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
12:58pm
Saint Paul
Hey, the end of the year is near.
And like the end of 2024, I have a new podcast epi to drop!
Marketer, speaker, and writer David Newman, author of Do It! Marketing, joins me for Episode #018 to discuss his newest book:
Market Eminence: 22 Strategies to Build a Bold Personal Brand, Become a Business Celebrity, and Drive Unstoppable Growth
In this episode, David explains why being “good” is not good enough to stand out in a very noisy world –– and the 22 steps you can take to build up your own fame (among your chosen audience).
• What is Market Eminence as a concept, and what’s in the book? (2:26)
• The 3 jobs that need to be done if you want to get noticed in 2026 (3:19)
• How to make it dangerous, risky and dumb for a buyer to choose someone else (5:02)
• AI has ONE type of intelligence –– and it’s helpful if these 2 things don’t matter to you or your customers (6:55)
• How-To content is everywhere –– and it’s dead, says David. Stick a fork in it! Here’s what comes next for marketers (8:44)
• Why a good rant can make YOU more *|FNAME|*-ic (10:45)
• The convergence of the business world and celebrity happened 50 years ago –– but today you can use this same personal branding to increase profits too (12:39)
• The ONE reason to build up your own eminence (15:15)
• How should a ghostwriter approach building someone else’s personal brand? (18:20)
• David quotes Kevin Halbert from his Persuasion Play Podcast appearance: a copywriter’s “Number One Biggest Mistake” (22:40)
• Excerpt from Market Eminence: 3 questions to ask yourself to find your contrarian positioning in the marketplace –– grab a pencil and paper and write your answers now (24:20)
• Most people fear this –– but when you see it, it means you’re doing something right (27:55)
• Unplug these 2 ideas from your brain ASAP (29:21)
• How to install a magic, electro-magnetic fence around your company to attract the right audience… and repel the wrong one (32:40)
• Are ALL of these parts of your business in alignment with your branding? (36:30)
• David’s book Market Eminence is NOT for brands who are comfortable starting at “Square Zero” with every new client (40:20)
• How to out-position 90% of your competitors (41:10)
• Mind-blowing advice David received early in his career that will help YOU make more sales (43:40)
• Should you be a Tugboat or a Lighthouse for your customers? (46:16)
• David’s other books, Do It! Marketing and Do It! Selling and Do It! Speaking are how-to books –– here’s how they compare with Market Eminence (47:53)
• The BIG IDEA you should take away from this conversation that will amaze you with the results (51:15)
• David’s “ethical bribe” he wants to offer you: FREE resources to build your own market eminence starting today –– no purchase required (52:45)
And so much more. Watch episode #018 of the Persuasion Play Podcast with David Newman here.
You can find David’s book Market Eminence at MarketEminence.com or on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Market-Eminence-Strategies-Celebrity-Unstoppable
And you’ll find more episodes of the Persuasion Play Podcast on YouTube, with guests such as Drayton Bird, Bob Bly, Doberman Dan, and more.
Thanks for watching!
9:50am
Saint Paul
Click click click.
“Maybe it’s the oil,” my son says.
We check. Oil is good.
But the snowblower still won’t fire up.
Click click click.
Not the morning I was hoping for after a foot of snow fell last night.
Click click click.
“Maybe it’s the spark plug?”
(more…)7:47am
Saint Paul
It’s a cold winter morn and the sleet is sleeting.
And within a few hours, the temperature will be falling –– so I need to run any errands before that happens.
Like getting some wine for the kids’ teachers before Christmas break.
And hitting up the post office, which is named Elway.
Why Elway?
Branding.
Earlier this week we visited the Rose Street Patisserie, a bakery on the corner of Selby and Snelling.
Across Selby there is the Heritage Rose Professional Building and the Legacy Rose Flats apartments.
I’ve lived near here most of my life. I’ve never known this area as Rose anything.
Why Rose?
Branding.
EMarketer sent out one of their charts today showing podcast hosts are more trusted than other celebs, including TV and Movie and Radio personalities.
Methinks this is due to a few factors…
Got a few minutes?
First is the amount of time people spend listening (or watching) a podcast.
The more time you spend with someone, the more you trust them.
Go on one date? Some trust.
Go on multiple dates? Increased trust.
Pick-up artists use this to compress multiple locations into a single interaction, to increase trust quickly.
Direct response marketer Perry Belcher repeated this same idea when I attended his “Primal Offers” training earlier this year:
Over the course of 3 days, attendees spent some 6+ hours in his training.
It was all valuable, don’t get me wrong.
And Perry said it flat out, something along the lines of:
“The more time we spend together, the more you’ll trust me and the paid membership I’m offering. That’s why we’re together for 6 hours. Not everyone can attend it all, but we want to make sure they can attend as much as possible to build trust.”
And to connect this with yesterday’s email:
It’s the same reason Nike and Apple advertise, to make people familiar with the brand over repeated exposures.
Branding builds trust.
But most companies don’t have deep enough pockets to do it the way they can –– aka long term, wide exposure, raving fans.
Plus, ad costs are f stupid today. Deep pockets only type stuff.
But you can increase exposure with email, and build trust over time. So long as you’re not using AI to do it.
And having your Call To Action at the end can make it pay, too.
SECOND reason podcast hosts are trusted?
They share personal details and stories.
History.
Like you can in email.
Like Rose Flats and Rose Professional Building could be doing. Should be doing, to attract tenants. I want to know, why that name?
And the person who can tell the story wins. Because a story sticks in the brain.
But they don’t tell the story of Rose. Because their branding is one dimensional. There’s no meaning behind their Rose names.
(The newer patisserie does have a history behind their name, partially in Google’s search summary, but you’ll no longer find that history on their website).
3rd reason podcast hosts are trusted?
They ask questions. They don’t pretend to know everything.
But that’s a topic for another day. Because this is long enough already!
I have a podcast full of questions for today’s best marketers who spill their own histories, thoughts, ideas and secrets.
Because as the host and a life-long learner, I certainly don’t know everything.
Anyway, check out my Persuasion Play Podcast here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0kmaAjYl9BWhWBMqyPwr9NoRnn_gnKKu
Errands need doing. Work is calling. And if I’m lucky, maybe a nap is in my future, too.
Love you,
Jeffrey
PS. I sent an email to a client list earlier this week and it got a 14.2% click rate.
That’s 1078 people interested in looking deeper at the offer, to be exact.
But the page the email pointed to?
Not long enough. Not detailed enough. Not building enough trust.
So the conversion wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted.
Rewriting the sales page is on my unofficial To-Do list.
Client didn’t ask for it.
But if we want to make sales, it needs to happen.
8:59am
Saint Paul
Lemme tell you about one of my failures.
Few years back, I tried starting an online community.
It was on Telegram. Maybe you were there?
Anyhow, much like the Ronin class of Samurai warriors, my “Copy Ronin” community was aimed at copywriters who were skilled in their persuasion and wanted the freedom of freelance work.
(more…)