Rules Of Thumb

A followup to my Trump prediction from last year

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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an email for my email newsletter where I predicted that Trump would lose the election. My arguments were based on three persuasion “first principles”:

1. People vote against the other guy rather than for their guy

2. The only thing that disqualifies you from becoming president are looking annoying or having a fucked up name

3. People care more about getting out of hell than about getting into (or staying in) heaven

I remembered my prediction today because I read an article about a guy named Gerd Gigerenzer. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and he studies how simple rules of thumb often outperform complex data-driven predictions. There’s apparently a lot of interest in Gigerenzer’s work in the world of healthcare and finance and I suppose political modeling.

Makes sense to me. After all, I’m 1-for-1 with my political predictions based on simple rules of thumb.

Which got me thinking…

Perhaps you should write down a list of rules of thumb you yourself find useful. In your personal life… in your business life… for managing your own bad self. Perhaps force yourself to explicitly state how you make choices and predictions… because you might be able to rely on those same rules of thumb in other situations, too.

Perhaps I should do the same. In fact, I started writing down exactly such a list today. But then I remebered something else. Last summer, I had actually created this very thing.

Back then I called it, “My 10 direct response fundamentals that work almost any time.” You can find them at the link below.

There’s nothing very shocking here. But perhaps these rules can help you make a better marketing decision next time… or avoid a stupid mistake that you will hate yourself for. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/second-hand-news-my-10-direct-response-fundamentals-that-work-almost-any-time/

Second hand news: My 10 direct response fundamentals that work almost any time

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Do direct response prospects still respond to “How to” headlines?

Or is it better to strip off the “How to” and give them a command?

I decided to test this out. The results were instructive, but not in the way you might expect.

Anyways, ​​I don’t have a live sales letter running, but I do have several large email lists that I can send A/B-split emails to.

So I prepared one email with a “How to” subject line and identical “How to” CTA text. The other subject line and CTA were the same, except if you imagine a pitbull came and ripped the “How to” part to shreds.

Result?

The “How to” variant had marginally lower open rates… marginally lower clickthrough rates… and marginally higher total sales.

In other words, a total testing washout. I repeated the test a couple days in a row, and same crabstick.

You might not be surprised. In fact, you might think this is a perfect example of testing “whispers” — irrelevant details that don’t really move the sales needle.

I agree. The only reason I tested this is because I was told, on very good authority by a very successful copywriter, that “How to” headlines, much like a love affair between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, are a nostalgic throwback to the 70s. In other words, second hand news.

Maybe you think I’m wasting your time, but there’s a bigger point here.

After doing this copywriting stuff for a while, after reading a bunch of books, watching a bunch of courses, talking to other copywriters, and most importantly, writing copy and seeing the results of actual campaigns, I’ve come to a couple conclusions.

First, top copywriters really do produce better copy and get better results. But much of the specific copywriting advice out there — “Don’t use ‘How to’ headlines in today’s market” — is really unproven intuition or personal preference.

My other conclusion is that there are just a few direct response fundamentals that really matter, and that really work in almost any context. I wrote down 10 of them. (It was hard to get to 10.)

When in doubt, I will go back to these 10 ideas. If you want, I’m sharing them with you below. You’re unlikely to find something surprising or new here. But you might find a good reminder — and that’s really what the point is. Anyways, here’s the list:

1. Markets are problems. Address problems.

2. Curiosity works to get people’s attention, and to keep people’s attention.

3. Start where the reader is. Positioning is probably the most important decision you can make.

4. Accept that you don’t have the reader’s full attention and that the channel is noisy. Adjust your marketing and your copy for this.

5. What you say is more important than how you say it.

6. Concrete beats abstract. Stories beat sermons.

7. It’s a numbers game. The best you can do is make an educated guess. Or better yet, several educated guesses.

8. Your copy can probably use more drama than it currently has.

9. New sells real well. New product. New mechanism. New understanding.

10. Give people a way to justify making this purchase. Justifications can be proof… or another dimension of benefits… or a risk-free offer.

I’m back. Just to tell you one last instructive thing. I write a daily email newsletter. If you want to read more of what I write as it comes out, then one option is to subscribe to that newsletter. If you want, here’s where to sign up.