CHALLENGE: Which one of these did 281% better?

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Hey Candidate,

I'm going to talk more about GREAT WRITING for a few days.

Not Hemingway and not formal rules about the subjunctive tense — but battle-tested, everyday techniques you can use to make people WANT to hear from you.

All these people out there are talking about weird webinar tricks and Instagram hacks, but writing is a skill you can (1) get better at, (2) use to improve your relationships, and (3) if applied to business, use to generate millions of dollars.

I built a following of hundreds of thousands of people — and a multimillion-dollar business — by mixing tactical advice with jokes about Indian parents and how I think buffalo wings add more value to the world than life coaches.

You can write better and it will improve your life. Here's an example of using better writing at work. I got an email from a guy, Kurt, who works in human resources. Look what he said:

"I'm in HR, which is 20% comprised of sending out lots of information about inscrutable crap that very few people care about. My job is to make people care about it (or, barring that, to at least get people to read it). So my tactic is to make the emails ridiculous enough so that people actually enjoy reading them. Coworkers across the company actually tell me (unsolicited) that they look forward to opening emails when they see that they're from me."

ARE YOU READING THIS?! WRITE BETTER AND PEOPLE WILL EVEN BE EXCITED TO READ YOUR HR EMAILS.

Great writing sets you apart from everyone else:

At work. As a hiring manager, if I see 2 job candidates and one is a better writer, I'd hire the better writer every day. You can be great at your job, but if you can't communicate, your career will plateau.

In dating. God, stop being boring. You can send better text messages and emails to your friends. We even rewrote the copy on this guy's dating profile and got him 4X as many dates.

With your friends. You get two party invites, which one would you attend: "Wanna watch the game? Kyle's here" or "Hey, my BBQ Olympics party is on! You should come. We've got the rooftop patio reserved and I made a cocktail for you."

Simple changes, instant results.

Let me give you a before-and-after example with real numbers.

This is a business example from my student Colleen Carroll's business, Innovative Reading, a site that helps parents teach their children to enjoy reading. Colleen is a student in Call to Action, our premium copywriting course.

Take a look at the two images below. They're two different versions of a landing page. At a glance, they both look similar. But one of them performed 281% better than the other.

That's nearly 3X as many email subscribers.

Version A:

Version B:

Which one do you think brought in nearly 3X more subscribers? And more importantly, why?

Take a close look at the two versions and I'm sure you'll be able to guess.

Version A outperformed Version B by 281%.

On the surface, that seems insane. That means her reach and her audience more than tripled overnight. But this isn't magic or luck. When you break it down, it makes perfect sense.

Compare the two pages.

Version A is a masterpiece — not because the copy is perfectly polished or because she uses the perfect grammar — but because it shows a deep understanding of the customer:

It paints a picture that resonates with her customer. Anyone who's going to buy this product has had a lot of fights with their kids about getting away from the TV / Xbox / iPad and picking up a book.
It's credible. At a glance you can see her academic credentials, that she has 15 years' experience, and that she has happy customers. If someone is going to trust you with their child, that kind of credibility is vital.
It promises to solve their problem NOW. Look at the offer. One week, 10 minutes a night, and your child will love reading. In other words, if they commit an hour the problem goes away forever.

Without changing her product one bit, she increased email subscriptions by 281%. To put that in perspective, if you changed the way you write anything — emails, sales pages, even text messages — you could massively improve the number of people who responded.

You could get recognized at work.

You could grow your business in a huge way.

You could connect to new people at companies you're interested in.

All from getting a little better at writing.

That's why you hear the real experts and successful business owners spend so much time talking about copywriting.

But I don't want to just talk. I want to show you.

You ever wonder how I write emails like this one? (The one you're reading right now, Candidate.)

I decided to show you a real, behind-the-scenes video where I write an entire email right in front of your eyes. We captured the entire creative process. I'll send you that video tomorrow.

Keep an eye out,

P.S. Here's some more amazing copy:

What do you think of this Tinder profile?
How do you sell fish oil, a product with no clear benefits? Great examples here from Triton Fish Oil and Onnit Krill Oil. Study them carefully. What do you notice?
Seen any amazing copywriting lately? Send me a link.

And most importantly, I want you to start thinking about how important it is to become a better writer. If you spend even a couple weeks on this, it will change your life.