The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
–MARCEL PROUST
Involvement devices are devices that get people involved with your copy. They move people to read every word of your copy. Getting your website visitors to read your copy is job number one if your objective is to sell them something. When you use involvement devices, you effectively own your audience; that is, you hold your audience captive.
In the first two editions of this book, involvement devices were featured in the same chapter as psychological devices. However, due to the escalating challenge of getting people’s attention in the overcrowded streets of cyberspace, involvement devices have become more important than ever before and warrant a chapter all their own. If the struggle to gain attention on the information superhighway was fierce back in 2009, it has only become even more so now that the number of indexed websites has multiplied exponentially! As of June 30, 2012, the estimated number of webpages indexed by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search totals 7.38 billion pages. You need to know about every involvement device that will cause your website visitors to stay longer than the eight seconds a website is usually accorded. Nowadays, I rarely write copy that doesn’t include the use of one or more of the involvement devices discussed in this chapter.
FIGURE 7.1 Example of an involvement device.
I tested an involvement device on the website of a client who sells affirmation software. This client’s web copy had a decent conversion rate, so I rewrote his copy and added the involvement device shown in Figure 7.1. I installed this involvement device in the first screen of my client’s website, and his sales tripled the next day. During subsequent weeks, he maintained sales that were 200 to 300 percent more than the previous daily sales—including days when he sold six times as much product as he had previously.
The original headline, “Learn how to be prosperous, successful and happy in just 10 minutes a day,” was an attempt to get at what he thought were the hot buttons of his target audience, but, although reasonably successful, the headline sounded vague, and it definitely was not riveting. It didn’t call out to the real desires of his target audience.
The involvement device asked readers to identify their wants, needs, and dreams. What could be more riveting to your target audience than their specific dreams, the dreams they might not dare tell another living soul? The involvement device asked them to name their dreams, and it gave them a safe place to do it because they knew that no one would ever see their responses. Bringing the readers’ desires into focus allowed us to present the product (affirmation software) as the means of achieving those desires.
Do you see how powerful that is? Involvement devices break people’s preoccupation with other things. At any given moment, a person’s attention is occupied with dozens of things—everything from how they’re going to pay for their children’s college education to what they’re going to have for dinner that night. Think of your prospect’s mind as an antenna that receives signals from everywhere. Like a radio tuner, an involvement device gets people tuned in to only one signal, one station, or one channel—in this case, your sales message or your web copy. Getting someone’s attention on the Internet is probably the biggest challenge you face, because attention is in short supply—with over 7.38 billion webpages clamoring for it.
In an effort to capture attention in the overwhelming marketplace of the Internet, an increasing number of websites in various industries have begun to employ involvement devices. For instance, I’ve seen a retailer of loudspeakers feature a Home Theater Wizard on its website. The Home Theater Wizard asks a few simple questions of the web visitor, about budget, room characteristics, listening preferences, and equipment setup. The web visitor clicks on check boxes to answer the brief questionnaire, thereby becoming effectively involved. Based on the answers given, the Home Theater Wizard recommends one of the company’s preconfigured home theater systems customized to the customer’s wants and needs. Since there’s no way the company could know what web visitors are looking for in a home theater system, and it offers more than 350 different combinations of speakers from which to choose, the involvement device gets visitors to participate in customizing a system for their needs. In the process, the device causes casual web visitors to stay on the website (instead of clicking away) and take a close look at its product offerings.
The Jewelry & Watches division at Amazon.com employs a similar involvement device. Its website uses a wizard that enables visitors to create a diamond ring to their specifications by answering four questions (visitors click on radio buttons to select their preferred shape, number of carats, type of metal for the setting, and the setting style). When a web visitor answers all four questions, he or she can preview the ring, then select the diamond quality and ring size. The wizard recommends a ring from the jewelry inventory and gives the price of the ring and ordering instructions. This is a more effective approach to choosing a diamond ring than viewing hundreds or thousands that are available.
Figure 7.2 shows an example of an involvement device used on a website that sells a real estate investment course. The quiz does two things: It gets prospects involved and makes them curious enough to click on a text link (“Click here for correct answer”) to learn something they don’t know—something that whets their appetite for the product being sold. When respondents click on the text link, a small pop-up box reveals the answer. They are not taken to another webpage, which potentially could take them away from the intended sales path. This is essential when designing a device like this one. You won’t need to know anything about programming in order to create involvement devices. Your web designer can usually help you install simple devices, or you can post the job you want done on freelance websites like Elance.com, Freelancer.com, or VWorker.com. In the Project Description, you can specify whatever kind of interactivity you want in plain English, and you will receive bids from programmers all over the world, who’ll do the work for you inexpensively and even install the device on your website, if you wish.
FIGURE 7.2 A questionnaire-type involvement device.
The website www.1MinuteCure.com utilizes an involvement device (Figure 7.3) in which website visitors are asked to check the boxes next to the diseases that they or the people they know are suffering from. This device effectively compels website visitors to raise their hands and identify themselves as being the prospects for the book the website is selling. This is a superior way to grab visitors’ attention rather than simply making a catch-all claim that the information in the book could potentially cure the whole gamut of diseases. When you narrow their focus on their specific problem you make them believe you’re speaking to their particular needs, and they’re more likely to pay attention to your sales message. This type of involvement device does not entail programming at all, since the check boxes are simply graphical and do not cause anything to happen other than the placement of a check mark in the check box selected. The only purpose of the check boxes is to involve the website visitors with your copy and compel them to pay attention to your message.
FIGURE 7.3 An involvement device using check boxes.
The same website employs a second involvement device in the part of the web copy where an attempt is made to close the sale.
Now, the only decision you need to make is this: Which of the following would you rather entrust your healing (and the healing of your loved ones) to? Check one.
Pharmaceutical drugs that alleviate only the symptoms and the pain of diseases, but don’t cure (and often harm)
Elaborate, expensive and often invasive treatments and procedures offered by organized medicine
A simple, low-cost therapy based on a natural oxygenating substance that is easy and painless to use at home—and which is scientifically proven to prevent and cure virtually all diseases without adverse effects
For your sake, I hope you’ll make the right decision in partnership with your doctor or a qualified health care professional.
In the preceding example, when website visitors click on the third check box signifying that they’ve made their decision in favor of buying the book, they are taken directly to the order page. This type of simple interactivity can be accomplished by installing one line in the html code of your website, which any website designer or anyone with a working knowledge of html can do for you if you’re unfamiliar with html.
Interactive software programs are now available through which you can have a multiple-choice involvement device, such as the preceding one, on your website. When your website visitor checks one of the options, the ensuing copy on the webpage dynamically changes and is personalized with appropriate benefits and an offer suitable for that specific target audience. One example of such software is called Interactive Sales Letter, developed by interactive software developer Scott Stevenson. Using my Web Copywriting Mastery Course as an example, I could conceivably use the following involvement device on my website:
Countless people from all walks of life wish to learn the skill of writing killer web copy for a variety of reasons. What is your reason? Select one below . . .
I am an Internet marketer, entrepreneur, or website owner who sells (or plans to sell) a product or service online.
I am a writer (or copywriter) who wants to transition to the lucrative specialty of web copywriting.
I am a marketing professional who’s in charge of my company’s online sales operations.
Go ahead—click on one of the radio buttons . . .
With the interactive software installed, when a website visitor clicks on one of the radio buttons, the software loads a prewritten copy piece designed to speak to the specific needs of that website visitor, depending on which radio button he or she clicked on. This is far more powerful than trying to create one web copy piece for a diverse array of target audiences.
The sky’s the limit when it comes to involvement devices. You’re limited only by your own creativity. The Earnings Calculator featured as an emotional mechanism in Chapter 5 (see “The Cyrano Effect” section) is yet another example of a device that effectively involves people with your copy, giving them another reason to stay at your website and find out what you have to offer.
In a custom lift letter that I wrote for Underground Health Reporter, I used a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire type of involvement device (See Figure 7.4). The product that was being advertised was Natural Health Dossier, a subscription-based health publication featuring powerful health breakthroughs researched and compiled by doctors and research scientists. Since there was a massive amount of information being presented on Natural Health Dossier’s sales landing page, I decided to distill that information into four intriguing fill-in-the-blank questions that not only got readers involved but also made them curious to learn the answers to the questions. This was such a successful custom lift letter that the advertiser immediately ordered $22,000 worth of additional advertising with Underground Health Reporter and ran that letter multiple times over the next several months with great results.
FIGURE 7.4 An involvement device using a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire.
FIGURE 7.5 An involvement device that uses the power of commitment.
Figure 7.5 shows an involvement device that uses the power of commitment. Why is this powerful? According to Robert Cialdini, “Writing is believing.” When you ask your readers to write down (or, in this case, to type out) the things they desire, they admit the need for your product or service. In addition, a written commitment is more lasting than a mental commitment. When you write out a commitment, you have a greater likelihood of following through than if you don’t write it. Notice that I also make readers close the sale themselves by making Megabolic Weight Loss part of their commitment statement.
An involvement device I invented several years ago makes use of the recovery principle of marketing. It not only gets people involved in the sales copy and makes them raise their hands and prequalify themselves as your target audience but also captures their contact information. The recovery principle is not new. It’s something used often in direct-response marketing.
Here’s how it works: If you fail to sell your web visitors on your primary product at the full price but succeed in selling them the same product (or perhaps a different product) at a lower unit of sale, you recover the effort and cost of getting viewers to your website and plug them into your income stream. Even if you don’t make as much profit on each of these sales, you recover costs, which adds to your overall profitability. More important, you turn someone who might otherwise never have done business with you into a customer, and, of course, those customers have a lifetime value since they will be buying future products from you. (See Figure 7.6.)
The recovery involvement device that I used on a website that sells a $2,650 water ionizer accounted for over 115 additional sales to customers who were given a 25 percent discount. That amounted to $228,562 in sales they would never have made if the recovery involvement device had not been installed. Once you understand that you don’t have to offer your product at only one price but you can adjust your offer on the fly, you can make far greater profits than if you had not employed a recovery device, which can dramatically improve your website’s profitability.
FIGURE 7.6 A recovery involvement device.
FIGURE 7.7 Recovery pop-up.
Another example of a recovery involvement device is one that I saw on a website that was selling an online video submission service package for $97 a month. If the visitor attempts to leave the website without signing up for the service, the window shown in Figure 7.7 pops up.
A prospect who clicks on the OK button is given a 14-day trial of the $97-per-month service for just $1. The company is willing to forgo half a month’s revenues (approximately $48.50) in the hope that once prospects try their video submission service, they will become subscribers paying $97 per month.
A software developer named Dave Guindon took the recovery involvement device to a whole new level by creating an automated chat solution called Virtual Smart Agent. Once you have the software installed, a virtual agent appears whenever a website visitor attempts to leave your website without having bought your product or service. The virtual agent offers your departing visitor any discount that you want to extend. (See Figure 7.8.) When this happens, up to 40 percent of your prospects are saved and converted to happy customers. Even if you don’t make as much profit on each of those discounted sales as you’d like, you still recover costs and generate revenues, which contribute to your website profits.
According to an eMarketer report, acquiring a new customer costs five to ten times more than retaining an existing one. Therefore, every effort must be made to keep customers. Some companies use the recovery approach to increase customer retention and minimize product returns. A software company sends out the following e-mail to those who want to return a product:
FIGURE 7.8 Virtual Smart Agent.
Dear [name of customer],
Thank you for your recent order of [name of software]. I’m sorry to hear that you’ve found it necessary to return the software for a refund.
We’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that [name of software] meets the needs, and exceeds the expectations, of entrepreneurs like you. Therefore, unless you’re dissatisfied with the way [name of software] performs, we’d like you to continue enjoying the benefits and convenience of owning it. In this regard, we’d like to offer you the rebate of $68.50—that’s 50% of the price you originally paid for it. We’re offering you this special accommodation because we certainly don’t want to lose you as a customer, and look forward to serving you for years to come.
Simply reply to this e-mail, and a check in the amount of $68.50 will be mailed to you immediately. Please understand that your acceptance of this rebate signifies your decision not to return [name of software] at some future date. Should you not wish to accept this rebate offer, and choose to return [name of software], please place it in the original packaging (or another appropriately sized box), send it back to us insured (for your protection), and we will issue a full refund of your purchase price within 4 weeks of receiving the product.
Sincerely,
Name of customer service representative
Marketing communications such as this one go a long way toward retaining customers, as well as recovering the effort and cost of getting them to buy in the first place. AOL uses a similar recovery approach when its “free trial” members call in to cancel their memberships. Instead of just letting potential customers go without a fight, AOL offers every member wishing to cancel the opportunity to continue enjoying AOL at no charge for another month—sometimes two or more. The company is justified in thinking that if members become accustomed to using AOL, eventually they won’t want to cancel.
The key to the recovery principle is that no offer has to be static. Any of its parts—the price, the duration, the warranty, the privileges—should be flexible enough to meet the needs of customers. Even if the profit margins from the downsell are considerably less than the standard margins, every unit of sale adds to the company’s bottom line, helps to recover costs, and keeps customers in the company’s income stream. When you consider that repeat customers spend 67 percent more—and after ten purchases, the average customer has referred seven people—every attempt to exercise the recovery principle is well worth the effort.
