ActiveCampaign Archives

Why I won’t use BerserkerMail

May 12, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday I wrote about an “unwilling unsubscribe” issue that’s been haunting me for a few years. I asked readers for suggestions on how I can keep good subscribers from getting accidentally kicked off ActiveCampaign.

Lots of people replied with lots of good ideas.

But a fair number of people also pitched me on switching from ActiveCampaign to Ben Settle’s BerserkerMail service.

From what I can tell, many of those people don’t actually use BerserkerMail themselves. Instead, they just berserk on behalf of Ben about how great BerserkerMail is.

I’ve never used BerserkerMail and have no plans to switch. I thought somebody out there might want to know why. Three reasons:

#1. Switching would be a pain in the ass.

One reader wrote me yesterday to say how easy it is to switch over to BerserkerMail “in just a few clicks.” That sounded like a kid trying to sell his parents on a weeklong trip to Disneyland by saying “it’s only a 4-hour flight away.”

Looking at the flight time only ignores all the packing… the booking of the hotel… the taking of the dog to the dog kennel and watching his big eyes as he accuses you of abandoning him… and the fallout at work after a week away and a few thousand accumulated small fires that have gone untended.

In less Disneylandy terms:

I have a few dozen automations set up in ActiveCampaign that run a large part of my product delivery.

I have a few dozen integrations with my website membership software… with optin forms in various places… with my cart software.

And I suspect that, in spite of the “just a few clicks” to switch my contact list to BerserkerMail, I would still be left with days of prep work and weeks or months of things breaking and me having to fix them.

And if that’s not enough…

#2. BerserkerMail has the same problems I want to run away from.

A couple people tried to sell me on how “simple” BerskerMail is to use. But I’ve never had a problem with ActiveCampaign because it’s complex.

I have had a problem with ActiveCampaign when it crashed right when I ran a classified ad and got hundreds of new subscribers in a matter of hours.

I’ve had a problem with it when I scheduled an email that never got sent out — still my one missed day of emailing in the past 5+ years.

In other words, I’ve had a problem with ActiveCampaign because of occasional reliability and tech issues.

But BerserkerMail has its own reliability and tech issues. I know, because people who use BerserkerMail have told me so, and because Ben has written about BerserkerMail’s tech issues in his own emails.

It’s kind of like that famous Disneyland commercial on TV:

“Are you tired of your kids screaming at home? Take them for a weeklong vacation to Disneyland and have them scream here! It’s only a 4-hour flight away and buying the tickets is super simple.”

(By the way, as for unsub issue I wrote about yesterday, it seems the most likely culprit is simply Gmail and Apple Mail unsubscribe features. If that’s the case, it would affect BerserkerMail emails the same as those sent from any other service.)

#3. I already have an easy-to-use, technically reliable alternative to ActiveCampaign.

It’s not BerserkerMail.

Instead, it’s Beehiiv, which I used for my health newsletter.

I loved everything about Beehiiv so much that I actually thought about switching this newsletter to use Beehiiv. I decided against it because of point 1 above.

However, if I do ever start any new newsletters, they will go on Beehiiv by default.

If you want to start a new newsletter, you can try out Beehiiv at the link below.

I won’t try to sell you on Beehiiv, beyond saying it’s free — not just during a 30-day trial period like BerserkerMail, but forever — as long as you’re below 2,500 subscribers, and you don’t start coveting advanced features like the referral program and the ad network.

If you want to try out just how simple it is to sign up to Beehiiv, and how pleasant, and how short of a flight it is:

https://bejakovic.com/beehiiv

Please help me staunch the unsubscribes

May 11, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Over the past 5+ years of daily emailing, I’ve trained myself to shrug as my default reaction when people unsubscribe from my list.

Most of the time, people who unsub have never bought anything from me, weren’t a good fit for what I sell in the first place, weren’t even reading my daily emails very often.

If those kinds of subscribers go, that’s ok. The world is packed full of people, and my email list is not the right fit for most of them.

But!

It sometimes happens that the people who unsubscribe from my list have bought stuff from me, did read my emails, even seemed to be fans.

Sometimes, these unsubscribes are the result of a fermentation process — people move on, their circumstances change, or perhaps they just get sick and tired of me.

Other times though… take for example what happened yesterday.

I got a message from a reader who had bought my Copy Riddles program, my Most Valuable Email program, and my Horror Advertorial Swipe File. A reader who had replied often to my emails. A reader who had given me glowing testimonials for a few of my offers.

And yet…

ActiveCampaign has this reader marked as having unsubbed 8 days ago. Last night, this same reader wrote me to say:

===

John, I’m somehow kicked off your list again. Hah! I have no idea how this keeps happening. This is the last email I got from you.

I signed back up via your opt-in form just now, but thought I’d let you know in case this is happening with other subs.

===

Normally, this would be an opportunity to say something like, “and that’s what happens when you write emails every day… it becomes like appointment TV and people seek you out if you don’t show up on time. This is why you should buy my courses on writing daily emails blah blah…”

Actually, that’s exactly what I did write the first time the reader above wrote me to say he got kicked off my list, a couple years ago.

But now, I’m actually a little anxious to root out this phantom unsubscribe problem once and for all.

Because the reader above is not the only one who has told me he was unsubbed from my list for no good reason.

I have a few real-life friends who are also subscribed to get my emails.

A couple of them have also told me they stopped getting my emails at various points. I checked, and ActiveCampaign says they unsubscribed. My friends deny it. I trust them over ActiveCampaign.

And I figure that if I already know of a handful of cases where people got unsubbed from my list without willing it, there might be more cases where it happened and I don’t know about it.

So I’m appealing to you for any help or advice you can give me.

Again, I use ActiveCampaign. That seems to be the only technical thing I can point to.

Have you had something similar happen to you? Or to one of your clients? Or do you have any advice for me on how I could start debugging this “unwilling unsub” feature?

Write in and tell me what comes to mind. I’ll be grateful for any advice or pointers. Thanks in advance.

Hotel Octavia Campo: New room available

November 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

This morning, I rolled out of the creaky hotel bed and stumbled across the dusty, cavernous old hotel room, past the sink, to the small table in the corner, which barely held my typewriter.

Suddenly, somebody started rapping on the door.

“Open up! Open up right now!”

I opened the door to find Octavia Campo, the wife of the hotel owner.

“If I told you once,” she said as she pushed her way past me, “I told you a thousand times!”

I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Octavia.”

“Don’t good morning me,” she barked. “All night long, clack-clack-clack from your room. All my other guests are complaining! I told you a thousand times! This is a residential hotel! No typewriters! No work allowed here!”

I reached for my Tommy Bahama shirt. And then I walked over to my typewriter, and started to fit it in its carrying case.

Octavia Campo kept railing. “While you’re staying in my hotel” — here she pointed at her chest — “you will not be making any money! This isn’t some brothel, some butcher shop! I only want respectable guests here, who come to sleep and that’s it!”

“I understand completely,” I said. “I’ll take my typewriter now. And I’ll send a boy later for my clothes.”

Octavia’s face got tomato-red. “Good!” she said. “And don’t come back! I don’t want your kind in my hotel! You don’t care how you ruin the reputations of others!”

And that’s pretty much how I checked out of Hotel Octavia Campo… and checked into the shiny and new Bedazzling Happiness Towers, down by the beach, where the guests are free to do what they like in their rooms, and the air is fresh.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. Well, about that:

Starting a week ago, I’ve been writing and sending my new, daily health newsletter. I’ve been writing and sending it from Hotel Octavia Campo — aka ActiveCampaign.

But then this morning, I got a note from ActiveCampaign telling me that my email from yesterday was not sent. Why? Because it contained an affiliate link.

The note I got from ActiveCampaign wasn’t as shrill as I tried to make Octavia Campo sound. It even offered suggestions for some workarounds.

But still, it was more than I was willing to tolerate.

So I spent about a half hour this morning to move my daily health newsletter to shiny and new Beehiiv, the platform I already use for my weekly health newsletter. I’m not really sure why I didn’t do this in the first place.

In time, I might even move this marketing newsletter over to Beehiiv, because I’m so fed up with ActiveCampaign, and so satisfied with Beehiiv — Bedazzling Happiness.

You might think I will promote Beehiiv at this point, using — gasp — an affiliate link.

But no, and not just because ActiveCampaign might throttle me for doing so.

Today I have a special, one-day, newsletter-related offer to celebrate my move to Bedazzling Happiness Towers.

As you might know, I’m planning to launch a newsletter-related community soon, all about how to publish, grow, and monetize a newsletter.

I haven’t decided exactly how that will look, what it will cost, and what it will include.

But I know it won’t be nearly as one-on-one and as generous as the following offer:

Today only, I’m offering a 1-hour consult at a price I would never offer it otherwise, $100.

This consult is for you if you already publish a newsletter, and want to grow it or monetize it better… or you do not yet publish a newsletter, and you want help in picking a niche, a concept, or a content strategy.

I am willing to sit with you, listen to you, answer your questions, offer my feedback and experience and advice, based on what I’ve learned writing this daily marketing newsletter over the past five years, my weekly health newsletter over the past year, and my daily health newsletter over the past week.

I want to help you succeed with your newsletter, or succeed more. I will share whatever information you can squeeze out of me in an hour, I won’t hold anything back, and I will give you my best ideas.

The only reason I am offering to do this, and at such a low price, is because 1) I’m in a good mood thanks to (at least partly) moving out of Hotel Octavia Campo, and 2) as research and prep for that newsletter community I’m planning.

Speaking of:

If you take me up on this 1-hour consult, I will also apply it to that future community, so you get one month of it for free.

Today’s offer won’t make me rich, and it will require me to work. So I’m limiting it to the first three people who take me up on it.

The cart link is below. If you send me the $100, we can then figure out a time to get on the call that works for both of us.

And if the link below isn’t working, that means three people already signed up, and I’ve turned this offer off.

So in case you’d like in, best move now and move fast:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/goodbye-octavia/

Ben Settle or Daniel Throssell? My #1 recommended resource to learn email copywriting

August 26, 2022 by John Bejakovic

In my email yesterday, I wrote that I’m traveling for a few days and that my subconscious let me down.

That’s because I wanted to write a quick and easy email. But even though I channeled my inner Gary Bencivenga and summoned the giant within to help me out with my copywriting duties, I got nothing.

Absolutely nothing…

Or so it seemed.

In reality, maybe the giant within did do some work on my behalf.

Because there was something about the email I did end up writing yesterday.

For some reason that’s not clear to me, it provoked a bunch of earnest, curious, and even strange responses from people on my list. These responses will provide me with good email fodder for the next few days and maybe beyond.

To start with, here’s a question I got from a reader named Paul:

I am a relatively new copywriter but one thing that fascinates me is email copywriting. People like you, Ben Settle and Daniel Throssell make their email interesting to read, persuasive, even addicting.

If you could recommend some/one resource for learning email copywriting, which would you recommend? (besides your 10 commandments book, which I already bought and read, btw it’s a really great book)!

Well, if you have $100, you can give it to either Ben Settle (for his Email Players Skhema that comes with his Email Players monthly subscription) or to Daniel Throssell (for his Email Copywriting Compendium).

I have both, and I cheerfully endorse both.

Also, some time soon, I will re-release my Most Valuable Email training in a formal, course-like format. That will also sell for $100.

I’m biased to the tactic I discuss in that training, because it’s been responsible for many good results for me personally. So maybe you can just wait a bit and give me your $100 when the Most Valuable Email is available again.

Of course, there’s also an entirely different route if you want to spend you $100 in the best way.

Most people won’t want to hear this. But if you want to learn email marketing, I mean really learn it, then the best resource I can recommend is…

Active Campaign. Or MailChimp. Or Constant Contact. Or whatever.

The email software you use isn’t important.

What is important is that you start your own list.

Do it today.

And then later today, write a short email and send it to your list, even if you’ve got zero subscribers.

In that email, give a little occasion of what happened to you earlier in the day — “this Bejako character suggested I start my own newsletter.” Then tie it up with something you learned about email marketing by reading the newsletters of people who are a few years ahead of you.

Such as, for example, the fact that there’s a lot of value in free daily email newsletters, if you will only read carefully and then apply the advice.

So write that email today.

And then tomorrow, do it all over again, with a new occasion, and a new bit of something you learned.

Keep this up for a week. Then 30 days. Then for 90 days.

By that time, I bet you will be well on your way to making your own emails interesting, persuasive, and even addicting.

All right, so much for the free but valuable advice that almost nobody will take.

Again, if you’ve got a $100 burning a hole in your pocket, you can buy solid courses from both Ben, Daniel, and eventually from me.

But $100 will also get you 11 months of the lowest plan of Active Campaign. That’s the software I personally use. It’s fine, and I’m fine endorsing it to you.

If by some small chance you want to take my advice and want to get started now, you can use my affiliate link for Active Campaign below.

And if you do sign up for Active Campaign using my affiliate link, send me an email and let me know.

Once you set up your optin form, I’ll get on your list.

I don’t promise to read your emails all the time. I certainly don’t promise to give you feedback or coaching or public endorsements.

But I do promise to stay subscribed for at least 90 days. And maybe knowing that at least one person is on your list will be enough accountability to allow you to go from being fascinated by email copywriting… to being fascinating.

In case you are ready to get going:

https://bejakovic.com/activecampaign

I broke the email chain yesterday

May 1, 2022 by John Bejakovic

This morning, reader Jesús Silva Marcano wrote to say:

Hey John!

Today when I saw that I didn’t have an email from you….

And after waiting a few hours…

I must admit a part of me was a little saddened.

Besides Ben Settle’s emails, yours are the ones I usually look forward to.

They never disappoint.

I hope all is well.

It’s true. I didn’t send out email last night.

I broke a chain going back to July 2020, when I skipped a few days because I was on vacation at the seaside, drinking quite actively, and generally celebrating and feeling high from having made a ton of money the previous few months, my first really big copywriting months.

But nothing exciting like that happened yesterday.

I had an email scheduled. I checked my inbox before I went to bed. But the email still hadn’t arrived.

I checked ActiveCampaign. It said my email was “Pending Review.”

I tried to stop the campaign so I could recreate it and send it again. It wouldn’t allow me. I tried again. No soap.

I contacted ActiveCampaign to ask what’s up.

No response.

I went to bed, figuring it would solve itself.

It didn’t.

This morning, my email from yesterday is still “Pending Review.” I can’t imagine why, because I wasn’t writing about any controversial or flaggable topics. (I do have an email about a certain kind of “gross body enhancement” coming up, but last night’s email waddn’t it.)

Oh well. The world doesn’t end if I don’t send out an email.

But it does spin a little faster. So it’s a shame I don’t have something to sell you right now.

In my experience, people today are starved for something — anything — real.

And when your readers witness you making a mistake, in real time, or getting involved in conflict, in real time, or failing to deliver on a public promise like a daily email, that’s more powerful and engaging than even the most personal stories you share.

And if I had, say, a training on writing faster, that would be perfect. I could end this email right here by saying something like:

“But you know what? Let’s talk copywriting. According to my extremely neat timekeeping, 72% of so-called “writing” really goes to editing. And things often don’t get delivered on time, or ever, because they are “Pending Review” by that finnicky, editing part of your brain. So if you don’t want to be at the whim and mercy of your own inner editing demon, if you want to meet all deadlines, if you wanna get projects done more quickly and make more money, then join me for the Faster Writing (and Editing) Workshop here blah blah…”

Well, maybe a little less ham-handed than that, but you get the idea.

If only I had the faster writing offer for sale right now, then the fact that ActiveCampaign is behaving like a lazy consular office processing my visa application… rather than as a for-profit business that has been taking my money for the better part of a decade… well, that would’ve all worked in my favor.

So keep this in mind if you have your own email list. Anything really real in your life, particularly that readers can experience and verify for themselves, makes for the pinnacle of engagement.

As for me, I got nothing. No gain from this event. Except to tell you that indeed I am ok, in case you were worried. And now that I’ve told you the background of all this, to maybe make a slightly stronger bond with you, so you get excited about getting my next email tomorrow, and decide to sign up for my email newsletter.

I screwed up yesterday

February 8, 2019 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I was sending out an email to my aromatherapy list when the Internet died.

Normally, I write my daily email in a text editor.

I then paste it into ActiveCampaign, tweak the formatting, and then click “Send.”

Yesterday, however, between the pasting and the clicking, the Internet died.

I restarted the router, finished sending out the email (so I thought), and got on with my merry day.

It was only later I realized I’d screwed up. Because the Internet had died at the proper moment, the email body didn’t get saved in ActiveCampaign.

So I managed to send out an email with a tantalizing subject line, “This essential oil treatment only works for 25% of people”…

… But the body of the email talked about something entirely unrelated (it was the template copy, from an email I had written two years ago).

Most importantly, the email wasn’t promoting what I wanted
it to promote (Essential Oil Quick Start Guide, my book on aromatherapy).

Shamezul.

What to do?

Well, I simply waited. And then today, I sent out another email saying, “I screwed up yesterday.”

I explained what had happened.

And I pasted in the correct email body from yesterday’s email below my explanation.

Many people opened this “penance” email.

Some read it.

And a few might even buy through it, as tends to happen when I include the right link.

Now, you might wonder why I’m mentioning all this. It’s to illustrate a principle I first heard from email marketing guru-in-chief Ben Settle. Says Ben (I’m paraphrasing):

“Nothing bad ever happens to you when you write emails”

In other words, everything can be turned and twisted into a good email.

So far, I’ve gotten new email content out of negative Amazon reviews, doubts about my credibility, and accusations thrown at me on Facebook.

And as you’re currently reading, out of a story of how I botched my actual email sending.

All of which illustrates that it’s not hard to come up with fodder for daily emails, once you get in the groove.

Of course, you can’t send out an “I screwed up” email every day. You’ll need some other email ideas to keep things interesting for your audience.

If you want my ideas for the kind of email content you could be sending out to your list day after day, you might be interested in my upcoming book on email marketing. For more info or to sign up for a free copy, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/