Bencivenga Bullets | Gary Bencivenga's 7 Master Secrets of Wealth Creation for Marketers and Copywriters

Announcing the
Bencivenga 100 Seminar

If You Can Meet the Four Qualifications
Spelled Out Below,
You Qualify to Be One of
Only 100 Top Guns Who Will Discover...

Gary Bencivenga's
7 Master Secrets
of Wealth Creation
for Marketers and Copywriters

"I Will Never Be Able to Share These 7 Secrets in
The Bullets, for Reasons You'll Understand in a Moment

"But as my retirement legacy,
I will share all seven face-to-face
with only 100 Top Guns, whose
skills and ability to generate wealth
will immediately rise to a whole new level.

"If you'd like to be one of us . . . to become
a ‘Bencivenga-Certified Top Gun' . . . please read on."

Dear Marketing Top Gun:

     There are seven master secrets of copywriting and marketing that I can never share in the Bullets.

     Why not?

     From the start, I promised to keep the Bullets short and fast, like bullets.

     But teaching these seven master secrets takes a little time and in-person coaching. For example, my #1 master strategy, the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation, has eight parts. It takes about two hours to teach and another two hours to bring you to mastery.

     Anyone can master this, and once you do, your ability to boost response virtually on demand soars and becomes very consistent. But the unavoidable problem is, it does take four hours to attain mastery, mainly because you first have to unlearn several things you've been taught about how to generate maximum response. (Since everyone else is using the same principles you've been taught, their effectiveness has been greatly diminished, which is why the advanced secrets I will teach are so much more effective.)

     In addition, the seven master secrets I'll share require real-life examples of the advertisements that are shattering response records in many different fields and have systematically done so for years.

     All this takes a seminar to deliver . . . the very seminar that hundreds of readers have been asking me to put together ever since I started firing the Bullets.

This Will Be My Legacy to
100 Marketing Stars and Superstars
(Both Present and Future)

     So, for the first time in my life, in May of 2005 in New York City, I will be hosting a special two-day seminar for just 100 Top Guns—veteran gunslingers, grizzled mavericks and hungry young guns alike—who want to stake their claim to the mother lode of response-boosting knowledge I can give them.

     This seminar will be my legacy to 100 individuals who are already stars and superstars of copywriting and marketing . . . as well as those destined to be. For these 100 dedicated souls, my vocational brothers and sisters, I will reveal every secret in full, holding nothing back.

     If you qualify to attend, as I'll explain below, my aim is to give you a seminar experience you will look back on as a turning point in your life, two unforgettable days when your knowledge of your craft comes together as never before . . . when you see a new universe of opportunity with a new, inner vision . . . when your ability to convert your marketing knowledge into major wealth takes a quantum leap . . . when you know in your heart that your future financial independence is secure because of the life-changing knowledge you have just acquired.

The Particulars

     The Bencivenga 100 Seminar will be held on Friday and Saturday, May 20-21, 2005, at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City.

     Tuition is $5,000, no exceptions, as many of those in attendance will be the biggest stars of the marketing world, career-long friends, major marketers and business partners of mine for decades.

     Naturally, I cannot show favoritism to any one attendee without slighting others, many of whom have been friends and business associates for decades. So everyone will be on an equal footing, and everyone will pay full freight, as I'm sure all attendees will readily understand and accept.

     Attendance will be strictly limited to the first 100 individuals who reserve their place and make payment. As such, this seminar will be a guaranteed sellout. Indeed, judging by the early buzz, I've never seen such a formidable posse saddling up, as superstar copywriters as well as several of the largest royalty-paying advertisers in the world (Phillips, Agora, Boardroom, etc.) . . . have already started placing their reservations, even before I have released these details publicly.

     For example, if you'd like to read what Gary Halbert just wrote about this seminar (with no financial incentive whatsoever) and why so many "celebrity marketers" are already reserving their places, please click here: Gary Halbert's take on The Bencivenga 100 Seminar.

     So, if you want to attend, I urge you to reserve your place immediately. But first, let me tell you about the secrets I'll be sharing . . . .

Secret #1:
The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation—
The Never-Revealed Formula
Based on More Than a Billion Dollars Worth
of Scientific Testing

     Almost 40 years ago, I broke into direct marketing working with two Hall-of-Fame legends, John Caples at BBDO, and later David Ogilvy at Ogilvy & Mather.

     With these two masters as my guiding lights, and others in the decades since, I have never escaped the copy department. As a result, for almost 40 years and continuing to this day, I have written and methodically supervised well over a billion dollars worth of scientific direct marketing for many of the smartest and most successful direct marketers in America.

     What "rules of response" have I discovered from more than a billion dollars of scientifically tracked and measured results?

     This billion dollars worth of testing has revealed, clear as day, eight critical factors so influential, I call them the eight overwhelmingly dominant factors of generating maximum response.

     I've woven all eight into what I call the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation, which makes it very easy to apply each of the eight critical factors in your every marketing message.

     Never before revealed, this Bencivenga Persuasion Equation is, in my view, the most consistently successful proprietary formula ever devised for creating breakthrough advertising . . . boosting response, traffic and revenue . . . and gaining an overwhelming advantage against your competitors—be they other copywriters, products or services.

It Took Me Ten Years and Millions of Dollars
In Testing to Piece This Puzzle Together

     Actually, it took me the first ten years of my career and tens of millions of dollars in testing to put the pieces of this puzzle together. That's because, surprisingly, several of the results of our testing consistently contradicted conventional direct marketing wisdom. Yet every time we created headlines and layouts built around these "inexplicably powerful" factors, response would soar.

     After more years of further testing, it all came together and made perfect sense, at least once you know The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation and how the eight factors reinforce one another and make the whole so much more powerful than any one part in boosting response.

     The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation works for any product, in any market, for any piece of advertising you'll ever run. It's so reliable, it will let you know with almost unerring precision—even before you test!—how strong your advertising message is going to be.

     If your message is weak in any of the eight key areas, you will know it instantly—just by reading your ad and seeing if that element is present or not. That's how easy it is. This means you can now know exactly where and how any piece of copy needs to be strengthened to crank it up to maximum power.

     As I say, it took me a long ten years of trial and error to piece this formula together, and then the next twenty years to refine it.

I Was Just an Average Copywriter
For the First 10 Years of My Career

I mention this because, for the first ten years of my career, if truth be told, I was really just an average copywriter. But, once I based my copywriting and marketing on the Gibraltar foundation of The Persuasion Equation, I became almost unbeatable, winning about 85% of the time, usually against the best copywriting competition in America.

There are some major marketers for whom I've never lost a split-run test, even when tested against several of the best copywriters in the world. To put this in perspective, one of my ablest competitors over the years, the superstar copywriter Doug D'Anna, has written . . .

"If a copywriter beats the control one out of four times, you've got a really good copywriter. If he beats it two out of four times, you've got a great copywriter. If he beats it seven out of eight times, you've got Gary Bencivenga." And here's what some of America's leading direct marketers have said about my work, after I formulated The Persuasion Equation . . . .

"Gary Bencivenga is America's best copywriter, the gold standard. In basketball, everyone wants to 'be like Mike.' In copywriting, everyone wants to 'be like Gary.' In fact, when new writers pitch us to try to get assignments, they know that if they tell us they are a 'student' of Gary Bencivenga, whether self-taught or not, that is the best way to get in the door at Boardroom." —Brian Kurtz, Boardroom, Inc. (publishers of Bottom Line Personal)

"World's greatest copywriter." —KCI Communications

"Best copywriter in the world." —Marty Chenard, Advanced Business Strategies

"His Controls Are Nearly Impossible to Beat. Hall of Fame copywriter Gary Bencivenga is without question one of the top 3 greatest living direct response copywriters in the world, with decades of monster winners for large mailers like Boardroom, Phillips and Rodale. His respect among peers is infinite....I had my first big breakthrough, as a rookie, by deconstructing his letters and carefully transcribing his phrasing and word choices."
—John Carlton, The Marketing Rebel Rant

"Best copywriter we've ever used. He's given us more winners, more consistently, than anyone else." —Phillips Publishing

"You can just about count the creative geniuses who revolutionized direct mail on the fingers of two hands....(They include) Gary Bencivenga." —Target Marketing (8/94 issue, page 14)

"His name is the stuff of legend around here. Against other top creative talent, he has never lost a split-run test in selling any of our books." —Rodale Press

"Possibly the most respected copywriter in the direct marketing business." —Who's Mailing What

"There are, I'd say, only four or five 'A-level' direct response copywriters in the country, the true masters. There are as many as sixty or seventy 'B' and 'B+' writers, but just a tiny handful of 'As'. Gary Bencivenga is on the short list, as am I." —The late Gene Schwartz, world-famous copywriter; author, "Breakthrough Advertising"

"When people ask me to name the best copywriters in the world, I say with a wink and a smile, 'Well, I consider Gary Bencivenga the second best copywriter, after yours truly, of course.'" —Ted Nicholas, direct marketing legend

"Gary Is the World's Greatest Living Reason-Why Copywriter." —Alex Mandossian & Yanik Silver, internet marketing gurus

"A Genius at Writing Copy" —Joe Vitale ("Mr. Fire"), marketing guru

"Gary Bencivenga is one of the greatest copywriters the world has ever known." —Robert Lerose, direct response copywriter

"Since I started writing direct mail, I've heard of the legendary Gary Bencivenga. His work and his success is the ‘gold standard' we who toil in his shadow strive for." —David Deutsch, world-famous copywriter and author of"Million Dollar Marketing Secrets"

"Gary is the copywriter everyone is in awe of, including me." —David Garfinkel, author, "Copywriting Templates"

"Gary Bencivenga is the Michelangelo of direct mail copywriting, the man who most high level copywriters and mail order publishers acknowledge is the 'top dog' in terms of RESULTS."
—Ken McCarthy, The System

"The David Ogilvy of Direct Response Copy." —Jeffrey G. Greenberg, President, J.G. Communications, Inc.

     I've often been asked how I've been able to win so consistently.

     Until now, I've never revealed the secret. Why should I, when I've had to compete for royalties against the fastest guns in the west, east, north and south?

     I wish I could say it's my writing talent, but, as you can tell from my plain, graceless sentences, I am no David Ogilvy, let alone a William Shakespeare.

     But that's the liberating, "common-man" beauty of The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation. You don't need to be a great writer to create blockbuster winners. That's because...

The Real Secret to Creating
Blockbuster Advertising Consistently Is . . .

     ...knowing exactly what to say to your target market to trigger breakthrough response. It is not how elegantly, cleverly or creatively you say it.

     It's the same as in personal selling.

     The best salespeople, the superstars of selling in every field, are almost never the best looking or the smoothest talkers. They are surprisingly ordinary souls who know how to establish trust and have mastered exactly what to say to make prospects listen and then eagerly buy.

     And that is precisely what The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation teaches you to do in your own market, regardless of what product or service you sell.

     Best of all, it grows directly out of my own personal philosophy of how to succeed at anything in life, which is . . . .

Secret #2:
The "Make-It-Easy" Approach
to Breakthrough Marketing

     I don't believe in hard. Nobody sticks with hard very long. I believe that those who've achieved incredibly difficult feats, such as Lance Armstrong, have found ways to make the extremely difficult a lot easier. And that separates them from—and allows them to outperform—those who never find ways to make the difficult easier.

     Do you ever find marketing and copywriting hard? If so, you're not alone. Marketing can be a brutally tough way to earn your living, if you don't know a few secrets of how to make it much easier.

     Believe me, I know. For roughly the first ten or eleven years in this business, I found copywriting and marketing not just hard, but agonizingly, torturously difficult. Sometimes my frustration made me depressed and would almost bring me to tears.

     In my early years as a copywriter, working for Madison Avenue direct response ad agencies, many a late night would find me trying to stare down a blank page in a battle of wills.

     I was always the first to blink. I could produce nothing, not even a first line of copy. Picasso once said that all art is merely the artist's reaction to the first simple line put on the page. But I couldn't even get my first line!

     I smoked cigarettes back then, and I'd light up one after another. I'd curse my deadline. Curse my fate. Curse the stupid product I was trying to sell. Rearrange my desk drawer. Make a phone call. Read a magazine. Grab a snack. Wonder what else I could be doing at that moment and, for that matter, with my whole life. This would go on for hours, sometimes days, until my Copy Chief would inquire, "What the #%*! is taking you so long?"

     In time, mercifully, I developed my Make-It-Easy System for marketing and copywriting, which I'll also reveal at The Bencivenga 100 Seminar.

     I learned, over these years, to look at every aspect of successful, breakthrough marketing and ask, how can I make this process easier?

     In fact, that's how I came up with The Bencivenga Persuasion Equation.

     It happened when, at age 30, I was appointed Copy Chief at Callas, Powell, Rosenthal & Bloch, then a highly-respected direct response New York ad agency owned by copywriting legend, Dan Rosenthal.

     I suddenly found myself in charge of an elite, fast-growing Copy Department and had to teach others the art and science of creating breakthrough direct marketing.

     I quickly concluded that I couldn't teach an art—it's too subjective and intuitive.

     I realized I had to turn the teaching of marketing and copywriting into a science, a repeatable set of principles which, if followed, can be counted on to yield the same predictable result of breakthrough response.

     So I systematized the process, and, most importantly, made everything about successful copywriting as easy as I could possibly make it . . . so that even a wet-behind-the-ears kid just out of college could quickly learn the system and start creating breakthrough control packages virtually out of the gate.

     This is exactly what happened with my staff. With just one regular weekly class of training in this method, every single writer in our Copy Department was soon belting home runs—

Often crushing by 50%, 75%, sometimes even 100%-200% or more, the former control packages of our new clients. Most of these clients had been in direct marketing for years and were astonished at the results our approach was able to yield, usually on our first try.
Once instructed, my young tigers were also able to dramatically boost response rates and rejuvenate long-running control packages and space ads for our existing clients.
Likewise, they were able to get fledgling entrepreneurs off to a flying start, launching new products so successfully that, in a few cases, these entrepreneurs went on to build direct marketing empires that made them fabulously wealthy.

No, We Didn't Win All the Time

     Sometimes a client came to us with a new product that, after testing, proved to have little marketplace appeal. We learned that when a new product is so flawed that few people want it, even the most brilliant advertising won't sell it.

     But with long-established products, where the only variable was the pulling power of our advertising, we almost never lost.

     All thanks to a system of proven success factors made easy to apply and use.

     And that's how I've always approached copywriting and marketing—how can we make it easier?

     For example, at The Bencivenga 100 Seminar, I will teach:

The #1 easiest way to get a 50% to 100% boost in your results immediately.
The easiest way to beat out even the most ferocious competition in your marketplace, even when their marketing is brilliant, their budget huge and their copy is so persuasive, it could have been written by Claude Hopkins himself.
The easiest way to apply the secrets of Warren Buffett, America's smartest investor, to the process of marketing.
The easiest way to spot and exploit hugely profitable new niches.
The easiest way to persuade your best prospects to desire your product intensely—so much so that they'll never truly feel satisfied with anyone else's similar product.
The easiest way to control the process of persuasion rather than merely guess at it. You'll learn that persuasion, like music, comes down to a few simple notes. Master them, and you can play an infinite variety of melodies that are music to your prospects' ears.
The easiest way to come up with powerful premiums to help sell a main product. (So effective, you'll find that prospects will often buy your main product just to get the free premium!)
The easiest way to persuade someone to say "yes" to your offer.
The easiest way to outsell your competition in an overcrowded marketplace.
The easiest way to beat procrastination, perhaps the #1 occupational hazard of copywriters and marketers with too many projects on their plates.
The easiest way to know how strong your headline is before you spend any money on testing. No, it is not a survey. It is much simpler and a lot more reliable. Curiously, it is something you can do totally by yourself and instantly know how persuasive your pitch will be with others. This is especially valuable when you've been very close to your own marketing efforts for so long, you can no longer be objective . . . and also when you're not a prime prospect for the product yourself, have no "natural enthusiasm" for it, yet still need to know how to make your prime prospects go wild for your offer.
And finally, the easiest way to be a master of persuasion—the simple, 12 word sentence that will make you one of the most persuasive people on the planet, no matter what field you're in. This is the "master secret" of knowing how to persuade almost anyone to do almost anything.

Secret #3:
"The Blockbuster New Product" Secret

     As you can see, I have tried through my whole career to take what's difficult about marketing, break it down and make it a lot easier.

     Now, one of the most difficult challenges in marketing, perhaps the hardest but also the most financially rewarding, is launching a successful new product.

     Some experts say that, on average, only one out of seven new products succeeds. So the odds are normally overwhelmingly against you. But if you beat those odds, you can experience the marketing equivalent of hitting the lottery.

     I have found a way to dramatically increase your odds of success in launching new products that can make you wealthy.

     This astonishingly effective, easy-to-use and truly secret formula is different from anything ever written in direct marketing. It has never been revealed publicly on the planet, or published in any book. And it never will be, not as long as I retain the copyright to it, which I intend to do. As you'll fully appreciate at the Seminar—just as I do!—you will want to preserve for just the few of us the enormous competitive advantage this bestows.

     It was taught to me by the legendary Joseph Segal, the mega-millionaire founder of The Franklin Mint, when we worked together on one of his projects.

     If you are planning to launch a new product and try this secret just once, you will be blown away by the difference it makes in response, often 100%-300% or more.

     What's so beautiful about this little secret is that it is equally powerful and reliable no matter what you want to sell—books, newsletters, golf clubs, videos, music club memberships, collectible plates, financial advice, e-books, land in Arizona, anything. This one secret is worth many times the price of this whole program, and I guarantee you've never heard it from anyone else, ever, no matter how many books you've read or seminars you've attended.

     With this one strategy:

You will raise the odds of a blockbuster success several fold. With any new product, you can never be guaranteed success, but this strategy raises your odds to the max.
You will dissolve price resistance and may even be able to double or triple your original price point because your product will create such white-hot demand from the core of your market.
You will create intense desire for your new product and yours alone. In other words, once you introduce your product this way, your market will never again be satisfied with your competitors' products. Buyers will seek your product out specifically, demanding exactly the unique features you described in your advertising.
You will lock in many years of repeat business from these same customers—converting their loyalty into self-renewing rivers of revenue that enrich you for decades. Your loyal customers will become the best annuity and "retirement plan" you'll ever have.
Not only will you likely achieve a blockbuster success, but once you do, your new product will be relatively immune to knockoffs.

     I know, you may be thinking any product can be knocked off. Not so! Certainly not if you launch your product the way I'll describe. Do it this way and you will build a moat around your new product that can't be breached by those slick knockoff artists who slither through the marketing weeds, waiting for a chance to cash in on other people's hard-won success. (I really dislike knockoff artists, and this strategy foils them as surely as a mama lioness guarding her cubs. Yet it has nothing to do with lawyers or legal roadblocks.)

     Please understand, I'm not talking here about the "USP," the well-known principle of "the unique selling proposition" first formulated by the great Rosser Reeves and popularized by Jay Abraham. No, this goes beyond the "USP" and is much more powerful.

     It's one of those advertising secrets so important—and so unknown—that if you follow it, it will literally change your whole approach to marketing for the rest of your life and make an enormous difference in your success and personal wealth. So priceless is this formula that you must agree in writing never to publish or reprint it anywhere.

Secret #4:
"Wealth Is an Income Stream"

     Speaking of making things easy . . . .

     What's the easiest way to get rich in our business, either as a marketer or copywriter?

     Commit these five words to memory: "Wealth is an income stream."

     This applies to both marketers and copywriters. Let me start with marketers.

     The smartest marketers I've ever worked with—Tom Phillips (Phillips Publishing) . . . Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz (Boardroom) . . . Allie Ash and Walter Pearce (KCI) . . . among many others, all know and practice this principle. If you're not applying it yourself to build your wealth, you should write it on your palm with a permanent red ink marker and read it hourly: Wealth is an income stream.

     These smart marketers know that you don't build great wealth by merely creating "a product." You build great wealth by creating a product that rewards you with substantial initial sales, and then—much more importantly—rewards you repeatedly with an automatic backend revenue stream.

     That's how you leverage your wealth in direct marketing.

     For example, if you have information to sell, you might choose to sell it either in the form of a book, a newsletter or perhaps even a membership site. How do you choose?

     Well, if you apply the "Wealth is an income stream" principle, you'd know the answer immediately.

     You would certainly not choose a book. Both a newsletter or a membership site would be far superior ways to build your wealth.

     Why?

     When you successfully sell a book, you've got a product. But when you successfully sell a newsletter or membership site, you've got a business.

     With the book, you make a one-time sale, and it's over and done. To make more money, you have to write a new book, on a new topic, start a whole new selling process, get a whole new "yes" or "no" decision from your customers, many of whom may not care for the topic of your second book.

     But with a newsletter or membership site, your first sale leads automatically to years of repeat sales.

     How so? Because a high percentage of your first-time buyers will renew their subscriptions automatically each year. So, with that first sale, you've locked in an automatic, self-renewing revenue stream, an annuity, that will keep pouring money into your pockets for many years to come without having to create a whole new product and marketing campaign.

     Result: You'll grow a lot richer, much more easily, and have an extremely valuable, thriving business you can someday sell, instead of a pile of outdated books collecting dust in inventory.

     Books do have their place, especially in establishing your credibility. But they're a very hard way to build wealth by themselves.

     As you'll come to fully appreciate at the Seminar, wealth is not just a one-time infusion of money. Real wealth is knowing that you've secured a healthy flow of money that keeps pouring into your life, this year, next year and the year after that. That's real wealth because it bestows not just an ongoing river of revenue, but also the priceless security of feeling rich all the time.

     Now let's take this a step further . . . .

     Even better than a newsletter is a newsletter that itself leads to further ancillary sales. A good example would be a health newsletter that brings in lots of money year after year from subscriptions . . . and that also persuades people to buy your own proprietary vitamins and supplements. Now you have automatic revenue streams triggering lots of other automatic revenue steams, and you can keep the process going indefinitely.

     At The Bencivenga 100 Seminar, I'll show how any marketer can use the mighty leverage of this principle to grow much richer.

And That Certainly Includes Copywriters!

     If you're a copywriter, how can you apply the "Wealth is an income stream" principle to build your own wealth?

     The best way I know is to help your clients multiply their wealth and have an arrangement that lets you share in their growing wealth.

     At the encouragement of my friend Jay Abraham, this is what I started doing about 20 years ago, and why I am able to now retire while I'm still young and healthy enough to enjoy it.

     For more than 20 years now, ever since I became known for consistently producing breakthrough direct mail packages, my phone has never stopped ringing and my schedule has been booked for years in advance by clients willing and, in some cases, eager to share the extra profits my copy would create for them.

     So, until my recent retirement, my standard, non-negotiable charge for more than 20 years has been a $25,000 upfront, non-refundable advance against future royalties of five cents for each direct mail package mailed.

     When I first started charging this rate, many of my fellow writers were shocked. Back in the 1980s, creative fees were much lower than today, and free-lancers worked on a flat-fee basis.

     When I started quoting (nervously, at first!) my $25,000-fee-plus-royalty rate for writing a direct mail package, my copywriter friends thought I'd gone mad. They would ask, "How can you charge $25,000?"

     Their question showed how little they understood about wealth-building. First, the $25,000 upfront fee that bowled them over was just to screen out the dreamers, tire-kickers and time-wasters among potential clients. The real money was always in the royalties!

     Moreover, for major mailers whose revenues depend so heavily on a successful direct mail package, neither the $25,000 nor the royalties was ever a deterrent if I could consistently deliver success, which I and they both knew I could, mainly due to my Persuasion Equation approach, which yields such remarkably consistent success.

     Now, if you do the math, you'll see that 5-cents-per-piece-mailed adds up quickly. If a client mails, say, five million pieces in a year, you've just made $250,000 that year from just that one piece of copy, and the meter starts rolling anew next year, and the year after that, and so on.

     As long as your copy keeps working, you keep receiving royalty checks like clockwork, similar to a best-selling novelist or a rock star with a hit song.

     If you've written a really compelling piece of copy for a mass market product, and your client mails 50 million pieces in a year, you've just made $2,500,000 from that single piece of copy for just that year, from just one client.

     At The Bencivenga 100 Seminar, I suspect one of our liveliest discussions will be about royalties and how copywriters can better help their clients get rich and share in those riches themselves.

     I can see that the early registrants already include the highest-paid royalty copywriters in the world . . . as well as the advertisers who pay the highest royalties!

     I'll discuss my own experiences and the best ways I've found to set up royalty arrangements . . . the clauses your agreement should include . . . how to know which clients will honor their agreement to pay you, and which ones will likely try to wiggle out . . . how you can prevent other writers from horning in on your royalties (by knocking off your copy) . . . what royalties other writers are charging . . . whether you can ask some of your clients to pay royalties but not others . . . and many related questions.

     Toward this end, at the Seminar we're going to discuss whole new ways of partnering between marketers and copywriters that can help both sides become a lot more productive and wealthier in today's new marketing environment.

     For example, the direct mail royalties I've earned over the years have all been on a 5-cents-per-piece-mailed agreement. But that doesn't work for internet marketing because there are no "direct mail pieces" mailed!

     I'll share what I think does work to everyone's advantage in this situation, and how copywriters can much better serve their clients by helping them across all their creative needs in their business—not just customer acquisition, but customer retention . . . not just initial sales, but ancillary products as well.

     Finally, I'll also reveal some inventive compensation plans other copywriters are using that will give you lots of ideas as well, whether you're a copywriter or a marketer who wants to inspire your copywriters to be obsessed, to "dream, live and breathe" about new ways to make your marketing more successful.

     Whichever method you're most comfortable with, if you're a copywriter, please heed my words: you'll never get rich on flat fees! You must find a way to share in the wealth you create for your clients, or you may reach your own golden years with much less gold in your pocket and too much regret that you helped make others rich, but not yourself.

Secret #5
"The CrackerJack Secret"

     In the last 12 years, this one secret has made more money for my clients and me than anything in all the best advertising books put together. It works for any product or service, and is the real factor behind the biggest direct marketing creative breakthroughs of the past 50 years, and especially of the last 12 years. And it works even better online!

     I won't give too much of it away here, but I will tell you why I named it The CrackerJack Secret.

     Have you ever noticed that nobody, in the entire history of the world, has ever thrown away a CrackerJack box without first getting their fingers sticky, rummaging inside to dig out their prize?

     To the best of anyone's knowledge, no CrackerJack box has ever been thrown away unopened.

     What does this have to do with you?

     Well, if you send out direct mail or email, what's your biggest problem?

     Exactly! Right now, perhaps 95%-to-99% of your prospects are throwing your messages away unopened!

     Let's connect the dots.

     Up to 99% of your prospects throw your marketing materials away unopened. Yet nobody in the history of the world has ever thrown away an unopened CrackerJack box.

     Do you catch my drift?

     Are you beginning to see that one of the biggest mistakes you can possibly make in marketing is to fail to put a valuable surprise inside every marketing piece you send out . . . and let your prospects know there's a valuable surprise inside?

     If you start applying the psychology of "The CrackerJack Secret," as I'll show you in the Seminar, your improvement in results will blow you away. You will make your envelopes and email almost irresistible to open. Just as with the CrackerJack box, many of your prospects won't be able to throw your mail away because they've first got to find that little surprise gift inside.

     And I don't mean a gimmicky plastic trinket. The surprise you include in your direct mail package, space ad or email can be anything your market values, especially a highly-prized piece of information . . . and especially something that demonstrates what you're selling and why it is so desirable.

     What have tens of millions of dollars of our tests shown about the best way to harness this powerhouse secret? I'll reveal all at the Seminar.

     As you'll see, I've taken this principle to extremes most marketers can't even imagine until they see my samples. The results, uniformly, have been off-the-charts explosive.

     I seldom use the word "always" in advertising, as there are usually exceptions. But I have yet to find an exception to the response-boosting power of "The CrackerJack Secret." I always use it in some way for my clients, and it virtually always has smashed their previous control.

Secret #6:
"The Manifestation Secret"

     There are certain secrets that greatly empower your success in all walks of life, including marketing. Chief among these is the ability to manifest your desires.

     Everything in the universe is governed by laws, and this is true of how to harness your own mind to manifest what you want, including outrageous success in your marketing and copywriting.

     This is so important because every great achievement in life—whether a splendid bridge, towering skyscraper, the attainment of your own financial independence, or the launch of your thriving business or blockbuster product—all have one thing in common. They all begin in the mind.

     When you fully understand this, and how to harness your mind's phenomenal power to manifest your dreams, your life will change in positive ways you cannot even imagine.

     For one, you will realize that you possess a power similar to the train engineer whose fingers lightly command a mighty locomotive, or the pilot who sits comfortably at the controls of a roaring jet. Once you know how to "use your controls" in smarter, effortless ways, you can experience a whole new level of propulsion to get where you want to go in life.

     I've lived a very blessed life. Working with many clients who've remained my business partners for decades, we've spawned tremendously successful businesses. My clients, my family members and friends have sometimes commented on how "lucky" I seem to be, how often circumstances seem to break my way to make our joint ventures successful. Some even consider me their good luck charm.

     Well, the secret will now be out. It is not luck, at least not the way most people think about "luck."

     When you want things to start breaking your way, when you want the universe to conspire to assist you and shower you with good fortune, I've found what I feel certain is the key, and I will share this with you at the Seminar.

     Learning about this whole area of how to manifest your desires is critically important to your mastery as a marketer.

     Why?

     Because as a marketer, this is your stock in trade—the intensification and fulfillment of desire!

     To help others realize their desires, it helps enormously to become a master of the laws of desire yourself. This is an important part of what I will teach at The Bencivenga 100 Seminar.

Secret #7:
"How to Be a Master Closer"

     On Wall Street . . . or on Madison Avenue . . . or in direct marketing circles, if you know how to sell, and especially how to close, you are golden.

     In good times, when companies are flush, you will be showered with money, perks and trinkets. In some Wall Street firms, for example, year-end bonuses for top salespeople run into the tens of millions.

     In hard times, if you know how to sell, when layoffs force others to hit the cold pavement, you will be coddled and protected—because you have the most highly-prized skill in the business universe, the ability to sell, to generate cash flow, the lifeblood of any business.

     Among all salespeople, no one is held in higher esteem than the stars known as closers. Being called a "closer" is the highest accolade your admiring colleagues can pay you. It means that no matter what your prospects may throw at you in a presentation, you know how to roll with the punches and bring home the order a high percentage of the time. When stakes are highest and a company must win an account, they send in their star closer.

     That can be you, in either personal selling or in direct marketing, when you apply the secrets I'll teach at the Seminar.

     In this part of the Seminar, I'll share my whole bag of tricks for closing the sale, including "The Secret of the Apothecary Scale" ... "The Secret of the Wise Old Salesman" ... "Advanced Secrets of Risk Reversal" ... "The Secret of Best-Sellers in Any Product Category" ... "The Take Away Principle" ... "How to Make Offers Your Prospects Can't Refuse (Without Resorting to Lucca Brazzi)" . . . and much more.

The Secret of the Monkey's Fist

     One of my favorite examples is The Secret of the Monkey's Fist. It was first described by one of the greatest super-salesmen of all time who worked in life insurance, an extremely difficult field. (Woody Allen's vision of hell: flying on an airplane for all eternity seated next to a life insurance agent.)

     Nobody ever wants to sit still for a pitch from a life insurance agent. That's why, before this salesman discovered The Secret of the Monkey's Fist, he was doing so poorly that he was about to quit the business. But after he discovered this amazing little secret, he did so well that he shattered his company's sales records.

     The best part is, this secret works with stunning effectiveness (maybe even more so) for direct marketers. In fact, any marketer who fails to use this strategy is at a severe disadvantage to those who do. It literally transforms your presentation and offer into something that almost anyone is irresistibly tempted to say "yes" to.

     And as we marketers love to say, much, much more.

All Key Principles Illustrated
By Breakthrough Control Ads

To bring these 7 secrets vividly to life, each will be illustrated by examples of my own work (available nowhere else), and from a wide array of the most successful control ads and direct mail packages of all time.

These are among the strongest-pulling ads of all-time, and you can easily harness their strength to boost your own response. Just a few examples:

The most powerful headline in the history of direct response advertising. It beat all other tests created by top copywriters over a 40-year span, a feat unmatched even to this day.

Remarkably, this headline and the psychology it harnesses are as powerful today as ever, and can be used by any advertiser. (Not long ago, I used it to convert a mediocre ad for a mail order book into an instant best-seller.)
Sales of this product soared off the charts, and allowed the product's maker to build one of America's great fortunes, thanks to this one simple secret of advertising persuasion. In fact, the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy until they made this one change in their advertising. Soon afterward, they had to build new factories, humming at full capacity, to keep up with demand.
The advertising strategy recommended above all others by Claude Hopkins (the Aristotle of advertising), and an ad campaign that powerfully illustrates this secret. This strategy, used by a number of shrewd marketers, not only triggers an avalanche of immediate sales, but also implants your advertising message into your customer's brain, where it continues to create desire.

Your customer will have no conscious ability to stop its sales-inducing influence. Example: I recently bought a product that was advertised this way some 30 years ago. Astonishingly, I've harbored an unquenched desire to own this product all these years. That's how strong and long lasting an effect it wields!
The 25-word headline that sold more high-priced cruise trips than any other ad in history. It, too, uses a simple but remarkably powerful principle that any ad can harness to boost response. Works universally to build desire and increase response because it's built on a universal human trait.
How to use a simple punctuation mark to boost your response by 50% or more. No, it's not an exclamation mark (they often decrease response, because they smell like hype).
How a happy accident created one of the most successful ads of all time. How you can methodically capture this "lightning in a bottle."
An ad with a 5-word headline, written by an amateur advertiser, that's one of the greatest gems of persuasion in the history of copywriting. Anyone can tap the same secret, but very few do.
The ad that broke all records for response for a Financial Newsletter Publisher.
How to make your advertising so specific, singular, and believable, your prospects will come to believe you couldn't be making this stuff up. A famous example.
Finally, you'll see an ad which brilliantly combines many of the secrets above with astonishing results. How astonishing? Look at these documented results, as quoted by the company's advertising director:

"With these 130 words of copy, no more, no less, monthly sales, according to Wooten's annual published reports, jumped from $50 million to $60 million, then to $100 million, then to $150 million, $200 million, and up and up and up....We are not only producing and selling at factory capacity, we are enlarging the plant to meet consumer demands."
The single most important sentence you will ever read about how to create powerful marketing. It contains just nine words, and they will forever change your approach to marketing.

Plus Special Advice for
Marketers and Copywriters, Including . . .

22 advanced copywriting and marketing tips in 30 minutes, including the 11 habits of super-successful copywriters and marketers.
How to price your product for maximum response and revenue.
How to make your counsel indispensible to your clients and customers.
If you do this, your copy will sing.
The best advice I've ever heard for living a full and good life, as well as becoming a great marketer.
If you are now a "B" or "B+" copywriter, by learning this one unusual secret, you will much more easily move up quickly into the rarefied ranks of the "A" or even "A+" writers who command the biggest freelance fees and make fortunes in royalties.
How to harness the law of karma to create blockbuster ads that help people become healthy and wealthy...and thus guarantee that life's blessings flow right back to you in ever-greater abundance.
Simple trick for eliminating writer's block. Ideas will gush from you like a busted faucet.
If you organize your assignments this way, you will be guaranteed to write copy that pulls a much higher response. I've seen this work again and again for every level of writer, no matter how good or accomplished they are before, they immediately advance to much higher levels with this one simple process.
As a writer, you can double your productivity if you do this.
A step-by-step, play-by-play guide to writing copy for any product.
An amazing little trick that will instantly clarify your thinking of what to put in your headline and feature in your advertising. Works every time.
Why, if you want to wield enormous power in your marketing efforts, you must watch more movies. What to look for and why... as well as how to apply what you see to build enormous emotional power into your advertising.
How to make even cynical, skeptical readers—who feel they have been lied to time and time again—believe what you say in your advertising. If they don't believe, they won't buy, so this is critical to your success.
How you can create copy that is both contagiously enthusiastic and, at the same time, meticulously precise and truthful. This sounds like trying to drive with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. But it can be done, it must be done if you want to trigger breakthrough response in an ethical manner. Actually, it's quite easy to achieve if you use this technique.
Indeed, you must learn to play both Jekyll and Hyde—to first write like a crazed arsonist, lighting fires of desire—then change roles and edit like a skeptical prosecuting attorney. Why this combination of fiery writing and meticulous proof-gathering will bring your advertising to a whole new level of response.
Why, if you are a freelancer or consultant, you should never put your signature on a flawed product.
The best single rule to remember if you are managing a creative department. This will get more and better work out of your staff than any other secret you'll ever read.
Do this, and your copy will take on a cadence, a power, an authority that is impossible to duplicate in any other way.
How to write brilliant copy and headlines for any product, even when you have no feeling for it. This simple psychological trick is something you must master if you want to be a top copywriting professional who can write breakthrough ads for any product, even when you have no natural enthusiasm for it.
Among your most interested 2% of your hottest prospects, there are two different types of people. Here is the one strategy that persuades both.
What are the most productive and response-boosting ways for a copywriter and designer to work together on an assignment?

And, Speaking of Designers . . . .

Literally tens of millions of dollars have been spent to identify these: the 8 most important rules of design for maximizing response. Ignore them at your peril.
Why designers should "draw with their heads, not with their hands!"
The results of numerous split-run tests of different design elements that boosted results as much as 81%.
How type and layout can increase readership by as much as 500%.
Commonly used design elements that kill response, making your copy less readable and driving readers away in droves.

How to Qualify to Be Among
The Bencivenga 100

     To attend The Bencivenga 100 Seminar, you must meet these four qualifications:

1. Full payment required by all. Tuition for The Bencivenga 100 Seminar is $5,000, no exceptions, as many of those in attendance will be my friends and associates, and I cannot show favoritism to one and not to others. The $5,000 does not include accommodations, although we have arranged a special discount rate at the elegant St. Regis Hotel in New York City if you'd like to stay there.

2. For Stars and Future Stars Only. As I say, there will be no exceptions to the $5,000 tuition, and this is also true for the few struggling copywriters and marketers who've written me with hardluck stories, looking for a price break.

     Not only will there be no price break, but if you're in desperate financial straits, and have to hock your car or sell your firstborn, I strongly prefer that you do not attend the Seminar. I'm not looking to inherit anyone's financial desperation.

     If this is your situation, I wish you well, but this is not the seminar for you. Please understand that this is not a "business opportunity" seminar where I promise to teach novices about multi-level marketing or how to make a mail order fortune overnight by drop-shipping umbrella hats, invisible pets, motorized back scratchers, and mounted fish that sing "YMCA."

     It's been my experience that most business opportunities and get-rich-quick schemes are for the benefit of the sellers, not the hopeful buyers, and it's not what I'm about.

     What I'm offering here is something quite different and special . . . .

     This will be the ultimate seminar for serious copywriters and direct marketers—the stars, superstars and future stars of direct marketing, both online and off—who want to take their knowledge to a whole new level, who want to learn the most powerful secrets I've ever discovered from 40 years and a billion dollars worth of testing to boost your response much higher for virtually any offer . . .

     In these areas, this seminar will indeed be life-changing. If that's what you are looking for, I'd love you to join us at The Bencivenga 100 Seminar.

3. You Must Keep What You Learn Confidential. You must agree never to publish, resell or distribute the information you learn at the Seminar in any way, shape or form. You will be learning copyrighted, proprietary formulas and trade secrets for your own use and benefit, not for resale or redistribution in any way.

4. You Must Let Me Know Immediately If You'd Like to Be One of the 100. As I say, this Seminar is going to be a guaranteed sellout. How do I know?

     In an earlier Bullet, I conducted a survey asking if readers who were interested in attending could let me know their two favorite days of the week for holding it.

     I was bowled over—not by the choice of favorite days (Friday and Saturday, which I expected), but by the sheer numbers of people who intend to come. For two to three weeks after I made the initial announcement, and before I even set the dates, it seemed as if they were storming the walls of my inbox.

     Judging by the many hundreds who voiced enthusiastic interest, I know there will be many people disappointed that they were not among the first 100 to hold their place.

How to Register

     If you'd like to be among those who will have a place at this extraordinary Seminar, I need you to let me know immediately. A delay of even a few days could mean you're locked out. Once we hit the 100 mark, the doors will close, and additional names will be placed on a waiting list—first-come, first-served—in case any of the original 100 cancels out.

     Here's how the process will work. If you meet the four qualifications and want to be among the Bencivenga 100, please let me know immediately by clicking on the link at the end of this letter.

     Please do not send money now. All I need from you now is your definite commitment that you will attend. (Once we soar past 100 attendees, I don't want the hassle of having to return checks to disappointed people.)

     Neither do I want to have to chase people for payment once they reserve a place. So, once you commit to attending by clicking on the link below, and are accepted, I'll notify you about how, when and where to make the $5,000 payment. All you'll have to do is then actually make your payment by the deadline I'll give you, and your place will be assured.

A 100% Money-Back Guarantee

     If you must change your plans for any reason, you may cancel before March 31 and receive a full refund.

     Thereafter, since we're holding a place for you and will be excluding others who would have paid, you are committed to coming, just as if you had booked a spot on a cruise ship.

     Once you are at the Seminar, however, if by 12 noon of the first day, you don't believe the information I'm presenting will be worth at least 20 times your investment, just let me know at the lunch break and you will receive a 100% refund.

     I've never given a seminar or course like this, and I don't know if I ever will again. I do know for certain that I will never reveal these wealthbuilding, response-boosting secrets in a book or any mass market manner. They will be reserved for the few who know the extraordinary value of these secrets.

     If that means you, I invite you to seize the moment immediately, click on the link below and join your fellow direct marketing superstars, stars and future stars who shall comprise The Bencivenga 100.

     Yours for a good life and
     (always!) higher response,

To Register for The Bencivenga 100 Seminar,
please click here now.