Gary Bencivenga

An email marketing and business-building topic

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Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash despises his band’s biggest hit, Sweet Child O’ Mine.

​​Slash came up with the famous intro riff as a joke, by playing a “circus tune” that mocked the popular guitar technique of string skipping. But the rest of the band picked up on the joke riff and developed the song.

They recorded it, and in 1988, it became their one and only no. 1 hit. Now, 30-something years later, the video for Sweet Child O’ Mine has over 1.2 billion views on YouTube.

You can file that away as “useless fact #754 that’s stayed stuck in JB’s head for the past 20 years.” Except there is a point to it:

If you create anything, even some bastard form like sales emails or blog content, you might start to get bored. Your taste and interests might evolve away from where your audience is. You might veer off and cover topics that you haven’t covered before, and stop covering topics that your audience wants.

Examples of this:

1. I used to follow a guy online who wrote a blog about picking up girls and self-improvement topics. All right. Then he started writing book reviews of the manly pulp novels he was reading. No. Delete.

2. I recently heard Gary Bencivenga talk about email marketing for his olive oil business. “If we don’t put ‘olive oil’ somewhere in the subject line,” Gary said, “we can’t get people to open up the emails at all.”​​

3. My own email newsletter. It’s mainly about persuasion, marketing and copywriting. Whenever I get away from those topics, I feel the pulse of my list slow down. I never tried pushing it… but I bet that after a week of off-topic emails I’d hear the flat line of no pulse at all.

So my point to you is to beware.

Your audience came to you for a reason. If you don’t respect that, even in spite of your own fancy and evolving tastes, you will miss out on those blockbuster #1 hits… and pretty soon, you will lose ’em altogether. And then you’ll be left singing like Axl:

Where do we go?

Where do we go now?

I’ll tell you where you go. At least if you’re interested in persuasion, marketing, and copywriting. You go to my email newsletter. Available for free here.

How Gary Bencivenga transforms his counterexamples

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A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once wrote an ad for an agency he worked for. The ad ran in the Wall Street Journal, and the headline read,

“Announcing a direct response advertising agency that will guarantee to outpull your best ad.”

As you might expect from Gary, this ad was packed with all kinds of proof. In fact, a quarter of the ad consisted of eight case studies of previous clients that hired Gary’s agency.

​​Seven of the clients got tremendous results. One did not, and they didn’t pay anything, as per the guarantee in the headline.

I thought of this ad today because of a book I just finished reading, called Transforming Your Self, by Steve Andreas. The book is about our self-concept — how we think about ourselves — and how to change that.

Right now I’ll only share one bit of this valuable book with you. It’s about the raw meat that your self-concept, at least according to Andreas.

​​(And bear with me me for just a bit. Because this does tie into Gary Bencivenga and sales and marketing.)

So say you think of yourself as “smart.” How do you know that? How do you know you’re smart?

Andreas’s answer is that you have a set of mental images, each representing an experience, which back up your claim to being “smart.”

Perhaps you see your parents praising you when you were 7… or some workplace triumph… or getting through a dense book and really grokking it.

Whatever. The point is you have examples that back up your claim to being smart. Probably lots of them.

But what about the counterexamples? What about that time the intimidating college professor asked you a question… and you just sat there squirming, like a sweaty turnip?

That’s the interesting bit.

According to Andreas, your self-concept becomes stronger when you include counterexamples in your mental database.

A counterexample makes your claim to a quality more real and believable. (I’ve tried it out personally… and I believe it.)

And by the way, that’s exactly what’s happening in Gary’s ad above. That one counterexample makes the ad more real and believable.

But what if you have more than one counterexample? What if they start to pile up? What if they rival, or even outnumber your good examples?

That’s what the rest of Andreas’s book is about.

But Gary, master psychologist that he is, figured it out intuitively. And if you read Gary’s ad, you can find the answer, both in the headline and in the offer itself. In case you want to crack the code, here is Gary’s original ad:

https://bejakovic.com/bencivenga-agency-ad

#1 secret of wealth creation for marketers and copywriters

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Today, for the first time ever, I took a closer look at Parris Lampropoulos’s Copy Vault sales page.

Parris, who is an A-list copywriter, offered the Copy Vault training back in 2018. And back in 2018, when I decided I wanted in, I raced past the sales letter and went straight to the order page. Rabbit brain.

So today, while working on a project, I finally took a closer look. And right away, I saw something odd. The headline reads:

For the First and Last Time Ever,
Parris Lampropoulos Opens the Vault and Reveals His Top Wealth-Creation Secrets
for Copywriters and Marketers

Hmm. That sounded strangely familiar.

The bit calling out copywriters and marketers… the promised secrets of wealth-creation… and that “first and last time” thing…

Had I seen all of those somewhere before? Oh yeah. Of course:

Available on DVDs for the First and Only Time…
“Gary Bencivenga’s
7 Master Secrets
of Wealth Creation
for Marketers and Copywriters”

That’s the headline that Gary Bencivenga, an even more famous A-list copywriter, wrote for the sales letter for his farewell seminar, back in 2006.

Coincidence?

Hardly. Rather, it’s the #1 wealth-creation secret for any marketers or copywriters who are willing to listen. Here’s why.

I recently heard marketer Caleb O’Dowd talk about how he does research. Caleb said two things.

First, when you enter a market, you should look at your top 3-5 competitors. (Or I guess one is enough, if your competitor happens to be Gary Bencivenga.)

Caleb said there are reasons why those people are at the top. So reverse engineer their successful sales letters… figure out those reasons… and you too will know exactly what to say to prospects to get a response.

Very obvious, right?

Right. But still something that was eye-opening to me. Because while I’ve spent hundreds of hours of research on copywriting projects… very little of that time went to analyzing copy from the competition.

Silly me. That’s something I will change starting now.

And what about the second tip Caleb had about research?

Well, that’s in the video below.

​​The video is from the Q&A after-party of the recent Clayton Makepeace tribute. It features a bunch of A-list copywriters, including Gary Bencivenga and Parris Lampropoulos, answering questions.

​​I personally think it’s worth watching for Caleb’s answer alone. But perhaps you’re wondering if you really need another Obvious Adams tip on research.

In that case, let me repeat something I wrote a few weeks ago, also in connection to Caleb:

“Caleb said deep research is the kind of thing very few marketers are willing to engage in. But those who do inevitably wind up at the top of their market. They don’t just succeed, they have breakthroughs, and they make millions.”

By the way, Caleb isn’t the only one to put such a premium on research and understanding your audience.

Gary says the game is won or lost in research. He calls deep research the “launchpad of copywriting breakthroughs.”

And Parris says the #1 secret in copywriting — more than any technique or book — is to understand your audience.

In case that’s sufficient motivation for you to find out Caleb’s other research tip…

Well, let me interrupt for a second. And say that, if you are a copywriter or a marketer, and you’re after wealth-creation secrets, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter.

And now, if I’ve convinced you about the value of research, and you want to see what Caleb’s second tip is, here’s the video:

The “Cow For Sale” principle

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Do you know what this is:

If you’re like me, you probably said it’s a cow.

Actually, this is Posh Spice. Posh is a pedigreed Limousin heifer, and several months ago, she became the most expensive heifer in the world. She sold at auction for a little over $359k. (Her owner described her as”smart and stylish” with a “lot of panache.”)

Speaking of farm animals:

Gary Bencivenga has this thing he calls the “Duck For Sale” principle. Sometimes, says Gary, when you have a duck for sale, just say so. “Don’t beat about the bush with a headline such as, ‘Announcing a special opportunity to buy a white-feathered flying object.'”

That’s good stuff, Gary. But don’t forget about the “Cow For Sale” principle.

Because sometimes, what you have in hand, or at the end of a rope, is a solution that is more specific than what your prospect really wants, or at least is aware that he wants.

I couldn’t tell Posh apart from any other cow. Maybe you couldn’t either. Maye you just thought to yourself,

“I just really need a cow right now. Any cow. That’s all.”

In that case, no sense in being stubborn. Don’t push a specific headline on your prospect such as, “Pedigreed Limousin heifer for sale — daughter of Gingerspice.” Because that will fly right over your prospect’s head.

Instead, swallow your pride and write a less specific headline. Something like:

“Beautiful cow for sale. Milk for miles, cheap to keep. Call 617-459-POSH”

One final point:

Are you looking for entertainment as well as education, specifically in the field of persuasion? In that case, check out the opportunity at the other side of this link — it might be just what you need.

Writing to the urgent foot fetish market

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Today I learned about Wikifeet, which is just like Wikipedia, with one big difference. Where Wikipedia has a range of in-depth articles on things like gift wrapping and Sam Kinison, Wikifeet only has pictures, and only of feet.

The feet on Wikifeet belong to celebrities, like Ilona Robelin and Trisha Paytas. If you’ve never heard of these two celebrities, don’t worry. Neither had I before today. But both Ilona and Trisha apparently have an IMDB page (a requirement for getting onto Wikifeet), and of course, they both have feet.

I learned about this today through a woman named Laura Bassett. Bassett, who is not a big celebrity but who does have an IMDB page, wrote an article about discovering her Wikifeet profile.

Finding a page dedicated to your own feet would probably be strange enough. But what was even more strange was that Bassett’s Wikifeet profile was always up-to-date. Each time Bassett posted a new photo to Instagram where her feet showed, a few minutes later, she found the same photo, uploaded to Wikifeet.

Mysterious.

So Bassett posted to Instagram, asking the foot poster to get in touch (“No shade, I just have questions”). And to her surprise, she got a response. Bassett’s foot admirer came out of the shadows, and was willing to publicly share his name — and so much more.

I won’t reprint the whole article, but here are a few key statistics about the man who came forward, Robert Hamilton:

1. Robert is 58 years old, and he lives in northern New Jersey.

2. He works as a salesman.

3. He loves the Yankees.

4. He is also a big fan of live music.

Basset had a Q&A with Robert, which is printed in the article. Robert revealed the key childhood events that led to his foot fetish. He explained what he looks for in a foot. He listed his favorite celebrity feet.

He also said he is aware his foot fixation on Internet strangers might make those strangers uncomfortable. And he’s willing to stop if asked. Otherwise, he doesn’t think he’s harming anybody.

Which leads me to something A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga teaches.

Markets are problems, says Gary. And by problems, he means problems, wants, desires, or possibly, fetishes.

Gary’s point is not to get hung up on demographics. How many other Wikifeet posters are 58-year-old salesmen from New Jersey? Probably not many. And yet all Wikifeet posters share something powerful in common.

So Gary says to focus on writing to that common problem. And even better if you can write to a slice of that market that has a more urgent problem.

But that urgent part is another topic, for another time. Speaking of which:

If you have a problem, or a fetish, involving persuasion, marketing, and copywriting, you might like my email newsletter. It’s just like Wikipedia, except it’s a short email that arrives to your inbox each day. In case you’d like to try it out, here’s where to go.

Cheapest way to get an A-list copywriting education (only good until Thursday)

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Say you’d like to get a bunch of A-list copywriters to sit around and share insights and advice with you. I’m talking the biggest names in the direct response industry… people like Gary Bencivenga and Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch. Copywriters who have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff with just their magic, fascinating words.

How much would you be willing to pay for such an opportunity, if it lasted, say, an entire afternoon?

$5k?

Too much?

How about $1k?

Still too much?

Maybe only $500?

Well, I’ll tell you how to get it for free.

This Thursday at 1pm EST, a bunch of the most successful copywriters of all time are getting together in virtual space, somewhere in east Zoom. The occasion is the one-year anniversary of the death of Clayton Makepeace, himself a famous A-list copywriter, and a mentor to many of the people who will be speaking on this call.

Here are few things that might interest you about this event:

1. It will last for 3 hours.

2. So far, about a dozen A-list copywriters and other direct marketing veterans are confirmed to be participating.

3. I have no idea what these people people will talk about. But even if there are zero headline tips and even fewer magic sales letter closes being shared… I suspect the call will still be very valuable.

4. Since this is organized in Clayton’s honor, and based on the profile of the people who will join, I imagine it won’t just be a 3-hour-long tease-fest that’s designed to sell something else. But I could be wrong.

5. I don’t know if there will be any recordings of the call, and if there are, how they will be made available and to whom.

5. This event is free to attend, but you do gotta register.

So if an A-list education sounds good to you… and if free is a price you can afford to pay… then here’s where to go:

https://members.carlinecole.com/clayton

A little direct response gem, or a dirty trick?

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Once upon a time, deep in the direct response mines, I found a little gem in two sales letters from Gary Bencivenga.

It reminded me of my childhood tennis coach, who claimed he would wear the same t-shirt four days in a row. One day, the standard way… next day, inside-out… third day, front-to-back… fourth day, you get the idea.

Well, Gary’s two sales letters did something similar.

The first sales letter ran with the headline, “Do you make these mistakes in job interviews?” The offer was a book, Interviews That Win Jobs, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, How to Answer the 64 Toughest Interview Questions (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

Then there was a second ad of Gary’s I found.

The headline read, “Job hunting? How well can YOU answer these 64 toughest interview questions?” The offer was a book, 64 Toughest Interview Questions, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, Interviews That Win Jobs (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

I don’t know. Maybe Gary wore the other two bonuses inside-out and front-to-back also. I just haven’t found those ads yet.

My point being, if you hit upon a hot market, you can use and reuse your main offer and your bonuses to blitz your market. This way, you can often get more of a response than you would with just one ad and one offer.

And if you don’t use Gary’s trick all at once, you can do what Dan Kennedy calls a reverse:

When your offer starts to flag, take the free bonuses and make that the paid system you’re selling… and take the old system you were selling and break it up into free bonuses.

But maybe you don’t think this is a little gem. Maybe you think it’s a low-down dirty trick… selling people what you used to give away for free… and giving away what you used to charge for.

But what to do? Such is human nature. You have to play these kinds of games if you want people to value what you’ve got. As a clever Spaniard once wrote:

“And as all men know, what costs but little, that we rate but low.”

Here’s something I suspect you will rate but low:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s where I put the most interesting and valuable ideas I come across related to persuasion, marketing, and copywriting. Here’s where you can sign up, for free.

A simple 3-hour “trick” which 100% makes your bullets better

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Today is the last day of the bullets course I’ve been running. We will wrap it up with an important lesson. Let’s start with a bullet by David Deutsch:

“Restore night vision — with a berry. See page 76.”

Which berry? Here’s what it says of page 76 of the book David was selling:

Night Vision

* Eat blueberries when they’re in season. They can help restore night vision.

* You know the old joke about carrots being good for your eyes? Well you’ve never seen a rabbit wearing glasses. Eat two or three carrots a day (raw or cooked) and/or drink a glass of fresh carrot juice. It’s excellent for alleviating night blindness.

* Eat more watercress in salads and/or drink watercress tea.

David’s bullet is an example of the teaser mechanism I wrote about yesterday. But that’s not the point I want to make today.

Instead, look at all that other stuff in the source material.

Why did David choose to focus on the berry? Why didn’t he highlight the proven “Bugs Bunny cure” for night blindness instead? And why didn’t the bullet read,

“Restore night vision — with this delicious tea. See page 76.”

Who the hell knows. But I can take a guess. Let me set up my guess with two facts about two other expert copywriters. First, here’s Gary Bencivenga, writing in the royal “we”:

“When it comes to strong copy, we’ve seen again and again that the most persuasive ads arise from thorough research. We’ve established this general rule — accumulate seven times more information about the product than we can use.”

Second, there’s Parris Lampropoulos. I heard him say in an interview how he also follows Gary’s 7x research rule above. But from what I understand, Parris takes it one step further.

Parris will also write 7x the bullets he can use in his copy. This means that for a magalog with a 100 bullets, Parris will write up to 700 bullets.

So now we get back to those night-vision blueberries.

It’s very possible that David did write up bullet with a “Bugs Bunny cure,” or something like it. But when comparing it with the berry mechanism, he simply thought the berry sounded better.

The fact is, in any decent book or course or other info product, there will be a bunch of problems that are addressed… a bunch of solutions offered… and a bunch of factoids you can twist and highlight about each of these solutions. Each of those can make a new bullet.

You don’t really know which combination will sound the best until you try it out. And you also don’t know which one will work the best once you have it in the actual promo, surrounded by other bullets. Which leads to today’s bullet lesson:

Lesson 11: “Write many more bullets than you need.”

How many more?

That’s up to you. David and Gary and Parris wrote copy where millions of dollars were on the line. In that case, it makes sense they put in 7x extra work.

But what if you’re just starting out? Well, it might make sense even in that case. Here’s a quote by another master of bullets, Gene Schwartz:

“This is what makes success. There’s nothing else in the world that makes success as much as this. I will take the best copywriter in the world who is sloppy and careless, and match him against a good copy cub, and two out of three times, the sloppiness of the great person will be beaten by the carefulness of the other person. […] The person who is the best prepared and the most knowledgeable makes the most money. It’s so simple!”

I can tell you this personal tidbit:

For my lesson yesterday on teaser mechanisms, I wanted to feature three examples. And so I took my own advice, and I dug up 21 examples of teaser bullets, and the source material behind each of them. It took me about three hours of work to do all the research and analysis.

So was it worth it?

I think so. It’s how I could see the (now obvious) lessons I found yesterday.

But like I said, today’s is the end of this bullets course.

This doesn’t mean there are no more bullets lessons out there… or that I’ve stopped researching and writing them up. Quite the opposite.

The fact is, I want to create a new version of this course, which actually gets you practicing these lessons instead of just reading what I write. This new course won’t be free and it might be expensive… well, at least when you compare it to free.

Anyways, I’ll write up an offer page for this in a few days. And I’ll send it out in an email so you can see for yourself — assuming you’ve been eating your carrots — whether it’s something you’re interested in or not.

And if you want to get that email when I send it out, you can subscribe here to my amazing email sending service.

How women can write more exciting bullets (even if the source material is boring)

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See if you can answer the following question:

If you’re a man, do you know why you should never wear a gold bracelet to a job interview?

No? But you’re curious? Well I’m not surprised.

Because that bullet/fascination was written by one of the greatest copywriters of all time, Gary Bencivenga.

​​Gary was selling a book by Benci-Ventures, his own tiny publishing company, about how to succeed when you search for a new job. So what’s up with the gold bracelet?

Well, the secret behind that is the same secret behind my subject line. Because it’s true. It is possible for women to write more exciting bullets… even when the material they are working with is deadly dull.

How?

I talked all about this in today’s issue of my bullets course. If you’re new to these parts, maybe you need an explanation of what the bullets course is, and how you can join (for free). Here’s where to start:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

Welcome your prospect to the Hotel California

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Two days ago, on a dark desert side road, I checked into the Hotel California.

That’s not what it’s really called. But that’s what it makes me think of, whenever I step outside my room.

The place in question is a 10-storey complex with five or six apartments on each floor. My guess it has a 10% occupancy rate.

There is staff floating about without ever seeming to do anything. They don’t speak English, and they don’t seem interested in dealing with guests.

There’s also a tiny pool and a basic gym on the top floor.

And as a curiosity, the sides of the building are open. In other words, as you climb the stairs, you first see a normal hotel… and then the walls disappear to give you a direct view to the city below.

For me, it all has a surreal feel. That’s why I liken it to the Hotel California. You know, in the Eagles song. “You can check out any time you want… but you can never leave.”

Because this place is convenient enough, but nothing spectacular. And yet, some small barriers to actually leaving, such as the grave-digger staff, might keep me here for eternity.

So what’s my point?

I’m not sure. Perhaps only a reference to an eye-opening insight from Gary Bencivenga, who was called the “world’s greatest copywriter.”

Gary said that wealth is an income stream. In more detail:

“You don’t build great wealth by merely creating a great product for a hungry crowd… not even a great product for a hungry crowd and a great piece of copy to sell it.

“No, you build great wealth by creating a product for a hungry crowd, plus a built-in way to keep that hungry crowd frozen in place and buying from you again and again whenever they’re hungry. In other words, you want a marketing system that rewards you with substantial income right away, and then — much more important — rewards you repeatedly with an automatic back-end revenue stream.”

And speaking from personal experience — as a buyer rather than seller:

It’s not that hard to get your prospect to check in and never leave.

Of course, he might resist at first at the possibility of having to pay forever.

But a sexy front-end offer and urgent copy will often get him over that hurdle, at least for a one-night’s trial.

And later, all you really need is something like my Hotel California to keep your customer frozen in place. A product or service that’s nothing spectacular, but is convenient enough… and some small barriers to actually leaving.

And now for the coda of the song:

“Relax”, said the night man. “We are programmed to receive.” You can sign up for my email newsletter any time you like… and you can also leave whenever you find you don’t want to receive it any more.