Let’s go back to the basics.
What is copywriting?
According to American Writers & Artist Institute (AWAI), “Copywriting is the process of writing persuasive marketing and promotional materials that motivate people to take some form of action, such as make a purchase, click on a link, donate to a cause, or schedule a consultation.”
It’s an accurate definition, but I believe it can be taken to a higher level.
So, two things I want to mention:
Back in November, the month I started the full-time position I’m working in right now, I was in a one-on-one copywriting training session that was led by the Head of Marketing.
And if I remember correctly, some of the things we discussed was the persuasion aspect of copywriting, including Robert Cialdini’s Influence book, the B2B Elements of Value Pyramid, and the emotional power of words.
I’ll come back to this later, but here’s the second thing.
I was listening to an interview with the #2 most viral YouTube content creator of 2020 in the world, who goes by MrBeast, where he shared his thought process on maintaining his virality on the platform. And he mentioned these main points:
1. Understand that at its core, YouTube wants their users to click on a video, watch it, and click on more videos to watch.
2. How to properly meet and exceed your viewers’ expectations.
3. How to eliminate every single dull moment in your videos
But there was one golden sentence that he said, which was, “When you’re studying the YouTube algorithm, you’re essentially studying human psychology.”
There are a lot of guides on how to “hack” or “beat” the YouTube algorithm and most of them don’t talk about what MrBeast talked about in his interview.
Similarly, when it comes to email marketing, people always want to figure out how to increase their open rates, click thru rates, etc. But I find it interesting the way people talk about it, as if it’s zeros and ones. If you think about it, it almost sounds as if people think they’re playing a game of logic and forget that there are actual human beings opening the emails.
“If you use this word in your subject line, you’ll increase open rates.”
“Here are 53 subject lines that are proven to boost open rates.”
“Add social sharing buttons to increase your click thru rates.”
Instead, why not ask, “What subject line would get my subscribers to stop everything that they were currently doing and open my email?”
Notice how that question makes you think about your audience. Likewise, going back to the copywriting training session, the discussions about Robert Cialdini’s work, the B2B Elements of Value Pyramid, and the emotional power of words all boil down to one thing.
And that’s when I brought up to the Head of Marketing that I believe the definition of copywriting is essentially the study of people.
Hopefully, this’ll help you see some new perspectives when it comes to your own marketing.
And if you want to learn more about email copywriting, click the link below.