Shakoor Chowdhury

A grateful reader succeeds in making me blush

by

Last night, I got an email from marketer and copywriter Shakoor Chowdhury, who wrote:

===

Hello John,

I wanted to take a moment of my day to say “thank you”!

Besides Dan Kennedy, you have played the most impactful role in growing my revenues every single day

most of my NEW cashflow can be directly attributed to you and your courses “MVE” & “influential emails”…

I write emails daily now and they always bring more money or book appointments with high ticket clients…

This year I decided to focus on building relationships with my customers and not just ‘direct selling’ one time…

And I have to say, nobody is able to teach the concepts of email marketing better than you have…

It is simple, straightforward and teaches the FUNDAMENTALS of what it takes to be an email copywriter

I am a lifelong fan and customer.

Hope many more people and great things find their way to you, you are a bit of a ‘best kept secret’ in the copy world

which is perhaps why you are the best… the mystic ‘guru at the top of the mountain’

I found you because OTHER copywriters spoke so highly of you

===

Like I said in the subject line, Shakoor succeeded in making me blush, and I’m blushing now having to write about it. So let me change the topic immediately.

I recently heard business coach Rich Schefren say that he often gives presents to his mentor Mark Ford, because Mark doesn’t like to be in anybody’s debt, and so he always gives presents in return.

Let me do the same with Shakoor:

Based on what little I know of him, he sounds like a guy who gets things done and would probably have been successful one way or the other.

Last October when Shakoor and I first exchanged a couple emails, he was already working with a number of clients as a kind of full-service marketer for ecom businesses.

With just one of those clients working on a performance deal, Shakoor was taking in $10k+ per month. Overall, at that time, he was driving $300k+ in sales for his clients each month.

Somewhere along the line, Shakoor also had time to run his own dropshipping businesses, one of which got up to 100k+ buyers.

All that’s to say, after Shakoor decided to build up his personal brand and to start writing daily emails, I’m guessing he would have been successful with Dan Kennedy or without Dan Kennedy, with me or without me.

That said, I do appreciate Shakoor’s kind words.

​​I also do appreciate that I have been able to help occasional people learn something about direct marketing and copywriting… and even make transformations in their lives, whether that meant making more money, or getting going with daily emailing so they can build a personal brand and stop relying on cold outreach.

And on that topic:

I’m not currently selling the Influential Emails program that Shakoor was referring to. But I still am selling my Most Valuable Email program.

Most Valuable Email pulls back the curtain and shows you, in less than an hour, how to perform a specific email copywriting trick, one I use regularly in my own emails.

Emails using this trick are different from emails you might be familiar with, like story emails, or “hot takes,” or how-to emails, or personal reveals.

Unlike those other kinds of emails, Most Valuable Emails happen to work well whether you have authority or not, whether you’re just getting started with your personal brand or you have had a following for years.

And yet, none of that is the reason why these kinds of emails are most valuable.

The real reason is that Most Valuable Emails make daily emailing fun and educational for me personally, and easy to stick with for the long term.

And it seems for others like Shakoor also.

Maybe for you too?

I don’t know. But if you’d like to find out more about MVE, and see if it makes sense for you:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Revealed: MVE contest winners

by

Yesterday, I concluded my first-ever prize-giveaway contest. The prizes totaled $1,088. The condition to enter was to submit 50-150 words about any email I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick.

My goal for this contest was to find out whether the MVE trick makes my emails more sticky and effective, and also how my readers are using the MVE trick for their own benefit.

Only one problem:

Now that the contest’s over, I don’t really want to reveal which Most Valuable Emails the winners picked.

There’s value in keeping the mystery around what the MVE trick is. And if I gave five distinct examples of Most Valuable Emails, odds are good that the trick would be easy to spot.

But a deal’s a deal. So I’m announcing the contest winners, the prizes they got, and my reasoning for why they won:

#1 Gold medal

The first prize of $250 goes to Shakoor Chowdhury, a marketer and copywriter from Mississauga, Ontario.

Shakoor picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote over the past week, the same email I referenced yesterday, which drew lots of positive responses from other readers also.

But the real reason Shakoor gets first prize is because he also wrote me to say:

===

John, this is by far my favorite of your programs and really kickstarted my email marketing.

When I bought this course I was very inconsistent, but you gave me direction and I started writing daily and grew a list of 470 subscribers in less than a month of implementing.

===

This is the #1 winning entry, because it matches the #1 reason I find Most Valuable Emails so valuable. And that’s that that Most Valuable Emails make it interesting for me personally to stick with daily emailing day after day. And it seems for Shakoor also.

#2 Silver medal

The second prize of $200 goes to Tom Grundy, a high-powered London banker who also happens to write excellent emails about self development.

Tom picked three of my old Most Valuable Emails as his favorites, going back to 2021. But the real reason Tom won a prize is that he also applied the MVE trick in one of his LinkedIn posts. And the result, in Tom’s words:

===

I thought I’d share the attached LinkedIn post I made a while ago. Great thing about this post was that people replied with their own “MVE style” replies and it turned into a fun thread.

===

Like I keep saying, the MVE trick makes your emails engaging and fun for your audience. Same goes for your LinkedIn posts, if that’s your bag.

#3 Bronze medal

Finally, three third prizes — three $197 tickets to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop — go to:

1. Carlo Gargiulo, an Italian copywriter working in-house at Metodo Merenda.

Besides working in-house, Carlo also writes his own email newsletter. He’s been selling his own services and coaching for years to his list. But recently, Carlo made his first-ever affiliate sales to his list, via an idea I shared in the MVE swipe file.

Point being, the MVE training has value beyond simply teaching you the MVE trick.

2. Alex Ko, senior copywriter at KooBits in Singapore.

Alex won because he picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote more than a year ago, and he pointed out how this email still has an impact on my business every day.

In other words, Alex rightly highlighted that writing Most Valuable Emails is not just about sales or engagement. Instead, it can actually transform you and your business in time.

3. Jeffrey Thomas, a DR copywriter from St. Paul, Minnesota, who works in-house at Marketing Profs.

Jeffrey has previously written me to say nice things about Most Valuable Emails I’ve written. But he won this time because he applied the MVE trick himself — to the description of a live presentation he’ll be giving at a major conference this November.

So there you go. The MVE contest winners, and the reasons why they won.

If you’re one of the winners above, I’ll be in touch about how to get you your prize.

And if you’re not one of the winners above, you now have 5 good dimensionalizations of what the MVE program can do. Not just for me, but for other marketers, copywriters, and even one business owner, in a range of situations, applications, and formats.

If you already have my Most Valuable Email program, this might encourage you to revisit it, apply the trick yourself, and benefit.

And if you don’t have my MVE program, I can only assume it’s because you found the prize contest cheesy and crass. Because you’re above such flat-out manipulation. Because you don’t want your name to be used to sell stuff online.

I can completely understand. I feel the same way about many marketing stunts.

That said, maybe this email has given you some new arguments for why you can benefit from discovering the Most Valuable Email trick and inserting it into your marketing. If you’d like to get started now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/