Agora

The trend for the best modern copywriters

by

Hidden Nazi treasure — that’s the gist of a video that’s been circulating around the Internet for the past few months.

​​The video starts off with footage of WWII personalities and tells you about a German-Jewish scientist and doctor, whose research was so valuable that he got a personal hall pass, signed by Adolf Hitler himself, to keep working in Nazi Germany.

If you take a look at this video and you squint just right, you can convince yourself you are watching the History Channel or perhaps a roided up version of a BBC documentary. Of course, that’s not what this video is. Instead, it’s a VSL for an Agora health newsletter.

Here’s a second example to illustrate the point I want to make. It also comes from an Agora imprint, Banyan Hill. It’s a short 3-minute video, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Well, unless you’ve ever seen that viral Purple Mattress video. Or the viral video for Squatty Potty. Or the viral video for Poo-Pouri.

In other words, this Agora imprint hired the Harmon Brothers ad agency (which did all the videos I just mentioned). And the result is an ironic, self-referential, Will Ferrell-inspired ad for a stock picking service.

Will it work to get new customers for Agora?

I don’t know. But the trend is clear in both the Nazi treasure video and the Harmon Bros video. And the trend is that, even for hardcore direct response businesses who sell to cold traffic, entertaining is becoming more important than big promises. In the words of Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief:

“‘Aggressive persuasion’ is dying with the Boomers, but Big Tech will kill you for it first. The best modern copywriters spend more time studying Quentin Tarantino than they do Claude Hopkins.”

Here’s some un-aggressive persuasion:

I write a daily email newsletter. If you would like some entertainment and maybe even useful copywriting knowledge, click here to sign up.

Two multi-millionaire marketers go into a cigar bar…

by

Today I was listening to the newest edition of Steal Our Winners, and Internet marketer Rich Schefren told a quick story.

He said that around 10 years ago, he started writing daily, slice-of-life, Matt Furey-style emails, much like what you’re reading now.

And then, at a cigar bar, he ran into Mark Ford. Mark is a big-name copywriter and one of the main guys behind the direct response juggernaut Agora.

“Look, this is the poor man’s Agora,” Rich said to Mark about those daily emails. (Then, as now, Agora was sending out emails every day, real serious editorial stuff.)

“Actually, I like this better than what we do at Agora,” said Mark. “And let me tell you why.”

The gist of it was, Rich’s slice-of-life emails were sometimes short, sometimes long. Sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a page.

That kept the reader guessing.

The reader could never say, “Oh I don’t have the time to read this now.” That meant each time an email hit him, he couldn’t dismiss it.

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what Mark Ford said. It makes good sense to keep your reader guessing, and not just about the length of your emails.

I could tell you more.

But in the interest of keeping this post short, well… all I can say is, if you want more, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Don’t bring a knife to a proof fight

by

Continuing on yesterday’s discussion about proof, there is the following sad fact:

If you are a copywriter trying to prove your case, you might be forced to squeeze juice out of a dry and withered lemon.

Most often, that consists of stacking up a few weak testimonials, and maybe including an unremarkable mechanism.

Don’t get me wrong. This kind of proof, dry and withered though it may be, is still better than nothing.

But in a way, it’s like that scene in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indy comes into a crowded marketplace, only to be faced with a black-robed giant who’s wielding a scimitar.

The black-robed giant laughs and does some fancy sword waving.

And then Indy pulls out a gun and shoots him.

Lesson being, don’t bring your testimonial knife to a proof fight. Somebody out there will shoot you.

But if testimonials are the scimitar equivalent of proof, then what is the equivalent of a gun?

Well, just take a look at all the direct response giants.

Guthy-Renker…

Agora…

Golden Hippo.

All these billion-dollar companies don’t use just endorsements or testimonials to prove the worth of their products. Instead, their entire offers are built around gurus with a following, credibility, and authority.

People like Tony Robbins… or James Altucher… or Steven Gundry (okay, maybe not a terrible amount of credibility there).

Point being:

You might not be able to get a famous and successful person to be the face and heart of your new product. But with a bit of thinking, you can find ways to bake the proof into your product, rather than sprinkling it on as a dry and withered afterthought.

On an entirely unrelated topic:

I have an email newsletter. It’s all about persuasion insights and strategies. Want proof that it’s worth reading? Tony Robbins is my editor. If you want to sign up and see what Tony and I have to say, here’s where to go.

Selling without “you”

by

There are many ways to flay a feline, and sales copy is no exception:

Today, I read through a part of the Chaffee Royalties promo. This 2008 sales letter is famous for its use of “transubstantiation,” and because it was analyzed in the book Great Leads.

But something else struck me upon reading the lead of Chaffee Royalties:

There’s almost no “you”. There are no direct promises. It’s all intrigue, case studies, historical anecdotes.

In many ways, Chaffee Royalties doesn’t read like “typical” copy. If I looked at this without knowing it’s a sales letter, I wouldn’t be sure immediately that there is something for sale — simply because not every sentence ends with, “and so can you!”

Even so, this sales letter was successful. Not only did it do well enough to get into Great Leads, but Agora ran a version of it again in 2013, just with different stocks.

Here’s what I’m trying to get at:

A while back, I mentioned the most common piece of feedback I kept getting from my former copywriting coach. That was to make more “on the nose” claims in the lead. Meaning, make claims that are so direct and you-focused that even the most distracted reader can’t fail to grasp them.

That’s obviously worked well for my-ex coach. And in many ways, it’s copywriting dogma, which you can see in the majority of big-name promotions.

But even at very high levels, writing to the same financial newsletter market… there are people who have had success selling with a soft, indirect, and camouflaged approach.

And so can you.

Repealing prohibition on multiple daily emails

by

Prohibition in the U.S. ended in 1933 with the repeal of 18th Amendment. After that, states could make their own laws about the sale of alcohol.

Some states couldn’t wait to get soused.

But others kept up with prohibition. Oklahoma, for example, kept going with prohibition until 1959.

Today, there are still over 500 “dry” municipalities across the U.S. One recent study even found that prohibition, horrendous as it sounds, might be a good idea. According to this study, crime went up by about 10% in areas that went from dry to wet.

The point being, just because you can stop, doesn’t mean you should. And I’m not talking about prohibition, see? I’m talking about marketing, specifically email marketing.

Over the last few years, it’s become commonplace for companies to send a daily email. But there’s nothing magic about the number one.

You can send your customers more than one email a day. For example, most Agora imprints send at least two emails each day, with one being mostly content and the other mostly promotion.

So two is ok. What about more?

Email marketing guru Ben Settle combines his content and promotion in each email. That’s why he can get away with sending, for example, five emails this past Monday, and over 10 over a recent 3-day promo window.

Old direct marketing wisdom says to keep repeating something until it becomes unprofitable.

Of course, too many emails can become unprofitable. Maybe you do burn out your list after a time. More likely, you get to a point you’re better off spending your time doing something else than writing an additional email — perhaps working on building your list, or creating a new offer.

But most businesses never get to that point of declining email profits. Maybe your business is one of them. In that case, it might be time to start writing an additional daily email — and getting sloshed on all those extra profits.

Of course, this all assumes you make money from your daily emails. I don’t. That’s why I only send one a day. It usually has to do with marketing or copywriting, like what you just read. If you’d like to get my one daily email as it comes out, here’s where to go.

When marketing jiggery pokery backfires

by

One time, I stopped a girl on the street, and I unsuccessfully tried to run game.

That means I didn’t ask her any questions like other boring guys would do. Instead, I made observational statements.

“You look like you’re from Sweden,” I said.

“No,” the girl said.

“Really. Because with the blonde hair and the dark clothes and that confident attitude… you gave me a definite Nordic vibe.”

She just stared at me.

“Yep, I can imagine you, walking down a street in Stockholm, listening to Ace of Base, ready to board your Viking ship.”

She started to frown. My stupid assumptions were not getting me anywhere. Should I escape to safety and call it a day? I decided on one last desperate play.

“So… where are you from?”

“Oh, I’m from Slovakia,” she said, brightening up. She started to talk. I listened. A few minutes later, I asked her to sit down for an orange juice with me. She said ok.

I’m not saying that game doesn’t work. It definitely does. But sometimes… you don’t need game. And on rare occasions, game can in fact backfire.

Same thing with high-octane marketing.

Late in 2019, I signed up to Agora’s Daily Insider Secrets. That’s the free daily email newsletter for Agora’s newest imprint, which deals with copywriting and marketing.

They sent interesting emails. I read them on occasion, and I wondered what it was leading to.

And then it came.

A 72-hour marathon live stream… with some of the biggest names in the Internet Marketing world, most of whom I had never heard of… sharing tips and tricks to help you make a million dollars, stat.

At this point, I tuned out.

I wasn’t sure what exactly they were selling. I wasn’t curious to find out. All the emails about the live stream I kept getting didn’t change my mind.

Some time later, quite by accident, I did find out what the offer was.

The main part is like a video newsletter. Each month, Rich Schefren interviews several successful marketers, and they spill the rice on what’s working for them right now.

Then there are several bonuses, including a recording of a 12-day training course that Agora gave its new media buyers back in 2018.

I think there’s more stuff too. And you get all of this for some ridiculous price like $50 a year (the standard Agora newsletter subscription rate).

At which point, I said, “Oh, I’m from Croatia,” and I got out my credit card. I don’t know why they didn’t just start off with that charming and seductive offer, instead of the live stream jiggery pokery.

Anyways, having gone through the past two months’ worth of interviews inside… and going through the media buying training now… I can comfortably recommend Steal Our Winners. It’s worth tracking down and checking out.

But you know what?

Most offers out there, particularly in the Internet Marketing and copywriting space, are just awful.

And if you want to keep an eye out on the bad ones, and get an occasional recommendation for the rare good ones, you might like to sign up to my daily email newsletter. You can join it for free by clicking here.

Agora finally gets into Internet marketing

by

I remember back in 2006, when Amazon announced its new Amazon Web Services.

How clever, I thought. Like Donald Trump selling golden mailboxes at Trump Tower to entrepreneurs who want the ritzy mailing address.

After all, Amazon already had all of the computer boxes and wires and know-how for connecting them together. Other businesses didn’t have this — but wanted it. So Amazon could make a nice business by making its internal IT resources publicly available on a per-use basis.

And what a cash cow it turned out to be. AWS is now estimated to bring in $25B a year — more than McDonald’s — and is one of the main profit centers at the famously profit-free Amazon.

Now here’s a puzzle for the marketers out there:

What’s lying around your desktop (literal, computeral, or mental) which you could sell like Amazon sold AWS?

Don’t just shrug if off, but think for a minute.

Because even some of the most successful marketing businesses out there don’t collect this free money. Case in point:

Agora.

Agora is probably the biggest direct response company, with dozens of subsidiaries, and hundreds (thousands?) of offers, mostly financial newsletters.

You can bet that with all this experience selling high-margin info products online, the people at Agora know a thing or three about copywriting and Internet marketing.

And yet, in spite of its tremendous proof elements and branding, Agora doesn’t have any offers in the profitable and growing copywriting/IM niche.

Or at least… they didn’t.

Right now, Agora is spinning up a new division focused on Internet marketing.

I’m not sure what it’s called, but they have an email newsletter called Daily Insider Secrets.

On different days, you can read insights from Evaldo Albuquerque, one of the most successful copywriters at Agora Financial in the past few years…

…from Peter Coyne, also a successful copywriter and the youngest publisher inside Agora…

…and finally, from Rich Schefren, a big name in the IM space for the past decade or two.

I’ve been signed up to these emails for a few days. So far, it’s been like they say — IM secrets you can’t get nowhere else.

Except perhaps, in my own email newsletter. After all, my only fun in life is scouring the Internet for new marketing and persuasion ideas, and then giving them away in my daily newsletter. Usually packaged up in some kind of story.

If that sounds like the kind of thing you might be interested in, then you can try out my (FREE!) email newsletter here.

Simple price negotiation with long-term clients

by

Yesterday I talked to a previous client about a possible new job. He offered me to handle emails for one of his businesses on a straight-up commission basis.

At this point, a lot of copywriters would start running and screaming “Red flag!” But I got no muss with getting paid all on commission, at least with this client. I’ve worked with him already… he’s legit… and his business is making money and growing.

At issue is how much commission I would get paid. The client wrote:

“What’s the minimum amount you’d want to be making for the volume of emails that I’m proposing?”

Hmmm. That’s not a question I have a good answer to. So I thought for a minute. And I responded using a strategy that I saw described on Mark Ford’s blog.

Mark says he saw his client/partner BB (I assume Bill Bonner, the billionaire founder of Agora) using this strategy throughout his career.

It’s a way of negotiating that’s very simple, but effective if your main goal is a long-term relationship and a fair outcome for everyone involved.

I think Mark’s post explains it very well, so I won’t rehash it here. It’s worth reading if you find yourself negotiating prices with clients, and you hope to do business with them again. Here’s the link if you’re interested:

https://www.markford.net/2019/10/23/11059/?doing_wp_cron=1576003704.1623599529266357421875

How is your vagal tone?

by

“Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?”
– Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

Gary Halbert once wrote that if you’re in the marketing business, you always have to do two things:

1) Keep the fundamentals in mind
2) Keep an eye out for what’s working right now

Well, right now, one specific health offer seems to be working like crazy. I’m assuming this because I’ve gotten dozens of emails promoting this offer over the past two months.

Many of these emails came from various Agora health brands (the offer in question also seems to come from an Agora brand). Others came from 3rd party newsletters that I suppose are affiliates. And I’ve even seen email drops in Newsmax promoting this offer.

I’m listening to the VSL right now, and two things stick out as possible reasons why this offer is doing so well at the moment.

First, it has a unique “problem mechanism” (that’s a term that I first heard from top-flight copywriter Stefan Georgi). In this case, the problem mechanism is “low vagal tone,” which as the VSL will tell you, will do everything from shriveling your nuts to corroding your cells and even burning out your brain. Do you have a health problem right now? Maybe it’s time to get your vagal tone checked.

But how do you check your vagal tone? Well, the VSL has an answer for you. It’s even got a solution in case you find that your vagal tone is low.

And that’s the second possible reason why this VSL seems to be killing it right now. The “solution mechanism” (your run of the mill, Gene Schwartz mechanism) is not a pill, not a supplement, and not even a newsletter. instead, it’s a special sound, or as the VSL says, a “healing frequency discovered between 85-255 Hz.”

Maybe that’s the secret chord that David played to increase the vagal tone. Anyways, if you’re in the marketing business, and you’d like to see this offer that’s working so well right now, here’s the link:

https://pro.donovanhealth.com/p/OV6SSSPKG1I/EOV6VB48/

The FTC strikes again

by

A couple days ago, the news around the marketing and copywriting water cooler was that the FTC, the club-wielding government body in charge of stamping out deceptive and prohibited marketing practices, had sued several Agora companies.

Agora and its offshoots are some of the biggest players in direct response space, so this has the potential to be big news. Or not. But in any case, it got me curious about what the FTC is up to, so I signed up for their newsletter.

And only yesterday, while I was in the middle of hacking away at my current real estate VSL, I got an FTC email with the subject line, “Yet another real estate seminar scam.” The email reads:

“For the second time in about a month, the FTC sued a company that falsely promised it would show people how to earn money in real estate to get them to pay thousands of dollars for seminars. […] If someone says you can earn a lot of money on an investment with little or no risk, that’s probably a scam.”

So how does this affect the real estate promo I’m writing, which pretty much says you can make money in real estate with little or no risk, and also has an $1k+ upsell on the back end?

​​Well, I’ll tell you about that another day.

​​For now, I encourage you to head over to the FTC site and sign up for their newsletter. It’s entertaining reading, and might be a lifesaver if you’re doing work in edgy markets like bizopp, investing, or health.