Gavin Juff

Boring copy beats interesting copy

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Yesterday, I wrote about the value of being clear in email copy. I got a curious reply to that from a business owner who has been on my list for a while.

​​This business owner gave his personal experience with two email lists he’s on, by two marketers I will codename Jeremy and Gavin. My reader wrote about these two marketers:

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Jeremy’s emails are interesting, full of personality, and always something going on.

Gavin’s emails are super simple, clear, and direct to the point. Almost boring.

If I had to choose a better writer, it would probably be Jeremy.

But I’ve bought about 4 products from Gavin over the past 6 months, and none from Jeremy.

I also tend to read all of Gavin’s emails, because I know they are going to be easy to read, while I often just save Jeremy’s emails for later and end up not reading them.

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The point being:

If you write simply, clearly, and make a valuable point, you don’t need to be clever or impressive. You can even be boring. And you will still be effective.

That was why I created my Simple Money Emails training the way I did, and why I named it like I did.

Simple Money Emails shows you how to write simple emails, that make a clear point, and that lead to a sale.

I’ve used the approach inside this training to write emails that sold between $4k and $5k worth of products, every day, for years at a time.

If you’d like to do something similar:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

3 Tuesday bland breakthroughs (Dec 20 edition)

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In preparing to write this email, I dug up my notes for a high-priced consult I did this past summer. For that consult, I looked over the email marketing of a running and profitable business, and I came up with little-known, highly technical, A-list email copywriter secrets to skyrocket conversions.

Since I am now promoting a new coaching program with a focus on email marketing, I’ve decided to give you a sneak peek into that high-priced consult, and reveal some of the behind-the-velvet-rope ideas I conjured up in there. Here are the three most exciting ones:

– email more often
– inject more curiosity and intrigue
– add some personality to it

Those exciting ideas might remind you of the “bland breakthroughs” of a marketer I’ve code name Gavin Juff.

And maybe these bland breakthroughs make you glad you never hired me for an email marketing consult. After all, is this anything worth paying for?

Well, Camille Clare, the business owner who hired me for that consult last summer, wrote me some time later to say:

Just so you know, since your feedback, we have tripled our sales via email. So that’s pretty awesome and thank you 🙂

Why don’t people email more? Add some intrigue? Inject a bit of personality into their copy?

It’s beyond me. But the fact is, there are plenty of businesses that don’t execute on the basics of email marketing — even if they’ve been hearing about those basics since Saddam Hussein was in office.

Enter my new coaching program.

As genuine A-list copywriter David Deutsch might say, I’m not promising that this coaching program will triple your sales from email.

But I am promising I won’t just tell you the obvious “what to do” — email more, you dummy — but I will give you specific one-on-one ideas, tailored to your business, for how to implement those “what to dos.”

The truth is, that’s actually what I did with Camille in that consult last summer. The extra thing I will do within my new coaching program is work with people week-by-week, and make sure they actually implement these ideas in their email copy and their email marketing.

Is this anything worth paying for?

No, it’s not. Not for most people.

But if you have a running and profitable business, or at the very least, an email list of some size and quality, then it might be worth paying for. Because it might end up making you much more money than you pay me.

My new coaching program will kick off in January. I will be promoting it until tomorrow. If you think you might be a good fit for it, then the first step is to sign up for my email newsletter. Click here to do that. After that, we can talk in more detail.

My frustrating personal experience reading a well-known marketer’s email a few days ago

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A few days ago, a well-known marketer sent out one of his daily emails. I don’t to make it sound like I’m trying to make my name by repeatedly picking on people with bigger audiences than me, so let me just use an impenetrable alias for this guy. We can call him Gavin Juff.

So Gavin sent out an email a few days ago. The subject line read something like, “The one thing all successful copywriters have in common.”

But then, Gavin opened the body copy of his email with a long and I assume interesting personal story.

I say I assume it was interesting, because I just scrolled through it, looking for that “one thing” payoff.

And you know what? The payoff was, in effect, “We all make mistakes, and it’s okay.”

I rolled my eyes at this.

The fact is, Gavin was actually sharing a worthwhile point. The fact is, he put in a good amount of effort to illustrate his point with an (I assume) interesting personal story. And the fact is, it took me all of three seconds to open his email, scroll to the end, and feel he had wasted my time.

So there you go. That’s my personal story of a frustrating recent experience. I’m not sure what valuable point you can take away from that. Perhaps it’s something like:

“Excessive use of proven direct response techniques in personal daily emails can be more of a liability than an asset.”

Or maybe it’s something like:

“Make sure the transitions between your copy sections (including from subject line to body copy) are congruent and adequately prepared.”

Or maybe it’s just something like:

“The number one problem with daily email copy is a preachy, old-hat takeaway. But if you have to make such a takeaway because it’s actually true and important (like in Gavin’s case above), then sell something else in your subject line. Such as, for example, yourself and your frustrating personal experience.”

Anyways, I realize I haven’t done much to educate you in this post. I will try to do better in the future.

In case you would like to get my daily emails, and witness me trying to educate you more on the fundamentals of email copywriting and persuasion and influence more broadly, click here and follow the instructions.