Back to the blog, and straight down to it.

Have you ever seen a piece of marketing, a sales letter, landing page or email and you just think “I call bullshit…”?

Lately you see it on Facebook and Instagram with the ‘I can help you make £10k a month’ BS posts.

We all know they’re bullshit, often praying on someone’s desperation, or just greed to get a sale for their crappy ‘make money while you sleep’ course.

These posts do work though. Which made me think, what else do we see on a daily basis which – perhaps more subtly, you can call BS on while still being used by proper businesses selling stuff? – And how you could use them, without an bovine whiff…

Exclusivity.

I saw this example in an email from Wayfair today, the subject line reading ‘Exclusively for you: Welcome offers for every room’.

A solid subject line – it’s targeted, shows their list is segmented and pushes exclusivity – a marketing technique we all fall for.

I immediately opened the email, and what did I find…? Just a long boring email full of generic product photos and links, which are hardly exclusively available or offered for me.

The Wayfair email database knows I haven’t bought yet, they’ve got that right, so they’re enticing me to make my first purchase with the ‘Welcome offers’ section. But then the rest of the email lets it down.

 

Now, if this is your business, definitely use this subject line, and ensure your email list is segmented between leads and existing customers, – but actually offer something exclusively for ME. Perhaps try to segment your email list further into male / female and age so you can target this exclusive content even more, to include offers on products I may actually be interested in.

Another one which gets me is a technique you will see constantly when you delve into trying to improve your marketing and copywriting efforts.

Scarcity.

‘We only have X coaching spots left, so book now to avoid disappointment’…

Scarcity is an important, and pretty effective technique to use in your copy, encouraging prospects to immediately sign up / buy now etc instead of saving it until later for fear of missing out.

But, in the same example as before – the product or service you’re actually selling needs to be scarce – you need to have a finite number of spots / widgets available.

You don’t want to find out that you’ve been hurried into signing up for something, only to discover later down the line they’ve ‘found new spots’ or ‘stumbled across a lost batch of widgets’.

If you’re using scarcity – make sure you do actually run out! Otherwise, this technique is just lying and you’ll lost trust and credibility, and seem kinda desperate…and you might sound a bit like a cheesy second hand car dealer…

…Hardly a good look. Can you tell I’ve been stung by this pretty recently?

Phew, off my chest. It’s Easter Sunday at last, so even more chocolate today and a family visit to my Grandparents today for roast.
W