Counterintuitively, highly formatted and image-heavy emails can feel corporate and impersonal, decreasing engagement. Shifting to a simpler, plain-text style mimics a personal message from a friend, which increases perceived authenticity and encourages more replies and genuine connection.

Dave Gerhardt defines his copywriting skill not by its literary elegance but by its ability to grab attention and get a point across forcefully, yet tactfully. He applies this skill everywhere, from rewriting sponsor ads to helping his wife draft firm emails to a school.

Data from 57 million conversions shows that landing pages written at a 5th-7th grade level have a 56% higher conversion rate than those at an 8th-9th grade level. This quantifies the severe financial penalty for even slightly complex marketing copy, making radical simplicity a CRO imperative.

Instead of trying to create something entirely new, effective copywriters begin their process by finding successful examples to model. Dave Gerhardt's first step for a new landing page or newsletter is to analyze best-in-class work from others to understand what works.

In a crowded digital space, products and marketing with a unique, even polarizing, visual style are more likely to capture attention and be memorable than those following standard design trends. Daring to be different visually can be a powerful competitive advantage.

The packaging of a lead magnet—specifically its headline—has a disproportionate impact on how many people opt-in. Businesses should spend more time testing the name and framing of their lead magnet rather than endlessly tweaking the content inside, provided the content solves a real problem.

Human vision has two modes: sharp central focus (foveal) for details like text, and wide peripheral vision that scans for general signals like shape, color, and movement. Since peripheral vision detects things first but cannot read, visual marketing must grab attention with imagery before communicating details with text.

Technical structure is crucial for AI Search Optimization (AEO). An article with properly ordered HTML headings (H1, H2, H3) is three times more likely to be cited by an LLM compared to a similar Page 1 ranking article with poor structure, making it a critical, low-effort optimization.

In the first two weeks of the year, your audience's attention span is extremely short as they catch up on work. Cater to this mindset by using shorter subject lines, concise body copy, and designs with plenty of white space in emails and social posts to improve consumption.