Fully patented Most Valuable Email

I’d like to announce I have just drafted and am about to submit US patent application 16/573921.

​​My patent application only states the proven and the incontestable, which is that my Most Valuable trick fulfills the three main criteria for a patentable invention. Namely, my Most Valuable Email trick is:

Patent Criterion #1: Novel

​​While the underlying persuasion idea I write about in Most Valuable Email is as old as magic, my use of this idea in daily emails is novel. As copywriter Van Chow wrote after going through Most Valuable Email:

“I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.”

Patent Criterion #2: Non-obvious

​​I have used the Most Valuable Email trick hundreds of times in my newsletter and yet it continues to surprise. For example, copywriter Cindy Suzuki wrote after learning the Most Valuable Email trick:

“You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.”

Patent Criterion #3: Has a concrete, practical application

​​The Most Valuable Email trick produces interesting emails, but it also produces more concrete, practical results, such as money. In the experience of copywriter Ivan Orange, who went through Most Valuable Email:

“I want to take the opportunity to tell you that the day after I read MVE, I sent my list a first [MVE trick] email, using an idea from one of your swipe file emails. That day I sold one of my courses, which made me make 5 times more the investment in MVE, so I’m looking forward to keep improving in this technique and make many more sales.”

As soon as my $900 application fee is accepted and my patent application is approved, I plan to vigorously prosecute any and all copywriters, marketers, or small business owners infringing on my Most Valuable Email patent and writing Most Valuable Emails without a license.

​​Fortunately, I will have the full force of U.S. government and their thousands of patent lawyers on my side in that fight.

Of course, my goal is not to stop the spread of the Most Valuable Email trick. Most Valuable Email is most valuable for a reason, and it’s not only most valuable for me.

​​At the same time, I do want to control the spread of this powerful and novel idea, and I want to be rewarded properly for this invention. That’s the reason for my imminent patent application.
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​​Anybody can buy a license to learn to safely and legally use the Most Valuable Email trick, and the license fee is very reasonable, $100.

If you would like to buy a Most Valuable Email license, you can do so at the page below.

​​I also have a special offer, good for 24 hours only. Buy a Most Valuable Email license and also reply to this email, and I will tell you how this email relates to the Most Valuable Email trick, beyond just promoting my Most Valuable Email course.

You have until Tue, Apr 11, 2:31 EST to do so.

​​If you’ve bought a Most Valuable Email license already, of course this offer applies to you as well. But you do have to write me and ask, and before the deadline.

To get your own Most Valuable Email license:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Using Stefan Georgi in your copy

“It might take some figuring out to do it to where people aren’t pissed at you and you do it right, but I think this could actually be a home run thing that just absolutely CRUSHES it.”
— Stefan Georgi

So now let me ask you:

What is it?

What is Stefan talking about in the quote above?

I’ll give you a hint:

It’s a little gimmick, which Stefan advises you to use to start off your ad and VSL copy. It ties into that all-powerful driver of action, curiosity. And additionally, it creates a feeling of insight.

No? you don’t know the gimmick Stefan has in mind? Let me give you one more hint:

It starts with the letter R…

Then I…

Then D…

Then another D…

All right, fine — it’s riddles. In a recent video, “Using riddles in your copy,” Stefan advises using riddles in your ads and VSLs.

Why riddles?

Because riddles — “How many months have 28 days?” — consistently go viral on social media.

And what Stefan and many other smart marketers like to do is to camouflage their sneaky sales pitch and make it look like something — a riddle, for example — which you might want to consume for your own ends, and not for theirs.

And now, let me throw off my cloak and hold up my wizard staff, and with a blinding light shining from behind me, admit in my deep and resonant voice that this is exactly what I’ve done with this email.

Because the underlying idea Stefan is recommending — people enjoy riddles, so give ’em riddles — is at the core of my Copy Riddles program.

My goal was to make Copy Riddles fun. So I covered up the teaching, the learning, and the transformation bit in what I call copy riddles, hence the name of the program. ​​Did it work? Here’s what copywriter Cindy Suzuki, who joined Copy Riddles a few days ago, thinks about it:

Hi John,

I am having a blast with copy riddles so far. It feels like a game. I love it when learning is actually fun. Was on the fence until the last day, and I’m so glad I bought it 🙂

Cindy

If you like fun and games, and maybe some sales, then don’t join Copy Riddles. But see if you can sign up for my email newsletter. You can get started on that puzzle right here.

Have we reached “peak storytelling”?

This week’s New Yorker features a cartoon of a puzzled couple in front of an apartment door.

​​The man is holding a bottle of wine, so the couple are probably guests coming for a party. But they are hesitating, because the welcome mat in front of the door doesn’t say “Welcome”. Instead, it says,

“Welcome?”

This cartoon connected in my mind to a “law” I found out about a few day’s ago, Betteridge’s law, which states:

“If a headline asks a yes or no question, the answer is always no.”

Ian Betteridge is a technology journalist. And his argument was, if the answer to that yes/no question were yes, the writer would definitely tell you so, right away, as a matter of shocking fact.

Instead, the writer didn’t have enough proof to support his claim. But he decided to make it anyhow, as a question, in order to say something more dramatic than he could otherwise, and to suck you into reading. Like this:

“Will AI and Transhumanism Lead to the Next Evolution of Mankind, or Doom It?”

No. And no.

Betteridge’s law is an instance of the persuasion knowledge model.

​​That’s a fancy, academic term for the fact that people become aware of manipulative advertising and media techniques. And after people become aware, they also start resisting — “Don’t even bother reading this article, because the answer is sure to be no.”

That’s how in time, people become dismissive of intriguing headlines (“clickbait”), of being told something new about themselves (r/StupidInternetQuizzes/), even of effective stories (the entire TV Tropes website).

That’s not to say that curiosity, categorization, or stories no longer work or will not work as ways to persuade or influence.

But it does say that the effort and skill required to make them work today is a bit greater than it was yesterday — and it will be a bit greater still tomorrow.

And so it is with what I’ve been calling the Most Valuable Email trick.

Like stories, categorization, or curiosity, my MVE trick is based on fundamental human psychology.

​​It will continue to work forever — just how a well-told or fascinating story continues to work today, in spite of the fact that you probably have 20 story-based daily emails sitting in your inbox right now.

The thing is, if you act today, you get bonus points for using the MVE trick.

​​The day may come when the persuasion knowledge of the market becomes aware of this trick, and maybe even takes evasive measures. But today, practically nobody is aware of the MVE trick, especially in emails. As copywriter Cindy Suzuki wrote me after going through the Most Valuable Email course:

I’m looking back at your old emails with new eyes. You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.

In case you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity while it’s still early days:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/