This was emailed to me buy Paul. Thanks Paul, some great Sales Letter tips here:
What testing tools to use will change from month to month, based on who has the most useful features that meet both your needs and your budget.
For this article, I will keep it pitch-free and focused on sharing with you information that will work, regardless of what products or services you use.
1. Your offer
I’m going to piss off some people by sharing this point:
It doesn’t matter if you have killer sales copy on your site…
Or breathtaking graphics…
If you make the right offer to the right targeted prospects.
Don’t get me wrong. All of the things I just mentioned will help. But if you have a great offer, it will convert well even if you don’t have any of the other elements in place.
So test your offer. Try different prices. Try offering more or even less bonuses. Track your results and stick with what is converting best for you.
2. Your opening headline
70-80% of all readers will decide if they will read any more of your sales letter, strictly on the strength of your opening headline. Capture their attention and they’ll keep reading. Bore or confuse them and they’re gone.
I’m not going to start teaching you how to write copy in this article. There are tons of great copywriting
The book I recommend the most often is “Tested Advertising Methods” by John Caples. Caples is a legendary
copywriter and he will teach you a ton about writing great headlines. Best of all, you can get this
book for about $15 through Amazon or your local bookstore.
I will give you one really simple headline tip. Try adding the words “How To” to the front of the headline.
So if your headline is “Brighten Your Teeth Fast!” then we could add “How To” to your headline to create a
more compelling headline “How To Brighten Your Teeth Fast!”
One more quick headline tip. Most IMers try using mega-long headlines that are 30 words or more. Unless
you really know how to write copy and craft a headline that tells more than one benefit, don’t do it! Keep
it simple and stick with one benefit per headline.
conversion rate every month for me. I decided to test the headline and was shocked when the new version
started pulling a 7% response rate —
That made me a testing fan for life.
3. ‘From The Desk of’
Most people assume that putting your ‘From The Desk of:’ automatically goes on the left side of the sales
letter.
It depends on the niche. I’ve found that in some non-IM niches, the right side placement actually converted
10-15% better than the traditional left margin.
4. Graphic signature files
It surprises me how many marketers don’t use a graphic as their signature at the end of a sales letter. I
believe it’s because they may not know how to create one in their graphic design software.
client fast, I just use an online tool like one of these free sites instead. They can help you create your own
signature graphic for free,
In my testing, I’ve found a black signature graphic has out pulled a blue one in the IM niches… but the
opposite is true in some non-IM niches. The difference between colors has been as much as 20% to date.
5. Your guarantee
Adding a money back guarantee is a proven response booster in both offline and online marketing. A great
money-back guarantee is one of the top reasons why a fence-sitting prospect will decide to take a “risk”
and buy your product.
guarantee. As of this writing, it’s 60 days but check with Clickbank to get the latest on their policy.
A couple pointers on guarantees to get you pointed in the right direction.
First, the longer the guarantee, the less likely it is to be used. This is because the buyer feels less pressure
to check out the product immediately and make a decision if they are going to keep it or not.
reason why is people have to be pretty unhappy with a product to want to pack it up, drive to their local
post office, and ship it back to you to get a refund. The average internet freebie seeker isn’t going to order
a physical product because they don’t want to deal with shipping it back.
Selling physical products has its own pros and cons, which I won’t cover in this article.
guarantee. Call it something like your “No B.S., Hassle-Free Money Back Guarantee”
6. Graphic callouts
Using hand-drawn notes, arrows, and other graphic callouts on your sales letter is a proven response
booster that has been used for decades.
Originally started in the offline direct response world, graphic callouts were added to marketing pieces to
draw reader attention to specific spots on the page like a compelling subheadline or the order form. For
many years, they could only be done with offset printing or print shops.
Fortunately, that’s no longer the case as a number of do-it-yourself options have been created from graphic
Even though I know how to create my own hand-drawn graphics, I usually use pre-created callouts like
CopyDoodles simply to save myself some time. I also feel like I can focus more on the writing copy process
instead of futzing around with the graphic design software which I’m not real handy with.
The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter whether you create your own callouts or not.
You need tostart using them and start using them right now.
One website of mine uses the hand-drawn notes to draw attention to the opt-in box on the page. Based on
extensive testing of that site, the “Doodled up” version of the opt-in box out pulls the ordinary version by
In both my testing and other business friends, every one of us has confirmed that adding graphic callouts
frequently boosts response rates for a sales letter.
7. Your readability
One of the first things I notice when I look at a sales letter is the layout and it’s readability. In plain Eng
lish,that means how easy it is to read.
You see, you’re not paying prospects to read your sales letter. If it’s hard to read, then they won’t read it.
Take a look at your website logs and look at the average visitor duration. If most of your traffic is leaving
within 15 seconds, then you may have bad sales copy, poor readability, or both on your site.
When I discovered the importance of readability, I looked at one of my infoproduct sites web logs that was
improved the layout of the page, and my fast exit numbers dropped to 60% and that site became immedi
atelyprofitable.
How do you improve readability?
· Stick with 1-2 font colors throughout for your text.
· Go easy on the bright colors and highlighting.
· Don’t jam all of your text and headlines together. Allow ample space between paragraphs and headlines
so they are easy to read.
I consider readability and layout to be so important that I often will spend several hours on them at the
beginning of every copywriting project
8. Bonus – Your headline colors
Michel Fortin tipped me off on this one back in 2004 and it still applies. Test different headline font colors
– especially the first headline – and track your results.
One veteran Internet marketer sent me a testimonial for my testing script. He discovered that by testing
two different headline colors for his opening headline, that the new version out pulled his old version by
In closing, take the time to get educated about testing your online sales letters. By learning how to test
correctly, you can literally add more money to your bank account. I guarantee it!
Testing doesn’t have to be hard. Just start your testing with one of these 7 things and you could be pleasantly surprised by a boost in your conversion rates.
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