The S.T.U.P.I.D. Email

(Swipe, Thought, Uplifting, Picture, Interesting, Drawing)

This is a fun email for Friday April 22nd, 2022. Hope you like it :)
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🎤 Listen to this email here:

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Swipe:

This seems so stupidly old school, but the whole world used to run on these things called "pagers" or "beepers."

Circa 1997 it was common for people to carry around these big fat chunky plastic devices that would display a phone number on it:

You would then find a landline phone to call back that number.

However people got clever and started making codes they could send using roughly 12 characters or less.

Checkout this LA Times article from 1997 showing how teenagers would use these codes to communicate:

It's funny to think how "high tech" this was ~20 years ago. Compare this simple one-way communication device showing 12 characters compared to a regular modern day iPhone!

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Thought:

My favorite things to re-vamp in our members area is software products. The reason is you can:

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Show, Don't Tell

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Basically this means you can show an image or video of the software in action and people understand it right away. No need to explain with tons of text.

Here's an example of Show, Don't Tell for a workout app:

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Here's an example of Show, Don't Tell for a podcast editing feature on Descript:

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Here's an example of Show, Don't Tell for a "social landing page" app:

Each of these examples conveys what the product does with very little text, as just "showing it" does most of the work.

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Uplifting:

This is a cool feature of Apple TV I rarely seen talked about:

Try watching your Apple TV using AirPods and they do this thing called "Spatial Audio."

It means even if your head turns away from the screen, it will still sound in your head like the audio is coming directly out the TV...as if you were watching with speakers.

It works amazingly well on Hulu and NetFlix (not really YouTube).

This sounds so realistic I had to triple-check my speakers were off!

To test the different settings, try watching YouTube or turning off the Spatial Audio, and you'll see how different "normal" mode sounds.

This is a cool feature if you don't want to disturb other people in the house, but still want to crank a movie loud, or if you don't have great speakers on your TV.

Try it!

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Picture:

This is a funny sign, but super accurate and to the point! You can't help but run this horrible scenario in your head when you look at the machinery.

This is as direct as copywriting can be!

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Interesting:

This whimsically bad homepage is still the homepage of CopywritingCourse.com:

The reason it stays like this:
I've NEVER been able to beat the conversion rate of it....specifically this version with the stick figure guy.
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​This month a 1,000+ conversion test showed this page did:​
• Unique Visitors 7,619
• Conversions 1,200 (people who entered their name and email)
• Conversion Rate 15.75%
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Nearly a 16% conversion rate!

That means of every 100 people that see that page, 16 of them signup to receive my emails. That's pretty good for an old stick figure!

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Drawing:

10 years ago I acquired most of my knowledge through books.... Now I acquire it mostly through podcasts and YouTube and Social Media:

It's been fun to watch this shift happen as better forms of consumption become digital, easier and cheaper.

Next stop: VR and AR experiences!

In 20 years we'll look back on the era of big fat chunky facemasks for VR like we look back at the comical technology of pagers 😎

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Hope you enjoyed these little tidbits, have a happy Friday!
​Sincerely,
Neville Medhora - CopywritingCourse.com | @NevMed​

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