Jacob Pegs Archives - Desert Kite

Yesterday I noticed I hadn’t gotten any emails from Jacob Pegs in a while.

As you might know, Jacob runs an online business called Modern Maker, which consists of him, a set of headphones, and I guess an Internet connection.

And yet, as I write this, Jacob and his Modern Maker online business are rolling into the million-dollar revenue mark for 2024, with something like a 95%-98% profit margin.

Jacob asked me to coach him on email copywriting earlier this year, and so I did, and I got on his email list as part of that. But I haven’t been getting his emails lately. I checked. Nothing, since November 20.

I wrote to Jacob yesterday to see if he’s alive and to ask what’s up with the no emails. He replied a few minutes later:

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What that’s weird!

I’ve been emailing daily. Let me check that for you 😮 really appreciate you letting me know. WTF!

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It turned out I had been “bounced” off his list. “Bounced,” as far as I understand, is a special mystery status for when an email cannot be delivered, for reasons that are not listed inside services like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign.

I’ve already been bounced a few times off other newsletters. I have a custom domain (bejakovic dot com), and the email address associated with that is more flaky than your typical gmail or yahoo email address. Sometimes, I noticed weeks or months later I had stopped getting emails from somebody.

This affects me the other way around also. Last week, I got an email from marketer Fred Beyer, who wrote:

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I haven’t gotten a single email from you, since Nov 13th.

But my personal email address is still getting your emails so I KNOW you’re still broadcasting.

I had NameCheap crap out on me and shut down my domain for a few days, did your ESP auto-scrub me because of the temporary bounce?

I have bought products from you, from both of my email addresses so I’m guessing it’s kinda important that I’m a proper part of your system to receive any updates and such.

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I checked inside ConvertKit. Sure enough, Fred had also been bounced off. I added him back — the only way was to go to my home page and sign him up by hand.

I checked the analytics for my email from last night. 4 bounced subscribers, compared to 3 unsubscribes. Now, I guess not all of those bounced subscribers will be permanently unsubscribed. But some will. Since September, I’ve had 67 subscribers permanently removed because of bounces, and these include long-term readers and customers.

What to do?

I already wrote a while back about “unwilling unsubscribes,” people who got unsubscribed in spite of swearing to me they never meant to do so.

That issue seems largely solved by a two-step unsubscribe process, which more and more email senders now provide.

But this bounced thing is both more tricky and more serious. For one, because it seems more common. For another, because it seems to disproportionately affect people with custom domains.

All that’s to say, I’m just bouncing this bounced problem at you, hoping you can bounce a solution or at least a suggestion back at me.

Is there some tech thing to be done?

Or is the only reliable way around this to have two or five ways to reach your customers and prospects? Email… plus Skool community… plus work phone number… plus SMS… plus bedroom GPS coordinates?

Please bounce back any information or suggestions you can give me. In turn I promise to collate the answers I get and share the most useful-sounding ones.

Back in May, on the last day of my promotion for the Daily Email Fastlane workshop, I got a message from Modern Maker Jacob Pegs.

Jacob was one of the three daily emailers I had profiled inside that Fastlane workshop. In brief:

1. For about two years now, Jacob has been posting on LinkedIn as a way to build an audience (he’s built it up to 40k LinkedIn followers)

2. He’s been driving those followers from LinkedIn to his daily email list, where he promotes a lean stack of info products and a group coaching offer

3. A few days ago, Jacob wrote that he had just crossed the 60% mark of his $1M goal for 2024. According to my math — and I was a math major, so you can trust me — this means that Jacob has made $600k so far this year.

I’m telling you about Jacob for two reasons.

One is to show you what’s possible, and even how quickly it’s possible, if things line up right.

Two is that in that email back in May, Jacob sent me a nice testimonial/case study, and it’s now time to trot it out, with only a three-month delay.

Jacob approached me back in April, because he wanted to improve his copywriting and email game.

I mean, clearly it was already working great. But he wanted it to work even greater.

So we did a kind of one-month “Up Your Skills” engagement. Over the course of a month, I gave Jacob my feedback on his emails, and I told him how I might tweak some of the copy he was writing. Result, in Jacob’s words:

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Here’s a good bit of feedback for you from our latest engagement, which might help as an honest testimonial 😅 —

Something about your writing style kept me glued from start to finish.

I’d go to make a coffee, the kettle would finish boiling, and I’d delay the coffee to the point I’d have to reboil the kettle again!

Because, I had to finish the email. I couldn’t quite pin point what it was, but it made me reach out to you.

3 weeks into our mentorship, I’m getting the same feedback from my list (screenshots attached).

15 sales in, and they can’t “quite pin point how.”

Maybe it’s the JB effect.

And it’s definitely in the fast lane.

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Like I said, Jacob already had everything lined up. He was making sales. He kept his readers reading day after day.

But Jacob did make changes to his emails during that time we worked together. I noticed the changes. It seems his audience noticed them too, and in a positive way.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation to Jacob?

Not necessarily the same numbers with the money and the audience size… but maybe you have offers that are working, and you’re writing regularly to get your people reading and buying from you?

And maybe you’re wondering how much further you could take it?

If you are, I’m guessing it doesn’t make sense to do a long, extended, open-ended coaching program.

But maybe a one-month “Up Your Skills” engagement, like I did with Jacob, might make sense.

In case you’re interested, hit reply. No pressure, and no promises at this point. But I’ll get back to you, and we can talk in more detail.