Headlines

“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/


Make writing sales pages fun again

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It’s that time of the year again.

Today, during a tutoring call with a client, I mentioned how much fun I was having writing a new sales page—especially coming up with the headline.

I explained to him my process of coming up with attention-grabbing AND entertaining headlines.

Namely, I write an entire list of different headlines in rapid succession, not caring about the quality of any of them. In fact, I only have one goal during this process: to write the most absurd, often unhinged and unorthodox as can be, having as much fun as I can have, trying to jam in a bunch of wordplay, making outrageous statements, being an absolute lunatic, and doing whatever else I can possibly think of without any mental restrictions whatsoever.

Next, I let them simmer for a day or two before I come back to look at them again with a fresh mind.

Then, and only then, do I pick the best variations and decide the winner—and the final headline that will end up on the live sales page.

I do this because, as every good writer ought to know, if you have fun writing it, others will have fun reading it.

It also has to grab the attention of the right audience, no doubt about that. But that takes care of itself if you do the necessary research.

As for the headline in question, the one I wrote today and told the client of mine (and the one I’m quite proud of if I do say so myself)?

You’ll find it soon enough

In the meantime, check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


The 5 best ways to pick up a chair

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Here we go:

#1: Grab both the back posts with each hand and lift it that way.

#2: Pick up the chair at the top rail with your non-dominant hand while using your other dominant hand to support (and lift up) the chair from underneath the seat.

#3: Turn the chair upside down and hold it by any 2 legs (attention: holding it up by the two diagonal legs, although perfectly possible, might feel a bit awkward)

#4: Sit on the chair and ask someone else (you might need 2 people to do this depending on how much you weigh) to pick up the chair while you get to relax (don’t lose your balance though).

#5: Just leave the chair where it is. No need for you to pick it up. That’s somebody else’s problem now.

Now, I don’t know how useful this information might have been for you.

But there’s just something about reading “X ways to do Y” that makes it so you just need to check out the email/article/video/whatever it is and see what’s inside.

That said.

More useful information (we’re talking 100’s of ways to do many things, mostly revolving around writing emails, growing your list, and getting paid) can be found here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla