1:58pm
East of the Mississippi
Saturday I watched half of the Mel Brooks classic, Spaceballs.
I’ve seen it dozens of times and I still laughed out loud.
I was inspired to watch it after reading a Judd Apatow interview with Brooks in Judd’s serious book about comedy, Sick in the Head.
There was a lot about writing in the book, and about life in general, and I want to share some of it with you.
2:14pm
East of the Mississippi
I tried something new today with my coffee:
Brewed it with Thai Chili Pepper flakes.
It adds a bit of zing to every sip.
Years ago, as a prank, my uncle put my dad’s name on a mailing list for Mo Hotta Mo Betta, a hot sauce mail order company.
(more…)8:17am
-10° here, east of the Missississippi
Hey, last week we discussed the importance of grabbing your reader with a BIG IDEA.
The best sales letters revolve around a single BIG IDEA, with copy that supports and expands on that singular idea. Like these blockbusters:
• The End of America? (Mike Palmer for Stansberry Research)
• Two Young Men (Martin Conroy for The Wall Street Journal)
• Tap the Hidden Wealth Inside Your Paycheck (Doug D’Anna for StraightTalk Magazine)
My friend Rick Peterson is an ex-Agora copywriter.
Agora is a huge financial publisher of investment advice. If you know of Motley Fool, Agora is similar –– but Agora’s been around longer.
Anyhow.
Rick was hired by Agora to write “BIG IDEA” emails that get attention and get people salivating… and buying.
And that’s exactly what he did.
Check it out:
Just ONE of Rick’s email sequences at Agora pulled in over $90,000 in sales.
Then he followed up with non-buyers and that sequence pulled in another $65,000 in sales.
Rick and I were chatting about BIG IDEAS a few weeks ago when he dropped those info nuggets.
But what was even cooler was that he broke down the structure of those 2 email sequences… plus a 3rd sequence!… so those structures could be used as frameworks to create additional, high-selling email flows.
Not fill-in-the-blank templates that customers have already seen and gloss over, mind you…
But 3 reusable, adaptable frameworks that anyone can use to quickly create high-converting emails.
Because good sales copy is less about the words and more about the way peoples’ brains react to what they’re reading.
And these frameworks help you create those mental reactions.
I asked Rick if I could share these frameworks wih you.
And he did me one better:
Rick recorded a video to explain the 3 high-selling frameworks and his thinking behind these winning emails.
But here’s the thing:
Rick said I could share this, yes. But he was only going to keep it active for 48 hours.
Now… I don’t know if that means 48 hours from when I write this email… at 8:53am… or 48 hours from when this mails later today.
Either way, clock is ticking.
If you want Rick’s 3 high-conversion frameworks… including the original copy you can study and apply… plus the 30 minute video of HOW Rick thinks (so that you can write better copy yourself…)
Well, best jump on this now:
https://therickpeterson.com/Jeffrey
Love you,
Jeffrey G Thomas
Direct Response Copywriter
2:24pm
Saint Paul
The internet is dying.
What was once a place of fascination and connection has become a wasteland of uninspired, templated content created by, well, pretty much everyone.
More people are opting out of an always-connected lifestyle…
Buying devices to lock up their smartphones (because they can’t control themselves)…
And returning to living in the real world.
Example:
(more…)Did you watch my conversation with David Newman?
We covered his career in marketing and his books, especially his newest book Market Eminence about becoming a celeb in your niche.
Well tomorrow is his online launch party for that book. 1pm US Central time.
(more…)1:45pm
-1° in Saint Paul
A year ago I took Derek Johanson’s CopyHour course, a 90 day journey of handwriting successful sales letters to embed their lessons into my subconscious.
One thing I’ve learned in marketing is that most people don’t complete the thing they buy:
(more…)11:47am
Saint Paul
Longtime readers of this website may know how it got its start back in 2016:
Reading and summarizing the lessons found in the books from Scott Adam’s “Persuasion Reading List.”
And while I didn’t summarize all of the books –– persuasive copywriting became my main focus –– I did write up a good number of the books on his list (and I read others that I didn’t summarize).
Well, if you haven’t heard, Scott Adams died from cancer yesterday at age 68.
Scott, through his blog and livestreams, changed the way I saw the world in profound ways.
(more…)12:55pm
Saint Paul
“It’s time to get back to how, as a human, I can help other humans.”
Last week I caught up with an old marketing friend.
We discussed a lot of things, including AI, and when he dropped that quote above, I had to write it down.
As you may know, I’m working with Denny Hatch and Paul Bobnak to re-release their book, “The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting.”
And I’ve reached out to a number of big-name direct response marketers to see if they’d be open to promoting Denny’s book.
(more…)