It was the best of responses, it was the worst of responses. I’ll share the numbers with you below. But if numbers aren’t your thing, then I just want you to spot the puzzling contrast between these two sales events:
Earlier this week, I made 21 sales of my Copy Zone offer during 24 hours, to a coldish audience of about 460 people.
That’s roughly a 4.6% conversion rate, at $100 per sale.
So you can either argue that I’m a wizard at cold sales, since the standard conversion rate on cold traffic is 2%, or you can argue that this was not entirely cold traffic, since these folks came from my ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, which ran with Daniel’s endorsement.
Still, most people who bought from me had never even heard of me minutes before they decided to send me money, and had never before heard of Copy Zone. And yet, 4.6% take rate among these people, at $100.
On the other hand, take a less inspiring example:
At the end of Influential Emails, a training I put on in late 2021, I made a 24-hour-only offer for people to pre-order Copy Zone for $50.
Result:
I had one taker out of around 50 people.
These were highly engaged, current customers who had paid $237 for this Influential Emails training. They had spent hours on the training with me, listening to me talk, and interacting with me. Most of them had also bought other other products from me.
So… that’s a 2% conversion rate, at $50, to a warm or even hot audience.
You can say this is an apples to pineapples comparison. Different sizes of audience… pre-selling versus actually selling… and maybe other intangible, untouchable, and impalpable factors.
But I believe I know exactly what the difference comes down to. And unlike in many situations, I don’t believe it’s a matter of offer, of list, of price point, of selling environment, of prestige.
Instead, it’s a rare instance where it’s really about sales copy, about copywriting technique.
I spent a couple weeks in February going for my morning walk while listening, for the third time, to a course by the “21.7 Billion Dollar Man,” Jay Abraham.
This course sums up Jay’s entire marketing and business approach, from getting more customers and clients, to getting more out of your current customers and clients, to enjoying the process more.
Jay talks about salesmanship throughout, and towards the end, he also talks about copywriting.
There’s one commandment Jay keeps repeating over and over. He then illustrates it with a fanciful example of trying to sell a $100,000 Ferrari with a custom paint job.
Jay’s commandment is not new, and it’s really not a secret. But it was ringing in my ears while I was writing the copy to sell Copy Zone a few days ago.
And it made all the difference, at least if you ask me, between a 4.6% conversion rate to coldish traffic and a 2% conversion rate to warm or even hot traffic. The commandment is simply this:
“Layers upon layers of comparable value, of contrast, of measurable ways you could see the benefit, the intrinsic value, and the worth it had to you.”
Jay uses his characteristic “tripled-up” way of making his point above. For me, the first six words are what really matter and what kept ringing in my head:
“Layers upon layers of comparable value.”
Like I say, that’s not new. It’s not a secret. And everybody should really know it, at least if they pretend to call themselves a marketer or a copywriter.
And yet, you have the fact I didn’t “know” it, not so long ago. Even after I had made millions in sales for my clients, even after I had spent tens of thousands on copywriting trainings and courses, and even after I was billed by others, who should have known better, as an A-list copywriter.
It comes down to the difference between having heard something and really knowing it. You can hear a thing once, twice, 10 times. But it doesn’t mean you really know it.
So now I have a recommendation for you. My Most Valuable Email training.
This training is valuable because of what it can do for you — endorsements and authority and even sales. In fact, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick just once at the end of January, I got a completely unnecessary and unexpected windfall of about $2,900 in sales, with zero work. But that’s a story for another time.
For now, I just want to say that the Most Valuable Email is most valuable because of what it does to you. And that’s to inch you closer to mastery, to really knowing, with each email you write using the Most Valuable email trick.
In case you’re interested: