The Most Important Copywriting Skill. Direct Response Copywriting Email Archive. April 2020.

The Most Important Copywriting Skill

In September 2014, I attended The Titans marketing conference. There was a huge amount of schwag, including two whopping folders with a number of Boardroom promotions that were controls. The writers included many of the top direct response copywriters including Gary Bencivenga, Mel Martin, and even Eugene Schwartz.

I just spent several hours going through these controls in detail.

In case you’re not familiar with Boardroom, it’s a newsletter publishing company. It’s now called Bottom Line.

The company has had huge success selling subscriptions to its newsletters by using elaborate direct mail pieces: bookalogs and magalogs, mostly. The newsletters provide a lot of useful information about health, finances, work, travel, and other subjects.

One thing struck me as I was going through these highly-successful pieces. They are pretty much just a big collection of fascination bullets.

A fascination bullet is sort of a copywriting ‘tease.’

Let me give you a couple of examples from these Boardroom promotions.

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When auto dealerships are willing to LOSE money on your new car!

How dying in the wrong state can result in loss of entire marital deductions.

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The theory ... you'll read the fascination bullets and you'll think, "I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT'S NEXT" and this will motivate you to buy a subscription.

A fascination bullet is essentially a headline ... or it should be.

Let’s look at the famous John Caples headline formula.

Curiosity + Self-Interest = Compelling Appeal

You might think that headlines are only for the very top of an ad. But we see headlines elsewhere.

PPC ads.
Email subject lines.
Fascination bullets.
Sub heads.
Decks.
Pull quotes.

Plus radio and even TV.

I’m sure you can think of other places where you’ll find headlines.

So knowing how to write headlines is a super-vital skill.

To help, here’s a video from the headlines category in The Aspen School of Copywriting. Click here.

And here’s a video about bullets/fascinations. Click here.

Being a great headline writer and really understanding how to write powerful headlines is a skill that’s going to help every part of your copywriting … especially with bullets.

I hope this helps you.

Scott Martin