My first big direct response copywriting customer was Dr. Audri Lanford, back in 2017.
Dr. Audri and her husband Jim were direct response veterans — they ran a big Internet Marketing event with the legendary Jay Abraham back in the year 2000.
Audri and Jim died in 2019 in a freak gas leak explosion. I found out about that through Brian Kurtz’s newsletter because Brian was apparently good friends with Dr. Audri and her husband.
Back in 2017, Dr. Audri had an innovative offer called Australian Digestive Excellence.
ADE was a drink of some sort that fixed every chronic digestive problem you could ever have. According to the hundreds of testimonials Dr. Audri had accumulated over just a year or two, it seemed the stuff was really magic.
Now it was time to scale.
Dr. Audri had her source of cold traffic, I believe banner ads on a radio talk show website.
These banner ads drove leads to a quiz. And after the quiz, that’s where some patented Bejako emails kicked in.
Well, really, my patented emails were a 12-email sequence in the infotaining style of marketer Ben Settle. I just softened Ben’s somewhat dismissive and harsh tone to make it more suited to these tummy-sensitive leads.
Result?
What were the total sales, made across I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of expensive cold leads?
Two. Two sales total.
Why? Why???
The email copy was solid. Sure, I would do it better today, but even back then, I had a “George Costanza school of digestive health” email and one about “How to survive 5-star restaurant food.”
I don’t know the reason why my infotaining email copy flopped. But it brings to mind this old but gold point raised by master copywriter Robert Collier:
“It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”
Tweaking words is rarely your biggest lever. Even less so if your copy is halfway decent.
Instead, figure out the right scheme. The scheme to get in front of the right prospect. The scheme to get their attention. The scheme to appeal to hidden closets and cupboards of their psychology. The scheme to get them eager and greedy.
Do that, and the specific copywriting tricks you use won’t matter all that much.
And now, let me tell you about my Most Valuable Email trick. It’s an email copywriting trick.
It might seem self-defeating to tell you about it.
Except, through some magic, this email copywriting trick turns you into a 21st-century scheme man or scheme woman. Maybe one to parallel Robert Collier himself one day.
I won’t explain in more detail how the Most Valuable Email trick makes that happen.
For anybody who has bought and gone through my Most Valuable Email training, it will be obvious.
For you, if you haven’t yet gone through Most Valuable Email, and if you’re curious: