Interesting "Super" Negative Word - Page 2

Jason Moffatt · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-22-2008, 11:38 PM

Well at least I found out that James is my accountant...

Is Glyphius Just A Magic Ball?

... and apparently I think Coca Cola is full of crap...

Do Large Companies Use Multivariate Testing?

Figured I'd give em a little plug after a little bash.

My favorite part is this...

" How come Jason Moffatt makes so little mullah?"

Kyle Tully · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-22-2008, 11:48 PM

Er, he kinda took your comment completely out of context... didn't he?

Trebor · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 12:15 AM

A while back a guy on here was saying that Glyph said a certain word was bad. But I was using it in the headline of an email that sold 1200 magazine subscriptions in a week - and its in the headline of some adwords campaigns that are winning.

So, Eric test a lot, maybe on the whole it does out pull the averages. But in this specific instance it would have killed off several successful campaigns.

(of course the counter argument would be..."No, it would have made those campaigns even MORE successful!).

Uh huh.

Nebulousx · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 01:05 AM

Well, at least I got an honorable mention for my "abrasive" remark

So, how did he find us? Was it because Ricky spilled the beans or is he really lurking or more likely, somebody tipped him off.

Mike Humphreys · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 01:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Moffatt

My favorite part is this...

"How come Jason Moffatt makes so little mullah?"

How does he know what anyone else makes? What is he hacking into Moffatt's bank account?

Personally, I thought it was funny that he's called Nebs "abrasive". If you did a survey of James B.'s previous customers, they'd probably vote him #1 most abrasive IMer.

Nebulousx · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Humphreys

Personally, I thought it was funny that he's called Nebs "abrasive". If you did a survey of James B.'s previous customers, they'd probably vote him #1 most abrasive IMer.

Oh, I have no doubt that James finds me abrasive. And the ironic thing is, I'm objective enough to defend his software in spite of his personality and insults.

But Mike, you are absolutely correct. He is probably the most despised marketer there is. He maintains a small cult-like following and outside of that fuggedaboutit!

It's too bad for James that he and I weren't on better terms. I know some information that he AND his bank account would LOVE to know.

Montello Marketing · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 01:30 AM

Most people don't know that Grift-eous or whatever it's called was used by our forefathers to write the Magna Carta.

On another note... this software has its place. It's sort of a cheap incarnation of how Hollywood tests TV pilots with a bunch of nimrods in a room with a controller. When the tv show makes them happy they press one button. When it doesn't they press the other...

Ask most writer/producers and they'll tell you it's what ruined tv.

Oh, and those test groups are notoriously wrong. In the history of the tests being done, Seinfeld came in with the lowest scores.

Michel Fortin · 02:00 PM

Bruce, Jason, and Rick make a solid point.

You know what the most important part of Glyphius is?

Yup, the writer.

People tend to think that Glyphius is a tool to replace good copy. It's not. It's a tool, just like a thesaurus, just like a dictionary, just like a word processor.

The idea is to understand the market, and understand the principles of GREAT copy. Then use Glyphius to validate -- not to replace.

Glyphius is not my favorite tool. It's a cool tool, though. Plus, we have to keep in mind that the stats behind Glyphius are based on winning ads -- such as online ads (like AdWords).

But the context of email (and open rates), as well as salesletters themselves, are different.

Testing is not gospel. People tend to forget the 2nd most important part. Aside from great copy (the copywriter), the 2nd most important (and probably #1, really) is the market.

Markets are different. In fact, I would say that copy is 2nd and context is first. The market, the delivery channel, the time frame, and of course, the copy around the "negative" keyword are ALL important.

When I test, I never say that it's gospel or should be taken as such. It's never statistically significant, unless there's a MASSIVE amount of traffic. The more traffic and the more results you get from testing, the slimmer the margin of error.

Next, test results are, again, contextual. I think the important thing about testing is knowing what to test. If a test result says "this works" or "this doesn't," you shouldn't cross-polinate those results to your situation, but now, at least you have something you can test in your business, too.

When I won a split-test challenge using Glyphius, Glyphius didn't win, it was my copy (my choice of words, my angle/hook, and the connection between my copy and the reader, i.e., the context) that won. I only used Glyphius as a tool "after the fact" to validate, tweak, and come up with variations.

Bottom line, let's understand that there's a difference between correlation and causality.

In fact, let me quote an answer I gave to one of my coaching students just recently about a blog post from James.

He asked:

Quote:

Hi Michel, I was just wondering what your opinion was on this post from Brausch’s blog.
Headline Most Important Part Of Sales Letter?

My answer...

Quote:

James may be right as it relates to actual, bottom line, end-of-the-road results. Are headlines DIRECTLY conducive to more sales? The answer, of course, is no.

A headline is the most important part of the salescopy not because it is directly tied to sales. It is, of course, indirectly tied to the bottom line. It isn’t directly producing sales, but it is tied nonetheless.

It’s all about fundamental marketing: AIDA.

The primary objective and purpose of a headline is one thing and one thing only: to get people to start reading the next paragraph. And the next paragraph’s job is to get people to read the 2nd one, etc.

Simply because “nothingness” (no headline) wins in some cases doesn’t mean the headline tested doesn’t work or that it’s safe to say that it’s NOT the most important part of the salesletter. (That’s a correlation, not a cause. And I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

First of all, there are many other variables here that not taken into account:

For one, the first paragraph (in a no-headline letter) can act as a headline itself. Heck, the web page title (in the top browser bar) can be the headline. Who knows?
The mindset of the reader may be “presold” before hitting the copy (such as coming from an affiliate promotion or keyword campaign).
If the traffic came from a PPC campaign, the ad (keywords and ad copy) acts like the headline. People read it and want more information. (That’s what people go online for!) So if they hit a salesletter without a headline, they’re tempted to read it anyway.
Headlines can sometimes scream “salesletter!” and when people see one, they may be pushed to scan or leave the copy.
Finally but most importantly, they may not be targeted AT ALL. And if they are targeted, a headline may push them away. (Better said, a poor headline will.)

Again, the biggest bottleneck in any copy is almost always the headline. Because if people can read past it, they won’t read the rest. If you don’t get their attention (the “A” in AIDA), then the rest of the formula falls down the drain.)

But removing a headline in some cases may be like removing the bottleneck in the first place.

As Dan Kennedy once said:

“The truth about long copy is that, first of all, there’s abundant, legitimate, statistical research, split-testing research, to indicate that virtually without exception (...) that readership falls off dramatically at 300 words but does not again drop off until 3,000 words.”

Dan Kennedy - Tim Paulson Interview

Dan was talking about long copy in this case. In that, if people are targeted, they will read it. All of it. But if they're not, they won't even get pass the headline.

But the prevailing notion pervades headlines in and of themselves, too. In other words, if people are targeted, and the headline is RIGHT for them (they are targeted and the headline grabs their attention), they will read the rest. If not, they will leave the moment they read the headline.

If the headline is poor (and all other headlines are poor, too), then “nothingness” can win because you are in essence removing the bottleneck -- but not necessarily the cause.

If a really good headline was found, it might win over “nothingness”. And I admit that, in some cases, finding the perfect headline might be a challenge -- so “nothing” can be an obvious solution.

But it can also be the result of being too lazy to come up with better headlines, or not having enough traffic and/or time to test more headlines.

Bottom line?

There is a difference between “causality” and “correlation”.

In plain English, I mean that no headline winning over other headlines may be correlational -- in that, no other headline was good enough to produce a result, so nothing wins. “Nothingness” won because the other headlines it was pitted against were not the right headlines (or they were poor headlines.)

So there is a correlation. But it’s not the cause. In other words, “no headline” is NOT what caused a salesletter to outperform. It’s simply the lack of a bottleneck (a poor headline in the first place) that led to the copy outperforming with “nothingness.”

A good example of cause vs. correlation is, if you drink orange juice every day and you don’t have cancer, that means that drinking orange juice cures cancer. Right?

Obviously, that’s an assumptive leap, and it’s wrong. There may be a correlation there, but it’s not the cause.

And that’s the same thing, here.

No headline winning over other headlines doesn’t mean that the lack of a headline caused the copy to pull more. It may simply be that “no headline”, in relationship to all the other headlines it was tested against, won because the other headlines sucked, or that they weren’t right for that market.

So removing the headline removed the bottleneck, in this case.

But it’s also safe to say that, if you were to test more headlines, there would be one out there that may outperform “nothingness” as well.

My 3 cents.

Bottom line, interpreting some test results may be correlational. But it doesn't mean it's causal. Saying that Glyphius says "x" word is a bad WORD is making a leap of assumption that this is the case with your particular copy, your particular market, your particular offer, and your particular delivery channel.

And that's no different than orange juice curing cancer.

Just a thought.

Nebulousx · **Re: Interesting "Super" Negative Word -** 03-23-2008, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michel Fortin

You know what the most important part of Glyphius is?

Yup, the writer.

Bingo! I just had this discussion on the phone with Vin yesterday. For me, Glyphius serves to focus my concentration on the headline.

Before Glyphius, I never understood how BKV could write 200 headlines. Now I do it routinely and subconsciously.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michel Fortin

Bottom line, interpreting some test results may be correlational. But it doesn't mean it's causal. Saying that Glyphius says "x" word is a bad WORD is making a leap of assumption that this is the case with your particular copy, your particular market, your particular offer, and your particular delivery channel.

In my defense, that IS the way it is sold by James. But, to your point, Michel; if I'm selling a video product, the word 'video' will probably be in the headline, regardless of what Glyphius says.

BTW, I've been playing with the word 'video'.

Its the combination of the letters "ide" that Glyphius hates, scoring that a -97. So if you use words that incorporate that 3-letter sequence, you're toast. I'm not sure why or how that makes sense.

And this brings into doubt the concept of 'tokens' that James talks about because that token ruins any word with the sequence in it such as:

ride = -89
tide = -65
idea = -102
ideal = -106
bide = -102
glide = -107
hide = -107
side = -100
slide = -97
wide = -93
cide = -97 hmmm, suffix meaning "to kill"

I don't know what to make of all this, just putting the data out there. Are we subconsciously affected by letter sequences? I don't see how all these words can be bad for copy.

skywriteing · 08:06 PM

Quote:

That settles it, then. Gliffius is not only wrong, it has everything backwards.

The software tracks the longevity of a piece of sales copy. I think that was a Claude Hopkins idea. A video may sell well. But the odds of the same ad selling the same video for more than 2 months are pretty slim....on average.

The lowest score I've discovered is for the name of a company in the UK that rents apartments. They have very short running ads.

That's why the software is only correct 85.6% of the time.
"Flash in the pan" advertising copy can be profitable too.
Some are good at it. Gliffius can still help with that also.