Experimentation

“Does this catch your attention?”

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Here’s an oddly specific, yet potentially priceless, piece of random information you might be glad to learn.

From the book Ogilvy on Advertising:

“When you put your headline in quotes, you increase recall by an average of 28 per cent.”

More.

Even though it’s wisdom—possibly timeless wisdom—being shared by the great late David Ogilvy, I’m not simply reading it in a book, believing it at face value, writing about it in an email, and sharing it with you, hoping you believe it at face value as well and think more highly of me as a result.

Instead, I’ve been actively testing this odd—be honest, it does seem a bit weird, why would a few curly lines change anything about how people recall information?—piece of advice myself in one of my hobby projects. And I haven’t just been testing the headline of the sales page. No, no, I’ve been testing it on every single sub-headline as well.

You see, where bigger brands, are playing an entirely different game than you and I—a game of brand recognition and perception—I’m playing a more simple game. A more relaxing game I find as well. A game with only two possible outcomes:

Making the sale or not making the sale.

So increased recall isn’t that valuable to me—there’s an argument saying it matters for retargeting campaigns, but let’s not go there now. What is valuable to me is skimmability. After all, we know almost nobody actually reads a sales page. People quickly scroll through it, read the headlines, look for a section or two they care about, and immediately know whether they’ll buy the product or not.

If you don’t believe me, do some heatmap studies of your sales pages (or look up some recent studies) and you’ll see this phenomenon time and time again.

Anyway.

For my, not so, scientific experiment, my question was, “Does putting my subheadlines in quotes (presumably) increase skimmability, and increase my conversion rate?”

Turns out, it does.

Or at least, it might. While this small change improved my metrics, I have no scientifically accurate way of knowing whether the quotes were the actual reason, let alone a causal connection instead of merely a correlation (read: I can’t be arsed setting up a proper scientific experiment in a controlled environment so this will do).

So there you have it.

Try it out if you want, don’t try it out if you think it sounds like a bunch of majoring in the minors, which I won’t deny it might be.

That said, if you enjoy reading tips and tricks on creating better-converting sales pages, then you might want to check out my course, Sales Page Sorcery.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/sorcery/


I lighted my jeans on fire

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Back when I was 15 I overheard this fun fact about denim.

Apparently standard denim jeans would be fire resistant or fireproof. (I don’t know the difference) This sounded crazy to 15-year-old Alex. See I used to wear jeans only. Nothing else. I had filled my closet with jeans. Which is funny if you think about it because I barely wear any jeans today.

But still.

Jeans? Fireproof? I couldn’t just believe that without testing it out myself, could I?

So little old me devised a genius master plan. Or something like it. Me and some friends from school at the time wanted to do a ‘scientific’ experiment and test the hypothesis that jeans are fireproof.

This was our plan:

I would take my jeans, spray them full of deodorant, and light them on fire with a lighter. Sounds simple enough right?

But here’s the thing. I was at school. This was during our lunch break. I obviously didn’t bring separate jeans with me. I was wearing THOSE jeans. So there I was. Spraying my jeans with deodorant. How else would we light it after all? We had to REALLY test it. So here it went, I had my lighter ready. 3. 2. 1…

Fire!

Immediately my jeans lit on fire. Everyone looked at me and we were all equally amazed, “Wow! Fire!”. So cool I thought.

But then it got hot. REALLY HOT!

My legs were burning, obviously. Why didn’t I think of that? I panicked because I was literally on fire. So I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled down my pants and got out of them as fast as I could. There I was. In the middle of my school, in my underwear because my jeans were on fire.

After taking off my pants, we immediately stopped the fire and that was that.

I had some burns on my legs, but not much. Just first-degree burns. My jeans had blackened in some spots, but that was about it. They weren’t really damaged. So in the end, it turns out: my jeans were fireproof…but my legs weren’t.

I did, however, learn something valuable that day. I learned experiments can cause harm.

Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Sometimes it’s better to learn and accept the lessons others have discovered before you. In this case, I burned my legs.

But in business?

Imagine the damage you could do by not learning from others and having to discover everything for yourself? How much money would you miss out on over a month? A year? 10 years? How much, really? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? $10,000,000?? I’m not quite sure. But it’s a lot, let me tell you that.

Luckily for you, you don’t have to discover everything for yourself.

I did the testing and experimenting for you. I’ve been writing emails for over 2 years months now. I’ve written plenty of emails that made sales. And so many more that didn’t. I now know which ones bring results, which ones don’t, and most importantly, I know why.

And if you want to learn what works and what doesn’t, then check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Fail fast, fail often

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You may (or may not) know that I’ve been working on competing (as far as there is any real competition lol) in new niches; more specifically hobby niches.

Doing so requires research—lots of research. Especially when it’s a niche I know almost nothing about—as is mostly the case for me.

So for the past few days I’ve been doing nothing but scrolling through tons of Reddit posts, reading hundreds of YouTube comments under dozens of videos, checking out every single course available about the subject on sites such as Domestika, Udemy, SkillShare, Coursera, going through the entire Facebook ad library trying to find every single ad ever written in the niches, and writing down every single detail I come across that might potentially be useful to me in one way or another.

Needless to say, I’ve spent quite a while researching (far too many) topics.

Is all of this research necessary?

Well, it might surprise you, but actually, no.

See, while doing some research is vital—you simply can’t expect to enter a market you know nothing about just like that and watch the money come flooding in. But you don’t have to do nearly as much market research as I’ve done over the past few days.

So why did I do all of this research?

Simply said, I was indecisive and afraid to fail. It was mental procrastination, to say the least.

In reality, it’s often better to do “just enough” research (or create a product that’s “good enough” in that case) and go with it. See what happens. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, now you can analyze the situation and figure out what went wrong. This allows you to move forward faster, rather than slower as some people might think, by learning from your mistakes and building your experience.

One of the best things you can do in business (and probably in life as well, although I’m probably not qualified to talk about that, yet) is to “fail fast”—as long as you analyze your mistakes, pick up the pieces, get back up, and try again almost immediately.

Anyway.

Another way to approach market research, which I also employed at the very beginning, is to use your email list, either to simply ask the questions you have to your list or by making offers, testing out new ideas, and seeing how people react.

To do that, it helps to write highly entertaining emails people love to open and read day after day.

Luckily, that’s something I can help you with.

Check out Email Valhalla here to learn more about just that: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


Running some sneaky “experiments”

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In the past, I’ve run some sneaky “experiments”.

More precisely.

I deliberately wouldn’t send an email at the “usual” time I send them.

Why?

Well, I once heard Josh Spector, who runs a 40,000+ email list called For The Interested, mention in an interview a little tactic to see whether you really have “fans” on your list.

Or if it’s just a bunch of readers who don’t really care much about you.

The tactic?

Don’t send an email for a day—or send one a lot later than you normally would.

Then just wait and see whether people will message you asking about your missing email. If you do get one or more of these questions, then you’re doing it right (remember, if one person asks something, a hundred are thinking it).

So that’s what I did once in a while.

And lo and behold.

I usually receive a few such questions (obviously not from the same people because they already know this happens).

But doing so shows you the power of daily email and building that relationship.

That said.

If you’d like to learn how to build a relationship with your reader by writing simple, yet entertaining, daily emails that just so happen to get you paid in the meantime as well…

Well then look no further than my flagship course Email Valhalla.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


How many types of cuisine have you eaten before?

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By the time you’re reading this email, I’ll be in a restaurant eating what I hope will be an amazing meal.

But not just any restaurant.

A Korean Barbecue place to be specific.

See, I’ve heard (and seen) many great things about Korean Barbecue, yet I never tried it before in my 24 years of existence. Until today that is.

Now, I didn’t write you this email just to share what I’m eating today.

No.

In fact, this simple event in my life reminded me of something important. A valuable lesson many people, myself included, often forget.

What am I talking about?

Simply said, the power of experimentation and trying new things.

You see, it’s easy to keep doing the things you know, going to the places you’re familiar with, practicing the skills you’ve already mastered (or at least have a good grasp of), and repeating this every single day.

But that’s a dark place to be. It’s where hopes or lost and dreams go to die.

Nobody ever got where they wanted without pushing their assumed and self-imposed boundaries. You simply need to push yourself out of your comfort zone if you want to grow as a human being.

Now, sure, trying out a new style of food isn’t “pushing yourself out of your comfort zone”—especially when I’m looking forward to it.

Yet even so.

How many cuisines have you tried before (figuratively of course)?

Stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. It can be as small a step as trying out some new cuisine or it can be as huge as revamping the entire way you approach business (although I wouldn’t recommend you to do this too often).

For example.

You might have been selling services for many years, or perhaps you’ve been selling and delivering physical goods to your customers. But have you tried creating and offering digital products, either as replacements or as supplementing products to the main thing you’re selling?

If you haven’t, then I’d highly encourage to step outside of your comfort zone for just a moment and see how that might suit you.

Who knows, maybe it’ll be the best choice you ever make.

And in case you don’t know where to start, check out Product Creation Made Easy here: https://alexvandromme.com/product