“A piece of alien technology that arrived from the future.”
That’s how one top-level marketer described a sales letter that A-list copywriter Clayton Makepeace wrote back in 2005. Clayton’s sales letter started out with the headline:
“The 23-Cent Life-Saver Heart Surgeons Never Tell You About!”
Beneath that, Clayton had three bullet points:
* So safe, it’s FDA-APPROVED for use in baby food
* So effective, you can actually SEE it working
* So cheap, it’s just PENNIES A DAY
Sounds great, right? But I’m not here to sell you a supplement. Instead, I’m here to sell you a number. For example, consider the following bullet by Gene Schwartz:
“Three things you must never say to your children – but almost everyone does”
Would you like to know what those three things are? I did. So I looked them up in the book that Gene was selling. And by my count, there are either two things or five. But not three. And yet, Gene chose to put three in his bullet.
Why?
For the same reason that Dan Kennedy decided to write the following passage as he did:
“I and my organization NEED honest, ambitious, reliable men and women in your area right now. You can join me and earn profits of $5,000… $10,000… even $20,000 per transaction, implementing my proven and improved Business System — working at it as little as 4 HOURS A WEEK.”
Dan explains the thinking behind this passage:
“Erroneously most people consider themselves honest, they see themselves as reliable, and they believe they are ambitious. What you don’t want to do (unless very deliberately) is use qualifiers that a lot of people would feel ruled them out or that would intimidate or worry them. There is also some magic in 3, not 2 or 4 or more. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
And now for something completely different:
If you’re interested in persuasion, marketing, or copywriting, and if you are honest, ambitious, and reliable, then you might like my email newsletter. Each email is short, informative, and entertaining. You can sign up to get it here.