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Startup Copywriting*
Writing Non-Boring Copy with a Unique Voice
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STARTUP COPYWRITING
Andrew: Neville, do you have an example of what our audience is going to be able to do after they watch this full program? Neville: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I learned from copywriting is that it can dramatically, basically, increase the number of sales you get from an email or whatever you write on your site. So a lot of people have websites up, a lot of people send emails out, but theyre doing it in kind of like the totally wrong way, and I used to do exactly the same thing. I can show an example if you like. Andrew: Yeah. Is what Im looking at, your screen, thats your site, your newsletter? Neville: Well, these were newsletters from my business, HouseOfRave.com, which is just a drop shipping website for rave supplies, of all things. And anyways, I used to send out these newsletters, and I thought they were beautiful and Id make all these custom pictures and theres testimonials and theres [inaudible 0:00:53] item. Now, the funny thing about these, which tricked me into thinking they were effective is that they actually had really high click-through rates and that was great. All my friends were like, Wow, you got 20% click-through rate. Thats amazing. Thats really, really high. So I thought I was like a genius for doing these things and taking so much time to putting effort into them. In reality, I checked it and none of them were making me any money. So I have like this one and this one with Halloween stuff, and blah blah blah. None of them made me any money. So the most I made on one of them was like $40 directly from the email, but it cost me $80 in the meantime to just keep the email service up, my vertical response
email service. So I was actually losing money by sending out emails. I thought, like a lot of people, oh, its customer branding and all that kind of stuff. Ill stay in the customers head. So then, after I started meeting these marketing people, they told me to do some copywriting studies. I did and something really radical happened. The first time I sent out an email in that format, it got 120 orders within four hours, which was 12 times the normal volume I did in a normal day, at the time. So the only difference I did was send out a different email. That was really, really shocking to me, that a stupid little email could actually boost my business that much and that the power of the words had such an effect. Andrew: Increased by 12 times. Can we see what the new email looks like? Neville: Yeah. Now, take a look at one of these big, beautiful emails, and I spent all this time Photoshopping these and I got . . . Andrew: Thats your Photoshop, The House of Rave, thats on the pumpkin? Neville: Yeah. Andrew: Okay. Neville: So I did all this stuff and Im really proud of this email. Heres the newsletter that just killed it, right here, this ugly block of text. There are no pictures. Im going to slowly scroll down so you that you can see. There are no pictures. Theres no anything. Theres one link at the bottom. So let me see if I can show you the whole thing. Here it is over here. So its just this big block, two pages of text,
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Neville: So I documented this and the first thing I wrote over in the email was, If the names Lucida Sans Unicode or Courier New dont mean anything to you, go ahead and close this message. Thats not the typical first thing you say in an email. You see my friend, today were reaching out only to the community of people known as font whores. You know who you are! If your knees go weak when I whisper [inaudible 0:07:05], you might be one of them. It was kind of like a funny email, and right away this didnt sound like a typical marketing message to most AppSumo people. Basically, if people werent interested in fonts, they knew dont read it. Its not for you. We dont want to waste your time. So the funny thing is, is Noah called me the next day. Hes like, Dude, Kernest killed it. It got a lot of sales like theyd never expected. [inaudible 0:07:30] $150 font service to ever get any sales, and it was because of the copy. Then I go into why it was so useful for a certain group of people, and things like that. Thats what Ill be showing in the next part of this video. Andrew: Okay. All right. Now I understand its worked for you, its worked for a skeptical entrepreneur who gave you a shot with his
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Andrew: Okay. Neville: Youre looking at it. Heres the top of it, because this line was half screwed up. Andrew: So it has one hyperlink you said that was buried on the bottom. Why do we want to have one call to action instead of multiple calls to action, which would allow people to find the exact option that they want and click on that? Why are you saying, instead of a whole lot of options, you just have one thing that you can do? Neville: Well, everything that you read and everything that Ive done and everything that, even, Noahs done with AppSumo shows that people are capable of doing one action really well. As soon as you confuse them with two, it gets a little muddy and then so on. So with this, its leads them down what is called the slippery slope. Remember that. Whenever you get them reading something, you want them to kind of like be on a slippery slope where they just cant stop. So on this email I said, Hey, I screwed up. I used this whole story about how Im the owner of House of Rave and I screwed up and I sent all of these finger lights to my house and I have them just sitting around my house and Ive got to get rid of them. Im going to have this messy house, because I have so many. I have to just blow them out. So Im telling them this whole story, and at the end, Im not like, And so I have all these finger lights, and just leave them there. I lead them down, and Ill show you this action part right here. Andrew: Okay. Neville: So I give them exactly what to
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Neville: Oh, look at this one. Spam gets one response per 12.5 million emails. Thats actually a pretty interesting headline. Andrew: So now how would I use that in my email? Would I just copy and paste that? Neville: A lot of people actually just do that. Now, you have to make it sort of relevant, but also youre just trying to get them on that slippery slope. Now you dont want to make your headline so misleading like, Naked Girls Over Here, and then be like, Hey, do you need to make more money
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Neville: Okay. Well the next part, this is more of the action part where you can actually follow along and do this as were speaking. Now I have a method of setting up an email to where I have them like half finished before I ever start writing an email. Im going to show you that right now, and its really simple. A lot of people are like, If I want to write an email ore some copy, what do I write about? They get writers block. I never have that because I follow this simple framework, and Im going to show this to you. This is exactly how I write all the AppSumo emails. So what I first do is I open up a Google doc. You can use any spreadsheet. It doesnt really matter at all. So Im just going to open up a new document over here. Andrew: Okay. Neville: So Ive got my doc, and youve got a blank page and most people are like, Oh, crap, what do I have to do? So lets say Im selling this interview, how to do copy writing. Well just do this as an example. So the first thing I do is make some subjects, and I usually make about four or five. Subject 1, Subject 2, Subject 3, Subject 4. Then what I do, an important thing is to write your text in about 550 pixel blocks. That way its a lot easier for people to read. So I insert a table thats roughly 550 pixels. Just like that. Andrew: Oh, interesting.
Neville: Yeah. So if you noticed the David DeAngelo email, it was really long and thin. Its kind of like a newspaper, because your eyes can easily scroll. You dont have to make people look across a screen. I have a wide screen, and when I pull up a Gmail, it
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Neville: Oh, this is actually completely winging it. I dont like that, but well do it anyway. Andrew: Okay. Neville: So Im not going through and write an entire email here, but youll get the point of how Im keeping them on a slippery slope. So, One out of 12.5 million spam gets opened. I get a 30% open rate. Its actually pretty damn simple if you follow my formula, which Im giving you below. Right now, this is not very hard to read. Its nice big text. Its all in a tiny little package, and you know what youre going to get in this email. So lets say youre not interested in copywriting whatsoever, this is your time to leave. Im telling them what theyre going to get, and then I start on my interest part. Andrew: Okay. Neville: So Im going to interest them with interesting facts about email. Now I dont have to just list a bunch of facts, but Im trying to prove to them what theyre getting. So, I get a 30% open rate. Check this out. Before I use this formula, I got $40 in sales from every email I sent. Bam, I put this in place. I start raking in $2,000 every time I send an email. Notice, bam, thats not professional marketing speak. Thats just like how I would say it in real life. I mean dont bore them with boring shit. I mean make it like youre actually speaking. You can actually record the email into a voice recorder and just transcribe it exactly the way you do it, if you really want. Then I can go on and show how Ive implemented it, and then I can go on and show
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Neville: P.S. Laura told she watched this video, and her email rate went up 12X, so she bought a BMW, or whatever claim you have. You should always be able to back these up, by the way. So youre like, Wow, thats kind of cool. So at least this person is more inclined to click this link now. So, the whole point of this whole email is to get them to click this link, but weve also got to give them something. So were educating them, were entertaining them as the same time and making it sound personal. So even though I barely wrote anything here, this email is already coming together as a pretty good sales pitch. Its not that I just came up with this because Im a genius. No, I just followed a very simple formula, and you can do this too right now with every page on your website. Its really simple. Andrew: Now I noticed that there were some blank lines right at the top with the word subject in front of them. Neville: Yes. Andrew: What was that for?
Neville: Well, usually what I do is I try to test subject lines against each other. So Ill say subject 1. One out of 12.5 million spam gets opened, and then like, Spam, I hate it. Thats why I kill it. And then I just make a bunch of other headlines. Andrew: Gotcha. I see what youre saying. Neville: Ill test those. Also, if youre not testing your headlines, because a lot of people dont have really big emails lists or they dont have the capability to test, is you can
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Andrew: Okay. Neville: And generally, the format that works the best is simply an email just like youre seeing right here, without this border. I just have the border to show you its here. Andrew: Right, without the border and obviously without the headlines that were using for guidance, the subhead, Attention, Interest and so on. Neville: Yeah. So, if you look at David DeAngelo, which is widely regarded as one of the most successful newsletters out there, there is absolutely no stylistic elements at all in this entire email. He actually just uses plain text often. He doesnt even use bold and stuff. Some of his emails he does, but a lot of them are just plain text. They work really well because people are on this slippery slope. So someone thats really interested in your subject, if you write it correctly, they will keep reading. They dont like it sometimes. Like [inaudible 0:44:04] you may get some of the AppSumo people who are like, Oh, my God. It takes so long to read the emails, but I cant stop. Like they will complain, but by the time they get to the bottom they are so hooked, so they are so convinced that that product is good, that they buy. Andrew: How long does it take you to
Andrew: All right, thats impressive. All right. So looking back at that Google doc that you just created, right on the fly you created an email sales letter for us. The one thing I noticed about it is that, as you were writing, it was getting longer and longer and longer and that leads us into the next section of the course, which is long form versus short form. Neville: Yes. Joe Sugarman put it best and I will just quote him. If its a small $10 item thats easy to sell, use short copy. An expensive item people need convincing of, use long copy. He gives an example. Lets say you were trying to sell this to someone. Im selling you a banana or something like that. I dont have to go and talk about the benefits of eating a banana. I can a little bit, but it would take me roughly 30 seconds or a minute to sell someone a banana. Andrew: Right. Neville: If Im selling you a $5,000 product, this might take a little more convincing for a lot of people. So you might need to use long copy in that case and educate them and give them a lot of free information. So if what youre trying to sell is a very small, easy to buy item, it could be shorter or it could be
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Neville: So you have to explain the benefits and all that kind of stuff. At the same times dont make just too [inaudible 0:46:08] for longs sake. Now if you have a lot of really good stuff to say and you read your own email and dont get bored of it, youre good. Andrew: So I saw in your notes that you said, That long copy must have a slippery slope, which is what we talked about. Short copy for cheaper products, do we still need that slippery slope? Do we still need to have all four elements of attention and so on, AIDA? Neville: I use the exact same formula for long copy and short copy. Like right now, this is a relatively short email if we take out all these action and desire and all the spacing and everything like that. Its a relatively short email, and I would use the exact same format. Andrew: Okay. You say, if you get bored reading it, get it out of the email. So you read it and if you feel that your getting bored, you just delete that section out. Neville: Yeah. Sometimes Ill write a really long piece of copy and then start going through sections and being like, Am I just leaving that in, because I already wrote and dont want to get rid of it? I mean, Im ruthless when it comes to it. If its a sentence that doesnt really need to be there, its gone.
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Andrew: He explains in one of the letters why he does that. Like you said, its important for him to sound natural and also to look natural, like something that you would get from a friend. Neville: Yes, exactly. So one of the things he always does is, like in the headers of his, I dont know if he did it on this one, this is a different type of letter than his normal ones. But he always says, Writing from north of Jewfish Creek, which is where he lived somewhere. He always made it sound very personable, and he would write the time and date. Like right here you can see, 1984, June 12th, 5:41 p.m. It just gives it an extra little touch. If you want to learn a ton about marketing and I warn you, this will keep you up until 6:00 in the morning reading every night read the Gary Halbert letters and start with the Boron Letters Chapter One. I literally printed out every single one of them. So I have this big stack of all the Boron Letters, because theyre so damn good, and I take notes and highlight them. By the end of that, youll learn a lot about marketing, youll learn a lot about copywriting. Pretty much almost everything youll need to know. Then from there, youll be on the slippery slope to reading more of Gary Halbert. I tell you, if you do what I say, start at Chapter One, youll be
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Neville: Well, Noah Kagan sent out a little blast asking for samples, and one guy sent one in. Ill show that to you right now. Andrew: So these are real writing samples that people have sent in. Youre actually picking one of them out and youre going to scroll through it and show it to us, show us what this person has already sent out? Neville: Yes. So remember how you were talking earlier in the course about how, when people are like you sign up for something, theyre like, Welcome to yada yada,. In this case, Stem, its called Stemapp. Hes like, Welcome to Stemapp, blah blah blah. Who gives a shit? Like I already know I signed up. Like why do I need all this stuff? So he sent out this little short welcome email. Now, honestly, I dont think anyone is going to read this crap. So I read through his stuff and Ill briefly read some of it. Stem is live. Thank you so much for showing interest and waiting on Stem. Its been a big undertaking, but its finally ready for the world. You know, no one gives a shit. Like thats not how to people. I dont tell you, Andrew, thank you for showing your interest in Stem. Its such a dumb way of writing. If you think thats what youre supposed to do, its not. Then he had a movie. I posted a video on the homepage that gives a really quick overview of Stem. If youre in a hurry, check back. Like, you know, whats in it for them?
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Neville: For the most part, that is just kind of like one of the 1% cases where some nut job will get mad at you. It usually doesnt happen. Two, otherwise people arent going to read your damn email in the first place. Would you have read that other email? No. That was a straight to delete button. I mean, theres no content in that email that I saw right off the bat. I was just going to delete that ding, and I was only using it as a reference to know that I had signed up. Now with this, Heres how to close a sale with Stem, Im educating my customer in a fun way like. Whats wrong with that? And Im addressing him personally. Im thinking in his head. Like right now I got in the customers mind. I was shooting an email to a perspective client. I barely know this guy. Im not even sure if hes married or has kids. If Im trying to get your attention, you get a lot of requests every day. You get a lot of emails. If Im like, Does Andrew have kids? If he has kids, it could be like, Oh, hows Timmy, or something like that. It seems like I already know, so youre going to respond. In fact, I even wrote that later in the thing. So he uses the [inaudible 1:02:34] picture with the guys family. He does have kids. I banged out a great email that grabbed his brain, because
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