Yesterday, I concluded my first-ever prize-giveaway contest. The prizes totaled $1,088. The condition to enter was to submit 50-150 words about any email I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick.
My goal for this contest was to find out whether the MVE trick makes my emails more sticky and effective, and also how my readers are using the MVE trick for their own benefit.
Only one problem:
Now that the contest’s over, I don’t really want to reveal which Most Valuable Emails the winners picked.
There’s value in keeping the mystery around what the MVE trick is. And if I gave five distinct examples of Most Valuable Emails, odds are good that the trick would be easy to spot.
But a deal’s a deal. So I’m announcing the contest winners, the prizes they got, and my reasoning for why they won:
#1 Gold medal
The first prize of $250 goes to Shakoor Chowdhury, a marketer and copywriter from Mississauga, Ontario.
Shakoor picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote over the past week, the same email I referenced yesterday, which drew lots of positive responses from other readers also.
But the real reason Shakoor gets first prize is because he also wrote me to say:
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John, this is by far my favorite of your programs and really kickstarted my email marketing.
When I bought this course I was very inconsistent, but you gave me direction and I started writing daily and grew a list of 470 subscribers in less than a month of implementing.
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This is the #1 winning entry, because it matches the #1 reason I find Most Valuable Emails so valuable. And that’s that that Most Valuable Emails make it interesting for me personally to stick with daily emailing day after day. And it seems for Shakoor also.
#2 Silver medal
The second prize of $200 goes to Tom Grundy, a high-powered London banker who also happens to write excellent emails about self development.
Tom picked three of my old Most Valuable Emails as his favorites, going back to 2021. But the real reason Tom won a prize is that he also applied the MVE trick in one of his LinkedIn posts. And the result, in Tom’s words:
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I thought I’d share the attached LinkedIn post I made a while ago. Great thing about this post was that people replied with their own “MVE style” replies and it turned into a fun thread.
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Like I keep saying, the MVE trick makes your emails engaging and fun for your audience. Same goes for your LinkedIn posts, if that’s your bag.
#3 Bronze medal
Finally, three third prizes — three $197 tickets to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop — go to:
1. Carlo Gargiulo, an Italian copywriter working in-house at Metodo Merenda.
Besides working in-house, Carlo also writes his own email newsletter. He’s been selling his own services and coaching for years to his list. But recently, Carlo made his first-ever affiliate sales to his list, via an idea I shared in the MVE swipe file.
Point being, the MVE training has value beyond simply teaching you the MVE trick.
2. Alex Ko, senior copywriter at KooBits in Singapore.
Alex won because he picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote more than a year ago, and he pointed out how this email still has an impact on my business every day.
In other words, Alex rightly highlighted that writing Most Valuable Emails is not just about sales or engagement. Instead, it can actually transform you and your business in time.
3. Jeffrey Thomas, a DR copywriter from St. Paul, Minnesota, who works in-house at Marketing Profs.
Jeffrey has previously written me to say nice things about Most Valuable Emails I’ve written. But he won this time because he applied the MVE trick himself — to the description of a live presentation he’ll be giving at a major conference this November.
So there you go. The MVE contest winners, and the reasons why they won.
If you’re one of the winners above, I’ll be in touch about how to get you your prize.
And if you’re not one of the winners above, you now have 5 good dimensionalizations of what the MVE program can do. Not just for me, but for other marketers, copywriters, and even one business owner, in a range of situations, applications, and formats.
If you already have my Most Valuable Email program, this might encourage you to revisit it, apply the trick yourself, and benefit.
And if you don’t have my MVE program, I can only assume it’s because you found the prize contest cheesy and crass. Because you’re above such flat-out manipulation. Because you don’t want your name to be used to sell stuff online.
I can completely understand. I feel the same way about many marketing stunts.
That said, maybe this email has given you some new arguments for why you can benefit from discovering the Most Valuable Email trick and inserting it into your marketing. If you’d like to get started now: