Stock photos could be hurting your conversion rate.

Why? They’re unoriginal and inauthentic.

Often, people have seen the same images way too many times. They associate their boredom with your content—and bounce.

Conversely, unique photos and illustrations feel more authentic and engaging.

But what if you don’t have many original images to use, or the budget to create them?

Consider our AI art–generating overlords, such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

For example, I got Midjourney to generate this image with a prompt of "a room filled with robot monkeys working on computers":

Not perfect, but it’s definitely scroll-stopping and interesting. And I could take a few minutes to tweak it to more of what I was looking for. 

The software company Deephaven recently swapped out the stock images on its blog with DALL-E-created graphics. It cost $45 total (see them here).

It’s worth trying AI image generators like DALL-E if:

• You don’t have the budget or resources to create original graphics.
• Your niche isn’t easy to visually represent—whether because it’s very technical (like software) or because relevant photos simply don’t exist.

Some tips for creating better AI graphics:

• Browse the DALL-E 2 subreddit for inspiration. Most posts include images and their prompts.
• Include stylistic modifiers in your prompt. For example, include the name of a specific aesthetic or artist. Or use phrases like “a film still from [famous movie].”
• Avoid using words/phrases that may violate DALL-E’s content policy.
• Expect to do some post-production work. AI isn’t taking over the world yet. You may need to do some light editing to get rid of nonsensical text or elements you don’t like.

Speaking of which…

The unsubscribe link is ubiquitous. In fact, you legally have to include it in marketing emails.

It also helps keep your list clean, so your emails don’t end up in spam or the promotions tab. (We cover more ways to improve your email deliverability here.)

But some subscribers may not want to permanently unsubscribe from your list. Maybe they just want a break.

For instance, someone who just maxed out their budget buying Halloween costumes and Black Friday deals might want a break from promo emails until after the holidays.

Letting subscribers “snooze” emails is a great alternative to an all-or-nothing approach. Give them the option to hold off on getting emails from your brand, e.g., for a month or two.

Here’s an example from the oral-care brand HiSmile:

Why this is worth testing:

• It may reduce your total unsubscribes.
  
  
• It might give insight into users’ email preferences and habits. If a bunch of subscribers snooze for a month, consider toning down the aggressiveness of certain promotional campaigns (coughBFCMcough).

Sending too many emails can turn your unsubscribe link into your CTA.

But there is a time of year when consumers welcome more emails: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

A recent study showed that 63% of consumers want to be reminded of BFCM deals by email.

Hold on now. That doesn’t mean we’re telling you to send out multiple daily email blasts during your BFCM promo.

Instead, spread out your communications before, during, and after BFCM.

• Before: Pre-promote your promotion. Use a countdown sequence to build anticipation for your sale—and to be first to mind before the onslaught of BFCM messaging.

• During: Don’t wait until Black Friday to share your deal. Start at least a week early to literally get ahead of the competition. Make sure you’ve updated your site popups and email flows (like abandoned cart discount offers) to reflect your promotion. Once customers make purchases, filter them out from additional BFCM promotional and retargeting campaigns.
  
• After: Make a plan in advance for post-sale content—like product tutorials or gift guides—to provide deeper value as we head into the December holidays. Or highlight your brand’s values, e.g., by sending out a personal message from your founder or sharing your brand story.

Email is still the top channel for convincing someone to buy online—so spend time crafting your holiday sequence to maximize sales and minimize bails (unsubs).

Are you competing against well-known, established brands in search?

Here’s a clever way to use their popularity to your advantage: Create content targeting long-tail keywords about their product features.

You can effectively “steal” your competitors’ traffic. Companies often use a single landing page to discuss all of their products’ features rather than separate pages for each one. By writing content specifically about one feature, you could outrank them.

Take ClientVenue, a project management tool for agencies. ClientVenue targets branded keywords about better-known competitors like ClickUp, Trello, and Asana.

• Here’s a page about Asana’s client portal, which ranks for keywords like “asana dashboard” and “use asana as crm”. The page thoroughly covers Asana’s feature—what users are searching for—but then also explains what makes ClientVenue a better option.

This strategy doesn’t just help drive traffic—it drives high-intent traffic. After all, the people searching for info about a company’s specific feature are generally interested in using it. According to ClientVenue, its page about Asana’s client portal has an 11% conversion rate.

To find long-tail keywords worth targeting:

1. Look up your competitors’ feature pages in Ahrefs or Semrush. Example: If you were creating a new messaging software, you could check out Slack’s features page.
2. Find out the page’s top organic keywords.
3. Look for keywords about features that also apply to your product. If there are any features for which your product is superior, even better—these are the search terms that you should create content around.

Just make sure you tie the piece back to your own product—like explaining why yours is a better alternative. That’ll drive the conversions.

We see it all the time: A startup with a great product but no clear way to bring in recurring revenue.

Everything about your business is going to be tougher if:

• Your product only gets you 1-2 sales over the entire lifetime of a customer,
• It generates relatively low profit, and
• You have a super niche market.

Example: wiener dog ramps.

You can still build a thriving business. But without a way to grow LTV over time, you’ll constantly be on the customer-acquisition treadmill.

Consider these three levers to grow LTV and make your revenue more predictable:

1. Add value through memberships and subscriptions. Peloton is an example: You buy a Peloton bike just once, then pay a subscription to get full value from it by taking classes.
2. Expand your offerings within the current segment. What are some other products your customers would love? Bonus points if those new products have a higher buying frequency than the primary one-time product. Alpha Paw, the company that makes the dog ramps, expanded to sell dog beds, food, and toys.
3. Take your product to new audiences. There might be new-segment opportunities right in front of you. While market expansion won’t increase your LTV, it could be a relatively easy win, since you won't have to build a new product. (You will have to do some rebranding/repositioning, but that’s easier than developing and validating an entirely new product.)

Black Friday-Cyber Monday isn’t for everyone.

If sustainability is part of your mission, it probably doesn’t make sense for you to push a traditional BFCM deal—this is a notoriously wasteful time of year.

Instead of participating in the retail rush, here are three alternative approaches to consider.

• Highlight other brands that are doing good work. Ocean Bottle did this last year in a post supporting businesses like Trap Fruits London, a community grocer, and From Babies with Love, which donates 100% of their profits to orphaned and abandoned children. Build goodwill for your brand that outlasts the holiday shopping season.

• Launch a disruption campaign. In 2020, Allbirds raised prices for Black Friday—and donated the proceeds to Greta Thunberg’s climate movement. REI’s #OptOutside campaign encourages everyone to spend the day outside, not money indoors. They close their stores on Black Friday (but still pay employees). Trade short-term holiday sales for a stronger brand, new, mission-aligned customers, and long-term customer loyalty.
• Celebrate your loyal customers. Instead of promotions to bring in new customers, nurture the relationships you already have. Offer premium services or hold special hours for your existing customers, or consider on-brand sustainable ways to thank them for their loyalty.

94% of global consumers value companies with a strong sense of purpose. If your core values seem at odds with holiday sales, and you choose values over sales, you’ll leave an impression that lasts long past the season.

Get this: Simply using negations (words like “no,” “don’t,” “never”) can increase your engagement and word of mouth.

In a study of more than 15,000 tweets and Facebook posts, more people viewed, engaged with, and acted on posts that had negation words.

Consider testing them in your copy.

A few examples of how to frame your content using negations:

• Tell users what not to do. “Don’t settle for XYZ.”
• Explain what your product helps avoid or reduce. “Never worry about [problem] again.”
• Create a sense of impossibility. “You can’t find a better deal anywhere else.”

Why do negations generate more engagement?

Research suggests that since these words seem powerful and assertive, they signal higher social status. So consumers who desire status tend to engage more.

Given these findings, negations might have a stronger impact on luxury brands or other businesses that sell status-signaling products.

Creative teams often rely on instinct and assumptions alone to answer customers’ “whys”:

• Why they should click on your ad
• Why they should be excited about your brand or product
• Why they should buy

Until you understand which “whys” truly resonate, your campaigns will never reach their full potential.

If you run social ads, try a simple four-step exercise to uncover high-impact creative concepts.

1. Write down 25 reasons why someone should buy your product. We'll use a hypothetical example of deodorant from an eco-friendly DTC brand.

2. Look at the product's reviews, and make a list of all the benefits people talk about. If someone says:

• "It's long-lasting"—put a tally mark
• "It's natural"—put a tally mark
• "It smells great"—put a tally mark
• "It's long-lasting"—put a second tally mark

3. Sort benefits from most to least tallies.

4. Match the top 10 benefits with your list of "whys."

Now you have a messaging matrix for 10 ad angles—using your customers' words. Every angle on the list should have:

• A clear why
• A clear problem it's illustrating
• And the benefit it provides

Test these angles in your campaigns to see what resonates, then iterate on top performers.

David Perell recently asked a question: “What’s causing all these logos to look the same?”

Within a day, his post had gotten 20 million impressions.

His question points to a wider trend: Brands are getting more homogenous in their design, UX, and messaging. Creativity is losing out to CRO—and consumers are getting bored.

Reminder: Consumers like being surprised and delighted. Otherwise, TikTok wouldn’t exist.

To prevent brand burnout—that’s consumer fatigue caused by brand uniformity—differentiate your brand. Consider using an “onlyness statement” to do that. What is it that only your brand is doing?

Follow this structure: “Our brand is the ONLY ___________ [your business category] that __________ [your differentiator].”

For example, “Trader Joe’s is the only grocery store that makes shopping unique and fun.”

Then flesh it out:

• What: The only [your category]
• How: that [your differentiator]
• Who: for [your customers]
• Where: in [your market geography]
• Why: who [your customers’ need state]
• When: during [the underlying trend]

Another example:

• What: The only motorcycle manufacturer
• How: that makes big, loud bikes
• Who: for macho guys (and macho wannabees)
• Where: mostly in the US
• Why: who want to join a gang of cowboys
• When: in an era of decreasing personal freedom

You can see how that encapsulates Harley-Davidson’s slogan: “American by birth. Rebel by choice.”

Nearly half of checkout pages have poor UX in their field labeling and microcopy.

That means a lot of unoptimized bottom-of-funnel pages. 

Baymard Institute uncovered two major issues with checkout page labeling and microcopy: jargon and ambiguity. Both have easy fixes.

Checkout page jargon: Although “don’t use jargon” is copywriting 101, it sneaks in all the time anyway. Even the best jargon-hunters miss it in places that are easy to overlook, like checkout page microcopy.

• Easy fix: Read through your checkout page. Are there terms like CID or CSC? Does your shipping or opt-in messaging use robotic language? Clean up any confusing language, and use heatmaps or user tests to see if your checkout page language is slowing shoppers down.

Ambiguity in required vs. optional fields: 85% of sites don’t explicitly mark required and optional fields. Instead, sites often only mark required or optional fields—not both.

• The frequent result: validation errors preventing purchases. Not something you want at the purchase conversion point.
• Easy fix: Mark both required and optional fields. Every little thing you can do to reduce confusion and friction increases the ease of conversion.

Your goal as a writer is to get readers to fall down a "slippery slope."

The job of the 1st sentence: get people to read the 2nd sentence.

The job of the 3rd: get people to read the 4th. And so on.

Now: there's a simple (and effective) copywriting technique you can put to work today to keep people sliding down the page instead of hitting the "back" button.

"Bucket brigades"

What are Bucket Brigades?

Before fire engines were invented, firefighters would pass buckets of water from person to person down the chain to extinguish fires. Hence, "bucket brigade."

When writing content, the "fire" you're trying to prevent is a person leaving the page. 

Add these words and phrases to your content to keep people reading:

1. Listen up:
2. Here’s the deal:
3. Now:
4. What’s the bottom line?
5. You might be wondering:
6. This is crazy:
7. Let me explain:
8. It gets better/worse:
9. But here’s the kicker:
10. Want to know the best part?

You might be wondering: “How do you know where to add these?”

First: Use heatmaps to pinpoint where people drop off. Add a bucket brigade there, and watch your time on page increase.

Then:

• Use them in transitions
• Use them when you need to grab the reader's attention
• Use them before/after explaining a key concept
• Use them to direct attention to an important takeaway

And here’s the best part: (See what we did there?) Any form of written content, from emails to ebooks, to ads as well as advertorials, can benefit from a handful of well-placed bucket brigades.

Personalized product demos are an overrated tactic for acquiring new customers.

Here’s how the typical demo strategy runs:

Prospects click on a “get demo” button. They’re connected with a sales development representative for a qualification call. Then the rep passes on this information to a salesperson who leads a demo.

The problem with these demos: They make prospects jump through unnecessary hoops, like a qualification call before the actual demo. And qualification calls can raise prospects’ expectations—bad if your demos aren’t actually personalized.

Most companies don’t actually need to provide one-on-one demos to win customers. Instead, consider providing:

• An ungated explainer video that describes what your product does. Keep it under one minute.
• A short demo video (2-3 minutes) actually showing what your product does. This should also be ungated.
• A deep demo video that runs through your product more thoroughly. Make it as long as necessary, and publish it on both your site and YouTube channel.
• A weekly live demo that requires prospects to register. Here, prospects can ask questions—and you can follow up afterward to ask if they’d like to be connected with a salesperson.

Using this strategy, you’ll save your sales team’s time as well as your prospects’. Take a look at Otter.ai’s video assets for an example—here’s an explainer, short demo, long demo, and a recording of a live demo.

Consumer research often focuses on opinions, not stories. That’s missing a big opportunity.

Example of research that leans into opinions, not stories:

• Asking a customer, “What’s your favorite feature of our product?”
• Instead of, “Tell me about a time when our product added value to your life.”

Customer storytelling can reveal unfiltered perspectives and add context and depth to your consumer insights. And it’s grounded in real-world usage, not hypotheticals.

A simple way to gather customer stories is through digital ethnography. That’s the practice of studying your customers in the real world—and you should be doing it regularly.

We asked Eun Suk Rafael Gi, VP of Growth at our agency Bell Curve, for tips on conducting digital ethnography. Here are three he shared.

• Join customers’ online communities: “Understand what social platforms / communities your audience participates in, and join those communities,” Raf said. “Be an active listener; better yet, be an active participant. This roleplay will allow you to spend some time in your customers’ shoes and give you a more intuitive understanding of your audience.”
• Look for patterns: Don’t just look at the words people use. Focus on the intensity of posts and comments. What do people post about most often? What do they post about most “loudly”?
• Study your own profile: Review your company’s social media accounts. Who is following and engaging with you? If followers’ profiles are public, look at what kinds of pictures, posts, and stories they’ve shared to understand what motivates them.

Get inventive with it—think through all the ways you can find, engage with, and study behavior both on- and off-line. As Raf puts it, “Your creativity and curiosity set the bounds for what you’ll uncover.”

Internal links can radically improve UX and overall SEO health.

Thing is, most marketers don't have a deliberate strategy in place to benefit.

Unless you have a massive website (1,000+ pages), there's no need to over-complicate it—stick to the "ICARE" framework: Intent, Context, Anchor text, Relevance, External link authority.

1. Intent: Link to pages that readers expect. For example: "Strong customer relationships lead to better brand equality."

• Right: Links to Guide to Customer Relations
• Wrong: Links to CRM Software Solution Page

Link to pages that build on intent.

2. Context: Don't match keywords; match context.

Right: Put your audience at the center of your SEO strategy

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Wrong: Byrdie's SEO strategy is built around topic clusters

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Google understands the context surrounding links. So make sure the pages you link are contextually relevant.

3. Anchor text: Use keywords.

Right: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

Wrong: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

The former satisfies intent, context, and targets a great keyword. The latter satisfies none of those things.

4. Relevance: Add links where they're relevant.

Ideally, links are related to the main topic of the page. In a section on internal linking, you'd want to link to pages about internal linking. 

5. External link authority: Link from high authority pages.

Lastly, if you can't find linking opportunities that satisfy the first four criteria, your best bet is to link out from pages with the most backlinks.

“We’re pleased to announce”: the start of exactly 0% of compelling product announcements.

For a more remarkable way to announce product news, look at how Twitter does it.

That tweet is deceptively simple. A lot went into it. 

Marketing Brew’s Jack Appleby asked Ashley Tyra, Twitter’s Head of Social Editorial and Voice, what their process for product tweets is. Here’s what she said:

“We open up a Google doc and start doing a free write. First, we start with the very straightforward ones—once you nail the clarity line, you can start to have fun with the rest. We probably write 20 to 50 options for ourselves, then arrange them—what are the ones floating to the top? Which ones are making us laugh? Which ones do we have that gut reaction to?”

Breaking that down into steps, which you can use anywhere you’re sharing news (like email hooks or in-app popups):

1. Create a shared doc and invite your writing team to join.
2. Writers add announcements that a) share clear information and b) have personality. As Appleby puts it, “While personality is important in today’s attenuated social landscape, you can’t be all hat and no cattle.”
3. Arrange the top contenders. Pay attention to emotional and gut reactions—those are what make a message stick.

Having a well-defined social media voice will make this process easier. Here are some useful tips from Hootsuite on creating a social media style guide.

If you’ve been a reader for a bit, you might remember the DTC company Graza. They sell olive oil. We wrote about their clever retention tactic back in Newsletter 83. 

Turns out they also perfected their launch. Within 24 hours of launching, Graza sold out and got a 7.91% conversion rate from Instagram.

A large part of their hot start came from product seeding—sending influencers products with the hope that they’d promote them to their audiences.

Since Graza targeted a variety of influencers with different-sized audiences, timing played a big role here. According to Graza’s social media consultant Kendall Dickieson, smaller influencers helped sell out the launch, while larger influencers contributed to pre-orders for the next shipment.

To create a similar effect, here’s how to time your product seeding:

• Send micro-influencers (25k–150k followers) and nano-influencers (under 10k followers) products weeks before your launch. Their UGC is ideal for building anticipation for launch day. For Graza, these smaller influencers often posted about the olive oil right away.
• Send macro-influencers (200k+ followers) products closer to launch. These influencers have backed-up content calendars, but their posts tend to get more reach (and, in some cases, more conversions). If they post pre-launch, their followers won’t be able to buy anything. But after launch, their posts can generate a lot of momentum.