The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way

Yesterday evening, I got an odd email from a reader. The subject line read:

“About your email subject lines”

There was nothing in the body of the email. There was just an attached file, “7 Tested and Proven Email Subject Lines that Get Your Emails Opened.” Among them:

1. How to survive _____
2. The biggest mistake _____ make
3. The fastest way to ______

I have this Chateau Heartiste policy of keeping my replies to readers no longer than what the reader wrote me. And since this reader didn’t even include a hello, I couldn’t, according to my policy, reply to ask him why he was sending me this guide to subject lines.

Was he displeased with my subject lines in general?

​​Was he impressed with my subject line yesterday? ​​Did he think it fit one of these molds in some way?

​​I guess I’ll never know.

But since this reader did send me tested and proven subject line ideas, I squeezed a bunch of them into my subject line today.

After all, why not? I don’t think it will make a molehill of difference. Here’s a story on that matter:

Last year, I wrote an email with the subject line, “More real than real.” That email was about some slightly esoteric stuff. I purposefully didn’t want a DR-style subject line for it, one that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

A bunch of people wrote in response to that email to tell me how much they liked the story and the lesson I was sharing.

I also got a response from a smart and successful marketer. He warned me that he almost missed my email, which he thought was valuable once he read it, because my subject line didn’t catch his eye at all. He even rewrote my subject line to show me how it’s done.

And then, the next week, he wrote in with a similar message, again pointing out that my subject line is suboptimal and that he almost missed another valuable email from me. As far as I can tell, he continues to read my emails to this day.

I am not pointing fingers or making fun of anybody.​ I’m just pointing a finger at something obvious:

A lot of standard copywriting wisdom, which was extracted from cold-traffic tests, isn’t particularly relevant to warm daily emails, which people mainly open because they’ve learned that you have something fun or interesting to say. In warm emails, the “headline” is really your name, and not your subject line.

Maybe you say I can be cavalier about this, because I still don’t sell regularly in this email newsletter, and I certainly don’t A/B test my subject lines here.

Fine.

But I have been in situations where I was actively selling in email, and where I was actively testing. I’ve managed two 70,000-person email lists, which were made up of buyers, and which produced millions of dollars of sales, thanks to emails I wrote. And yes, thanks to subject lines I wrote.

And you know what?

I once ran a little test to find out how our email open rates influenced our sales.

​​Result?

Experts were shocked. Literally. I mean, I, an email marketing expert, was shocked.

And that’s why I want to warn you about the biggest mistake that email marketers make when it comes to subject lines. And that’s to follow “Tested and proven subject lines that get your emails OPENED.” If you want to read the real secret of why this is a big problem, here’s the fastest way to do that:

https://bejakovic.com/why-ecommerce-list-owners-should-beware-high-open-rates/

How to profit from bizarre Florida crimes

A Florida man (who else) was arrested on Sunday in what is being called a “McDonald’s condiment attack.”

The man was staying at a Tampa motel with his girlfriend.

When the gf brought back the wrong order from McDonald’s, the man allegedly grew angry and struck her with plastic containers of McDonald’s “Sweet ‘n Sour” dipping sauce “in the head and face area.”

He’s been charged with a felony, since he was convicted in April of battering the same girlfriend at another motel.

There are a lot more details to this bizarre story, which you could use to tie this news item into just about any sales pitch. But that’s not my goal for today.

Instead, I just want to give you a checklist of spots to look for such stories, as well as a few examples of how to turn them into profitable emails or blog posts. Here goes:

#1 The Smoking Gun

I only discovered this one recently but it seems to have been pumping out bizarre tabloid news for decades. The front page only has a few stories at a time, and they don’t change often. But the ones that do appear are gold. It’s where I got the condiment attack story above.

#2 The Daily Mail

This English rag mainly has celebrity gossip, and trashy sunbed-tanned British celebrities at that. In between, they sometimes run bizarre stories with lots of interesting details. Such as the story that I developed into Severed ear fills a gaping hole for UK landscaper.

#3 Morbidology

This is a true crime blog. It features in-depth posts about rapes, murders, abductions, disappearances, unsolved mysteries, and gruesome events. Sample story: “The Death of a Nazi” (about a father who raised his son in a neo-Nazi stronghold and was later shot by the kid).

#4 Takimag

Takimag appears to be a kind of high-level Chateau Heartiste: racist, misogynist, and funny. I don’t endorse the views but I read it for a jolt. It’s where I got the inspiration for The bland conspiracy behind the Great Awokening.

#5 The New York Post

This the American version of The Daily Mail. It’s got lots of political outrage and celebrity gossip, but occasionally also something genuinely bizarre. Such as for example, the gem that lead to my post Overweight passenger forces flight attendants to wipe his butt.

#6 Quilette

This site seems to be a right-wing intellectual sinkhole. Lots of earnest hand-wringing. But also an occasional interesting and provocative story. It’s where I got the hook for my Naked yoga for lonely, bearded old men post.

So now you know where to get your fix of bizarre stories. Which you can throw, almost verbatim, into your daily emails. Or into your advertorials. And if you want to see some examples of advertorials that kick of with similarly bizarre stories, then check out the following: