Brian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. Like a lot of people I fell into it. I thought
\nafter college I was an English major so I perfectly suited. I would
\nsay to people I was voted in my high school yearbook most likely to
\nbecome a list manager. Out of college I thought I was going to
\neither be a baseball umpire, which I still umpire, or I was going
\nto be a college professor of English or I was going to be the next
\ngreat film critique to the New York Times. Obviously I didn\u2019t do
\nany of those things.<\/p>\nI found \u2026 we\u2019re not going into the whole long story. I did end up
\nwith Boardroom, my second job. I was in the list side of the
\nbusiness. Started learning direct marketing and I actually
\n[inaudible 00:03:30] I was going to be an editor or a writer at
\nBoardroom when I got here. And I remember maybe a year or two in to
\nBoardroom a job opened up at the \u2026 on the editorial side and I went
\nto Marty and I said, \u201cHey Marty, this job opened up. I think I\u2019m
\nready to go to the editorial side.\u201d Marty in his infinite wisdom
\nsaid, \u201cYou know Brian, I\u2019ve been watching you for the last two
\nyears. You have a real nose for marketing.\u201d I mean I have a pretty
\nbig nose too. He said, \u201cYou have a real nose for marketing,\u201d was
\nhis quote. You\u2019re two years out of college or three years out of
\ncollege, the owner of the company looks at you and says he wants
\nyou to stay where you are and I\u2019m liking it. It wasn\u2019t like I was
\ndisliking my job at all.<\/p>\n
I think the lesson might be you get on this track that you think,
\noh, of course I\u2019m going to be an editor, right? Because I\u2019m a
\nwriter. Why would I either think about being on the marketing side?
\nThe rest is sort of history in that respect as far as learning the
\ndirect marketing business from the list side.<\/p>\n
Boardroom sold mostly newsletters and books, started with a
\nbusiness newsletter called Boardroom Reports, Bottom Line Personal
\nthen became the lead newsletter which is more of a consumer
\nnewsletter. And then we started doing a ton of health books and
\nstuff. So it was a journey of the content change but the journey
\nwas very much learning direct marketing from the list side and the
\naudience side which was a great place to come from.<\/p>\n
Marty really took me under his wing very early on. I think he saw
\nsome of himself. He was more driven than I was and probably \u2026 I
\ndidn\u2019t start this business, he did so we know who the bootstrap
\nentrepreneur was and it wasn\u2019t me it was him. He saw something in
\nme that was very entrepreneurial in terms of idea generation. He
\nmade me a partner not that long into my tenure into Boardroom.
\nMaybe ten years in. He was an amazing, amazing man in terms of not
\njust spotting talent I\u2019ll say that he spotted me, maybe that was
\nhis exception, but he spotted a lot of other talent. But he really
\nunderstood what it meant to be excellent. Really understood that
\nmediocre just wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n
The Henry Kissinger story when I describe Marty. Henry Kissinger
\nwould send an aide to go write a speech and they come back. As soon
\nas they come back he goes, \u201cThat\u2019s not good enough. Go back and
\nwrite it again.\u201d After the eighth time, the guy comes back and
\nsays, \u201cMr. Kissinger, I wrote this thing eight times. I can\u2019t do
\nany better. It\u2019s finally, exactly the way I want it.\u201d And
\nKissinger\u2019s response was, \u201cOkay, good. Now I\u2019ll read it.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s what kind of Marty was. It wasn\u2019t like he was \u2026 he wasn\u2019t a
\ndemand for the sake of being a demand but he always knew that you
\ncould do better. He had something on his stationary that said \u2018good
\nbetter best, never let it rest until the good is better and the
\nbetter best.\u2019 And he really demanded excellence in everything.<\/p>\n
The other big lesson I got from Marty was \u2026 I love this quote of
\nhis. It was \u201cThe only things worth talking about are the things you
\ncan\u2019t talk about. That\u2019s not about figuring out what the gossip of
\nthe day is. What Marty was so great at and what I\u2019ve continued to
\nbe good at, not as great as him, is what I\u2019ll say calling the
\nquestion. They call it the old moose on the table. It\u2019s like a big
\nissue that is confronting us and it could be creative, it could be
\nmarketing, it could be anything. It could be personnel.<\/p>\n
Everybody sort of skirts the issue and the image, of course, as
\nyou\u2019re sitting at a boardroom table. Not our Boardroom, any
\nboardroom table, and there\u2019s a big rotting carcass of a moose
\nacross the entire table with the guts spilling out and everybody\u2019s
\nhaving a conversation looking around the dead moose saying anything
\nbut the dead moose is on the table spilling its guts. And Marty
\nwould never be shy about calling out what we really needed to talk
\nabout, what was the most important thing. And I think that\u2019s why we
\nended up getting the best copywriters to work for us, the best \u2026
\nlist selection. No compromise, just never a compromise.<\/p>\n
There is an expression now that people say done is better than
\nperfect. Marty wasn\u2019t so great at that. Eighty percent done for him
\na lot of times wasn\u2019t good enough. I think in today\u2019s world, with
\nthe internet, we tend to \u2026 in some cases 60% good is good enough.
\nSince he can slap it out there you\u2019re thinking it\u2019s good enough to
\ntest. But I maintain that you spend a lot of time putting out
\ncrappy tests even on the internet there will be diminishing returns
\nin the long run.<\/p>\n
I think those are the big, powerful 30,000 foot [inaudible
\n00:08:30] lessons from Marty. There was so many little ones as far
\nas how we talked about \u2026 how we thought about copy and how we
\nthought about hiring copywriters. I think we\u2019re going to talk about
\nthat later anyway. So maybe we\u2019ll get into more granular. But those
\nare some of the bigger one.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Okay. You mentioned that he was good at spotting
\ntalent. I couldn\u2019t help but think of the guy \u2026 what\u2019s his name? Mel
\nMartin, the guy who created the fascination.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Wasn\u2019t he like the secret copywriter for you guys for a
\nwhile?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yes. It\u2019s funny I was on a call with Bob Bly, the same
\nquestion came up. I\u2019m going to do a blog about it because after \u2026 I
\nthink right after Mel died or shortly \u2026 maybe shortly before or
\nshortly after, Denny Hatch did an article and it was something like
\nthe best copywriter you never heard of.<\/p>\nI was telling Bob Bly and I\u2019ll tell you this too which is really
\nimportant. That Marty and I were great sharers. We would share
\neverybody, everything. We were very open with \u2026 because to us
\ncompetition was co-existence. There was no such thing about keeping
\na great list to ourselves. If Agora told us the best list they are
\nmailing and we told us, told them the best list we are mailing,
\n[all boats rose 00:09:43].<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s weird because Marty had this reputation of keeping this
\nwriter, Mel Martin under wraps like he wasn\u2019t going to share him
\nwith anybody. The true story is that Mel and Marty went back to the
\ndays of when Marty was at commentary magazine and before he started
\nBoardroom and he also was part of this Jewish book club and he had
\nMel Martin write copy for him that was this \u2026 the secrets of the
\n[inaudible 00:10:09] page 47, the Jewish encyclopedia or something.
\nAnd so Mel had followed the work of Ralph Ginzburg in terms of
\nusing page numbers, using \u2026 calling out these fascinations and
\nMarty and Mel were this incredible team. Marty wasn\u2019t a copywriter
\nbut Marty was not too shabby when it came to crafting words. And so
\nthe two of them were almost like writing stuff together.<\/p>\n
So when Boardroom was launched then Gene Schwartz did write the
\nfirst promotion for Boardroom Reports but Mel was in the
\nbackground, I think he had another job. And eventually Marty and
\nMel teamed up again probably late \u201870s early \u201880s when Bottom Line
\nPersonal was launched and Mel just wanted to work for Marty. Mel
\nsaid, \u201cI want to write copy for you. Let\u2019s work on this together.
\nI\u2019ll help you launch Bottom Line Personal. I want to start doing
\nsome of these consumer books and all the stuff we learned at the
\nJewish book club.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly the reason why Marty kept Mel a secret was on Mel\u2019s
\nrequest. Mel said I don\u2019t want to work for anybody else. I don\u2019t
\nwant to be a copywriter for hire. I want to be your partner at
\nBoardroom. He wasn\u2019t a full time employee, he still had some
\nfreedom but Mel wanted just to work for Marty. They were two peas
\nin a pod. The keeping Mel Martin under wraps and not sharing him
\nwith the industry was Mel\u2019s request more than it was Marty\u2019s. Mel
\nhad no interest in kind of getting into the occult the rat race of
\nselling his wares as a copywriter. He just wanted to be Marty\u2019s
\nguy.<\/p>\n
Mel was a character. I had a cubicle next to him in 1981 in New
\nYork. He used to come in to the office totally scruffy, unshaven.
\nHe wore like, you know, always wore a white or beige suit with no
\ntie of course in the middle of winter and he wore this white buck
\nshoes and he chain smoke. Then you could smoke cigarettes in the
\noffice. If he didn\u2019t have cigarettes he couldn\u2019t write which was so
\ncool. He was like a throwback. He could be a madman. He is just
\nlike chain smoking. He was [inaudible 00:12:19] drinker but he was
\nlike a chain smoker. He would just churn out the copy, just churn
\nout the fascination and back then Marty would write a lot of the
\nbridge copy.<\/p>\n
And the other thing that I shared with Bob and I\u2019ll share with you
\nwith a different version. I think that what I\u2019ve seen over the
\nyears is the evolution of fascination copy where back then it was
\nalways about \u2026 it was always about \u2026 you there?<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> [Inaudible 00:12:50] turn my phone off.<\/p>\nIt was always about \u2026 sizzle no steak, like you only gave away the
\nsizzle. That\u2019s what the fascinations were about. It was always
\nabout making the prospect vibrate, getting under the surface of
\nthings but not giving away anything.<\/p>\n
And then as we progress in our history of different formats from
\nnumber ten envelopes to magalogs and bookalogs, those formats lent
\nthemselves to telling a much long story even though we used 12-page
\nletters even back in 1980. I think the 12-page letter moving into
\nthe bookalog and magalog you really \u2026 it was so designed. I think
\nthere was a question later on about design which is really
\nimportant and it was so important to start giving away some of the
\nsteak. Clayton Makepeace was one of the first that did this for us.
\nFour secrets to lowering your blood pressure, you give away two and
\nthen the other two are on page 63 of the premium.<\/p>\n
So the evolution of the fascination evolved to that, to our format
\nand, of course, now you look at the internet and it\u2019s like on
\nsteroids, right? You give away so much content for free first
\nbefore you even sell anything if you do it right, product launch
\nformula methodology. I always found that interesting as I\u2019ve
\nwatched the evolution of that. I was taught to never give away the
\nsteak but I think copywriters on this call, and I think you\u2019ll
\nagree, that there\u2019s a lot of opportunities to give away steak and
\ndo it intelligently and actually have a much better sell-through by
\ndoing it in a different way than we were taught back in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> That\u2019s very interesting. I know with emails I\u2019m still a
\nsizzle guy. Not just me but a lot of people who understand how to
\ndo the emails certain ways can kind of make it look like steak even
\nthough it sizzle.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They make it seem like I just
\ngave away something even though I didn\u2019t. Yeah, it\u2019s absolutely
\nright. You know what? That\u2019s just as good Ben. If you do that then
\nyou\u2019ve gotten the customer\u2019s attention but, you know, however you
\nget it done that\u2019s what makes great copywriters. And I\u2019m not one. I
\nhave copywriter envy. I really do. I\u2019ve had it my whole career. I
\nknow how special it is to be a great copywriter. I value it at the
\nhighest level.<\/p>\nI was having a conversation with John Carlton the other day; he was
\none of my heroes and a good friend. I just talked to Carlton for an
\nhour and it\u2019s like one bit of wisdom after another. John was making
\nthe point to me that he thinks the next big breakthroughs online
\nare not going to necessarily be completely technological. Not that
\nwe\u2019ve gotten to everywhere we got \u2026 there\u2019ll be a lot more
\ntechnological wiz bang stuff coming forward but he thinks \u2026 and
\nthen we got into this conversation about the game changing isn\u2019t
\ngoing to be the technology, I think it\u2019s going to come back to a
\nlot of the storytelling and a lot of the copy. And I\u2019ve already
\nseen it so I\u2019m not like making believe, I\u2019m not making this up. And
\nit\u2019s so interesting when you look at the people talking about how
\nimportant storytelling is in the internet space. It makes me sort
\nof smile, you know? Sort of like internet people saying that
\nphysical product is the new deep dark secret of internet marketing.
\nGiveaway physical product on the backend for higher perceived value
\nand all I can do is like, \u201cReally? Oh, thanks for telling me.\u201d
\nAfter selling \u2026 I\u2019m not bragging but, you know, we sold three
\nmillion books in one year. That was a physical product.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m glad it\u2019s going that way. I think physical products
\nare just \u2026 they get consumed better than digital usually. Does it
\ndo so any good if they downloaded PDF they never read but they get
\nsomething to mail, physicals in their hands, they can take it
\naround, it\u2019s portable.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I love it.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> I think though that the prospecting \u2026 you know, I
\ndon\u2019t want to sound like a [inaudible 00:16:54] and I love email
\nand I think \u2026 as I always say the internet thing, this internet
\nthing will catch on. But I think that prospecting intelligently
\nonline with digital content makes a whole lot of sense in terms of
\nmargins but to ignore direct mail and physical product on the back
\nend, I say ignore [inaudible 00:17:19]. You have this opportunity
\nto go multichannel with something that still scales. Direct mail
\nstill scales. We still get three, four, five percent response rates
\nin direct mail. And the lifetime value of a customer in direct mail
\nis still much higher. So to ignore it completely seems crazy to me.<\/p>\nI\u2019m not sitting here saying everybody should be in direct mail nor
\nam I saying you should launch in direct mail. But I guess maybe
\nI\u2019ll be the T-Rex dinosaur roaming the Wild Wild West for quite a
\nwhile kind of preaching the fact that I don\u2019t care if the online\u2019s
\nyour medium of choice for your first sale. Why don\u2019t you think
\nabout a bunch of other? Think about TV, think about radio, think
\nabout print, you know?<\/p>\n
I bought a URL recently. I own this URL, I swear to God.<\/p>\n
Singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com. I own that. Yeah. If you go
\nto it I think you\u2019ll link to my site, to my personal site. But
\nsinglechannelmarketingissoboring.com is to me \u2026 it\u2019s also not all
\nthat exciting to be in single channel marketing. And, just saying,
\nwhat if Google decides to shut you down? You won\u2019t really like that
\nchannel anymore, will you?<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s a big danger. Relying on one, like,
\nonline. Just relying on the internet is a big danger.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> I totally agree.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Yeah. The stamps never changed technology, right?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> No. The postal inspector can shut you down too. Some
\npeople deserve to be accused of mail fraud but yeah. It\u2019s a little
\ndifferent being shut down. The possible [inaudible 00:19:03]
\nmonopoly like Google almost is a monopoly. There are some analogies
\nthere but yeah. I always say the least crowded inbox is the one you
\ngrew up with assuming you\u2019re over, what? Thirty years old?
\nThirty-five years old.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> You know what? We\u2019re talking about this so I wanted to
\nask you this. Since the internet\u2019s becoming more and more popular I
\nguess with marketers, have you noticed an increase in response in
\ndirect mail since the internet\u2019s been out or has it stayed the same
\nor gone down or \u2026<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> No. [Inaudible 00:19:35] hasn\u2019t gone down. In some
\ncases it\u2019s gone up, in some cases it\u2019s been kind of the same. But,
\nof course, if we have a crappy control package it will go down
\nbecause then the creative sucks, right? It\u2019s a different
\ndiscussion. For if the list selection sucks the response will go
\ndown. But pound-for-pound, direct mail still scales like it always
\ndid.<\/p>\nThe biggest difference in direct mail today is the availability of
\nuniverses of outside list. Because so many people have abandoned
\ndirect mail, you\u2019re not going to get to as many outside list. But I
\nwill tell you this, the sophistication with which you can do a
\ndirect mail campaign, you can actually weed out much more that
\nthere is such sophisticated dead files where I could sell with a
\n[bill me 00:20:21] offer, a soft offer where you don\u2019t have to put
\nyour credit card in. When you get a free book or a free
\nsubscription or trial subscription and I could do so many great
\nscreens that my response rate might be lower than it might have
\nbeen five years ago. My pay up is going to be so much higher and my
\nlifetime value will be that much higher as well.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to rephrase your question. Our response rate is higher,
\nmaybe, maybe not, depends on the creative, depends on the offer,
\nall that, it all depends. But the sophistication with which you can
\ndo list segmentation indirect mail is as good as is ever been and
\nthe ability to bring in new customers that have the highest
\nlifetime value is as good as it\u2019s ever been if not better.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> I know a lot of people who are \u2026 they\u2019ll test
\neverything online where it\u2019s cheap and then they\u2019ll take it offline
\nafter they have it working online. They tell me that it\u2019s just that
\nmuch easier to make it work.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. We\u2019ve done a lot of online testing. Some of it \u2026
\nmost of it translates. Good copy is good copy, right? I guess the
\nproof was when we took our 32-page magalog or tabloid and stuck
\nthem into an HTML format and put them online and then when we tried
\nto cut them and made them shorter online they didn\u2019t do as well.
\nI\u2019m sure you subscribe \u2026 knowing you because I read you a lot, it\u2019s
\nnot about how long or short the copy is, it\u2019s about how effective
\nit is.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m always trying of like finding ways and make things
\nshorter but it never happens.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s amazing, isn\u2019t it? If you can write
\ncompelling copy, write to your heart\u2019s content.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Oh, yeah. Recently I have been partnering in a golf
\nbusiness. I wrote the ad just to get it launched. I wanted it to be
\nlike a page, ended up being 12 pages.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s the way it goes.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. Yeah.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Okay, I got to ask you about one of my personal
\nmarketing copywriting heroes. I\u2019ve never met the guy of course and
\nthat\u2019s Gene Schwartz. Huge fan and I know a lot of people on my
\nlist are a huge of fan of his. You actually knew the guy. What are
\nsome things you learned just from working with him?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Gene and I were pretty close actually. Marty and Gene
\nwere very, very close and Gene wrote the launch package for
\nBoardroom Reports when Marty started his business. Read 300
\nbusiness magazines in 30 minutes and get the guts of each. That was
\nGene Schwartz\u2019s headline. He launched this business with Marty
\nEdelston. Not as a partner but as a copywriter.<\/p>\nYou know what I would do for your readers if you want. I wrote a
\nblog post, which you probably have, because I think I gave it to
\nyou. It was called \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not always
\nabout the money.\u201d That was a big lesson I learned from Gene
\nSchwartz. So one of the stories I love telling and it\u2019s in this
\nblog post in detail but Gene \u2026 I learned from Gene who\u2019s a very,
\nvery wealthy man. He was an art collector, he had a world class
\nmodern art collection. In fact, he couldn\u2019t even fit all the art he
\nhad in his apartment on Park Avenue. So when I used to have monthly
\nlunches with him I would go to his apartment and then if I went two
\nmonths later all the art had been changed. It was almost like going
\nto a museum exhibition.<\/p>\n
But the other thing you would notice in Gene Schwartz\u2019s apartment
\nis that what wasn\u2019t covered up by paintings was covered up by book
\nshelf. Gene Schwartz understood that copywriters are not \u2026 they
\ndon\u2019t happen by accident. They are people who are veracious readers
\nwho know a lot about a lot. It\u2019s not that you have to be an expert
\non everything to be a writer about one thing but if you are an
\nexpert on a lot of things and you are a veracious reader, you\u2019re
\ngoing to be that much better a writer and Gene totally understood
\nthat. So that\u2019s like a big, big, big lesson I learned from him.<\/p>\n
Another one that I learned from Gene is this \u2026 going back to it\u2019s
\nnot just about the money. That you really have to start looking at
\nhow you build a business and Gene, as a copywriter, understood how
\nimportant list were. He wasn\u2019t necessarily a list guy, I mean he
\nused to call me all the time for list advice and I used to tell him
\nall the list of Boardroom was mailing so he can mail them for his
\nlittle company which was called Instant Improvement. Instant
\nImprovement mailed these like little small books and they were
\nweird. He had some weird health books. He had [inaudible 00:24:55]
\nand he had How to Rub Your Stomach Away. I mean classic Gene
\nSchwartz copy and book.
\nGene understood that his little Instant Improvement which was his
\nlove, I mean even though he wrote copy for other people and all
\nthat, he understood that he needed to mail outside list because he
\ndidn\u2019t have a big database \u2013 a small little list, a small little
\npublishing company.<\/p>\n
So Gene, in his infinite wisdom, became really close friends with \u2026
\nhe was already close friends with Marty Edelston, and he was
\nalready close friend \u2026 and he became close friends with Pat Corpora
\nwho ran Rodale Books. So between Rodale and Boardroom we were
\nprobably the two biggest mailers of health books in the 1980s.
\nRodale, if people don\u2019t know who Rodale is, that\u2019s the publishes of
\nPrevention Magazine and Men\u2019s Health Magazine and they do a whole
\nline of health books which are just, you know, they\u2019re probably the
\nlargest health book publisher. I guess you might say \u2026 there might
\nbe some people who surpassed them since but Rodale was the number
\none.<\/p>\n
So we used to get together at Marty\u2019s apartment on 72nd Street in
\nNew York and it was Gene Schwartz, Pat Corpora, me, Marty and we
\nwould just sort of talk marketing for the evening and Gene would
\ntalk about what products were coming up for us and which products
\nhe might want to write for both Rodale and us. Basically Marty
\nnever paid Gene a penny for his copy and Gene had controls galore
\nfor Boardroom.<\/p>\n
What Gene would do is he would write a package for a book that we
\nhad Healing Unlimited and we would give him 750,000 names from our
\ndatabase that he could mail for Instant Improvement. Gene
\nunderstood that the idea that he\u2019d be able to mail that many name,
\nsell more books of his own then he\u2019d be able to [inaudible
\n00:26:45] more books which he really like to do \u2013it was something
\nthat he love. So he was doing what he loved and you know what? The
\nmoney did follow. Because he was selling books, more books because
\nhe had more list to mail therefore he made more money on the book
\nsales and then he was able to mail multiple times to that same
\nlist. And then his list got bigger and then he was able to rent his
\nlist and he made list [inaudible 00:27:08].<\/p>\n
So by not thinking about that I could charge Boardroom 20 or 30,000
\ndollars for a package he was looking long term that he could make
\nhundreds of thousands of dollars by getting 750,000 names per
\npackage. And I just thought that was brilliant and he told me that
\nany copywriter who doesn\u2019t pay attention to list and what their
\nclient is mailing on a regular basis is missing a huge boat. I look
\nat it as something \u2026 when I hire a new copywriter they\u2019re not
\nasking me a lot of questions about the list universe we mail, the
\nlist universe that\u2019s work and not work, who we exchange with in our
\nlist and all that. Of course you want to know the demographics and
\nthe psychographics and all that but it\u2019s such an important
\ncomponent that a lot of copywriters I think let that slip past
\nthem.<\/p>\n
Dick Benson who was another one of my mentors who\u2019s a direct mail
\nguru always said mailers don\u2019t spend enough time on list. Now he
\ndid before he died gave me permission to say no one spends enough
\ntime on list except Boardroom \u2013 because I came out of the list
\nbusiness. When I met Dick for the first time he actually was
\nimpressed that I was a list guy who was moving toward the
\ncirculation marketing side which was rare. I became a good friend
\nto Dick Benson in terms of recommending list to him too because he
\nhad the University of California Berkeley Wellness letter and the
\nJohn Hopkins Wellness letter. That was a big lesson from Gene, just
\nabout the whole list thing. And if you want that post, that blog
\nfor your list I would give you a link to that.<\/p>\n
I think one [inaudible 00:28:52] quick thing about Gene is that
\nthis concept that sometimes your best copy could be sitting on the
\nediting room floor. What I mean by that is that Gene \u2026 give Gene a
\nbook and say write a package, he would always think beyond the
\nbook. He would see what was in the book and be able to write
\nfascinations from which is one of his real talent.<\/p>\n
But then he would think about what\u2019s not in the book that could be
\nin the book that should be in the book. I\u2019ll use a loose example
\nbut he\u2019s reading our health book and he sees three secrets about
\nlowering blood pressure with certain fruit for example. I used that
\nexample in my Bob Bly call. But then, you know, maybe he\u2019ll come
\nback and say \u201cCan you go to your editors and see if there are any
\nother blood pressure cures that are not medication that aren\u2019t
\nfruit so then I can write a fascination that would be really
\nfascinating that said \u2018Did you know that you not only can find
\nblood pressure cures in your fruits but also your shoes,\u2019\u201d I\u2019m
\nmaking that up, \u201cwhatever the thing that the editors could find.\u201d
\nAnd so Gene never let \u2026 he never let it rest. So that he always
\nwanted to find stuff.<\/p>\n
He would actually interview our editor and find out what they
\ndidn\u2019t put in the book or what they thought was too controversial.
\nAnd I\u2019ll tell you, one of the writers we work with today, Parris
\nLampropoulos who\u2019s a great writer and a very good friend. Paris is
\nlike \u2026 he\u2019s a slave to this sort of thing. It\u2019s like he always
\nwants to know what\u2019s not there that I might be missing out on.
\nHe\u2019ll go to the editor of a newsletter or someone who wrote a book
\nand say, \u201cWhat didn\u2019t you put in this book that you thought was too
\ncontroversial or too edgy? Let\u2019s go take another look at it. I\u2019m
\nnot saying we should take it if it\u2019s responsible but if we can
\nthen take it to another doctor or somebody else to prove it out
\nmaybe, just maybe, we\u2019ll able to come up with a great edgy
\nfascination and a great piece of content to put in the book or the
\nnewsletter.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think copywriters need to think like that. It\u2019s not just what
\nyou\u2019re handed by the client but you\u2019re the creative guy or gal. You
\ncan start dictating. And you may not get there. Some publishers
\njust aren\u2019t going to help you with that but imagine if they do and
\nimagine if you come up with some great stuff; it could lead to some
\nof the best headlines you\u2019ll ever write. And I think Gene would
\nhave said that some of the best stuff he ever wrote might not have
\nbeen stuff that was in the original version of whatever he was
\nwriting about.<\/p>\n
So, really important lesson that I learned from Gene. It\u2019s just
\nthat veraciousness, you know what I mean? He never let it rest. And
\nMarty was like that too. That\u2019s why they were such good friends.
\nThey just never let it rest.<\/p>\n
Interesting about both of them, even though they both had strokes
\nin their life, I never thought that they were like really stressed
\nout about this never letting it rest because some people get really
\nstressed about that. There\u2019s always like something they\u2019re not
\ndoing so they\u2019re getting all uptight about it. I never got that
\nfrom Gene or Marty, even though they both ended up having strokes
\nin their life but interesting. I just thought of that.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> You know what? It\u2019s interesting. It sounds like \u2026
\nbecause I know a lot of people listening to this \u2026 the people on my
\nlist are listening to this or reading the transcript, a lot of them
\nare not \u2026 there\u2019s a lot of freelancers but there\u2019s also just a lot
\nof entrepreneurs who want to get better at writing ads and all that
\nand [inaudible 00:32:15] information doing what Gene did \u2026 because
\nI\u2019m the same way. I just saw my own stuff. We have the power to go
\nand create whatever fascinations we want because we control the
\ncontent anyway.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> That\u2019s correct. That\u2019s correct. In fact I think Gene
\nvery often \u2026 I remember our editor is going nuts. Adding stuff to a
\nbook late in the process because Gene came up with a great
\nfascination that we could end up supporting with a new piece of
\ncontent.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> It almost sounds like what they used to do in the old
\ndays where they would write the ad first and then create a product
\naround that.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. There\u2019s something to that Ben. I think that \u2026
\nI\u2019m not a student of the madman but I think that \u2026 I think there\u2019s
\nsomething to what you just said. Absolutely. Sometimes we fall in
\nlove with our products and we think that it\u2019s just that. What do
\nour people really want? And I think we talk about that a lot but we
\ndon\u2019t necessarily do it when the rubber hits the road.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t read all Gene Schwartz\u2019s books but the one
\nI\u2019ve read like \u2026 I don\u2019t know, 14, 15 times. Going to go deep into
\nit again actually soon is Breakthrough Advertising. Like a lot of
\ncopywriters we rave about that book but it\u2019s hard to find. Are you
\nguys selling that anymore?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> We own the rights to it. I have copies of it. It\u2019s not
\non the Bottom Line website because the Bottom Line website is more
\nof a consumer site that supports our newsletters. Breakthrough
\nadvertising is in a different category of the B to B side. I\u2019m
\nthinking maybe after the Titans event that I\u2019m doing in September I
\nmight create a site that puts the book up there. We do sell it
\ntechnically for $95 but I\u2019ll tell you that I\u2019ve given away a lot of
\ncopies over the years because it became a labor of love to
\nrepublish that book.<\/p>\nThe story behind it is interesting because after it went out of
\nprint, the original edition was written in 1966 \u2013 not a word was
\nchanged. Marty and I reprinted like 250 copies I guess sometime in
\nthe early 80\u2019s and we gave it away to the list community just as a
\ngift. And then we just didn\u2019t think about it again. And then maybe
\nten years later, it was after Gene had passed away, we saw a live
\nbid on eBay. It was later than that because eBay wasn\u2019t around then
\nbut maybe it was after 2000. That we saw a live bid on eBay for
\nlike $925 for an original edition of Breakthrough Advertising.
\nMarty and I looked at each other and said this is crazy. It\u2019s a
\nforgotten classic.<\/p>\n
We then went to Barbara Schwartz, Gene\u2019s widow and we\u2019re friends
\nwith her still too. She\u2019s still wonderful. One of the great art
\ncollectors in New York. We said \u201cLet\u2019s do the book,\u201d and she said
\n\u201cAbsolutely. Continuing Gene\u2019s legacy would be great.\u201d So that\u2019s
\nwhen we reprinted it. Didn\u2019t change a word. Marty wrote a new
\nforward for the book. That\u2019s the version we have now, it\u2019s a black
\ncover. Again, we technically sell it for $95 and we do sell some
\ncopies but it\u2019s more of like something that we have.<\/p>\n
So it is available from me for $95. Maybe I\u2019ve had other people
\noffer it to their list. I don\u2019t really care about the money so
\nmuch. I\u2019d rather get the book out there. Splitting 50-50 with
\nsomebody to sell book copies for us is fine. So I\u2019m not making an
\naffiliate deal on this call but I certainly would do that because
\nit\u2019s more about spreading Gene\u2019s wisdom than it is about being a
\nmoney maker.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m happy to spread the word about it whether it is an
\naffiliate, commission. I don\u2019t really care about that either as
\nmuch; people just keeping asking me. One of my friends, Dan
\nMeredith he actually asked one of the questions I\u2019m going to ask
\nyou soon. He\u2019s kind of a newer copywriter and he\u2019s like, \u201cMan,
\nwhere can I get it?\u201d<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> You can get it from me. You can get it from me.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> So now I want to kind of ask you something like more of
\nyour experiences here. I know you\u2019ve seen a lot of split test
\nbecause you\u2019re the best in the world of picking the winner after
\nyou know the results.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. The quote that I use sometimes is I can predict
\nthe result of any test once I have the results.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Like what are the two or three or maybe just one \u2013 I
\ndon\u2019t know how many of these on top of your head, of crazy test
\nresults. You\u2019re just like I cannot believe that one.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> You know it\u2019s funny. I will tell you that single
\nvariable testing which is critical in direct mail especially where
\nyou just test one thing and everything else in the package are the
\nsame. That\u2019s where \u2026 I have seen \u2026 it\u2019s not crazy but changing just
\na couple of words on an order card, I mean certainly changing the
\nprice is huge. I\u2019ve not had the one that \u2026 the 29.97 versus the
\n29.99 type of test. I haven\u2019t seen like big shifts in response
\nrates over my career. I\u2019ve seen winners and losers but not big
\nshifts. But I think that little things do mean a lot especially on
\nthe order card.<\/p>\nBut as far as like straight copy there\u2019s been certain copy that I
\nread and I said \u201cYou know? This is so crazy written by a great
\nwriter.\u201d One that comes to mind is a package that Jim Rutz wrote
\nwho\u2019s one of the great copywriters of all time. He wrote a magalog
\nfor us and it was all about this fictitious couple called limo
\nLarry and champagne Cherry and how they \u2026 it\u2019s a classic package.
\nI\u2019m going to give away a PDF of it at my event as one of the
\nclassic Boardroom packages.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that when we read that the first time it was like,
\n\u201cAlright. You know what? I guess I\u2019m going to trust Jim Rutz that
\nhe knew what he was doing with this. Some of the copywriter told me
\nrecently, Jim was one of those writers that he was almost
\nimpossible to copy or to learn from because he had a really unique
\nstyle. You could learn a lot by reading Gary Bencivenga copy, you
\ncan learn a lot by reading Jim Punkre copy, you can learn a lot by
\nreading Clayton Makepeace copy. I don\u2019t know that Jim Rutz copy
\nlike you\u2019d want to try to imitate it because you\u2019d probably screw
\nit up.<\/p>\n
So that was one, you know, from a copy platform and the way that he
\nstructured it just seem sort of silly on the surface. You know,
\nlive like this rich couple kind of thing and it went through the
\nroof. It was just incredible. It was just so entertaining and so
\ninsightful as far as what the customer that we were going after.<\/p>\n
And then I think I\u2019ve had some crazy results over the years when
\nI\u2019ve tested what I\u2019ll call gimmicks versus deep copy. Those are the
\nterms I\u2019ll use. By a gimmick I\u2019ll say a package that looks like a
\nsurvey that\u2019s not really a survey. We want your opinion, send this
\nin today with your opinion and we\u2019ll start your subscription,
\nwhatever. Or one of those packages that we actually send a real \u2026
\nwe don\u2019t do these anymore and that they\u2019re dangerous. But you send
\na real check in the mail, like a dollar check and when they cash
\nthe check that triggers the trial subscription. And you can do that
\nlegally. The disclosures have to [inaudible 00:39:37].<\/p>\n
When I see results like, you know, and we\u2019ve gotten packages like
\nthat way back to work and then you start testing those against like
\na 64-page bookalog that spends so much time selling the product,
\nselling the message, the copy is so expertly crafted whether it\u2019s a
\nGary Bencivenga or a Mel Martin or whatever. Seeing the results in
\nboth cases, sometimes the purely gimmicky transactional type
\npackage win and sometimes a long copy, get into under the surface,
\nread 64 pages on your nightstand wins.<\/p>\n
And then winning and losing, the actual analysis is so interesting
\nbecause usually the gimmick or the transactional is going to be a
\nvery high front end response because it\u2019s a bill me offer. So
\nyou\u2019re going to get a lot of people saying yes, yes, yes; five,
\nsix, seven percent sometimes. But the amount of people that\u2019ll
\nactually convert or pay for the subscription of the book could be
\n20, 30 or 40 percent or 20 or 30 percent. Maybe even less.<\/p>\n
And then when you do the 64-page bookalog your frontend response
\nmight be 2 \u00bd% or 2% instead of five or six but your pay up could be
\n55% because you\u2019re basically getting somebody who\u2019s wedding
\nthemselves \u2026 not wetting with a T, wedding with a D. Wedding.
\n[Inaudible 00:41:06] wedding themselves too because they\u2019re so
\nexcited. They become much more familiar with the product, what they
\nget is not a surprise obviously because you just sold them for 64
\npages or 52 pages or whatever. What you find with those people too
\nis that they stick around longer. Your renewal rates are higher on
\nthose people.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s really important to track the results of those kinds of
\npackages against each other into year two and three. What\u2019s the
\nlifetime value of a new person coming in from a transactional
\npackage versus deep package, [inaudible 00:41:42] gimmick versus
\ndeep or transactional versus heavy copy? But you got the message of
\n\u2026 those are extremes. I wouldn\u2019t say crazy results but you can see
\nthat the analysis is just not so simple. You know? It\u2019s not just
\nthis one got a 6% response, this one got a 3% response, 6% wins.
\nNo. Now you have to look at pay up in our case. Six percent got a
\n20% pay up, 3% got a 50% pay up. Okay. Another piece of data. And
\nnow a year later the people from the 3% front end and 50% pay up
\nrenewed at 35% where the people who came up at 6% and 20% pay up
\nrenewed at 8%. Now you\u2019ve got a two-year analysis that says this
\nisn\u2019t even close. And that you got to be in the deeper bookalog
\npackage. I\u2019m not quoting exact numbers of course but I think you
\nget the idea.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> That\u2019s where testing [inaudible 00:42:48]. It\u2019s funny,
\nas I\u2019m saying all this, I\u2019m thinking about my friends from high
\nschool and college who knew that I never took a Math course after
\nlike 10th Grade because I hated Math. And I\u2019m not good at Math till
\nthis day. But when I say I\u2019m a slave to my numbers where as Dick
\nBenson used to say, \u201cYou have to believe your number,\u201d that\u2019s what
\ndirect marketing is all about. I am a slave to my numbers. Someone
\nelse is doing them for me. If you think I\u2019m doing the spreadsheet
\nyou\u2019re nuts. Because I don\u2019t know how to do it, I suck at it. But
\ngive me the numbers, I\u2019ll tell you what the winner is. Because I\u2019m
\ngoing to analyze it up and down. I guess I\u2019m sort of proud of
\nmyself for actually not being resistant to that because being an
\nEnglish major I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t want to do Math. Screw that,\u201d
\nbut there\u2019s a lot of Math in direct marketing.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> That sounds like there\u2019s a lot of creativity in that
\ntoo. Did look that far into the future and try to strategize all
\nthese different offers and what work \u2026 who\u2019s renewing two years
\nlater.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know anybody who goes that deep. That\u2019s really \u2026<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> I think you have to \u2026 I think [inaudible 00:43:56]
\nmarketing you have to. Otherwise I think you\u2019re really missing the
\nboat. And once you have an advertise, if you\u2019re a magazine, you
\nneed advertisers so you\u2019ll pay ridiculous amounts of money to get
\npeople on your list but that was [inaudible 00:44:08] advertising.
\nWe couldn\u2019t afford to do that.<\/p>\nSo we had a thing with Canada. We did a mailing into Canada once
\nand Canadian response rates are like double what the US were back
\nin the 1980\u2019s. And we got double the response rate. But we got like
\na third of the renewal rate because we were \u2026 given the same
\nnewsletter. So Bottom Line Personal talking about US banks. Can you
\nimagine someone sending in Toronto thinking that this is useful?<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> You know? We didn\u2019t think about that until we saw the
\n11% renewal rate instead of a 33% renewal rate. So we got burned
\nwithout looking a year or two. So there\u2019s an example. We\u2019re not
\nperfect by any means. We make a lot of mistakes. But then we \u2026 that
\none we didn\u2019t make a second time.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> This is a little off topic but you just got me thinking
\nabout something. We\u2019re talking about selling physical products to
\nthe mail and all that using physical mail to send your ads and all
\nthat. Actually I have a print newsletter that I sell and what I
\nlove about it, and I\u2019m assuming you guys probably love this about
\nit, is that people are paying you to send them advertisements. It\u2019s
\nsomething stuck an envelope with it.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that\u2019s good. I mean I think that because
\nour Bottom Line Personal and Bottom Line Health newsletters mail
\nflat, they mail us self mailers, we didn\u2019t have the opportunity for
\nadvertising. But we did have \u2026 One of our other newsletters, we
\ndon\u2019t have any more, which was our natural healing newsletter
\nmailed in an envelope. The ability to put inserts in there,
\nadvertising other products of ours and also third party gave an
\nopportunity even in the newsletter business to not do on page
\nadvertising but at least to do some advertising that was related to
\nthe original product.<\/p>\nIt wasn\u2019t as big a deal for us because we were just not interested
\nin the advertising revenue; it just wasn\u2019t part of our DNA. But
\nthere was a guy back in the 80s name Mac Ross, who passed away, who
\nI always give credit for really discovering the newsletter
\nbusiness, advertising. I think he was the first one that really
\nturn that whole business on a tier in terms of Philips putting
\nadvertisements in their health newsletters in the envelop for, you
\nknow. I remember they used to sell ionizers and then they got into
\nthe supplement business later on and that was huge. Without mailing
\nin an envelope and advertising for supplements. By the way, it just
\nhappened a couple of weeks ago. Philips Publishing which became
\nhealthy direction just sold for $195 million two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Wow!
\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> And that\u2019s not because it was a newsletter business,
\nit\u2019s because it was a supplement business. And that supplement
\nbusiness started as ads, as inserts in the envelopes. You can check
\nthat but I think anybody from the Philips publishing crew back in
\nthe 80s and I followed what they did. I believe they would source
\nthe advertising with the newsletter to being able to get into the
\nsupplement business initially.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Well. That\u2019s [inaudible 00:47:17]. Kind of like an
\naccidental thing for them?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> I guess. I don\u2019t know what was happening behind closed
\ndoors with Philips at the time. I know Mac Ross was a great
\nmarketer and I\u2019m sure he sold that to the [inaudible 00:47:29], to
\nmanagement. Let\u2019s get some ads in this thing. We\u2019re mailing it in
\nan envelope anyway and it\u2019s mailing \u2026 there\u2019s room in this
\nenvelope.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Yeah. No, exactly. I subscribed to that one newsletter
\nof Dr. William Campbell. Or what\u2019s his name? Doctor \u2026<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Campbell I think might be Agora but you might be
\nthinking of either Julian Whitaker or \u2026 God! Steven Sinatra,
\nWilliams, David Williams. [Inaudible 00:47:59] newsletters are
\npretty well-known. But it\u2019s the same principle whether it\u2019s Agora,
\nwhether it\u2019s Phillips, the old Philips, whether it\u2019s Soundview.
\nThey all have doctors with supplement lines that they sell as ads
\nwith the newsletters.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m going to switch over to some of these subscriber
\nquestions. I don\u2019t want to \u2026 I promised them I would do this. As
\nmuch as I\u2019d like to hog all your time. My friend [Gabor Wolf
\n00:48:26] ask: Brian, what\u2019s your preference about graphic
\ndesigners, copywriters, website coders? Would you have them
\nin-house on the payroll or do you outsource these jobs?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> You know, interesting. I think they\u2019re all a little
\ndifferent, the one that he listed here. I mean we have people who
\ndo graphic design in-house and we do have website coders in-house.
\nI think the website coding, once you get big, could probably be
\ncompletely in-house I think. Because I think you\u2019ll get it done
\nfaster. Although I\u2019m a big proponent of anything you can do better
\non the outside do it on the outside.<\/p>\nOn the designer side I think your graphic designers in-house should
\nbe there for sort of the basic housekeeping stuff and the basic
\nstuff then you give them jobs if they want to spread their wings a
\nlittle bit. But if you\u2019re doing full blown direct mail, like,
\nmagalogs, bookalogs, advanced HTML, I\u2019m thinking that graphic
\ndesigner\u2019s \u2026 the best graphic designers are not looking for a full
\ntime job in a company. They\u2019re going to be freelance because they
\ncan make more money that way.<\/p>\n
And you can see that I\u2019ve avoided copywriters completely so far in
\nthis conversation because I\u2019m of the belief except that Agora prove
\nme wrong because they developed an in-house copywriting school and
\ngot them trained under Bill Bonner and Mark Ford that I think it\u2019s
\nincredibly difficult, if not impossible, to create copywriters
\ninternally that are going to rival the copywriters that can demand
\nthe big money in royalties on the outside because by the time they
\nget to the outside demanding those royalties, they are so
\n[inaudible 00:50:04] tough that they know that no one can pay them
\nmore than they can make as a freelancer.<\/p>\n
I learned this lesson at a very young age when we tried to once do
\na mailing package through an agency. I don\u2019t want to, like, put
\ndown all the agencies in the world but Gary Bencivenga worked
\n[inaudible 00:50:24] I think until he realized he didn\u2019t need to
\nwork [inaudible 00:50:29] anymore because he can make ten times or
\nhundreds times more freelancing because he was that good. To work
\non a straight salary would have been crazy.<\/p>\n
So anybody who\u2019s a copywriter at that level, it\u2019s going to be hard.
\nI once tried to take one of my copywriters, one of my A plus
\ncopywriters and say, \u201cWould you work for us full time in-house?\u201d
\nLiterally I would have to probably pay him well over a million
\ndollars to hire them as a \u201cemployee.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a P.S. to this whole thing, I\u2019ve told the story before that
\nMarty had a philosophy that it didn\u2019t matter sometime. There were
\nyears where our copywriters, outside copywriters were our highest
\npaid employees. If you counted them as employees, I put employees
\nin quotation marks. So if they were equivalent to employee they
\nwould have been making double what the highest paid employee was
\nmaking. They\u2019re not getting the benefits of course of being a full
\ntime employee but in terms of straight dollars in the bank, in
\ntheir bank account, they were making double what the highest paid
\nemployee was making.
\nAnd you know what Marty\u2019s attitude on that was? Some people would
\nsay, \u201cHow could you pay them that much? You have to renegotiate
\nthat. It\u2019s too much to pay them,\u201d and Marty would just look at them
\nwith a wry smile and say, \u201cWell, if they\u2019re making that much, how
\nmuch do you think I\u2019m making?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> And what he said was \u201cAnd if I don\u2019t pay them that I
\nhave to go to a copywriter who\u2019s not going to beat them. And then
\nI\u2019ve got inferior piece of creative that\u2019s not going to make me as
\nmuch money. [inaudible 00:52:01], I\u2019d rather pay the A plus writer
\nthat much and have a bigger business than pay the B writer and have
\na smaller business that\u2019s not going to grow.\u201d<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Way back in the day Gary Halbert wrote a newsletter
\nabout how \u2026 and this is I guess in the 80s. All the best writers
\nwork for Philips and going \u2026 they make \u2026 the copywriters get paid
\nmore than anyone else [inaudible 00:52:25] except for more Mr.
\nPhilips. He\u2019s the only one who made more in the copywriting.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> This is a true statement. Marty didn\u2019t take a huge
\nsalary. I know for a fact because I saw the numbers. There were
\nyears where there was a copywriter in a particular year who made
\nmore money than Marty.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> That\u2019s A plus plus copywriter I think.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> It was. It was.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Well, speaking of the A plus copywriters, next
\nquestion. Wayne Brown at businessbuildingtechnician.com asks, who
\nare the top three copywriters currently and who do you think are
\nall the time greats?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> You know? It\u2019s hard to say. I think there are people
\nwho are all time greats who never really wrote for Boardroom and
\nyet I think they\u2019re all time great. That would be John Carlton for
\nexample who was just one of the all time great copywriters and
\nteachers of copywriting. He\u2019s a perfect example of someone who\u2019s
\nreally never had a control for Boardroom and yet I consider him one
\nof the greats of all time. But I always think in terms of Mount
\nRushmore. US have three, I\u2019m going to give you a four. I\u2019ve got the
\nMount Rushmore of pre-1995 and then the post-1995. So I have two
\nMount Rushmores.<\/p>\nThe Mount Rushmore in our early days I always used to say were \u2026
\nfor Boardroom, were Gene Schwartz, Mel Martin, Gary Bencivenga and
\nJim Rutz. They had the most controls, they were the hardest
\nworkers, they studied everything, they did everything right. That
\nmakes them the best Boardroom writers. The current Mount Rushmore
\nis actually speaking at my event and I\u2019m calling them just that.
\nThe Mount Rushmore since 1995 who have been responsible for over
\n620 million pieces of direct mail since 1995 between the four of
\nthem and that will be Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, Eric
\nBetuel and Arthur Johnson.<\/p>\n
Are they the best writers? Now, let me just get a couple of big
\nhonorable mentions. Clayton Makepeace had a bunch of controls for
\nus. Not as many as those four. Couldn\u2019t put them on the Boardroom
\nMount Rushmore but he\u2019s on a lot of people\u2019s Mount Rushmore.
\nRichard Armstrong had a bunch of controls for us. Can I put him on
\nBoardroom\u2019s Mount Rushmore? I can but he\u2019s an amazing writer.<\/p>\n
Jim Punkre. Jim Punkre had some of the \u2026 was probably the number
\none health rider in the hay day of Rodale Press. He was an in-house
\ncopywriter. He\u2019s had a couple of controls for us and some big ones.
\nNot as big as those other ones. I wasn\u2019t going to just \u2026 and I\u2019m
\nprobably now didn\u2019t mention somebody that I\u2019m going to kick myself
\nlater on that I didn\u2019t because then I\u2019m going to hurt their
\nfeelings and that\u2019s going to make me feel bad. I\u2019ve worked with all
\nof them. There are many more.<\/p>\n
Gary Bencivenga, while he\u2019s not writing for other people right now
\nhe does have this olive oil business. If you look at what he\u2019s
\ndoing with that, writing for himself, he hasn\u2019t lost his touch \u2013
\nbelieve me. I would say that if I had to pick the best living
\ncopywriter today it\u2019s probably Gary Bencivenga. I think that my
\nMount Rushmore, all four of them would probably agree so that\u2019s a
\ngood sign. I think Clayton would agree, I think Carlton would
\nagree.<\/p>\n
Halbert is another one, like Carlton. Halbert\u2019s up there but he
\nnever had a control for Boardroom, didn\u2019t know Gary Halbert that
\nwell. I can\u2019t speak to it as much but some of the stuff he wrote
\nwas just pure genius. Another guy was Bill Jaime, more in the
\nmagazine world, and he did write some controls for us. Not as well
\nknown in the newsletter business but in the magazine business. Bill
\nJaime was god. Bill Jaime was \u2026 I have a blog about him too. He was
\nan interesting guy and a great copywriter. So I\u2019m betting \u2026<\/p>\n
Ben Settle:<\/strong> Can you give us your blog? I want to read it.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yes. I do a weekly email; I guess that\u2019s a blog. I
\ndon\u2019t know what the definition of a blog is.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> Either way it\u2019s cool.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s a weekly email. And if you sign up its
\nbriankurtz.me, www.briankurtz.me. The squeeze right now is an
\ninterview that I did with Joe Polish with Marty about building
\nBoardroom. If you opt-in to that then you\u2019ll be on my list and then
\nyou get a weekly email. My plan is to take all my blogs of the last
\nyear and put them into a book pretty soon actually. So I\u2019ll have an
\neBook pretty soon which will be free as well. So if you\u2019re on my
\nlist you\u2019ll eventually get all my past blogs as well. I have a
\ntitle for that too it\u2019s How Life Imitates Direct Marketing.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been wanting ever since you mentioned it.<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.<\/p>\nBen Settle:<\/strong> I know everybody listening to this are going to want
\nto. Okay, the next question [inaudible 00:57:49]. He asks how do
\nyou bridge your offline marketing efforts with your online
\nmarketing at Boardroom?<\/p>\nBrian Kurtz:<\/strong> Yeah. There\u2019s a bunch of ways we do it. It\u2019s not just
\na simple bridge, it\u2019s kind of like \u2026 it\u2019s a lot of different \u2026 I
\ndon\u2019t know, tributaries? I\u2019m trying to think of a good analogy
\nhere. One thing of course is that every time we get a control in
\ndirect mail we create an HTML version, we\u2019ll be calling e-magalog
\nand that becomes the online version of that promotion. That\u2019s one
\nway.<\/p>\nAnother way is we obviously have e-newsletters that sell our
\noffline products in the newsletter. So there\u2019s a lot of
\ncrosspollination sales wise. I think that there\u2019s a lot of traffic
\nbuilding online for people to come to our site and then interest
\nthem in a digital version of one of our newsletters and then once
\nthey\u2019re on the digital subscription file they get to see if they
\nalso want the print version so there\u2019s a lot of that going on.
\nThere\u2019s clearly \u2026 you can sign up for the digital and the print
\nversion of our newsletter at the same time. Other online offline. I
\nknow I\u2019m missing stuff. But it\u2019s not like \u2026 it\u2019s not church and
\nstate but it\u2019s not \u2026 there are still some things that we can do in
\neach of the channels that don\u2019t involve the other.<\/p>\n
Oh, another one would be \u2026 basically with all the \u2026 any email
\naddresses we have of the people that we\u2019re mailing offline in
\ndirect mail we can send them a pre-email to say keep an eye out on
\nyour mailbox [inaudible 00:59:48] publisher\u2019s clearing house thing.
\nKeep your eye in your mailbox because there\u2019s a piece coming for
\nsuch and such product then they get the piece in the direct mail
\nand then we send them a post email. So pre and post \u2026<\/p>\n
[END]<\/strong><\/p>\nMy apologies the interview was cut off.<\/p>\n
Apparently, there was a time limit on the phone recorder their
\naudio guy set up (something like that).<\/p>\n
Again, check out Brian’s “Titans of Direct Response” even here:<\/p>\n
www.TitansOfDirectResponse.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\nBen Settle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Below is the Brian Kurtz interview transcript. ’twas an absolute blast interviewing him, and the gems he dropped\u00a0for anyone in marketing and copywriting are extremely valuable. Read it. Enjoy it. And, yes, profit ye from it. Also, to check out his “Titans Of Direct Response” event go to: www.TitansOfDirectResponse.com In the meantime, let’s get thy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-copywriting-and-sales-letters","7":"category-sales-marketing"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}