Why I Almost Gave More Than $1,000 to A Man I'd Never Met
What Makes Great Writing #018 - Featuring Copywriting Legend Daniel Throssell's Email
In this strange age of self-crowned experts, it's tough to separate good teachers from total frauds.
To make an informed decision about your education today is to wade through a swamp of options.
Who can you trust?
Who is the best?
Who deserves your money?
Every marketplace is a crowded marketplace.
Or, in the case of copywriting education, a barely contained mosh pit.
One member of this mosh pit, swinging fists at both his competitors and his potential customers, is an Aussie named Daniel Throssell. Daniel sells copywriting skills to copywriters. That means his copy - the words that actually do the selling - can't afford to be second-rate.
And… well… they aren't.
Today, you're taking a seat in front of one of the world's most captivating sales emails.
If you're remotely connected to copywriting, you'll likely want this product in about 1,167 words.
Let's analyze the whole piece, inline.
Today I want to tell you about one of the most practical & valuable email copywriting courses I sell, called:
"Campaign Conqueror"
There is no grand cliffhanger here. BUT Daniel does keep that first line incomplete, which gets us to the second line.
He also opens with a benefit stack: "practical AND valuable." (Much like a book that has sold 30 million copies: "How to Win Friends and Influence People")
The course name itself is obviously an alliteration which makes it easier to remember.
This course is about how I regularly outsell even world-famous “A-List” copywriters in email campaigns, from the comfort of my living room
(Using this framework, I have won multiple head-to-head sales contests against some of the industry's most respected & well-known copywriters such as Kim Krause Schwalm … Ian Stanley … Chris Orzechowski … Drayton Bird … Roy Furr … Rob Marsh … Jacob McMillen … Lukas Resheske … John McIntyre … and many more.)
We’ve got a congeries (list) of social proof. Rattling off this list in the copywriting world is like a tennis coach saying they “regularly beat people like Serena Williams, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi... etc.”
He's also using 9 examples here - the rule of three, three times.
Which is why it's an absolute bargain that I sell it for the low, low price of just—
Waaaaaaait.
Now I think of it…
This line is either a typo or an enallage (a deliberate grammatical error). It should be “now THAT I think of it.”
Either way, your eyes skim past it.
This is probably the first time you’ve heard of this course … right?
You have no idea what it should cost … right?
I … thought so.
Which means…
This is a PERFECT opportunity
for me to price-anchor you 😏
Selling to copywriters is theoretically difficult. How are you supposed to sneak anything past them?
Daniel's answer: Don’t try. Just call out the strategy you’re using.
This disarming honesty keeps us reading.
You see…
The thing about price anchors is they (supposedly) work even if the anchor price is ridiculous.
But … do they really?
Why don't we find out?
Great copywriters give you a reason to read to the end. In this case, we need to see if our ideas about price anchoring are about to be changed.
This big internal cliffhanger sends us further down the page.
And thus…
Allow me to answer
the price question right now:
(tee-hee-hee…)
* ahem*
Campaign Conqueror is, in many ways, the most valuable course I have ever created.
Notice that in the introduction, the course was simply described as "valuable." Now, a superlative is tossed in. “Most valuable.” It’s subtle, subtle, subtle.
I can argue that quite easily, because it is literally the exact blueprint I use to run all my email sales — the very things which make me ALL of my money.
All my other courses — Market Detective, Upwork in One Hour, Email Celebrity, etc. — are indirectly related to profits…
But Campaign Conqueror is about THE THING THAT BRINGS IN ALL THE MONEY:
Email campaigns.
And so, just before I launched Campaign Conqueror…
I confidently decided that I would launch it for the princely sum of…
TWO THOUSAND,
MILLION,
BILLION,
TRILLION,
GOOGOLPLEX
DOLLARS.
Did that sink in?
I repeat:
TWO THOUSAND, MILLION, BILLION, TRILLION, GOOGOLPLEX DOLLARS.
And … that’s a fair price, mind you.
I could have charged a lot MORE than TWO THOUSAND, MILLION, BILLION, TRILLION, GOOGOLPLEX DOLLARS.
But I was firmly convinced it was worth it.
What started as an average email has now taken a skidding, 90 MPH hairpin turn toward pure satire (using sarcasm to make fun of something, normally through extreme exaggeration).
He dives all in, using a number so big you would need to divide it by America's GDP several times before you could classify the figure as merely "absurd."
And Then A Dinner With My Wife
Changed Everything…
I was telling my plans to Hayley at dinner one night.
“This is my most VALUABLE information … and I need to charge accordingly!” I told her, swilling a glass of expensive wine, and letting out a booming laugh. “Think of all the MONEY we’ll make!”
Notice all the wealth language here:
"princely sum."
"expensive wine"
"booming laugh"
She frowned.
“But Daniel,” she said, gently placing a hand on my elbow. “Would YOU have been able to afford that when you were starting out?”
Then … it hit me.
Suddenly, I felt something melt inside me.
I wanted MORE copywriters to have access to this knowledge…
And not many of them have TWO THOUSAND, MILLION, BILLION, TRILLION, GOOGOLPLEX dollars lying around.
At least…
I know that when I was a beginner, that was a lot of money to me.
A moment of silence for the amount of sarcasm in that last line.
And so I resolved, then and there, that I would not launch Campaign Conqueror for a cent more than…
TWO THOUSAND,
MILLION,
BILLION,
TRILLION
GOOGOLPLEXDOLLARS.
As you know, a googolplex is 1 with a googol (10^100) zeroes after it.
So to say I just gave you a discount is … well … the understatement of the history of the universe.
This is another case of a either typo or enallage. I've read this 50 times now. Daniel meant to knock off the "googolplex" in the big text.
Again, I didn't even clock that error the first time.
When you're slipping down a water slide to Wonderland, it's hard to notice if there's a screw out of place.
*** Initially, I wrote that this was an error. Daniel corrected me. I’d lost the strikethrough when I transferred the email.
But … I believe it’s the right thing to do.
And I was JUST about to
proceed to launch at that price…
When a thought struck me:
What if I did something … crazy?
Something … unheard of?
Something … obscene?
And as I thought about it … a plan started to form in my mind.
Because I realised that if TWO THOUSAND, MILLION, BILLION, TRILLION dollars was a good deal…
Imagine the response if I launched Campaign Conqueror for just…
TWO THOUSAND,
MILLION,
BILLION,
DOLLARS!!!
AMAZING!
INCREDIBLE!
DEAL OF THE CENTURYYYYYY!
THIS would make the headlines, I thought.
And I was just writing up my sales emails to launch it at that price…
But THAT’S When
My Accountant Called Me!
As Neil Gaiman suggests, good narration casts a spell. That spell is snapped the moment you find the text dull. Daniel keeps the hypnosis going with different “reasons” to drop the price.
First - the interruption from his wife.
Second - his own personal revelation.
Now - his accountant is calling.
“Hello?” I said, answering the phone.
“Hi Daniel,” she said, panting. “Oh good, I caught you in time to stop you from making a TERRIBLE MISTAKE!”
“A mistake? What do you mean?” I asked, concerned.
“Well,” she gasped, “I ran the figures and … I realised I forgot to carry the 6, and … well … you can afford to launch the course for only TWO THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS and still break even!”
I literally dropped the phone in shock.
The exaggeration continues here:
"she said, panting."
"she gasped"
"I asked, concerned."
And of course: "I literally dropped the phone in shock."
Only…
TWO THOUSAND
MILLION
DOLLARS?
Was she on drugs?
How would I feed my kids?!?
None of it made any sense.
But she followed up with an email proving that I would, indeed, still make a profit if I launched Campaign Conqueror for TWO THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS.
And so, with trembling hands…
I typed an email authorising my team to proceed with launch preparations at that price…
And slumped back into my chair in relief.
It was all over.
It was finally over.
It was—
PING!
A notification came through on Slack.
I checked it…
And Burst
Out Of My Chair In Rage!
There, on the screen, was the sales page all set up and ready to go.
Yet my designer had made a terrible mistake…
And he’d forgotten to write the “MILLION”.
Instead…
This awful, ghastly price confronted my eyes:
TWO THOUSAND
DOLLARS!!!
“NOOOOOOO!” I screamed, clawing at my head in agony.
How did this happen?
I mean, heck, Email Celebrity is $2,000, and that only shows how to get people onto your list — not how to SELL to them!
Any lower, and it might be even cheaper than such trifling courses as Market Detective ($1,500) or my Inbox Detonator Bunker ($1,000)!
How could I afford to launch Campaign Conqueror…
The most directly valuable knowledge I possess…
The secrets to how I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling my own products, off a tiny list…
For such a measly sum as TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS?
Obviously, we're thinking differently about $2,000 dollars now because we've done the mental math (even though, as Daniel flat out spelled out for us, the starter price was made up).
But we don’t really have to do the math because the phrase "measly sum,” directly contrasts this price with the "princely sum" he discussed earlier. This is juxtaposition.
I couldn’t.
I’d be ruined.
So when I think of the money the secrets in Campaign Conqueror have made me personally…
How I have used them to launch the bestselling book in Australian history … or to run launches for my clients that pull in tens of millions of dollars in a single campaign…
At last, a transition back to the pitch here. Moving from a narrative into product claims and social proof.
I feel kinda ill to tell you that (at least for now)…
You can get Campaign Conqueror
for even LESS than $2,000!
How much less?
And for how long?
These are, sadly, questions we have to defer to the sales page.
Which you can read right here:
Once more, he's dropping down the price ladder, this time outside of the fake narrative.
The implied, subtle urgency here is nice - "at least for now." "For how long?" (Compare this to a more aggressive: “YOU CAN ONLY GET IT FOR…”)
This puts a cap on Daniel’s zany ride, and leaves me with a final thought:
There are only 169 words of direct selling in this email.
But......
Don't you want to click that link?
Much love as always <3
—Todd B from Tennessee
P.S. I’ve scrubbed most of the formatting from Daniel’s original email… which means his version is even better. I highly recommend subscribing to his list and taking the ride yourself.