits you.

This is what I mean when I say, train your audience. Tell ’em what to do. Reward those who do it. Punish those who don’t. And make an example of ’em.

100 years ago, John E. Kennedy said marketing is salesmanship in print.

Today, John E. Bejakovic is telling you, marketing is discipline in print.

Of course, maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you think I’m saying something offensive or crude or just wrong. In that case, I invite you to write in and tell me so. I promise to read what you write me, and to reply as politely and thoughtfully as I know how. Perhaps publicly.

In any case, let’s get on to the discipline:

For the past couple days, I’ve been talking about a group coaching program I’m planning for the future. The goal of this coaching program is to get people writing daily emails, regularly and well.

Right now, if you’re interested, you can get on the waiting list for that program. The waiting list is the only place I will make this program available.

And as I say on the optin page for the waiting list:

If you do sign up to the waiting list, you will get automated email from me with a few questions. Answering those questions will take all of two minutes, but it will give me valuable information to see whether this group coaching could actually be right for you. Please reply to that email within 24 hours with your answers. I will take anyone who doesn’t do this off the waiting list.

So far, a good number have signed up for the waiting list and have written me in reply to that automated email. I wrote back to each of them individually to say thanks.
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​But a few people have signed up to the waiting list, and then failed to reply to the automated email within 24 hours.

Maybe they changed their minds about the coaching. Maybe they simply forgot. Maybe they were testing me.

Whatever the reason may be, I took them off the waiting list, and I prevented them from getting back on. They might be fine people, but they are clearly not good prospects for a strict coaching program, which is what I intend for this program to be.

If you’re interested in this coaching program, then the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so.

I bet you already knew what I’ll write about in this email

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Last night I went to see Air, the new Ben Affleck movie about how Nike signed Michael Jordan.

Air is a typical rousing Hollywood stuff — a scrappy underdog does what it takes to win. It was fun to watch, but as the movie neared its emotional climax, I started to feel a kind of gnawing in my stomach.

I kept thinking, “This is it? This is what life is all about?”

A bunch of overworked, overweight, aging people in an office, hollering and high-fiving each other and gazing knowingly into each others’ eyes after their one triumph — getting a 21-year-old basketball player to agree to wear one kind of shoe instead of another kind of shoe?

But the movie is set in the 1980s. Maybe it reflects the corporate ideals of that era.

Anyways, let’s get back on track:

At the start of the movie, a convenience store clerk chats with the main character, played by Matt Damon. The clerk obviously knows a lot about basketball, and is sure Jordan won’t turn into anything big. The Matt Damon character is the only one who believes.

By the end of the movie, thanks to Matt Damon’s dogged believing, Nike signs Jordan in spite of impossible odds. Jordan immediately becomes a huge star. Nike goes on to sell a hundred million pairs of Air Jordans in the first year alone.

Matt Damon goes back to the convenience store and chats up the clerk again. The clerk nods his head. “I always knew Jordan would be a big thing,” he says.

“We all knew,” the Matt Damon character chuckles as he walks out the store.

As I’m sure you already knew, human memory is fallible. We forget, misremember, and flat-out make up stuff if it suits us and matches our sense of self.

You might think this only happens over the span of months or years, like it did with that convenience store clerk in Air.

But maybe you saw — and failed to remember — a new scientific study that went viral earlier this month. Scientists managed to show that people misremember stuff that happened as recently as half a second ago. And if the scientists stretched it out just a bit longer before asking — two seconds, three seconds — people’s memory became still worse and more inaccurate.

So my point for you, specifically for how you deal with yourself, is to write stuff down. Because you sure as hell won’t remember it.

And my point for you, specifically for how you deal with your prospects, is to keep reminding them, nudging them, and telling them the same thing you told them a million times before.

You rarely have people’s full attention. And even when you do have their full attention, they forget. Even if you just told them a second ago.

The only way your prospects are sure not to forget, and to maybe do what you want, is if you remind them today, tomorrow, the day after, and so on, hundreds of millions of Air Jordans into the future.

Which brings me to the group coaching I am planning. I first wrote about it yesterday. Now that I mention it, I’m sure you remember.

This planned group coaching is about email copywriting for daily emails — so you can remind your prospects of your offer over and over, in a way that they actually enjoy.

If you’re interested in this coaching, the first step is to get onto my email list. Click here to do that.

My diagnosis is that you’re trying to normalize rather than pathologize

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I first wrote about Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in this newsletter in August 2021. Clance and Imes are the two psychologists who, back in 1978, wrote a paper in which they defined something called imposter phenomenon.

The interesting thing is they called it imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome. From a recent article in The New Yorker:

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Every time Imes hears the phrase “impostor syndrome,” she told me, it lodges in her gut. It’s technically incorrect, and conceptually misleading. As Clance explained, the phenomenon is “an experience rather than a pathology,” and their aim was always to normalize this experience rather than to pathologize it.

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It might seem like a trivial difference, phenomenon rather than syndrome. It’s not trivial. Like Clance says in that quote, their goal was just to point out, normalize, say, “it’s okay that you feel like a faker, because others do too.”

But that’s not what the public wanted.

The public wanted a concrete disease, a disorder, or at least a syndrome — something unique and special they can point to and explain why they feel uncertain or uncomfortable or why their life is not how they imagine it. The pathological imposter syndrome does that, the wishy-washy, normal, everyday imposter phenomenon does not.

So the public took Clance and Imes’s idea, and they made it their own. Imposter syndrome.

But my real point for you is not the word choice of phenomenon vs syndrome. Sure, it is important, but it’s also the only part that Clance and Imes didn’t get right in their original paper, at least from a persuasion perspective.

My point for you is that difference between concrete vs. wishy washy, unique vs. everyday, pathological vs. normal, all of which Clance and Imes, whether they wanted to or not, definitely did get right in their paper.

People are looking for answers. They want to know to why their life is the way it is, and now the way they want it to be.

If, like Clance and Imes, you give people a satisfying answer to that eternal question, it can literally make you a star in your field, and can have your ideas spread on their own, like fire among dry brush that hasn’t seen water for years.

Maybe this entire email speaks little or not at all to you.

In that case, my diagnosis is that you’re being too nice, and you’re trying to normalize your prospects’ experiences, to give them small incremental improvements and understandings, rather than a total change in perspective in how they view their world.

My prognosis in that case is that you will struggle to be heard, and struggle to make sales. It could even be fatal to your business.

If you want a fix for that unfortunate and dangerous condition, then there’s a pill you can take. I even named it for you above.

But enough of playing doctor.

Back in my own house, the fact remains that I’m still in the process of spring cleaning. I’m throwing out old furniture and old courses, dusting off wardrobes and sales letters, and planning out how to redecorate my living room and my newsletter.

While that’s going on, I will just point you to my only book that’s currently available for sale, and also the only offer I have that doesn’t cost $100 or more. If you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Last day ever to buy Copy Riddles

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Today is the last day ever to buy Copy Riddles. At 2:31 EST tomorrow, Tuesday April 18, I will turn off the shopping cart for Copy Riddles and stop making this program available for purchase.

In the future, depending on interest, I will from time to time offer 2-month group coaching around the content inside Copy Riddles, the way I did for a small number of people last year.

The price for that future group coaching, if it does happen, will be at least $1,000 higher than the price for current self-study Copy Riddles course. This coaching will also only be only available to a few people at a time when it is available at all, since my personal time and attention will be required.

All that’s to say, if you’ve already gone through Copy Riddles, or you never had any interest in doing so, then unfortunately I have nothing for sale to offer you in this email. I promise to do better in the future.

On the other hand, if you have been thinking about Copy Riddles but you’ve been on the fence — an uncomfortable and jagged place — then today is the last day to buy Copy Riddles as a standalone, self-study course.

And if you somehow managed to miss the dozens of emails I’ve sent about Copy Riddles over the past days, months, and years, and you’re wondering what this program is really about, you can read the full details, including the experience of many people who have gone through Copy Riddles already, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

How to increase your average open rate by 1.95%

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My average daily open rate for the last week of February was 33.89%. My average daily open rate for the last week of March was 35.84%. That’s a staggering increase of 1.95%.

Well, it’s not really staggering. It’s not really anything.

Open rates don’t tell you much, and what they do tell you is often bad. I’ve written before how for one large list I was mailing with daily offers, I found a mild inverse relationship between open rates and sales — on average, each extra 1% of opens cost us $100 in sales.

But my sales are up as well. Like I wrote a few days ago, this past March was a record month for me. I made plenty of sales in that last week of March, many more than in the last week of February. I won’t say how much more, but it’s enough to go to Disneyland with.

What gives?

I can tell you my impressions. The jump in both open rates and sales very clearly came after March 6, when I ran an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. But — about that.

The staggering increase in open rates might be due to new subscribers who came via that ad. I don’t know, and ActiveCampaign gives me no easy way to figure it out.

But I do know that the bulk of new sales I saw in the whole of March compared to the whole of February did not come from new subscribers who came via the ad. The bulk came from my existing subscribers.

Many of those sales came from people buying new offers I had made in March, such as Insight Exposed and Copy Zone. That’s normal.

But one thing that struck me is how many existing subscribers, some of whom have been on my list for months or even years, decided this March to buy offers like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email, which I have offered dozens of times before. These readers successfully resisted all my previous pitches, but they found themselves curious and willing to buy now.

It wasn’t just one such person. It was lots. I asked myself what made the difference.

My best answer is this:

There’s a lot that goes into the success of email marketing beyond the actual email funnel and copy. At least if you’re doing something like I’m doing, which is a long-running, personal, relationship-based email newsletter.

I’ll leave you with that for today. And I’ll just remind you of my coaching program for email marketing and copywriting.

I have to include the email copywriting in the coaching program, because it’s what almost everybody wants to learn and believes is most important.

But in my experience, email copy is rarely the thing that really makes the biggest impact in the results of your emails. By results I mean sales, as well as soft stuff like retention, engagement, and influence.

Anyways, if you are interested in my coaching program, you’ll also be interested to know this program is only open to two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

66 1/2 minutes of getting your money’s worth

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At the start of the evening, the mustached gentlemen at the Boston Athletic Association held on to their top hats and leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide open, all of them focused on the same point at the front of the room.

It’s not every day that you see a living man voluntarily handcuffed, wrapped in chains, placed inside a coffin, and then sealed inside like a corpse.

It was novel and dramatic.

But after a few minutes of intense staring at the unmoving coffin, the audience’s attention started to drift. The members of the athletic club began lighting up fine cigars, talking about sports, the news, and business, chuckling and chattering and catching up.

And then, 66 1/2 minutes after the show started, the coffin crashed open.

The living corpse inside sat up and then stood up, panting, sweat running down his temples, his hair in a mess, his frock coat rumpled. He held the handcuffs in one hand and the chains in the other — he was free.

The gentlemen in the audience broke into applause and cheers. Harry Houdini had done it again. Another amazing and improbable escape.

So far, so familiar. But here’s what gets me:

66 1/2 minutes of sitting and watching a coffin. Many of Houdini’s sold-out shows were like this. They were long — often many hours’ long — and for much of it there was nothing to see, because Houdini performed his handcuff and manacle and chain escapes in a closed cabinet or behind a curtain or inside a coffin.

66 1/2 minutes of nothing happening on stage. What was going on with the audience during all that time?

Was it just a pre-TikTok era, and were audiences happy to sit and zone out for an hour or three, like a cat staring at a blank wall?

Or did people just enjoy being close to danger and death, and was that palpable even if it couldn’t be seen?

I’m sure there was a bit of both to it.

But what gets me in the above story is how the gentlemen of the athletic club started lighting up cigars and having friendly chats about sports, business, and the news.

Maybe that was really what they had come for.

Maybe Houdini’s spectacular escape was really just an occasion to mark out the rest of the audience’s lives. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house, to do what they like to do anyhow — which is to chat and chuckle and gossip — but to do it in a slightly novel and exciting setting.

There’s a good chance you aren’t sold on this point yet. That’s okay. I have more to say about it to try and persuade you. And if you do get persuaded, I have some novel and exciting advice for how to apply this to copywriting and marketing, even today, in the TikTok era, without engaging in daring feats that risk danger and death.

But more about that in a couple days’ time.

For today, I just have a very simple offer for you. It’s my little Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​I used to refer to this as my “10 Commandments book.” I’ll have to stop that since I’m working on a second 10 Commandments book, and I have to distinguish between the two.

Anyways, Commandment III from ties into what I’ll talk about in two days’ time. It’s also the easiest commandment of the lot in my book.

​​This Commandment III takes just 5 minutes to follow, but it can suck your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened. It was first unearthed during an exclusive, closed-door seminar, which cost almost $7,700 in today’s money.​​

In case you’re curious, the secret behind this and all the other A-list commandments in my book are behind the locked door below. The ticket to unlock the door is but $4.99. If you feel you’re ready, step right behind this curtain:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Some facts for you to judge me by

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Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:

I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.

My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. ​​I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.

Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:

Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.

And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.

​​The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.

And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:

I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.

I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:

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I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.

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Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.

So you got two options:

Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.

On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.

Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.

You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.

Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.

Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.

It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.

Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.

How to become in-demand in your niche even if you have no contacts, portfolio, or good sense

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A long while ago, in the days when elephants still roamed the Earth, I came across the following question:

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Say I wanted my copywriting niche to be SaaS, but have no contacts or portfolio, what are the steps I’ll need to take to become in-demand for my niche?

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Here are the exact steps I would suggest:

Step 1: Go to Silicon Valley.

Step 2: Get in front of somebody famous in the startup space, like Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel. ​​Get creative if you have to — stalk them at a coffee shop they are known to go to, pay to go to a conference where they will appear, or maybe just write them an email and ask if they will meet you because you’re such a big fan.

Step 3: Take a selfie of yourself next to the famous nerd in Step 2.

Step 4: Put that selfie up on your site, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Tinder, along with an article like, “10 surprising copywriting lessons from my meeting with Marc Andreessen.”

Step 5: In your article, mention several times that you are a SaaS copywriter, and link to a “Free Consultation” page.

Step 6: Repeat Steps 1-5 with additional famous nerds, as needed.

Result: Almost instant status and authority, and very probably, serious demand for your services.

You might think I’m being flippant. But I’m being 100% serious.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you the big secret of peak status.

The thing is, you might not want to hear it. Or you might not want to believe it.

Because the secret is that status can be manufactured, and very quickly.

In the same way that quality is only a minor part of the influence that your content is likely to have, your resume is only a minor part of the the status you are likely to achieve. And all the other, more important stuff, can be accomplished in two weeks’ time, if you are willing to really hustle.

Maybe you get what I’m saying.

But maybe you feel exasperated. Maybe you are sure I am either 100% wrong. Or maybe you suspect I am right, but you just find it impossible to really hustle to create status for yourself.

In that case, my advice is not to hustle. Take it slowly. Better slowly than never.

My added advice is that, if you are a marketer or copywriter in search of status, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email.

Sure, MVE will show you a new way to create quality content, but that’s not why I recommend it. Instead, the real status-building value of MVE is that it can get you gradually more comfortable with all those content-adjacent status-building practices which really make the difference.

I imagine that sounds very vague and abstract. I can’t make it more specific without giving away the Most Valuable Email trick. If you’d like to find out what that trick is, and even start practicing it today, head on over here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

This offer is improper — unless you’re a grown-up

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I checked the fridge this morning and I found I was fresh out of emails ideas. So I ran down to the corner shop and grabbed the latest glossy issue of “On Today’s Date.” I brought it back home, jumped on the couch, and greedily opened it to the first page. That’s how I discovered that the most significant historical event ever to happen on March 9th was:

The first appearance of the Barbie doll. It happened on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair, in New York City.

I put my head in my hands. “Who cares about Barbie dolls?” I said. “I need email ideas!”

But after a few moments of quiet despair, I happened to glance back at that Barbie article.

And in that brief moment, in the very first paragraph, I spotted something new to me — why we’re still talking about Barbie dolls today, and why you and I and probably all the other 8 billion people on the planet have heard of Barbie.

Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, created Barbie after watching her own daughter. Handler’s little girl kept ignoring her closetful of baby dolls. Instead, she played make-believe with paper dolls of adult women.

Handler put 2 and 3 together, and realized there was an open niche here, a unique position to be filled:

A toy doll with adult features, adult outfits, and enormous adult breasts.

Barbie was an instant hit. Mattel sold around 350,000 Barbies in the very first year of production. They sold almost $1.5 billion worth of Barbie plastic last year.

So what’s my point?

Simple. People want to be grown up, or at least play make-believe at it. If ya don’t believe me, here’s a second example:

Tobacco company Lorillard once put out a covert ad campaign targeted at kids. The ad was supposedly designed to keep kids from smoking. But the devious message in that Lorillard campaign was:

“Tobacco is whacko — if you’re a teen.”

A later statistical study found that each exposure to this ad increased the intention of middleschoolers to try cigarettes by 3%. In other words, if your kid sees this ad 30 times, his or her odds of trying a cigarette double.

You might say this only applies to kids and middle schoolers, but I don’t think so. I think it applies to all of us, just in more subtle ways.

​​In any case, enough history.

Instead, I have an offer for you, which is entirely improper — unless you’re a grown-up copywriter or marketer.

​​The offer is my Most Valuable Email course. That course will only work for you if you already have an email list, or are willing to create one, and write to it regularly. Like I said, grown-ups.

But on second thought, maybe it’s better if you don’t get Most Valuable Email even if you’re a grown up. As one marketer, Kyle Weston, wrote me after going through this course:

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I love how the course is short and to the point, yet still packs in all the powerful info we need. And then the tools you give us at the end are brilliant. The MVE Swipes pdf alone is worth way more than a measly $100. Anyone involved in marketing or copywriting at any level will want to check this out. Then again, maybe its better for me if less people know about this tactic — makes it easier for me to beat out the competition muhuhahaha!

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If that doesn’t deter you, you can get Most Valuable Email here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve