Carlo Gargiulo

Everything is copy

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I woke up this morning to see an email from one of my most dedicated readers, copywriter Carlo Gargiulo, who wrote:

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Hi John,

Are you ok?

I didn’t get your email yesterday!

I hope you are okay and it is just a technical problem.

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I appreciate the concern. I am indeed okay. As for my non-email yesterday:

In the 5+ years of this daily email newsletter, I’ve missed sending an email only two times, yesterday being one.

On both occasions, my email service provider, ActiveCampaign, wasn’t working properly, and their support team didn’t fix the problem in time or even get back to me.

But like Nora Ephron’s mother used to coldly say whenever little Nora came home, crying about some injury or insult:

“Someday this will be funny, and you will write about it. Everything is copy.”

I’m still not finding the situation funny, but it has actually become copy.

The good news is that my non-email yesterday forced me to do something I had been planning to do for years, and had still planned to put off for a couple of weeks — and that’s to move out of the dingy and leaky-roofed hotel Olivia Campo, aka ActiveCampaign.

And so, I’m writing you today from my comfortable new email home on Convert Kit Lane. I’m still moving in and so it’s a mess around here, but at least I have a place to sleep.

As for my email yesterday, the one that will never be sent, it announced that today I will actually be starting a new promotion.

It’s for the “work alongside me” offer to build up your list via ads, with my feedback and help. I revealed a bunch of details about that offer in my non-email yesterday, but I will save that now for the official announcement later today at the usual time.

Thanks for reading. And now, I’ll go do some more unpacking.

Revealed: MVE contest winners

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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:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

A peek behind the curtain of my “mesmerizing” Copy Riddles sales letter

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It’s strange times around the Bejako household. There’s a Copy Riddles promotion going on, but I’m not the one furiously typing it up.

Instead, I’m looking on as Daniel Throssell sends out email after email to sell Copy Riddles. I’m watching the resulting sales coming in. And I’m feeling a little guilty that I’m not somehow supporting the effort.

So let me share a third-party opinion on Copy Riddles that might help change some minds.

This opinion comes from Carlo Gargiulo, an Italian-language copywriter. Carlo is a star copywriter at Metodo Merenda, a Switzerland-based info publishing business. He also has his own list where he writes to entrepreneurial dentists and doctors and marketers, and he is a bit of an LinkedIn influencer in the Italian copy space.

Carlo had the following to say about Copy Riddles:

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Copy Riddles is the best copy course of all time.

I have spent a lot of money studying and learning so much useful information from copywriter courses such as Stefan Georgi, John Carlton, David Deutsch, etc. (all great courses that I have enjoyed), but I feel that Copy Riddles was the COURSE that allowed me to become a good copywriter.

I hope you will create courses similar to Copy Riddles in the future.

My dream is a course of yours on writing sales letter-landing pages (Your writing style is completely different from that of most copywriters I see around.). Indeed, Copy Riddles’ landing page is the only one I have read in its entirety over and over again. You literally mesmerized me with that landing page.

Anyway, congratulations and thanks again for creating and making Copy Riddles available.

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Here’s a quick copywriting lesson, specifically about how I structured the multi-page Copy Riddles sales letter, which Carlo says he found mesmerizing.

Each of the three pages of that sales letter is designed to get you to believe one and only one thing, specifically:

Page 1’s belief is that bullets are one of the most valuable copywriting skills you can ever own.

To do that, I refer to authorities such as John Carlton, Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, Stefan Georgi, and Ben Settle, all of whom have gone on record to say that — yes, bullets are one of the most valuable copywriting skills you can ever own, and maybe the most valuable.

Page 2’s belief is that the best way to own bullets is to follow what Gary Halbert once recommended in his newsletter — and what people like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and Ben Settle have put in practice — namely, to look in parallel at both the source material and the finished bullet.

Page 3’s belief is that Copy Riddles is a fun and effective way to implement that Gary Halbert process…

… without spending months of your time and hundreds of hours of your mental effort to do what I’ve already done for you, which is to track down a bunch of winning sales letters… buy or borrow or steal the books or courses they were selling… and go bullet by bullet, comparing the source to the finished product, figuring out how exactly the A-list copywriters turned lead into gold.

And that’s pretty much the entire sales letter.

If I manage to convince the reader of all three of those points, then making the sale is easy, which is why I don’t have a big and dramatic scarcity-based close for the Copy Riddles sales page.

Of course, it does help that I have a bunch of great testimonials, like Carlo’s, right before the final “Buy now” button.

Maybe you would like to see how this mesmerizing sales letter looks in reality.

I won’t link to it directly in this email. Instead, I will remind you that Daniel Throssell is promoting Copy Riddles right now.

Daniel has gotten me to offer a one-time, sizable discount from the current Copy Riddles price, exclusively to people who come via his list.

So if you’re curious what my mesmerizing Copy Riddles sales page looks like, check out Daniel’s next email, because it will have a link to that page at the end.

And if you’re at all interested in buying, then act before tomorrow, Wednesday at 12 noon PST, because that’s when Daniel and I agreed to end this special offer, which will never be repeated again.

In case you’re not yet on Daniel’s list, here’s where to go:

https://persuasivepage.com/

The opportunity to become an insight specialist

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Reader Carlo Gargiulo, who joined my Copy Riddles program a few weeks back, writes in to ask (the bold below was in his original message):

First of all, I want to tell you something.

The Copy Riddles exercises are helping me so much.

Just yesterday the head of the copy team I’m on right now read my latest sales letter and said: “It sounds like you didn’t write this sales letter. The sentences are short, concise, and specific. You did a great job.”

I’m now on round 18 and can confirm that this is a really, really important course for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills and become a copywriter who can write ads that convert.

Also, the structure of the course is wonderful.

You study the theory part, then you do the exercises, and then you check if your bullets are in line with the master copywriters… and repeat this round after round until you improve.

Having reached this point, I am undecided whether to buy Age of Insight.

I’ve been asking myself this question for days: will the information within it allow me to expand on the concepts expressed in Copy Riddles? Are the two courses related? Or are they part of two different planets?

Fact:

​​All the people who have signed up so far for my Age of Insight training have bought something from me before.

On the one hand, that means I’m doing something right with the trainings and courses I’m selling. Like Carlo above, the people who have been through my courses get real practical value from them, and want to come back for more.

On the other hand, it also means been I’ve doing a bad job selling the opportunity that is insight marketing, and Carlo’s question shows it.

So let’s see if I can make this opportunity a little clearer and more tempting:

The Age of Insight not a replacement for Copy Riddles, just as insight techniques are not a replacement for clear promises, sexy offers, or unique positioning.

But using insight in your marketing is an opportunity to do something that most marketers not aware of yet, but that a few smart marketers are getting great benefits from. For example:

Rich Schefren – who sold $960,000 worth of coaching services in 2 hours and 15 minutes thanks to a 40-page report built on insight techniques

Travis Sago – who manages to convert 20%-25% of his entire list over time, and who says insight the best way to move people towards a sale

Stefan Georgi – who makes a very small but very important insight technique an integral part of the trillions or perhaps quadrillions of dollars he has made with his copy

And what’s more:

All these guys have taught aspects of insight marketing somewhere, usually in one-off trainings behind closed doors.

I know, because I’ve gotten my hands on those trainings. But while Rich and Travis and Stefan realized that they were on to something powerful, their how-to on insight was partial and limited to their own experiences.

I’ve done a lot more thinking and research on this topic, and collected more examples, and experimented on my own.

​​And I will aim to give you the white-hot core of that inside the Age of Insight live training, so you too can start to consciously use insight techniques in your marketing, and start to get the rewards that come with it.

A while back, I looked up the etymology of the word opportunity.

It comes from the Latin phrase ob portum veniens — coming towards a port, and in reference to wind. In other words, an opportunity is a chance to get into safe harbor, with the wind to your back.

Right now, the wind is blowing favorably. But it will shift soon, because registration for the Age of Insight closes in two days.

When the wind does become favorable again — some day, no guarantees when — the price to dock inside the Age of Insight port will be much higher, perhaps double what it is now.

Meanwhile, the waves, pirates, and sharks behind you will only get bigger and more threatening.

Because while insight techniques are nice to have now — see results above — they will become more and more mandatory as the market inevitably rolls on and matures and more people start using these same techniques consciously.

I am only making the Age of Insight open to people who are signed up to my email newsletter. So if you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity while it’s still early days, here’s the first step to getting into harbor.