Yesterday, I wrote an email wondering about a strange social proof conundrum:
Why do endorsements and testimonials sometimes act as powerful proof elements… while at other times they act as a red flag that signals the offer itself is unproven and iffy?
I didn’t have an answer I was convinced by, beyond shrugging my shoulders and saying, “because readers can basically sniff out if you’re coming from a position of power or not.”
I got a number of replies to yesterday’s email, from readers who both disagree with me and agree with me. For example, reader John McDermott thinks it all comes down to gut feelings:
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It obviously depends on the audience to a certain extent, but I think people make buying decisions largely from ‘gut feelings.’ That is, whether the offer invokes their defenses on some ‘spidey senses’ level. Or not.
Just as a salesman shouldn’t actually wear blue suede shoes, an ad shouldn’t show any ‘tells’ that the audience will perceive.
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On the other hand, a reader named Devd thinks it’s about structuring your copy in the right way:
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I think towards the end of the book, Gene Schwartz talked about something related to this in Breakthrough Advertising.
Like being the mind reader, and amply supplying the copy with claim-proof and other stuff as required.
And not blabbering about just proof or claims alone for too long, and having the right thinking process to switch as needed based on the thought process of your prospect after reading each line you write.
That’d probably help avoid the copy feeling too needy, I guess.
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A mysterious French copywriter or marketer, who keeps buying my offers under different names but goes by “Bro in Arms” in his emails, thinks it might not have anything to do with social proof at all:
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Or maybe it’s just a great product.
And like Elon Musk says in his biography, great products sell themselves through word of mouth.
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On the other hand, marketer Sean McCool, whose Persuasion by the Pint podcast I appeared on last Friday, thinks it’s the framing of the endorsement that matters:
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I think the speaker in the letter matters. If a “publisher” is talking about the guru and then shares testimonials about the guru in the letter, that is much more powerful and accepted than if the guru is the voice in the letter.
Thats why so many Agora promos use a publisher.
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And Maliha Mannan, who writes dailyish emails and sells courses over at The Side Blogger, offers an insider’s perspective:
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I have a hard time believing in testimonials, but I know I’m an outlier.
In most cases, as a buyer, a testimonial only works on me, regardless of whether it’s a testimonial about the person making the offer or the offer itself, when I have already developed a positive view of the seller. In that case, a testimonial of the offer itself comes off stronger than that of the person (because I already like the person?)…
On the other hand, as a seller of offers, I usually work with what I have. Since I’m pretty bad at asking for testimonials, most of what I have are things people have said in the passing, and most of these tend to be comments about me.
For example, “I like how you teach,” is an email after someone has taken a course. But it’s not exactly about the course itself.
On a more curious note, I get the best testimonials from fellow info-entrepreneurs. Maybe because we understand what it means to have a really good testimonial, we tend to give out the best testimonials ourselves.
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So? Are we any closer to unraveling this mystery?
I personally still don’t have an answer that convinces me. But perhaps some of the above comments gave you a good idea, maybe even one you can run with in your own marketing.
In any case, it was important to share these reader perspectives. That’s because daily emails should feel as much as possible as a dinner party, rather than as a sermon or a university lecture.
Since I end all my emails by promoting something, let me now point you to my Daily Email Habit service, which helps you write daily emails that feel like a dinner party, while at the same time getting people at the party to pay the tab at the end of the night.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have a good number of “fellow info-entrepreneurs” as subscribers to Daily Email Habit. I’ve got testimonials on the sales page from some of them, saying things like:
#1. “Fourth day in DEH. Turned the Elvis bullet into an email. Got a sale to my £170 course. So I’d say the investment has paid for itself.”
#2. “Within 5 minutes of getting your first ‘prompt’ in my inbox, I was cranking out my first email. Zero resistance.”
#3. “10 minutes going from sheer panic about what to write to a finished email building my expertise and selling my stuff.”
#4. “Exactly what I needed to get me thinking about my list.”
#5. “My best Black Friday yet… your service contributed to this result.”
If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and see if it might make sales for you too: