Influential Emails

Bejako the airheaded technician strikes again

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Let’s play a game of “Hit the Bejako piñata”:

As you might already know about me, I am very prone to making technical mistakes, snafus, and cock-ups.

Earlier in my life, this manifested itself in all kinds of travel related mishaps: showing up to the airport many hours too early, too late, on the wrong day, without the right visa, without having bought a ticket but fully convinced I had one (yes, this really happened).

Over the decades, I’ve largely managed to eliminate my travel-related clunkers.

But since I now work online and even have a little business online, each day presents a fresh new opportunity to screw up something technical, all the way from the mildly embarrassing to the serious in terms of reputation and money.

For example, consider the events of the past few days:

All of past week, I’ve been telling people to get on the waiting list for my Influential Emails course.

On Wednesday, I opened up the course to people on the waiting list who had bought something from me before. On Thursday, I opened it up to people on the waiting list who had never bought anything from me.

By Friday morning, I’d reached the number of sales I had been hoping for. So I closed down the cart and wrote an email about it, which I scheduled to be sent out last night.

But then, starting yesterday morning and culminating after the email last night, I got replies like the following:

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I thought you should know that I never received any cart-open emails for Influential Emails despite having signed up for the waiting list.

Actually, I know I clicked on at least two of the waitlist links (in different emails) to be sure I was on the list because I was interested in purchasing.

===

I would like to blame Octavia Campo aka ActiveCampaign for this. But really, it was Bejako the airheaded technician at work again.

Turns out I forgot to add the automation for adding people to the waiting list to at least two of the emails I sent out over the past week. As a result, some 100 people who expressed interest did not get added to the waitlist, and did not receive the email when the cart opened.

Yesterday and today, I’ve been doing damage control, replying to people who wrote me, and reopening the cart for them.

Like I said, it’s time to get out the sticks, and start working on the Bejako piñata.

In short, thanks to my airheadedness, I’ve created a bunch of extra work for myself… I’ve confused and possibly offended long-time customers, who were wondering why they got snubbed in this launch… and I’ve put myself in a situation in which I look like one of those ecommerce brands that says, “Whoa, somebody didn’t get a chance to buy yesterday, so we’re extending the sale for another day!”

So I’m sending this email for two reasons:

One is to explain what exactly happened to anyone who did get impacted by my technological prowess.

Reason two I’ll explain tomorrow, in case you’re curious.

Meanwhile, the Influential Emails cart remains closed except for the people I am ferreting out as having expressed interest earlier, and not having had a chance to buy.

So the only thing i have to offer you today is my 10 Commandments book. You might want to get it for its own inherent value, or for the reasons I talked about yesterday, and that I will talk more about tomorrow. If you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The third-hottest release of 2023 closes after just one night

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Last night, with crowds of paparazzi pushing outside the velvet rope, and a few stars making their way from their limos down the red carpet to the doors of the classy old theater, my Influential Emails show had its grand opening.

The show ran for exactly one night.

And then this morning, I locked and chained the theater doors, removed the “INFLUENTIAL EMAILS” letters from the marquee, and took out an ad in the local paper to announce this show is now over.

As I announced in the lead up and during the grand opening of Influential Emails, this promotion would go until Sunday at the latest, and I might close it down sooner.

Well, that sooner is today, about 12 hours after the initial grand opening. I would have closed it earlier but I was asleep.

The reason why I did this is that made up my mind, before I launched this promo, what a nice sum of money would be to make from it.

I’ve now made that money and more. And so the cart is now closed.

If you managed to squeeze in to the Influential Emails show, I hope you will get value out of it in a way pays for itself, and soon.

If you wanted to get in but didn’t manage to, then all I can say is — if you’re not too angered by this experience, then maybe you will have better luck next time.

And if you were not interested in buying Influential Emails, then I can share the following valuable truth with you:

You can choose who you sell to, and how much of something you sell. There’s no law against it. And it’s ultimately good for business, in many different ways.

Now here’s a little sneak peek behind the scenes:

This promo didn’t really run for 12 hours.

It ran for about 36 hours.

I opened it up a day earlier for a private showing, just for people who were on the waiting list and who had already bought something from me in the past.

I also gave them an inducement to buy within the first 24 hours.

Many did.

That’s how I managed to make more money with this one-and-a-half-day promo than I used to make in a whole month, the first few years of my copywriting career.

Some of the folks who were invited for this private showing had bought pretty much all of my offers in the past.

Some had bought just one of my courses.

And some only bought my little $5 Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

It didn’t matter.

They are all valued and ongoing customers, and I wanted to say thanks with this special opportunity.

All that’s to say, if you have not yet bought my 10 Commandments book, then consider doing so.

It might teach you a thing or two about copywriting. And it might just prove to be a ticket to an exclusive future show, and a walk down the red carpet. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Who Influential Emails is definitely not for

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A reader writes in with a timely question:

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Hey John,

I had a question about Influential Emails.

I’m looking to purchase your “Influential Emails” course next Thursday when my stripe payments clear from my clients…

…and am devoting more of my time to lead generation, list building, personal branding … kind of like what you do

I am curious, for this “Influential Emails Course” if it can help with someone for my specific use cases…

To grow an email list, establish authority, build a personal brand and sell copywriting and digital marketing services.

looking forward to reading your response…

===

Yesterday, I wrote about how I’ve learned to regularly send emails telling people what exactly is in my offers.

Another thing I’ve learned to regularly send is emails that tell people who my offers are for, and more importantly, who they’re not for.

I wrote back to the reader above to ask whether he has already been writing daily emails to promote his marketing services… or if he has a long-term agreement with a client to write daily emails.

I haven’t heard back from him yet. But a few things — waiting for Stripe to clear, the specific use case of having to accomplish pretty much everything, from list building to authority to making sales… makes me think this person is more of a beginner.

Nothing wrong with that. But Influential Emails is a bunch of advanced email copywriting tricks and strategies.

When I offered this training the first and only time so far, two years ago, I gave students a chance at a copy critique.

A bunch of people took me up on my offer and submitted their emails. All the submitted emails had good ideas in them. But I also realized many of these emails also had really fundamental, technical problems.

Many of those student emails failed on basic and important points, which would cripple the effectiveness of the email. For people who couldn’t do the basics right, none of the advanced techniques I was sharing would matter at all.

That’s the reason why I eventually created a beginner-friendly email copywriting course, Simple Money Emails.

So to sum up:

If you have not been writing daily emails for yourself for a while…

… or if you have not been writing daily emails for a good client for a while, and you have the kind of relationship that makes you think this will go on for a long time, and is worth investing in…

… then do not get Influential Emails.

Instead, start writing daily emails for yourself, or start seeking out a client who will pay you to write daily emails for them.

And if you are looking for guidance on what to put into those daily emails, then you can find that inside my Simple Money Emails course, available here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

On the other hand, if you want some advanced writing techniques to help you not just make sales, but get into your readers’ minds so they think of you as an authority… spread your ideas on their own… even refer you to others… then can get some of my secret sauce inside Influential Emails.

The techniques and strategies inside this training have allowed me to make connections with some of the most successful marketers and copywriters in the direct response industry.

​​They have created an aura of authority for me, completely independent of my results in the field.

​​Most importantly, they have influenced the minds of my readers.

Anyways, if you want Influential Emails, then the only way to get it is to be on the waiting list first, when I open up the cart this Thursday. To get on the waiting list, you’ll have to sign up for my daily email newsletter. Click here to do that.

A principled way to deal with chargebacks

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Last week, I wrote about a chargeback I got on my Most Valuable Email course. I solicited advice for dealing with this chargeback and preventing others in the future.

I got advice. I also got the folllowing question from a reader:

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If you’re so inclined, I’d be interested in hearing about advice you got to handle chargebacks, but of course more importantly prevent them in the first place!

I’m newer to the solopreneur arena. Chargebacks are just a cost of doing business in the large company space, usually as a consequence of not following large customers’ procurement/delivery rules, not automating transactions, etc.

For smaller enterprises, I can imagine they could be debilitating…

===

Since I’m so inclined:

I got lots of what might be called tactical or technological advice for dealing with and preventing chargebacks.

I’m sure much of this advice is solid but the fact is, it’s overkill for my small info publishing operation, and more than I want to do at the moment. The fact that this kind of tactical advice could change from today to tomorrow is even more of a reason to not invest my limited time or energy into such solutions.

But I also got several people sharing what can be called principled advice on dealing with chargebacks. Advice that will stand the test of time, that’s not subject to a change in technology or the whims of banks.

That advice boiled down to simply this:

Don’t sell to every rando off the street who struts up to your counter and pulls out a credit card.

I first heard this advice a long time ago. It’s taken me a while to accept it.

The fact is, just because somebody offers to pay you today doesn’t mean that they will prove to be a good customer today, tomorrow, and the day after.

If you have your eye on LTV as the main metric in your business, then it makes sense to do lots of things, even counterintuitive things, to turn away people who might be bad customers tomorrow, even if they seem to be willing buyers today.

And that brings me to my current offer:

I announced yesterday I will make my Influential Emails training available once again next week.

But I won’t simply send a bunch of emails linking to a sales page for Influential Emails.

Instead, if you would like to get this training once it’s available, you’ll have to get on the waiting list first.

The main reason fr this is the anti-chargeback, pro-LTV idea above. A waiting list allows me to filter through people who want to buy. I can see if they are already good customers. And if not, I have to take a closer look at who they are and whether I want to sell to them.

Of course, the the velvet rope effect of a waiting list doesn’t hurt either.

I will have more to say about Influential Emails, and why you might want to get it, over the coming week. But you will have to be on my list to be able to buy it. Click here to get on there.

The time I forgot how to write emails

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Today I’d like to tell you about the time I forgot how to write emails.

In the interest of keeping this story under 130,000 words, let me just give you four quick snapshots:

1. Friday, Oct 22 2021. I’m walking along the sea in Opatija, Croatia when I have a bright idea.

All these people have been telling me I’m so good at writing emails. So why don’t I finally offer a training on how I write emails?

​​Yes! I take out my phone, and write down a bunch of ideas for the offer, the sales page, and the actual content of the training.

Later that evening, I send out an email about it. Then I watch in wonder as thousands of dollars start to pour into my PayPal account from people who trust me enough to preorder this training.

2. Two weeks later. I’m sitting at my desk, head in hands, a pained grimace on my face. I’m staring at the pages of notes I’ve taken in preparation for the training, which is now called Influential Emails. But all I see are a bunch of half-baked ideas and vague fluff.

I start to despair that I will be able to give people their money’s worth. And the deadline is nearing.

3. Thursday, Dec 2, 2021. The Influential Emails training has completed. It consisted of me talking about a bunch of writing techniques, which I’d unconsciously used for a long time, but which I’ve now identified and given names to, such as stacking… layering… S. Morgenstern transitions… and bait-and-switch email closes.

According to the feedback I get, people loved the training. I’m amazed and very happy with how well it went.

4. The gray, rainy weeks and months that follow. Real despair sets in. After the Influential Emails training, whenever I sit down to write one of my daily emails, I am filled with confusion and doubt. Instead of writing spontaneously and enjoying the process, I hesitate.

“Should I stack something here? Or add another layer to the email? Maybe I could take out this whole section and replace it with an S. Morgenstern transition?”

Each email takes forever to write. I hate the process. And from what I can see in terms of engagement, people don’t love reading the results either.

I curse that Influential Emails training that I gave. “Why is fate like this?” I ask out loud, but nobody answers. I wish I could forget the techniques I have identified so I could enjoy writing my email newsletter again.

Let’s cut the story off at this point so I can tell what I just tried to show you. It’s the last of the six canonical story formats.

This one is called the Oedipus format. It goes like this: \/\. ​​Start high… go low… then go back up… and finally end down, way down.

And now that I’ve told you that… and now that you know about all six canonical story formats… maybe it’s best if you forget all about it.

Because these story formulas are fun to learn about. But they are not good to consciously follow. At least in my experience.

From what I’ve seen and tried myself, when you consciously write according to a formula or recipe, something feels wooden and off. And people can sense it, particularly in an intimate setting like daily emails.

Besides, there are a lot of fun stories that work well as anecdotes, which don’t fit any of these canonical structures, not unless you really give it some brutal massage.

So if you wanna have fun writing, and produce something that’s fun to read… then forget about the canonical story structure formats. Let them sink into the darkness of your subconscious, and let them guide you from there.

But if you really insist on conscious guidelines to help you write better stories, then remember the higher-level points I brought up over the past few days.

Be mindful of where you start your story… where you end it… what details you choose to include, what you omit… and of course, make sure there is drama, conflict, contrast, twists and turns of some kind.

Do this, and you won’t need an exact recipe. Your brain will surprise you with how creative you can be. And you’ll even enjoy the process.

And finally:

For more structural advice you can enjoy and then forget, sign up to my email newsletter.

If they pirate, they pay attention

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Here’s a confession from a once-broke, today-very-rich Internet marketer:

I was living in an apartment that cost $250 a month.

And I had about a month’s worth of living expenses left.

So I couldn’t afford to shell out the $2k it cost to buy any of Dan’s courses.

So I did something I’m not very proud of these days – I went to the dark parts of the web and torrented his stuff.

I found his advanced sales letter course…

His Wealth Attraction course…

Lastly I downloaded his holy grail – Influential Writing – which in my mind is the greatest information marketing course ever made.

I went through all of these on repeat for months.

Anytime I was working, I’d be listening to a Dan Kennedy course.

Maybe you know who wrote this. It’s Justin Goff.

Justin wrote that email a couple years ago, the day the whole direct response world thought that Dan Kennedy had died.

Justin also thought Dan was dead. So he wrote an ode to Dan, and said Dan was his “greatest mentor.”

And I can believe it.

I can also believe that it was Dan’s stuff that helped Justin get successful. That without it, Justin might not have made it, at least not as quickly and as richly.

In the marketing world, it’s popular to say, “If they pay, they pay attention.”

It’s also popular to mock those who pirate, steal, and share paid content. Here’s a recent bit from Ben Settle on the matter:

These criminals all end up fetching peoples’ coffee or begging for change for a living eventually. Bums to the end. Irony is, if they spent half as much time working on themselves & a legit business as they do pirating products, they’d be multi-millionaires many times over.

Writing this makes good business sense for Ben.

But obviously, not everybody who pirates stuff winds up begging for change (see Justin above). And vice versa.

Many people who honestly pay for stuff get nothing from their purchase except the rush of handing over their money.

And in case you’re wondering what I’m getting at, let me tell you a personal story:

A few days ago, while surfin’ the Internet, I surfed upon a membership site that claims to have the recordings of the Influential Emails training I held last November.

I don’t know whether this site actually has a copy of the recordings and resources I shared with people after the training ended… or whether they just copied my sales page and are baiting people into handing over their credit cards.

And I don’t really care much to find out.

Because I feel I’ve done right by the people who paid to join me for Influential Emails. Those who joined me, who paid attention, and who end up implementing the ideas I revealed… will profit much more than what they paid me.

At the same time, I respect the fact that they gave me their money. That’s why I don’t entertain requests for free copies of my paid stuff… or even offer discounts on the current price.

But on the other hand, if there is somebody out there who does pirate my stuff… and ends up profiting from it also… well, I won’t set my hair on fire about it.

​​In fact, I imagine I will still somehow benefit from it, in some unseen or indirect way, somewhere down the line.

So my point for you is:

Pirate all you want.

No, wait, that’s not actually my point. My point is:

Pay attention to the good information out there, whether it’s available to you for free or whether you have to pay for it. And then — key point — put that information to work.

Or don’t. Because maybe you’re ok with fetching other people’s coffee. Of course, maybe that won’t happen to you.

In any case, let me make you a free offer right now:

My Copy Riddles program will be re-launching later this month. I’m trying to get a few more people to find out about it before it gets pirated and shared into oblivion.

And if you help me get the word out, I’ll give you something in return.

This free thing will only benefit you if you consume it… and then put it to work.

But if you do that, it could lead you to self-respect, ongoing client work, and thousands of dollars in your pocket. For the full details:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

The most unlikely Australian murder mystery

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True story:

In 1935, somewhere off the coast of Sydney, Australia, a fisherman netted a 14-foot tiger shark that, unknown to the fisherman, was hiding a nasty secret in its belly.

The fisherman brought the shark to the local aquarium. The local aquarians put the shark into a tank. Then they all stood around, watching with satisfaction as the shark swam around its new home.

But soon, the shark began acting strange.

It started ramming its head against the sides of the tank, clutching its belly, and saying, “Uff… I don’t feel so good.”

The shark ended up vomiting. Within a few minutes, the foul-smelling contents of its stomach floated to the surface.

Visitors to the aquarium took turns identifying what they could see.

Some brown goo… a bird… a rat… and yep, there it was:

A tattooed human arm, with a rope tied around it. But…

Closer inspection of the arm showed no bite marks. The arm was cleanly severed. In other words, someone had cut it off and tried to get rid of it.

So whose arm was it? What was it doing at the bottom of the ocean? And what was the tattoo on it?

If you are curious about the rest of this severed arm mystery or the copywriting moral it contained, I’m afraid that particular fishing boat has sailed. Because the above true story was the intro to an email that email copywritress Liza Schermann sent out — a few days ago.

That email was part of a challenge Liza set to herself – to write 29 days of sexy emails about unsexy topics. So far, she has written about:

* Her failed apple crumble at Christmas
* Cushions
* Her water heater
* The mating habits of lobsters (pretty sexy, but we will let it slide)
* The above shark story (again, pretty sexy, at least copywriting-wise, but ok)
* Her attitude towards clothes ironing
* Toilet paper and the way you hang it (rolling over or under)
* Multiplication (the mathematical kind)
* Household finances

I’m telling you this to point out a curious fact about the mathematics of email copywriting:

Liza has been true to her challenge. She has managed to take the above mundane and unpromising topics and write interesting, funny, and — I’m afraid to say this — even sexy emails.

And here’s the curious thing:

I’ve been on Liza’s email list for a while. She previously only sent an email a week. I liked reading those emails.

But her daily, “unsexy” emails are much better.

That’s something I’ve noticed with my own writing as well.

It’s easier to prepare and write 10 good emails (or in Liza’s case, 29) than to write just one good email. It’s not just a matter of practice. It’s also a matter of research… idea generation… and less fiddling and self-censoring.

So that’s my takeaway for you:

If you’re having trouble writing a good email, try writing 10 instead. Paradoxically, you might find it easier going.

But getting back to the shark. Like I said, that particular fishing expedition has sailed. But a new one is waiting in harbor right now, because Liza is writing these emails day-for-day.

So if you want to follow Liza on her quest to write about tablecloths… the mechanics of garbage trucks… and the history of chamomile tea (I’m just guessing at possible future topics)… then you can do that at the link below. But a warning to ye first:

I’ve known Liza personally for a long while, long before either she or I got into copywriting. I also feel a bit responsible for and invested in her copywriting career. I’ve even hired her to write some stuff for me before. Plus, if you were on my Influential Emails training, you know she was there to help me run the thing and make it a success.

So if none of that turns you off, and you still want some sexy stuff in your life, here’s where you can follow as Liza turns lead into goldfish:

https://www.thecrazyemaillady.com/

Shock and delight at a celebrity funeral

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On December 3 1989, a memorial service was held at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at the University of Cambridge. The deceased was one Graham Chapman, aged 48, who had died two months earlier from tonsil cancer.

At various times during his life, Chapman was a homosexual, an alcoholic, a member of the Dangerous Sports Club, and one of the six members of the sketch comedy troupe Monty Python.

All the other members of Monty Python were there at the service. Several of them got up to give eulogies. One of eulogizers was John Cleese, the guy behind my favorite comedy of all time, A Fish Called Wanda.

“I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is,” Cleese started, “that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence should now be spirited away at the age of only 48, before he had achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.”

The camera zoomed around the large hall. It settled on the other Pythons — Michael Palin, Eric Idle — looking serious and proper.

“Well I feel that I should say… nonsense,” Cleese said. “Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard. I hope he fries.”

Yep, this really happened. During a eulogy, John Cleese said about the deceased, “I hope he fries.”

Last night, I had the second call of the Influential Emails training. Throughout this training, I’ve been talking about the similarities between comedy and email copy.

Not because you want to make your emails funny necessarily.

But because you want to surprise, shock, and even outrage people at the start. And then, pay it off in a credible and pleasing way, where the only people who leave are the ones who are either slaves to mindless good taste… or who genuinely disagree with you.

In my life, I’ve never seen a better illustration of this “surprise and delight” combination than John Cleese’s eulogy.

I won’t tell you how Cleese got out of the shocking hole he had dug for himself. But he did it, and he did it in a sweet, credible, thoughtful way.

You can see it all in the short two-minute clip below. It might prove very instructive if you want to write emails that people will 1) read day after day… 2) look forward to… 3) feel a bond with… and 4) allow themselves to be influenced by.

But be warned. This clip contains two profanities, one of which had never been spoken on television before. If that doesn’t shock you too badly, then prepare to be delighted here:

Still here? Maybe you’d like to be surprised and delighted tomorrow as well. In that case, sign up for my email newsletter.

The fascist cokehead who raised me

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How foolishly inconsistent of me.

On April 7 of this year, I wrote an email promoting the idea that you should give your prospects a menu of options. I quoted from Jonah Berger’s book The Catalyst:

But give people multiple options, and suddenly things shift.

Rather than thinking about what is wrong with whatever was suggested, they think about which one is better. Rather than poking holes in whatever was raised, they think about which of the options is best for them. And because they’ve been participating, they’re much more likely to go along with one of them in the end.

Reasonable, right?

Except, only a short while earlier, on February 28, I sent out an email with the exact opposite message. The subject line for that was “The best copywriting tactic ever.” It was inspired by an article I’d read in Scientific American by neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran. The email concluded:

The world is complicated. Too many choices. Too much information. That’s why we seek out extremes, to make our lives easier. And that’s something you can use to make your copy not better, but best.

So one email is basically telling you to give your prospects a choice… the other email is telling you to give them no choice.

How to reconcile these two ideas?

I don’t know. Maybe you can do it. I haven’t tried. And I won’t, because I’ve got better things to do. Like preparing for the second call of my Influential Emails training.

The first call was all about writing and persuasion techniques that I use regularly — and that anybody else can use and profit from as well.

But this second call is more personal. It will include some of my own writing and thinking quirks.

Such as for example, the contradiction in my two emails above. The reason I’m ok with this contradiction is because of a third email I wrote.

That third email was about David Bowie and an infuriatingly inconsistent interview he gave to Playboy magazine in 1976. (1976 was the height of Bowie’s cokehead era. A big brouhaha emerged after the interview because Bowie said during it, “I believe very strongly in fascism.”)

This Bowie email is the most influential thing I’ve ever written.

Not because it got me any sales… or any interest from important people in the industry… or even any engagement from readers on my list. In fact, as far as I remember, nobody even commented on this email.

But the ideas in that email had the biggest influence on how I personally write. And not just emails, but influential writing more broadly.

You might think I’m just advocating being provocative in your thinking and writing. It goes deeper than that, at least in my mind.

In any case, if you want to read that short email about David Bowie, so you can see if it will have any influence on you, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/being-authentic-is-overrated/

My exception that disproves the #1 copywriting rule

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I feel no shame about the story I’m about to tell you. I just feel a quiet and pleasing smugness for being able to say, “I’m not wrong. You’re wrong. And I can prove it.”

About a year and a half ago, I got an invitation to work with some very successful young copywriters.

They wanted me to write emails for them, but they didn’t want to pay so well. Instead, they thought of a creative way to sweeten the deal:

Being very successful, expert copywriters, they offered to critique my emails on top of the stumpy fee they would pay me.

As a show of good will, they asked me to send them some copy I had written, so they could show me the depth of their copy understanding.

At this point, I was already established as a copywriter. I had paid good money to get my copy critiqued by A-listers. And I wasn’t willing to get my own pay docked as a way of getting critiques. Still, out of curiosity, I sent over an email I’d written a few years earlier for RealDose Nutrition, an 8-figure supplement brand.

The subject line for this email read, “The evil twins blocking your path to good health.”

The body copy talked about a scientific study I’d found. Inflammation reduces the number of taste buds on your tongue… which makes you want to eat more… which drives up obesity… which in turn drives up inflammation, repeating the cycle one level down.

The expert copywriters read my email and sent me the following feedback:

“Feedback: you broke the #1 rule in copywriting – The Rule Of One (Write about only one thing at a time. Because one good idea, clearly and convincingly presented, is better than a dozen so-so ideas strung together.)”

And it’s true — I had two ideas in there. The burned-out taste buds on the tongue… plus the interplay between obesity and inflammation.

But here’s what I didn’t tell these guys, but what I kept smugly for myself — until now, that I share it with you:

This email was part of a campaign I had written for RealDose to replace an earlier sequence that they had used for years. My new sequence increased sales by 300% in this particular funnel. And this “Evil twins” email, with its violated Rule of One, was responsible for most of that 300% boost.

“Harumph,” somebody out there is saying. “The point still stands! That’s just the exception that proves the rule! The Rule of One! It must not be broken!”

To anybody who genuinely believes this… all I can do is shrug. Particularly since I still have work to do, preparing for the first call of my Influential Emails training, which is happening tonight.

When I was designing this training, I looked at some of the most influential emails I’ve written to this list. And I found that they inevitably break the Rule of One.

They break it in deliberate, consistent ways. But they break it nonetheless. In fact, breaking the Rule of One has become a kind of trademark of the emails I write.

And if you ever hear some authoritative copy guru telling you about this rule that cannot and should not ever be broken… maybe you will think of me and my not-so-humble exception here.

Now if you signed up for Influential Emails, then you will hear tonight about the specifics of how and why I choose to break the Rule of One.

If on the other hand you didn’t sign up for Influential Emails, well, maybe you can sign up in the future, if I ever offer this training again. Or just sign up for my email newsletter, because really, all my secrets are out there, lying in plain sight, each day that I send out my emails.