Email Players

My new chore-of-the-month arrived yesterday and is looking at me accusingly

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Yesterday I pushed my way into the lobby of my building — too many grocery bags in my hands — and I peeked into my mailbox.

My ex-girlfriend (still living together) was already by the elevators, holding her own batch of grocery bags. “There’s nothing,” she said. “I checked already.”

But I don’t trust anyone. So I peeked into the mailbox. And I saw it:

A narrow cardboard package that somehow telegraphed class and high-value.

I opened up the mailbox. The ex came over wide-eyed. “What is it? What did you order?”

Frankly, I had no idea.

The package was postmarked UK. I thought for a minute. And then I remembered.

I’d signed up to a magazine-of-the-month club a while back. Each month, they send you a new magazine, so you can get exposed to new stuff, be entertained, have new email fodder.

This was my first issue.

I couldn’t wait to see what I got. I tore open the cardboard package right there in the lobby.

Inside was more beautiful paper packaging. I felt bad ripping it apart. In the elevator up to the apartment, I tried to peel it open carefully. But impatience to see my cool new magazine bubbled over.

I ripped up the paper packaging as well.

As I entered my apartment, I could finally get at the fascinating and intriguing contents inside. And what I found was:

A squat, black cover, showing a hand holding a spoon, and taking a bit of some kind of unidentified mass from a platter, which was held by another hand.

A vague, arty photo. There was nothing else on the cover except the magazine title. Not a good start.

I flipped to the back.

​​”FEATURING,” the back cover said, “Fiction:” and then a long list of contributors. “Poetry:” and then another long list of contributors. “Art and photography:” and then more contributors.

“Ugh,” I sighed. “This feels like it’s gonna be work.”

I tossed my new chore-of-the-month onto the little stand next to the couch, where it’s still sitting, in its shrink-wrap. I’ll have to schedule a time during my work hours to sit down and face this obligation.

In case you’re wondering how this could possibly be relevant to you:

Between 2017 and 2021, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s Email Players print newsletter.

After I decided to unsubscribe, I asked myself why. What did it?

There were several logical reasons.

But I realized that the real, emotional reason was simply that reading Email Players had become a chore.

I’m sure there were still some valuable ideas in each issue. But it was no longer fun to read.

I kept looking at it sitting there by my couch, and thinking, “Ugh. There’s that to do.” And since Email Players is hardly the only source of valuable ideas in the universe, I decided to unsubscribe.

I myself am now planning a subscription offer, a community around newsletters, which I’m planning to call Publishers Club.

But I realize that — and here’s the takeaway of today’s email — value notwithstanding, my subscription offer will have to be enjoyable and even fun if people will have any chance of getting value out of it.

So I am appealing to you for help and input.

Write in and tell me one subscription offer that you pay for, and that you actually enjoy or even look forward to.

It could be a newsletter, a community, a magazine, a magazine-of-the-month club, a streaming service, whatever.

For bonus points, tell me what makes this subscription offer enjoyable or even fun.

In return, I will 1) telepathically send you good vibes along with my gratitude and 2) reply via email and tell you the only subscription offer I am currently enjoying, and why I suspect I am enjoying it.

I’ve mentioned this subscription offer in passing a few times in the past. But I’d say chances are about 99.9% you do not know what I have in mind.

​​If you’d like to know, write me with your fun or enjoyable subscriptions, and we can do a tit-for-tat trade.

The Psycho rules you MUST have for a stronger business and more successful customers

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Last night, as lights dimmed around the city and the streets got quiet and a lonely owl started hooting somewhere in the distance, I settled into bed and started watching…

Psycho!

(​​The trailer.)

This was a 6-minute promo movie, made by Alfred Hitchcock, to drum up anticipation for the real Psycho movie.

The Psycho trailer features Hitchcock himself, showing off the Psycho set as if it were a real crime scene.

​​With cheery music playing, Hitchcock walks around the set, hints at the murders that happened in different rooms, and occasionally pouts and frowns at camera as if to say, “You there, in the second row, what odd thing are you doing?”

At the end of it all, Hitchcock walks into the motel, to the bathroom.

“Well they cleaned all this up now,” he says. “Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was… well, it’s too horrible to describe.”

In spite of this, Hitchcock continues his cheery tour. He points out the toilet — an important clue — and then the shower. The camera zooms in as he reaches for the shower curtain, pulls it back swiftly, and—

A screaming woman’s face flashes and the famous Psycho slasher music cuts into your ears.

The closing credits appear, and then a notice:

“PSYCHO: The picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all! For no one will be seated after the start.”

“What?” I asked my laptop. No one allowed in late? Is this for real?”

It turns out yes.

Hitchcock made a rule for the release of Psycho. Nobody would be allowed into the theater, any theater, anywhere around country, after the movie had started.

Studio honchos were worried that this arbitrary rule would hurt ticket sales.

But you, my dear marketing psycho, probably know better.

What do you think happened?

Did people hear they won’t be allowed in late, and decide to stay away?

Did a few people who did come late, and who got turned away, and who fumed about it… did these people sour everybody else from seeing the movie?

Of course not.

Lines formed around the block, in cities around the US, made up of people waiting to see Psycho, at the appointed time.

Of course, these people were not there only because of this “No late admission” rule.

But I’m 100% sure this rule contributed to the fact that Pyscho broke box-office records in its opening weekend, and has become such a keystone of pop culture since.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

People loooove draconian rules and restrictions, particularly in a take-it-or-leave it setting.

Sure, some people get turned away. Either because they know in advance they can’t make it to the theater in time, or more likely, because they dawdle.

But some people will be intrigued who wouldn’t care otherwise. And more important, many people will treat the person setting the rules with a new level of respect and deference.

Ben Settle recently wrote an email about his Psycho rule not to allow people who unsubscribe from his Email Players newsletter to re-subscribe down the line. Ben wrote:

“I’ve tested, tweaked, experimented with, and practiced this policy for nearly 10 years. And I have found, without exception, the harsher I am with this policy, the stronger my business gets with far more successful customers. On the other hand, the more lenient I am with this policy, the weaker my business gets with far more weak-minded customers. It’s such an integral part of what makes my business model work, that it’s ‘part’ of my marketing now, just like clean parks are ‘part’ of Disneyland’s customer service.”

So there you go. If you want a stronger business and more successful customers, stop allowing anyone into your theater after the lights dim.

Or stop allowing them back in, if they ever leave for a pee break.

Or come up with yer own Psycho rules. Ones that match your personality, your preferences, and your business objectives.

“Here it comes,” some oddball in the second row is saying, while rubbing his hands together. “Here come Bejako’s rules. He always likes to write about an interesting marketing and business idea, and then implement it in the same email.”

True. I do like to implement good ideas as soon as I write about them.

But another thing I like to do is to take a really important idea, and sit on it for a while, and then implement it in future emails, and throughout my business.

This particular idea, about Psycho rules, is big enough and important enough to warrant more time and space than I want to take for a single email.

But keep an eye out, if you have an eye to spare, and maybe will see me pulling back the shower curtain some time soon, and with scary slasher music suddenly playing, startling my list with one of my new Pyscho rules.

Meanwhile, if you want my advice, insights, and guidance (no copywriting) when it comes to your existing email marketing funnels, you can contact me using the form below.

No arbitrary rules or hoops to jump through — yet.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

How to get all of Ben Settle’s best stuff for free

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A lot of value in today’s email. Let me set it up with a response I got to my email yesterday:

Not gonna lie, ever since you did that presentation about Daniel Throssel’s emails I’ve noticed you’ve been writing in a similar style.
But more subtle which is your approach.

This email had no value at all. But who cares? I was still reading all the way to the end. and I actually really liked it.

Hope the furnishing all goes well in Barcelona!

Let me tell you a personal, and very valuable story:

Many, many years ago, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s daily emails for the first time.

And right off, I was annoyed. Ben would send out emails claiming to be filled with “value,” which were just pitches for his Email Players newsletter, or testimonials which he slapped in and claimed were valuable in themselves.

What a crook.

Eventually though, all that shameless self-promotion wore me down. I got curious.

So I subscribed to Email Players see what Ben’s real secrets were.

I got his Email Players Skhema, the how-to workbook that comes with the subscription. I read through that.

I also finally remembered I had a free copy of the first issue of Email Players, which Ben gives away on his site. I read through that also.

And then I read the first month’s issue, which revealed the “secret” Ben had been teasing for weeks.

And you know what?

The damnedest thing happened.

It turned out Ben wasn’t lying all along.

His emails were packed with value. More often than not, the most valuable stuff in the paid newsletter was right there, in his emails, sometimes explicitly stated.

I didn’t see that before just because Ben’s emails are structured as infotainment. The value wasn’t bolded, highlighted, and explained as it would be in a textbook. It took what Ben likes to say “reading between the lines” or at least a slightly more careful reading than I was giving his daily emails, or to any emails for that matter.

Was there stuff in the paid Email Players print newsletter that wasn’t in Ben’s daily emails?

Sure. And by not paying for Ben’s newsletter, you will miss out on that.

At the same time, by a close reading of his emails, you will get the best stuff. You will also find stuff Ben doesn’t reveal in his newsletter, or probably even in his books, stuff that he wants to keep for himself.

So that’s my response to the claim above that my email yesterday had no value at all. And if you don’t see how that’s a response, well…

In any case, here’s another thing I learned from Ben Settle. It’s to end your emails with “Okay, on to business.”

If you want to get my best stuff for free, both stuff I’ve learned from Ben Settle, and from my own experience, working with 8-figure direct response businesses, and managing large and very profitable email lists myself, then you can sign up to my very valuable daily emails here.