Opening Lines In Sales Copy Writing a great opening line can massively increase your response rate. Most people know that headlines are important but every word and image that appears in that first screen shot or on that first page of your copy is absolutely vital. Recently I rewrote a sales page for online split testing software guru Frank Bauer. The rewrite increased the response by around 100%. Then we started split testing a few other changes. When we changed the opening line the response jumped by another 95%. Never underestimate the power of an opening line. Here's an opening line from a novel that kind of gets your attention... "Long ago, shortly after my mother's blood was sluiced from the streets of Changeover and her body was burned upon a funeral pyre, I suffered what the experts called a 'breakdown.' That seems to be a woefully inadequate word to me." Then in the same gruesome tone here's a great opener by brilliant copywriter Brian Keith Voiles where he talked about his surgery for a brain tumour... "They Cut Across the Top of My Head From Ear to Ear, Peeled My Face. I thought I Had Died When I Saw Myself In the Mirror.." When you read an opening line like that it forces you to keep reading. I talk more about opening lines in this post... Secrets To Story Telling That Multiplies Your Sales In sales copy it pays to write the most compelling intriguing opening line you can devise. Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh P.S. So what's the most compelling, I-have-to-keep-reading-this opening line you've read in a book, article or in a salesletter?
Notice as you get more specific with your opening lines and start INSIDE the story they gets more compelling. Start in the story and be specific. For example "I'm embarrased to admit when I started online I spammed 10,000 unfortunate people from a list I bought from some dodgy merchant. When they shut down my email account I realized I had a lot to learn about internet marketing." etc. My high school English teacher (who is still the best and meanest writing teacher I've ever seen) used to beat us around the head if we dared to state the obvious. She'd say things like "I don't want to see 'I am writing to you because' in your buisiness letters. It's redundant. It's obvious you're writing to them. They're holding the letter aren't they?" In the same way great writing is about going beyond the obvious to the story behind it by using specific language. Don't start by telling me you have a confession to make, start by telling me what that confession is. "My darkest confession is that deep in the night I dream of covering Britanny Spears in hot treacle. And you won't believe what she says to me as it's dripping down her thighs..." Actually I don't dream of any such thing but you get the idea. Start inside the story with your opening line and use specific language wherever you can. Rewrite your copy to make every word more specific. For more on this topic check out the post "Do the stories in your sales copy stink?"... http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=226138 Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh
A couple more key points. Some people confuse opening lines with headlines. The format of copy is usually... 1. Prehead 2. Headline 3. Subhead 4. Image or name of author (optional) 5. Opening line I think it's important to note that many of the opening lines that were used offline are far less effective online. If you're sending a letter in the mail you starting with a line like "Dear Friend" makes the letter look a lot like it was written from someone they know (it's imitating a personal letter). That opening is superfluous online. It's far more important to get attention. In a similar way lines like "I've got to get this off my chest before I explode" are not bad but if you start inside the story it becomes far more powerful, eye-grabbing and invokes more curiousity. For example... "When I saw this 15 year old kid's software churning out unique web page after unique web page I thought my chest would explode from the excitement." Online copy is getting harder and harder as attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. You really have to make every single word and image in that first screen shot of your sales copy stop your propsect and force them to keep reading. Then you have a chance. Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh
Here's a nice opening line from Dan Kennedy's book "The Ultimate Sales Letter": "One sage said, "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, slit your wrists and give blood." Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh
Here's another great opening line from Terry Pratchett's book "Going Postal"... "They say the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully..." This line forces you to keep reading but there's another clever element here that Pratchett uses to get attention. The tone of the writing is low key conversational tone as if you were reclining in your living room talking to an old friend in a relaxed way... Then said "Oh by the way the townsfolk are hanging me till I'm dead in the morning" (yawn). This contradiction between the content in the sentence (a hanging) and the tone stops your mind, makes it back up and say "WHAT THE HELL!!" If you can get your prospects to say "What the hell!!" when they read the opening line in your sales copy a much higher percentage are likely to keep reading. Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh
Great Opening Lines Get Huge Email Click Throughs To Your Site... One other great advantage of being really sensitive to good opening lines is in improving your email marketing. I know my emails get some of the highest click through rates in the industry (often over 70%). Email subject lines are more like opening lines or bullets than headlines. And that first line in an email is absolutely crucial. Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh
How to avoid the common copywriting mistake of over hyped language and what to do to grab even more attention without it... Here's another really great opening line from Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" (if you haven't read Frank McCourt's books you really need to do that - the style is a great lesson in the art of a personal narrative which we use all the time in sales copy)... The first line reads... "On the first day of my teaching career I was almost fired for eating the sandwich of a high school boy." That arouses a bit of curiousity. What the hell is a teacher doing eating a sandwich from one of his students? But McCourt understands the value of the following line to really grab your reader... "On the second day I was almost fired for mentioning the possibility of friendship with a sheep." What the...?!! You mentioned WHAT?!!! Also note the understated tone. A mistake even pro copywriters make is using over hyped language when the content is more than attention grabbing by itself. By using this understated tone in his writing McCourt is INCREASING the impact. He's speaking as if this kind of thing happens every day. Great salesmen use understatment all the time to increase their selling power. It's disarming and your prospect begins to fill in the blanks. Let me explain what I mean with an example. Let's say you were a marketing consultant selling your services to a potential client and you're talking about setting a profit target. You're telling your prospect a story... "When we first started working with Jim Jenkins from the TRS Housing Group he set his profit goal for the first 6 months at $500,000 - an increase of about 40%." "Personally I thought it was a bit low but we ran with that and I was happy that in his first 3 months he passed that goal and 6 months down the track he had an $800,000 profit increase." If this consultant is smart he knows he can just state the facts low key. That can have more power because his prospect thinks - "Hell this guy is talking like he gets results like this EVERY DAY!! He didn't even blink an eyelid when he said that!" Sometimes understatement is powerful in sales and in sales copy. Remember advertising is just salesmanship in print. Of course using a low key understated tone in opening lines requires a lot of thought. The key facts and statements MUST grab attention by themselves. Kindest regards, Andrew Cavanagh