(Note – there's a new video to watch here but read this post first for some context)
Now that SMARTS is well under way, I wanted to let you know what's coming down the pike for both the StomperNet Newsletter AND the next set of GoingNatural 2.0 videos (yes, there's at LEAST 4 more planned).
But first, in this post, I'm going to talk about, or, I guess I should say, expose to you (not in a weird way) some of the techniques and tricks that we here at StomperNet use to market not only SMARTS and StomperNet, but also my own personal eCommerce and Information Product businesses.
Here's the thing – MOST of what I'm about to tell you is Totally COUNTER-INTUITIVE. And…most of it was a mistake.
Meaning, I BLEW IT – and made more money. (Love the internet!)
Quick Story:
You probably know that I in my old life, I was a TV and Film editor, animator, and post-production supervisor.
And, I spent a LOT of time on TV and Film sets as an Assistant Director and Production Manager. I also directed a LOT of TV spots over the 14 years that I worked in the business, along with spending some time working for the soap opera "The Guiding Light".
Now, when we shot a scene, once in a while, something would happen during that scene that wasn't planned.
In the business, we called it a "Happy Accident".
For example, an actor might fight back a sneeze during the scene, and while he was doing that the look on his face was SO awesome that the director decided to include that in the final cut. (Hint, the actor’s name rhymes with… with… Bortz-a-neger… whew)
Or one time (this is classic), I was shooting a Potato Chip commercial where a bunch of raw chips got blasted into boiling oil with an Air Cannon.
You know where this is going, right?
Anyway, the Air Cannon was dialed up with a little too much air pressure and the raw chips became "chip projectiles". The splash that they made when they entered the BOILING oil wiped out part of the set.
But, before it did, the camera captured some of the coolest slow motion footage used in a Potato Chip commercial – ever. It was for Lays Potato Chips, and the commercial ran for 2 years – WAY longer than most.
The point is, IF you know that MEASURING your results (i.e. keeping the camera recording) is an absolute requirement when you market, you're going to start coming across your own "Happy Accidents".
Let me share with you a few…
First, let’s conduct this like a little quiz – try to guess what the right answer is.
The reason I'm doing this is to show you that the brain often thinks very differently when it's learning versus when it's being marketed to.
(BTW – there's a whole video full of this stuff here but take the quiz before you watch it)
Here we go:
Question 1:
For email SUBJECT lines, the best open rates come from:
A. Benefit Laden Subjects
B. Announcement-Based Subjects
C. Good News to the Reader Subjects
D. Fear-Based Subjects
E. Mysterious Subjects
Answer? The BEST open rate for an email that I ever got was when the subject said "Bad News".
How bizarre is that!?! So, the next question is, why? Well, consider this:
In any culture, humans desperately want to prevent bad things from happening, but will spend the most time, effort, and energy on CURING bad things once they've ALREADY happened.
You see, no one wants to exercise to prevent heart disease, but they will bankrupt themselves and their entire family on pills and surgery to FIX it once they've got it.
And what they WILL do is "Rubber Neck" to find out if they're at risk or not.
You know how traffic slows down when there's an accident? Even if the accident is on the other side of the median going in a different direction?
Part of that behavior is morbid, weird, curiosity – but MOST of that comes from our desire to protect ourselves from something really bad happening to us. So, if we can see it coming, we can brace ourselves, potentially lessening the damage.
We WANT to know about BAD NEWS so we can be prepared for it.
I was very surprised at that result. People are weird. Let’s move on…
Question 2:
True or False - Speaking of Email Subject lines, their only purpose is to get your prospect to open the email – you let the email copy do the rest of the communication.
FALSE!
Okay, that might have been obvious, but here's something that's not:
During a recent, errr, *cough*, "Flub" of mine, I accidently included some copy that was in parenthesis IN the subject line.
You see, the Subject line was "24 Hours Left (for the "drop our drawers" sale)"
The ("drop our drawers") part was meant to tell my assistant that the LINKS in the email pointed to the sales pages on the ecommerce Store. At the time, the sale we were running was so ridiculous that INTERNALLY, we called it the "Drop Our Drawers" sale.
It was an inside joke – a joke that made it out to a list of about 45,000 home décor subscribers.
The open rate was pretty good, but what REALLY surprised us is when we sent the SAME email to our buyers list that had the corrected subject line.
The difference between the click-thru rate from the email WITH the mistake and the email WITHOUT the mistake was huge.
The email WITH the mistake got 30% MORE clickthroughs.
WOW! I was not only embarrassed for being an idiot, I was cross-eyed at the results. "That's just WEIRD".
So, as it turns out, the more we tested setting EXPECTATIONS of BENEFITS in subject lines, the more solid the results were. When you set an expectation at the BEGINNING of a communication, and then pay it off with the rest of the copy – a visitor WILL take more action.
Okay, we'll do one more – again, this video has a bunch more examples.
Question 3:
When your prospect is reading your sales material, how many simultaneous conversations are they having with themselves?
Choices:
—–
Just one – People consume sales material in a linear fashion and then render a decision.
Two – People consume the information, and before they move to the next chunk of information, they decide if what they just read is meaningful before they continue.
Or Three – People consume different parts of the presentation in different containers of thought. Each container of thought is treated differently.
—–
Answer? When your prospects consume your sales information, the ACTUAL formatting of your copy, even the style of your images, will cause them to consider each format group a little differently than the standard formatting – and it's been my experience that the maximum number of internal conversations that you want your customer to be having is three.
Let me give you an example:
In a Typical Long Form Sales Letter, there are 3 pretty specific and repeating format choices:
Sub-headlines
Bullet Points
Bold, Italic, or Highlighted Text
Here's a little trick:
Once you've written your copy (and by the way, this can work for LONG form copy AND product descriptions for ecommerce, (hint, hint) go back and review your Sub Headlines…)
What you want to do is make sure that:
**if your sales copy ONLY consisted of Sub Headlines that it would STILL tell some part of your story**.
Use this same technique for Bullet Points and for Bold, Italic, or Highlighted text.
The point here is, each format variation should be able to deliver a message on its own to the reader.
Why? Because people scan.
And I'm not talking about someone who just scans through a page looking for some thing that interests them.
I'm talking about the actual way that your eyes read the page. Even when they're reading line after line of copy, they dart ALL around the page, looking for points of high contrast and even white space.
High Contrast and White Space are natural attractors to human eyes – and guess what Sub Headlines, Bullet Points, and Bold, Italic, or Highlighted text ALL have in common?
High Contrast and White Space.
So, TELL a Story, a separate story, with each one of those formatting or style options.
Well, like my videos, this post is getting Looooong.
In the next one, I've got 3 more little Happy Accident test results to talk to you about. Some of them are just strange – like, X-Files strange. But they work, consistently.
You know how some people always talk about having "An Unfair Advantage" (barf), or a "Secret Weapon" (hurl) that they use for their marketing? Ya know what I think?
Glad you asked. Heh.
I think that being good at this stuff is 50% fundamentals, and 50% testing.
Sure, I can teach you the fundamentals, but unless you cause a Happy Accident, you're NEVER gonna know the other 50%.
And to cause a Happy Accident, you actually have to…
DO SOMETHING!
And you've got to test it and track it.
There - there's the secret to big money. I am so full of Hype. Seriously, have you seen Frank Kern's Mass Control videos?
They are SOLID fundamentals. SOLID A,B,C's of marketing communication. And when people watch them, they FREAK OUT because it's stuff they've never seen before!
Why? Because, I think, or, it's MY opinion that the vast majority of Internet Marketers don't teach the fundamentals because fundamentals are not "sexy". Meaning, there's no money in teaching the basics, the “blocking and tackling”.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard at a conference, btw.
And I've heard some pretty stupid things.
They're under the impression that everyone wants the “Easy Button”, you know, the big red button that says "push here to make me wealthy". And whether they want that or not, it's NOT what they need.
My MOST successful StomperNet members (and I'm talking 7 and 8 figures worth of successful) are Masters of the Marketing Obvious (I just made that up). They did the fundamentals over and over again until it was as natural as walking…except that PARTICULAR walk generated sales.
So, getting straight with Fundamentals, even if Guru's don't think it’s sexy, is really the way to go. And I'd rather be rich than sexy… Cause I've got NO SHOT at sexy.
I **think** that Frank has 6 Mass Control videos out right now. There might be 8.
They're "Free Line" (meaning, they're, um… free), so you can watch them just by going to his site here.
And I know I don't have to say this, but I will anyway – you probably saw at least one of the Going Natural 2.0 videos - Just because they were free didn't mean they were not worth watching, right?
Same goes with Frank's vids. He'll be the first to admit that his videos are not (as he likes to call them) "all fancy pants" – but that doesn't matter. They're smart, entertaining, and Frank is a trip.
He's also the best copywriter that I know. His skills are…inhuman.
I get a lot of credit for building StomperNet, but make no mistake, he launched it.
Watch them - WITH a notebook and pen:
Mass Control Videos (Rated PG-13).
Okay, the next set of GoingNatural 2.0 Videos are in the pipe. I'll let you know when we'll start releasing them in the next couple of blog posts.
BTW, thanks for following along. We're gonna have a LOT of fun over the next couple of months.
Yours in Happy Accidents,
Andy "Not Sexy" Jenkins
P.S. Nope… Don't have one.
