Marketing Maxims for Gary Bencivenga
Gary Bencivenga is widely regarded as one of the greatest advertising copywriters of his generation. His Marketing Maxims, a series of short lessons on what makes advertising work, built a devoted following of copywriters and marketers.
The challenge
The original Marketing Bullets websites were aging and kept running into hosting, security and domain problems. Gary wanted to bring his teaching back to life as something new: Marketing Maxims, a newsletter and archive, with a course to follow.
What we built
- A new home: MarketingMaxims.com, with an optimized structure and revised signup flow, integrated with Drip, and written and revised together with Gary line by line
- The newsletter: an optimized email template and delivery process for each Maxim, an automated welcome series for new subscribers, and list management
- The archive: a growing library of every Maxim for new subscribers to catch up on
- The legacy sites: keeping the older Marketing Bullets domains secure, redirected and out of trouble
- Domain and email: moving domains and setting up Google Workspace for MarketingMaxims.com
- The course: groundwork for putting Gary’s copywriting course online with Teachable
Results
Since the first issues in fall 2024, we’ve produced every Maxim, each one proofread and formatted to Gary’s exacting standards.
Fewer emails, far more engagement. In year two, we sent 63% fewer emails, yet readers clicked almost exactly as often. Each email worked about two and a half times harder.
| Year one (Nov 2024–Nov 2025) | Year two (Nov 2025–Nov 2026) | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emails sent | 708,788 | 265,374 | −63% |
| Open rate | 23% | 45% | Nearly doubled |
| Click rate | 2.09% | 5.52% | 2.6× |
| Total clicks | 14,803 | 14,650 | About the same, on a third of the sends |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.95% | 0.67% | −29% (73% fewer unsubscribes) |
| Bounce rate | 0.31% | 0.08% | −74% |
Why it worked
In fall 2025 we made two changes.
1. We cleaned the list. In October 2025 we deactivated 28,087 subscribers who had stopped engaging. A smaller list of real readers protects deliverability, keeps bounces down and means every send reaches people who want it.
2. We changed the format. Starting with Maxim #7, we stopped sending the full Maxim in the email. Each issue is now a short text note from Gary with a link to read the Maxim online. We compared the original format (Maxims #1–6) with the new one (Maxims #7–11):
| Average per issue | Full Maxim in the email (#1–6) | Short note + link (#7–11) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 23.33% | 22.57% | About the same |
| Click rate | 1.50% | 3.75% | 2.5× |
| Click-to-open rate | 6.42% | 16.74% | 2.6× |
| Unsubscribe rate | 1.06% | 0.55% | Nearly halved |
The same share of people opened, but readers who opened were more than two and a half times as likely to click through and read, and half as likely to unsubscribe. A short, personal note from Gary works better than a long email: it reads like a brief, not a newsletter, and it sends readers to the complete Maxim on MarketingMaxims.com.
2026: the new format on the cleaned list
With both changes in place, every 2026 issue has gone to engaged readers in the short format. Averages for Maxims #15–21:
| Average per issue | 2025, full Maxim in the email (#1–6) | 2026, short note + link (#15–21) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 23.33% | 44.80% | Nearly doubled |
| Click rate | 1.50% | 5.24% | 3.5× |
| Click-to-open rate | 6.42% | 11.69% | 1.8× |
| Unsubscribe rate | 1.06% | 0.67% | −37% |
Every issue from #15 to #21 drew more than 1,000 clicks through to the full Maxim online: 8,070 clicks across 153,810 emails.
A welcome series that keeps new readers
New subscribers don’t start at the latest issue. We built an automated welcome series in Drip that delivers the collection from Maxim #1, so every new reader gets the full back catalog. Engagement is exceptional: Maxim #1 draws a 38.7% click rate, and the series averages 13.1% clicks and 40.7% opens across Maxims #1–14.
The relationship
We’ve worked with Gary and Pauline since 2013, first on Marketing Bullets and the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, and now on Marketing Maxims.
- Services
- website design · newsletter production · email deliverability · domain and hosting management · copy collaboration
- Platforms
- WordPress · Drip · Google Workspace · Teachable
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