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

Inspiration for Headlines. Direct Response Copywriter Email Archive May 2017 4

May 2017 4

From the desk of Scott Martin, direct response copywriter, Aspen, Colorado.

(More) Bookstore Lessons

In the last email, I talked about my visit to Strand Book Store in Manhattan. In this email, I’m going to discuss two more lessons from Strand that apply to direct response copywriting … one from the fiction section and another from the non-fiction section.

I’m contemplating writing another novel and I spent about an hour in Strand looking at how various novelists opened their novels. After all, in theory, the first few paragraphs and pages of a novel had better draw the reader in. Right?

But … with a couple of notable exceptions, the openings of even famous novels by famous authors were poor. The first few paragraphs of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway are superb, even beguiling. But that’s an exception.

The first few paragraphs of direct response copy, also known as the lead, MUST draw the reader in, and keep the reader reading. Each sentence of copy must propel the reader to read the next sentence … and so on. Direct response copywriters get this … I’m not sure that our brothers and sisters in the fiction business are always brilliant at this.

Let’s head over to the non-fiction section. The writers and editors are often superb when it comes to writing titles. Let’s see some examples. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Blast the Sugar Out!: Lower Blood Sugar, Lose Weight, Live Better I Will Teach You to Be Rich The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age What are we really seeing here?

HEADLINES.

Stuck for a great headline? Look at non-fiction books.

There’s some irony here. Yes … publishers create some great headlines/title but they are generally awful at marketing. Trust me on this based on my personal experience with my book about Caddyshack.

Scott Martin Direct Response Copywriter