Sticking With Status Quo

“Worse is better” marketing

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A-list copywriter Carline Anglade Cole doesn’t put a lot of effort into many of her email subject lines. On Thursdays, she sends out an email with the subject line “Carline’s Copy Thought.” Tuesdays are “Trade $ecret$ Tuesdays,” and Fridays are “Flashback Fridays.” And the next week, it all repeats.

Mark Ford, the multimillionaire copywriter and marketer who helped make Agora a billion-dollar company, went through a period where each email he sent out had the same one-word subject line. “Today.” That was it. Over and over.

Is this just a shocking example of laziness that top marketers practice when promoting their own stuff?

Or…

Could it be a case of “worse is better”? Where doing less gets you better results than doing more?

Well consider this. I always open Mark Ford’s emails, even if they say “Today” for the 10th day in a row.

On the other hand…

Today I got an email from an A-list copywriter. I won’t name him, but I’ll tell you I often open his emails. But I didn’t open his email today. I read the subject line and I said, “Oh, I know where this is going. I don’t need to read it.”

The fact is this:

Even people who are perfect prospects for what you’re selling will often dismiss your message instantly. They will use any little excuse to say, “No no, this is not for me, not now.” Even if your offer could hugely benefit them. Even if it’s exactly what they need.

Why are people like this? I don’t know. My guess is it has something to do with why taking out the trash is so hard.

Of course, one way to deal with this is the usual direct response light show, with flashing neon promises and blaring warning sirens.

But if you’ve got enough credibility with your audience, then you can do what Carline and Mark do. And you might actually get better results. And if you’re not convinced yet that “worse is better” can get you better results, let me give you an example with some hard numbers:

Marketer Rich Schefren once offered an upsell he called “Mystery Box.” Once you bought Rich’s front-end product, a video popped up with Rich holding this box and saying something like,

“Do you trust me? I promise you that what’s inside this box is worth 100x the $49 price I’m asking for it. Get it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree with me, you can always get your money back.”

Rich says his typical upsell converts at around 30%-40%. The mystery box? No excuses to say no? That converted at 75%.

​​Twice the sales. For less effort. Might be worth a try in your business as well.

And since you’ve read this far, let me ask you a question:

Do you trust me? I promise you that the free offer that’s waiting at this link is worth 100x the price I’m asking for it. Try it today and see for yourself, and if you don’t agree, you can always get your entire investment back.

Bump your order form bump 15% without changing the offer

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Two days ago, I watched an interview with a successful marketer who currently has several million-dollar funnels. He broke down his most recent success and shared some tricks and tips. Here’s one that got me, about an order form bump.

You probably know what an order form bump is. It’s an impulse buy you can tack onto your order form that doesn’t need a lot of explaining. If you haven’t seen one of these before, you can think of it as asking, “Do you want fries with that?” This can often substantially increase your average order value.

So this marketer discovered (by accident) how to increase his order form bump take rate by 15%, even for order form bumps that cost as much as the front-end offer. The breakdown:

1. The customer goes on the order page

2. He sees an initial two-sentence description of the oder form bump, along with a checkbox that says “Yes, add this to my order!”

3. If the customer clicks the checkbox, the 2-sentence description expands into a slightly more detailed description, which also includes the price.

This marketer’s accidental discovery was leaving out the price out of the initial two-sentence description. All his offers used to show the price there… but he forgot to put it in one time. The take on that no-price order form bump was 15% higher. And once he took out the price out of the initial description in other funnels, he saw similar increases.

Just in case you’re wondering about the legality or ethics of this:

The price is perfectly revealed once you click the checkbox. And for anybody who decides he doesn’t want the order form bump, another click on the same checkbox will remove the order form bump from your offer.

In other words, this is just of one of those human quirks. You might attribute it to the endowment effect or consistency or whatever you like. The fact is some portion of those extra 15% of people find it easier to convince themselves they actually want something they don’t really want… than to click on the checkbox a second time.

And that’s my point for you for today.

Because I don’t normally share these kinds of funnel hacks (though this one is worthwhile). Rather, I’m more interested in fundamental human traits and how we can use them for influence and persuasion.

Well, the trait here is how even tiny obstacles, particularly phyiscal obstacles, can have big effects on human behavior. Like in the example above, you can use tiny obstacles to reinforce the behavior you want. And vice versa.

Because right now, there are sure to be tiny obstacles that are hindering the behavior you want from people. It makes sense to hunt down those obstacles and terminate them with extreme prejudice. As Jonah Berger wrote in his book The Catalyst:

“Instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already.”

For example, I have an email newsletter. I could probably help get my optins up by offering some small gift for signing up, besides the pleasure of hearing from me each day.

I should work out what would make a good gift… but in the meantime, I can offer you the following, a special report called Copywriters Hero. It’s my collection of the best free and paid resources for discovering the world of copywriting and direct marketing. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/copywriters-hero/