New Halbert Email Promo Blew Me Away! Here's Why...

Michel Fortin · **New Halbert Email Promo Blew Me Away! Here's Why... -** 11-04-2004, 08:47 AM

Just received an email from Gary Halbert. Not his newsletter, but his call for clients. I'm blown away! Even though he says "it's not his best work," the man is brilliant. Utterly brilliant. If you read it once, go back and read it again -- but be aware of the specific flow, the nuances, the psychology.

100% swipe file material. Ka-ching!

Michel Fortin

Let me reprint it here, because it's a great piece.

Quote:

I have been working on a marketing concept for nearly half-a-year.
This is, I believe, a concept that wouldn't work nearly as well if
John Kerry were elected President of the United States. Since
George Bush has been re-elected President (and the results are now
final) it is my belief this marketing concept will work in a
spectacular way. And, this could be a bonanza no matter if you're
marketing on-line... or off-line... or a combination of both!

By the way, you should not take this information as to mean I was
or was not rooting for George Bush to win. I don't believe my
newsletter is a proper forum in which to express my political
views.

But, since Bush did win, I would like to use this concept I have
developed to make as much immediate money as I can for myself, and
a few other select people. Therefore, I am now doing something I
haven't done for 14 years. That is... I am, as of right now,
actively soliciting for a few new clients.

I have done some client work over the past 14 years, just to make
sure I wouldn't lose my touch. However, when all of these clients
came to me, it was their idea, not mine.

It would appear I have not lost my touch, to say the least. Three
days ago, I got the results of a sales campaign I had written for a
very famous person in the marketing and real estate business. You
would know his name instantly but, for personal reasons, I think
it's best I keep his identity confidential.

In any case, the spreadsheet (Lord, I hate those things!) he sent
me illustrated the copywriting I did for him pulled in 6-1/2 times
MORE MONEY than anything written by any other copywriter he has
ever hired. By the way, he's a multi-millionaire so he does have
the money to hire the "creme de la creme" of copywriters in the
entire world.

I want to tell you about the last time I actively solicited for
clients. I was living in Key West and informed the readers of my
newsletter that, if they were willing to pay my fee ($15,000
upfront and 5% of the backend sales my efforts produced) I would
pay all their expenses to fly to Key West and put them up in a
hotel at my expense, while we discussed their project. I also told
them if they did this, they didn't have to guarantee they would
become a client of mine... but... they at least had to be a "for
real" prospect to whom price would not be a concern.

Many of those people did become clients. And a few did not. But
there was one guy I especially remember. Why? Because, in my
opinion, he was guilty of fraud. After I flew him to Key West, put
him up in the best hotel, and discussed his project at length with
him, he said, "Everything sounds great... but... I think $15,000
for your upfront fee is too much to pay you."

I did everything I could to hold onto my temper but, what I really
wanted to do was leap across the table we were sitting at, wrap my
hands around his neck, lift him up off his chair and in the air,
choking him until his entire body was shaking and his legs and feet
were dancing around like he was doing the "Funky Chicken".

But, of course, I didn't do any of that.

I simply ended the conversation immediately in a civil manner, took
him back to his hotel and suggested he get an early flight back to
wherever he lived. I think that man was genuinely bewildered by my
sudden lack of zero interest in him and his project.

See, it's no crime to not be able to afford the expertise of
someone like myself. But, it is obnoxious to pretend you can afford
someone like me... when... you flat-out already know you can't
afford me... or... you are unwilling to pay the fees I charge.

Look, I want you to understand something: I have untold thousands
of rabid readers of this newsletter. But, this message is truly
only directed at a handful of them. Maybe only one or two. It is
only directed to what I call "PWM" (which is an acronym for
"Players With Money").

Since it is my job to provide my readers with a learning
experience, I'm going to do that by demonstrating how to do
something I've never quite done before. Many copywriters have
written to me complaining they couldn't get any clients. I always
tell them, there's no such thing as a world-class copywriter who
should be hurting for clients. All he should have to do is write a
sales pitch for his services. And, he should then be flooded with
more clients than he can handle. By the way, I wrote a newspaper ad
once for Jay Abraham that, when it was ran in a single newspaper,
brought him in 602 potential clients.

Anyway, if I were writing a pitch for my copywriting services (as I
guess I am doing now) here are some of the points I would make:

* Gary Halbert may have hit more "financial home-runs" for his
clients than anyone else in history! These clients include Ron
LeGrand, Robert Allen, Ernest and Tova Borgnine, award-winning
actress Nancy Kwan, Vikki LaMotta and many others, too numerous
to mention.

* Gary Halbert's biggest home-runs have been written for himself or
companies in which he had some sort of ownership. Everybody knows
about the famous "Coat-of-Arms" letter, which may be the most
widely-mailed sales letter in the world with more than 600 million
copies mailed. That family crest letter built an organization that
needed 700 employees to keep it going... and... 40 of those
employees were needed just to make the bank deposits!

* Gary wrote a sales letter for a diet product for Health
Laboratories of America which was so good, it almost made skinny
people buy the product! At one point, when the client had run out
of diet-related mailing lists, on Gary's recommendation he got the
compiled file of everybody in America who had a driver's license.
Then, via computer, a simple calculation was done based on the
height and weight information in that file. If it turned out a
person weighed more than they should for their height, the client
mailed Gary's sales letter to that individual. The client mailed
millions of letters to that one file and made DOUBLE THE PROFIT.

* Gary has written for the biggest financial publishers in the
world, including Phillips Publishing, KCI, Agoura Publishing and
many others whose name you would not recognize! Once he wrote a
"penny letter" for Phillips Publishing. (That's a letter that has a
penny attached to the front page as a "grabber".) Phillips
Publishing mailed so many of those sales letters, they actually had
to have the Denver Mint produce many more pennies than they
normally would have and had to have them shipped in box cars
directly to the Phillips facility.

* When Tova Borgnine wanted to launch a new perfume, Gary not only
created the winning formula for the perfume, he also wrote a
newspaper ad that created the biggest perfume launch in history!
His ad got more than 7,000 people to show up at the Century Plaza
Hotel in Los Angeles. The ad also produced unsolicited purchase
orders from monster department stores like Federated (the biggest
department store chain in the world), Filines of Boston, the May
Company and a host of others. The event was also written up in
"Time" magazine. The work Gary did for the Borgnines literally put
their company on the map and jumped their gross from $20,000 per
month... to... $800,000 per month!

* Gary wrote an 8-page direct mail promotion for Howard Ruff that
doubled his subscription base!

* Another company hired Gary to help them raise money for their IPO
and his full-page newspaper ad (which appeared twice in "Investor's
Business Daily") brought in enough qualified investors to produce
nearly two hundred million dollars!

* Gary worked on the Nancy Kwan skin care commercials and made the
breakthrough that enabled them to run profitably on TV for nearly
two years!

* Gary wrote a direct mail promotion for CASI (Computer Amusement
Systems Inc.) that jumped their gross from three million... to...
13 million a year!

* But, Gary also made millionaires out of many "mom and pop" small
type businesses who had very little to start with!

* Gary helped guys like Jeff Paul, Joe Polish and many others go
from eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to become
multi-millionaires!

* George Zangas (world-famous power lifter) mailed a postcard Gary
wrote for him... which... generated $1,000 for every $100 he spent!
And George continued to make these profits even though he mailed it
to the same list five different times!

* One of the marketers Gary admires greatly and who is world-famous
is Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy got his start in marketing working for
Halbert's Inc. in Bath, Ohio. At a seminar about a year ago, Dan
was talking about a guy who said he couldn't make a profit with the
ad he was using. Dan looked at the ad and thought it was
spectacular. Dan then discovered it was Gary Halbert who had
written the ad! Dan told the guy (and you can hear it on tape),
"There's no way to improve this ad. It was written by Gary Halbert.
If you can get Gary, and you can get him interested, and you can
get him focused, there's no way in the world you're going to get a
better piece of marketing copy from anyone else on earth." Dan then
pointed out to this guy it was not the ad that was failing but, it
was the way the guy was exploiting (actually lack of exploiting)
the ad and his failure to set up a proper infra-structure and
several other things he was not doing properly. NOTE: I have not
quoted Dan word-for-word about what he said about that ad because I
do not have that tape right now. But, I have related accurately the
gist of his comment.

* Gary's worked on 17 successful infomercials, wrote the two most
successful direct response newspaper ads, has produced scores of
highly-successful magazine ads, created several catalogs, developed
phone scripts, etc.!

* Many people say you should include testimonials in all of your
sales pitches. Gary stopped collecting unsolicited testimonial
letters more than a decade ago after he had already received over
7,000 of them! Now that he has the most widely-read marketing
newsletter on the Internet, it would almost be impossible for him
to buy enough ink cartridges to print out all the rave testimonials
he gets on a daily basis.

Okay, those are just a few of the points I would make about myself
if I were writing an ad to pitch for clients. But, probably the
most important consideration you should be aware of is... most of
the time... I am not willing to take on any clients. But, I am a
little bit "in heat" to work with a few clients now because I have
just made what I believe to be is a truly gigantic marketing
breakthrough. Everybody in marketing will know about this
breakthrough a year from now... but... it will be old news by then.
I believe it will work for years to come. But, I think the first
people to use it are going to make money beyond their wildest
dreams.

You know, I could write a more compelling sales letter to you for
my copywriting services. But frankly I'm tired of writing about
myself and this half-assed, sloppy pitch is making me feel
"funny". But, I do feel moved to tell you another story.

I was recently contacted by a guy who said he had read each and
every issue of my newsletters on my website and he was thinking
about hiring me. He wondered if I would send him a portfolio of ads
I had written for other people so he could evaluate whether or not
I had enough talent to work for him. I was NOT polite with this
guy. I told him something to the effect, "Look, if you've really
read all my newsletters, many of which include examples of what
I've written for other people, and you are still in doubt as to
whether you should hire me or not, you are NOT a serious person."
Actually, what I said was much more profane than that. But, I see
no need to reprint it here.

This deal is not for everyone. There are certain people who
shouldn't even think about calling me in response to this offer. So
please, if you fall into even one of the following categories... do
NOT contact me to become a client of mine:

* I don't want to waste one single second with somebody who cannot
afford my $15,000 upfront fee and/or thinks they are going to be
able to hire me at a discount.

* Also, I don't want to talk with anyone who has to check with
anyone else as to whether or not they should hire me. If you have
to check with your lawyer, your accountant, your spouse, your mommy
or your daddy or anyone else, just assume it wouldn't be a good
idea and don't waste my time.

* My methods are unusual, to say the least. Don't expect me to slow
down to a crawl just to make you comfortable. When it comes to
money, I go right for the jugular and, if this takes you out of
your comfort zone, you should look in the Yellow Pages of your
phone book under "Advertising Agencies" and go ahead and waste your
time talking to one of those brilliant Ph.D.'s who'll be happy to
create a much more conventional (and totally unprofitable) campaign
for you.

* And, I'm not looking for anyone who has to scrape up the money to
hire me. It puts way too much pressure on me to know someone has
bet their entire life's savings on me producing a winner for them.
And that, if it's not a huge winner, they and their family will be
reduced to eating bark off trees.

* Another thing, if you are hiring me to write a promotion for you,
I will want to get a lot of information from you. But, you need to
remember that once I have this information, I will write what I
think is the best and ask you to check it for factual accuracy.
But, I will NOT change the sales pitch I have created just because
you and/or your spouse (or someone else) thinks the ad would work
better if it were written differently. There is an exception to
this. If you, yourself, have written sales pitches (as I have) that
have generated billions of dollars in profitable revenue, then I
will be interested in what you have to say.

One last thing, I am only one person and I can only do so much
work. I've got a spectacular new marketing concept which I think
will work like crazy... and... the best time of the year to market
most products is the month of January. So, if you are at all
interested in hiring me and becoming a client of mine ("for real"!)
call me at (305) 534-7577. If I'm not available to take your call,
simply leave your name and contact information (phone number and
best times to reach you) and I'll return your call as soon as
humanly possible.

Sincerely,

Gary C. Halbert

P.S. In my opinion, what I've just written is a lousy "sales
pitch". I could do much better if I gave it the time and effort it
deserves. Basically, the pitch can be boiled down to "I'm Gary
Halbert and I'm eager and willing to write for clients for about
the next 30-days. So if you're interested, call me right away at
305/534-7577."

P.P.S. I feel a little guilty about writing this long e-mail
message to you. I think I should only write you brief e-mails
informing you I've posted a new newsletter on my website. But, I
can't help it. I am so excited about this marketing concept, I
wanted to get this message to you on the same day Bush won the
Presidency. I'll behave from now on. I promise.

Cherrywood Publishing
3101 SW 34th Avenue, #905-467
Ocala, FL 34474
Usa

Eileen

Arrrgh ... now I'm dying to know what his brilliant new marketing concept is, but I don't have $15K lying around just so I can find out. Gary sure knows his stuff.

Michel Fortin

Eileen, you're experiencing precisely one of, if not THE intended outcomes of this brilliant strategy

Eileen

I know. But it doesn't make it any less frustrating.

Raydal

Great use of:

-- Credibility building elements --"Gary wrote .." Gary has .."

--Intimidation -- Don't waste my time. You must have money. Don't call if ..

--Current frame of mind (enviroment)-- US elections

--Story telling -- Gary's special gift I think.

--Hitting the competition -- "Advertising Agencies ... those brilliant Ph.D.'s"

--Scarcity -- My time is limited ...

-- Editorial style -- I'm not really selling you but If I were selling you this
is how I'll do it.

-- Writing cadence -- Start with Bush and ends with Bush. Interestingly
most biblical literature is structured this way.

There's more but I'll stop here. Great piece though.

Regards,

Ray Edwards

B-Lowe

No one writes quite like Gary.

I'm wondering though... was this really an effort to get clients, or a tease to generate interest in his "brilliant new marketing concept" (which I have no doubt he'll be telling us more about later)?

Somehow I doubt Gary needs to use an email to a huge list to get a few new clients.

This reminds me of another email he sent out about a year ago, after he'd written a ebook about sex. He wrote about how he was new to the whole Clickbank thing and couldn't even figure out how to find where his ebook was listed in the Clickbank Marketplace... could someone please help him out? I suspect that was a very clever ploy to get his readers to go to the Clickbank Marketplace and search for his ebook.. then promote it.

Gary's as brilliant at marketing as he is at copywriting!

Michel Fortin

Quote:

Originally Posted by B-Lowe

I'm wondering though... was this really an effort to get clients, or a tease to generate interest in his "brilliant new marketing concept" (which I have no doubt he'll be telling us more about later)?

... Or both?

Methinks it's a way to gather funds to finance this "secret" strategy.

Michael M

Pretty intriguing stuff...

FYI: There's a great companion piece to this letter at:

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/...raqisecret.htm

Turns out you can ALSO learn his secret Bush / Iraq marketing strategy by purchasing audio tapes of a seminar he gave a few years back...

Michael

Erik Mulder

I read that Iraqi newsletter too... I'm very curious what this could be.. Is it a soldier homecoming package of some sort perhaps?

Gary is simply good at what he does. If he can turn a simple "family crest" business into a million dollar venture, then you know he has a gift for selling just about anything.

I love reading his newsletters, nothing comes even close...