# SaaS Copywriting Secrets: 5 Mistakes Killing Your Conversions

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** MicroConf
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnhTqs3giNc
- **Дата:** 11.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 45:00
- **Просмотры:** 200
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/50695

## Описание

Most SaaS copy reads like it was written by a terrified technical founder — "we" this, "we" that, feature lists nobody asked for. SaaS copywriting expert Lianna Patch breaks down the 5 copywriting mistakes she sees over and over in SaaS websites and emails, and shows you the exact swipe file of great SaaS copy you can steal (legally, mostly) for your own product.

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In this MicroConf US 2024 talk from Atlanta, Lianna Patch (Punchline Copy) walks through real homepage, email, and landing page examples from SaaS companies doing it right — Bench, Bitly, Balsamiq, Knackle, Cloud Forecast, MAPAS Street, and more — plus the danger zones to avoid when you're knee-deep in the copy trenches.

What you'll learn:
→ How to gather voice-of-customer (VOC) research that actually moves the needle (and where to find it for free)
→ The "sticky phrase" technique 

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Yeah, okay, this is secrets from my SaaS swipe file. This is a brand new talk just for MicroConf. It features a lot of software examples, a lot of tiny seed examples, and so I'm going to really quickly just tell you what I'm going to tell you. We're going to look at so much good copy from all throughout the customer funnel. We're going to talk about what makes it good, and you can just go ahead and steal it. Like don't actually steal it, like make it your own, but like steal it, you know? Nothing is new under the sun. You don't have to reinvent anything. I'm also going to show you bad copy because Schadenfreude is a thing. We love to see what other people are doing wrong. We love to celebrate our superiority and their terrible decisions. We can learn from them, and I will not call anybody out by name with bad copy. And we're going to look at how to use voice of customer research because when I asked in the MicroConf Slack, "What do you want me to talk about? " like three people replied. There's 200 of you here. Three people were like, "Um, I would like to learn what to do with my voice of customer research. " So for you, there is an entire section of this talk. And I'm going to actually start there. We're also going to have a bunch of danger zones because it's after lunch, you're falling asleep, and so every now and then I'll be like, "Danger zone! " Don't do this. While I'm telling you to do something, so just, you know, watch out for that. Scary. Red, is it red? Does it look red or does it look orange? Red, red. Red was the consensus. Shades of red. Okay, great. And why are we talking about copywriting? I think everybody here is like fairly well copy pilled. You know, you understand that copy is like kind of the thing that matters the most when you have a website and you send emails and people have to read something, that thing should probably be pretty convincing. Um, but it's also one of the most effective levers financially that you can pull for growth. Uh, it's less expensive than throwing money at Meta, you know, depending on who you hire. I had to use that somehow. So let's talk about how to actually how to get actually useful voice of customer research and then what you can do with it. And this sort of dovetails with some of what Ran talked about. It dovetails with the stages of awareness that Rob talked about. Super useful for me cuz I don't have to teach you about the five stages of awareness, but like read Eugene Schwartz's book. It is the OG. So where do you start? You understand where they are. That's like stage zero. You have to understand if they are completely unaware of having a problem. We've already talked about like probably not the most effective place to target. It's just not worth it. Uh, and if only we have already had a talk about this, right? From a man who never ages. I call [ __ ] on this talk, okay? Like I'm upset. I need to know whose blood to drink, okay? What kind of plasma injections are we doing, Rob, because — this seems unfair. Sherry, I cut you out of the photo just to focus on Rob. It's not wasn't personal. I'm like I'm 35 and I look like Rob's grandmother, okay? — Anyway, Rob already told you about stages of awareness. I'm going to tell you where to go to find voice of customer research. Uh, you'll be able to plug this into your five stages once you have it. If you are not looking at your reviews and your competitor reviews, you should be doing that. Uh, Capterra, G2, Trustpilot. Um, you can look on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Quora. We've named a bunch of these sites already. Uh, you can look at your support chat and your email tickets for the kinds of questions that people have and the way they phrase them to you. You can send surveys. Imagine this, talking to your customers. Wow, what a concept, you know? Um, but instead of sending like a 15 question NPS numbers based survey, send them open-ended questions. Try to keep it to three max and talk about like how things were feeling. Where were you? What was going on in your life that led you to seek us out? You know, how does it feel to use blah blah? What made you so angry about the other thing, the other product that you were trying? And then obviously do user interviews. We've talked a lot about good user research tools. But like basically just get curious, right? Be open. I love this cat. You know I had to put one cat in the slides. This is not my cat. This looks like a designer cat. Don't buy designer cats. Don't buy pets. It's lame. Um, but you want to build the VOC collection process into all stages of your customer communication. So just because you get somebody to sign up, just because you activate them, you get them to pay for a subscription, don't stop asking them how they're doing, what they're using it for, if they have any feedback for you. That improves retention and it means that all of your copy at every stage of the user journey will reflect actual users. So build it in from the

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

beginning. We already talked about what was going on in your life that led you to consider this product. Uh, stole that one from Joanna Wiebe, another OG. Uh, what do you want from us? Describe your perfect situation. Like if you could sit down and get your best possible outcome, what would that be like? What does that sound like in your words? What don't you want? What do you really hate? What's driving you crazy about the current tool that you're using that you wish you could just throw into the sea? Definitely say that. They love it when you do that. What's stopping you? You're trying to understand their barriers, what's blocking them from achieving their goals. Uh, and then like, "Hey, can I upgrade you to the enterprise tier? " You know, while they're not listening at the end. Can I just like bump you up to the, you know, $500 a month plan? Don't do that. What are you looking for when people give you these answers? Specifics and sticky phrases. There is no good copy out there that is not specific. And the good thing is that your customers will already give you these specific phrases. They're sticky. They're the kinds of things you read a million reviews and somebody says something that just stands out and you're like, "Oh, I never would have said it that way. " That's really weird. So here's me, uh, in a Tonal Facebook group. Tonal's a digital weightlifting machine that I use and love. And somebody was talking about, "Is it worth the price? " It's like it's expensive. It's a big heavy machine. You have to get it installed. And somebody said, "I would spend this amount of money on a vacation or two. Those vacations last 7 to 10 days each. If I'm not willing to spend this much on my health for the rest of my life, something is off. You're not buying a machine, you're buying the rest of your life. " Like I was like, "Hey, Tonal. She's writing your copy for you. " And here's two more examples because we're going to have so many examples throughout this talk. We have, uh, two very different clients, one left, one right. This is how I organize my voice of customer research. Notice how the sticky phrases are bolded, but I've left everything else in context. This isn't a big mistake that people make when they start to gather voice of customer. They're like, "That's a cool phrase. " And they take it out of context and then we go they go back to it later. They're like, "Wait, what were they talking about? " I don't understand what this means. So leave it in context. Bold the pieces that you find most interesting. Uh, so stop chasing the next best thing and focus on what really needs to happen. That's raw. That's real. That's what a customer wanted. This was like a digital, uh, course academy, a digital marketing academy. Uh, that's what I call a good dose of hard-ass reality. That could be a subhead on a page. That could be an email that's like the truths you don't want to hear about how much work it's going to take to succeed at digital marketing. Uh, I am a hummingbird when it comes to the internet. Uh, I've been digging for gold. The vein of gold was always there if only I had kept on digging. These are really useful little snippets of copy that you can work in everywhere and they make you immediately sound like you're listening. They make you sound authentic. Uh, and then the other side is a SaaS product. Uh, it's called Testpad. Uh, you might use it maybe. Does anybody use Testpad? Rolling out user tests? No. Okay, you should. It's great. Uh, and uh, somebody said, "If you get abducted by aliens, could someone else pick up what you were doing? " That's one of the benefits of how easy it is to use Testpad. So instead of saying like, "Our stuff is easy to use. It's intuitive. " Those are good, but those are kind of up here. If you were abducted by aliens, if you got hit by a bus, if you quit your job SaaS tomorrow and went back to, you know, stocking shelves at Trader Joe's, could somebody else just instantly step into your shoes? That's what this product does. Very cool, right? This can also reveal things that you didn't expect about your own product, uh, the ways people are using it that you didn't know about. So talk to your customers and I'm like beating a dead horse out here. So what do you do when you have all this data? You've collected your Google Doc. You've filled up many, many rows. You've bolded your sticky phrases diligently. A great thing to do is to map it to your user journey or your stages of awareness. So like what do people say when they're just getting started? What do they say when they're like activated, but they're not using the whole product yet? There's they're leaving a lot of stuff on the table. What do they say when they're super fans and ambassadors and they're talking about it? What do they say when they're just kind of like hanging out, you know, hoping for something better to come along cuz you forgot about them? Or when they have trouble. Um, yeah, that's it's that's a key thing to know what do What do people say when they're having trouble? You can also structure it into a simple copywriting formula called problem agitation solution, PASS. I added a U, so it's U PASS. U is for UVP, your unique value proposition. What is this? Who is it for? Why should you care? As quickly and clearly as possible. So as you collect this UV VOC, structure it into the UVP categories. We enough acronyms? You're all like, "No, too many acronyms. " You're at the wrong place if you don't

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

like acronyms. Um yeah, and I because I'm a copywriter, I get to steal words from my clients' mouths. Like, some of y'all know your users so well um and you distill what they're looking for often better than they can. So, I get to talk to you and use your stuff as VOC, which I'm going to show you now. So, Kim Is Kim here? Kim from Naklie? Hi, Kim. Kim and I worked together on some website copy uh and I talked to him cuz he really understood his customers. Uh he sent me a lot of in he said a lot of interesting things. I took a lot of notes. These are my raw notes. You can see I'm highlighting like what people want from his software. It's document automentation a document automation for law firms. Uh we're human. We're busy. Errors creep into documents. A word like creep maybe I wouldn't have come up with, but it's it it's that kind of way that things sort of happen without you wanting to, right? Like, it's everyone's doing their best. We're all trying our best, but errors creep in. So, this is people become aware of their problem. They talk about it like this. Uh then you agitate it. What happens if you don't fix this problem? How does it get worse? Again, very specifically, how can things get worse? Uh you can send some unprofessional-ass documents to a client that shows like maybe you weren't paying attention and they lose a lot of trust in you as their attorney. Um the boilerplate portion of the template will vary between documents when it shouldn't 99% of the time. Like, you are promising this uh perfect result and you're not delivering it 99% of the time. You should probably use Naklie. Uh and then the aha moment is that like Naklie allows you to use conditional logic. Uh it's accurate. You can do so many more documents than you could by hand. So, you get both the accuracy and the efficiency, right? All of this all the bolded stuff uh is stuff that Kim knows his users really care about. Right, Kim? Cool. Um if this is hard for you to distill, here's a little trick for you. Get interviewed. Go on a podcast. Join a MicroConf mastermind. Join MicroConf Connect. And have people ask you a bunch of searing questions about your users so that you can have to think about this stuff and say it out loud. If you're like, "I just don't want to write this down. " So, here's what we ended up with. Naklie eliminates errors, inconsistent templates, and duplicated work. No attorney on Earth has time to create every document from scratch. You probably are doing What was going on in your life? You were using previous client documents as starting points for new clients. It's okay. We understand. We forgive you. We do it, too. We're coming at you where you are and we're saying actually there's a better way. Because like you don't want to end up with helpful file names like estate plan template _final _june2022 _use_this_one. Right? We've all seen that file name and it's like, "Cool. I'm so glad I paid you thousands of dollars. " So, we've already kind of talked about this. Sticking pieces of your VOC right into your website and email copy. If you have few pieces and far between uh put them in your headers, bullets, and put them in your CTAs. So, here is Rob's Kickstarter page, which we just talked about from the SaaS Playbook. Um Rob knows and I know what bootstrappers do when they're looking for answers. Google, Stack Overflow, Reddit, any search query with Reddit appended to the end. I do the same thing. So, trawling random forums for information was a very specific way to be like, "We know how you look for answers. " And actually we put them all in one book for you. Rob I had nothing to do with the book. Um here is a homepage I recently rewrote for Balsamiq. Uh they have again, they have so much great user data uh but we haven't talked about the problem of siloing, right? You collect this and then you don't do anything with it. It's like, "Make sure that it actually makes its way into its copy. " People talked about Balsamiq being really fun. They talked about it being really fast and quick to just throw a wireframe together. And they said, "I can get into flow. " And I was like, "Oh, three F words. " None of those are my favorite F word. But I guess all right the headline. So, fast, fun, and flowy. Someone else called it a simple shared language. Doesn't have all the bells and whistles that get confusing and sort of bog you down with more complex design tools that are designed for different parts of the visual process. Is this all making sense? Yeah. We We're on board. Okay. Nick says yes. Cool. Other things you can do with VOC. My favorite thing, if you ever run uh any top of funnel ads just throw it straight in an ad. So, like here's Bench Accounting saying uh using a testimonial. Always use

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

testimonials as ads. But look at the last line of this testimonial. I can spend more time growing my business instead of monitoring nickels. Who says that? That's weird. Right? But it's such a sticky way. Like, I would never have remembered Bench Accounting, but I just had monitoring nickels stuck in my head all day. So, it's in my swipe file. This is sort of like an extra credit option, but as you're gathering this voice of customer data, as you're organizing it by stage and problem and solution uh and what was going on in their lives and where they are in the process, you can actually start building a brand voice guide so that you have your customers' language baked into any future copy and content that you write. Here's what that can look like. Uh I worked with Jobrack, which is a job board platform. Um Noel Andrews is the founder and he's very charismatic and he says a lot of funny things. Uh he says recruiting is not a dirty word. Uh your next high-performing hire. We've read all the hiring books so you don't have to. Like, bring the flavor of what you and your customers say into your copy because it feels authentic and it helps you stand out, which I know is kind of like, you know, "Don't you want to stand out? " That was like a 2008 marketing buzzword, authenticity, but it's still important. It's so important. Uh and then we looked at VOC in the team interviews. And I should probably speed up because I have so many slides and we're going very slow. — Um cool. TLDR. Steal the sticky phrases. Keep an eye out for them. As you read more and more raw customer input, you get better and better about sussing out what those sticky phrases are. But anything that catches you as a rule of thumb, and makes you think like "Oh, that's weird or interesting or funny or strange. " That's good sticky copy. Then do two through four. You're welcome. And if this is hard, I have a free kit for you. Uh my Snap Copy partner and I, James Turner, made this VOC research kit. It's free. You can have it. Go get it. Do it now. End of list. What if I just like shuffled off the stage? — End of talk. That's not it. There's so much more. There's like 60 more slides. Anyway, I got paid every time I said VOC. Thanks, big VOC. — And now, what we've all been waiting for. So, I do a lot of uh audit calls with Tinyseed. Um I see a lot of y'alls copy when you post it in the MicroConf Slack. And I see the same few things over and over again. Um and so let's all level up a little bit. Let's stop making these mistakes. First mistake is the we problem. Which I understand is rich coming from someone who just called herself MCPPP. You messed that I did that. And now it's on tape. — Cool. Um This is like what happens when you write your copy and you don't edit it, right? What do we do? We do this. Problem is it's not about you. Most of the time, It's not about we, us, our, I. Uh it is, however, always about me. Including right now. You're welcome. Um here's how we copy looks. This is a tool that adds frames to QR codes. We have so many customizations. We even let you add a frame around your QR code so that you can get even more scans. Our frames also include a short call to action that instruct your audience what to do when they encounter the QR code. Not only is this not about me, it's just awkward writing. There's so many subjects in these sentences that don't need to be here. Like uh here we go. Here we go again. Circle the we's. Go through your copy, circle the we's. And then flip them into you-focused sentences. So, second person, you, the reader. It's easier to understand like literally psychologically when we're reading if we read something that says you, we're like, "Me? Me? They're talking about me. " Uh try cutting out the we phrases starting with you can. Uh and then set people up with uh questions. They're not rhetorical questions. I've made this mistake before. Like, I can't remember what a rhetorical question actually is. But like, "Hey, do you want this thing? Good news. That's what we make. " So, here is this bad copy. What does it look like if we cut the we phrases, add you can, add a question it looks like this. Add frames to your QR codes. Want even more scans? Add a frame around your QR code. You can even include a short CTA that instructs your audience what to do. Easier to read, right? Easier to understand. It's more about me. Cut them out, replace them with yous. And we is appropriate sometimes. This should probably be a danger zone, but I forgot. — We is appropriate like we do want to hear about you sometimes. We when we're learning about

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

hear about you when we're learning about you as a company or your founder background or when you're Queen Elizabeth II. The second mistake and Rob touched on this too, writing about features at the wrong time. We hear so much features over benefits or benefits over features, right? We've heard it before like don't write about features, write about benefits. When should you write about both of these? Taylor Swift doesn't know. She's confused. Is she here? Taylor, are you here? She must be in the bathroom. I saw her in there. So before we talk about when to use features and benefits, let's talk about what features focus copy is. It's all about what your software is. So facts, specs, integration. Integrations. This is like someone is all the way down the stages of awareness. They're comparing you to other people and they're like, but I need to make sure that it integrates with Zendesk or has this particular I don't know. What are other integrations that we care about? What You know this from what your users ask you. Zapier. Yeah, everything integrates with Zapier. John knows. Yeah, but does it integrate with Zapier? You know, can I connect it to all the other tools? What are these questions that people are asking when they know about you? They know about your competitors. They're all the way down that stage of awareness funnel. So that's all about what your service is and that's what we often see in SaaS. We see things that are like, here is our service. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. And like okay, but we can do better, right? Maybe at this far up the funnel on the homepage or on the landing page when somebody doesn't really know yet, we should be talking about what it does, benefits that it can give you. Benefits are often more emotionally focused. Like we make this thing so you can stress less about your website staying up, integrate your accounting softwares more easily. I'm really stuck on accounting softwares today. And they're often also linked to tangible specific outcomes because those grab people's attention and then you get to be like, by the way, the features are sick, too. So these are some examples of benefits and here is another person in the security space. So instead of just saying penetration testing, they say, you can continuously find, fix, and verify your exploitable attack surface. That sounds much more compelling. Notice how it's written in imperative voice. So instead of we make penetration testing and cybersecurity service software, you can do this. So they've gone from being feckless chumps to chumps with more fecks. So how do you decide when to use which? You already know where they are in the stages of awareness. You know how close they are to converting and taking that next big step and becoming a customer. But you can also ask is the how more important right now or is the what more important? Is the how can I do this and the what is already being taken for granted? Or do we have to sort of teach them about the benefits first and then we can get into the how with the features. Does that make sense? No. I saw no nods. Too bad. I'm moving on. See me after class. So if you have feature heavy copy, how do you identify it and fix it? You can ask stair-stepping so what's. We make penetration testing software. So what? So you can test to make sure your website can't be hacked. So what? So you can protect your valuable data. So what? So you protect your revenue, you keep customers happy, you have the security of knowing you can sleep at night. Like ask until you get to something specific, but not too specific that you can't like that you you're just like, so you save time and money. That's how you know you've gone too far. — How much time? How much money? Stop there. Specificity, emotion, or desired outcome. You don't have to ask a certain number of so what's. You'll know when you get there, but do keep asking. So Tony, I think had to leave. He's dead to me. Tony from Cloud Forecast. They could have written a homepage that said, we make AWS cost management tools. So what? So you can keep track of your AWS spend. So what? So you can avoid unexpected costs and all the pain that comes with not knowing what your AWS bill's going to be. They ended up with wave goodbye to unexpected AWS costs. Very cheerful. Love that. Danger zone. This is where I contradict myself. Danger Will Robinson. I'm making things sound more complicated than they might have to be because you don't have to overthink it, especially when you're writing your homepage formula.

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

What it is or what it does and who it's for or who you do it for is a solid hero headline formula. As evidenced by all of these tiny seed companies using that formula. But notice how specific they all are. There's an acly in there. The document automation software law firms love. What is it? Who is it for? This is great if you can name a single market. Not everyone in here can. And so sometimes you can't do this formula. But you don't have to overthink it. Talk to me after class if you're confused. Third mistake that I see is failing to bring the pain. We've already talked about understanding what people are struggling with. But there's this conception that like talking about pain is bad, but we need to tell them the truth. Also Method Man sang a song called Bring the Pain. Also Method Man — sang a song called Bring the Pain. — [snorts] — That's why he's here in case you needed to get that joke. That was for me. That one was for me. We have to talk about pain. Pain creates urgency. I know that none of us want to be like douchy direct response bros who make people feel bad for not choosing us, but we're actually doing our customers a disservice if we don't say, yeah, this particular thing is hard and painful and you're struggling and it's keeping your business from growing. We can help. You know, you can't have that second part without the first part because otherwise why should they do anything about it right now? They're ignoring the problem. They're happy to ignore the problem. And you'll find interestingly as SaaS companies tend to grow, somebody in the C-suite is telling them to not write pain focused copy. It's very weird. They're like, let's just be really like positive and generic and then like just rely on brute traffic. Just force traffic, right? And it's like you could be converting higher if you were just brave enough to talk about pain, but you don't care because you're making a billion dollars a year. — [clears throat] — Here's an example. This is my client Mapistry. They make I've mentioned them on the MicroConf stage before. They were one of the first people to let me test humor and then they came back a few months ago for another fun landing page which you can see at retirespreadsheets. com. They know their users really well. These people are really busy environmental compliance managers who don't want to deal with permit violations because they're really expensive. So like, hey, if you only take a single snapshot of your compliance program, you're going to have no time to make any fixes before you get slapped with heavy fines, right? Oh my god, I only have 7 minutes left. — We got this. Let's see, what else do we have? Here's Bitly saying we've all been there. We've hit send too soon. We've shared the wrong link. Notice a typo after you went to the printer. Good news, you can edit Bitly links. It's sort of a one-two punch. Here's where you are. This thing sucks. We're aligning ourself with this thing that sucks and we're showing you the solution. And we so often miss that first part. Speaking of sucking, if you're going to mention pain, please make sure that it's relevant. This is not a software ad. This is just a Reddit ad for dog like flea medication for dogs, but it says your dog de-stuffing your couch sucks. So do fleas and ticks. Disrespectfully, what the F does that have to do with anything? Like Don't do that. Make sure it's actually Make sure the pain is actually tied to the outcome you're promising. So how do you do this? Try a metaphor. So what does it look like? What does it feel like? Is there anything that we can compare it to that looks or feels like that? Exaggeration and hyperbole are your friends here if you're willing to try a little bit of humor and I will show you how that can look again with Mapistry in this landing page that I wrote for them. People hate spreadsheets. They should be using this platform instead. And so I came up with seven deadly spreadsheet sins and sin number two, connecting too many workbooks. Before you know it, your spreadsheets are slow as frozen molasses and you've created more dependencies than a cannon. Those are two metaphors for a pain that they're facing. Right? Cool. Mistake number four, forgetting to support your copy with trust signals and social proof. It's almost impossible to have too much social proof. I find that every time I get to somebody's landing page or homepage, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find their testimonials shoved into a tiny carousel and they have people saying the most amazing things, none of which are reflected in the copy and they're all hidden behind this little like, can't find the arrow, can't tap it, I'll never read that. How about we put social proof throughout the page? relevant social proof next to the claim that the copy is making? So, what is social proof? What are trust signals? These are so many different kinds of trust signals that you can include in your landing pages. Reviews

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00) [30:00]

testimonials, links to case studies, certifications that you've earned, client or customer logos is a big one, press that you've gotten, any guarantees that you can make, 30-day refund, 14-day free trial, number of customers you've served, number of I don't know AWS instances you've set up. Numbers, people love numbers. So, those are some trust signals and we like this stuff because we hate to be alone. And we want to make sure that we're not the first person who's ever done this thing. I think it was Dustin who said like, don't say we're the first because that doesn't build trust, that kills it. Just tells us like you're not very good at your job or you don't know about your competitors. Like you chose a stupid niche or you were ignorant about your competitors. That was fire. We hate to be alone, we hate to be the first. We don't want to risk our money, time, we don't want to risk looking stupid. And to underscore this, I have added a very real testimonial to this slide. You should believe me. It's true. I am God's favorite. Even though I don't believe in him. Sacrilege. What if I just get hit by a lightning bolt right now? Well, that'd be so bad. Okay, so here is Bench again, trusted by 25,000 plus American small business owners. So, they have testimonials and they have a number. You can cram these things into each other. They don't have to take up that much real estate, but it's so important because the most persuasive sales copy is somebody else saying that you're awesome. Here is Cobalt, another client of mine. They're putting a Capterra review which it underneath their first CTA. It's great like, hey look, we're a real company, we exist, you can read reviews on Capterra. Jesse bomber, Jesse Roselius here. Hi Roselius. Simplify your bomb process. I love this 200 plus other companies that simplified their bomb process and we're showing the logos of some of those companies. Again, you're like, maybe I even know some of these companies cuz I'm in this space. Like, oh if they're using it, maybe I should be too. And don't forget that your about copy is also a trust signal. This also happens as people move upmarket. They're like, well we have to look bigger. We can't be personal, we can't be bootstrap founders, the team is growing, we don't want to highlight anybody, so we're just going to be this faceless company, right? Nobody cares who I am. That is untrue. We want to know that there's somebody behind the curtain if we need your help. Here is NoteRouter doing it. Just sort of like an homage to about copy. It's not a big deal, it's not a whole separate page, it's just a little section being like, there's a human behind this. The human started this company in 2018. It doesn't make you trust the company less, right? It's like all companies were started by people at some point, presumably. Here is Corey. Corey, are you here? Oh, damn. Well, here's Corey doing this in an email. So, that was a website. Here is an email example. I signed up for SwipeWell, which is Corey's swipe software and they have the co-founders waving hello to me in one of the onboarding emails. Like, cool. This is going to make it harder for me to cancel because I'll feel like I'm disappointing these two very nice white boys. — And who wants to do that? Here's another email example, Chelsea from Mora Wear prefacing her email being like, hey I'm a product manager. What does that mean? I'll tell you. Here's why I'm sending you this email. It can be so simple, but it's very easy to just be like, anyway, here's some information, hope you like it. Instead of like, hi, I'm a human person and I have a job and that's what this job is. My job is making you happy. But there is a danger zone. When we talk about ourselves, we get really stiff and formal. It's weird. It's another great place to have somebody interview you, so they talk about you to you. Uh Here's a terrible example from my mortgage provider, go figure. We thank you for being a Mr. Cooper customer. The link below allows you to give us valuable feedback. I'm good. — I don't need to click that. Just like, uh You want hundreds of thousands of dollars and 10 minutes of my time? I don't think so. But here's Lumina being very chill and casual. Hey, we noticed you've been using your webcam for about a month, could you take a minute to share your experience? We're a small startup. Great use of we, right? We're a small startup, we could really use your advice. And here is Brian Richards who runs WP Sessions. This is one of the best survey ask emails I've ever seen. Uh I need your help, I think was the subject line and he said this survey is the easiest and fastest way for you to help me. But how does a survey help exactly? The question we all want to know the answer to. What are you going

### Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00) [35:00]

to do with this? And he's like, here's exactly what I'm going to do with your survey answers, so please take the time to give them to me. Cool. I'm starting to rush because the light has turned red. I'm going to sing a song about it. The fifth and final mistake that I see, usually on the email side of things, occasionally on the website side of things, is information overload. So, for example, I got an onboarding email recently and it looked like this. Nine life hacks for using this software. Thanks for registering with us. I'm like really hoping that I didn't forget to block something out. All of the gray things are the company name. But like, look at how many things I'm being asked to do. There is no particular hierarchy to these asks. It's just like, hey would you like to spend 5 hours on one email for me? The answer is no. There is a danger zone here. The whole danger zone is that you are trying to solve problems that users are not having yet. So, one problem at a time, right? Don't try to skip steps. We are so excited about what we've made. We know that it's really important to show people the value as fast as possible so they activate and so we throw everything at them right away when they're paying attention cuz they're opening the emails right after they sign up and then they sort of drop off, right? But if you throw everything at them in one email, you are adding so much to their list that they're like, I quit forever and this has now become a source of shame for me and I will never finish onboarding because you're asking me to onboard 25 steps at a time. So, how do you know if you're doing this? Go through your onboarding emails especially, you can also do this with your website copy. Circle the number of calls to action. things you're asking people to do. Try to cut those down. Try to ask for one, two, maybe three things per email. Make it clear which of those things is the most important for them to do. And then, if you're onboarding new customers, ask them why you signed up because that is how you build in voice of customer, right? We've all We're doing that, right? If you have a second, please hit reply to let me know why you signed up. What are you going to do with that information? Here's a good example from Max Rosen, very chill, very casual. Some tips to get the most out of online or not. I wrote a quick guide, thought it might be helpful. Link on its own line, very easy to click even on mobile. If this is annoying, unsubscribe here. Cheers. Super easy to read, natural inclination is to click the link, read the guide. Here is Michael Cooper. I don't think he's here. Uh he founder of Nusii Proposals. If you're ready, you can jump right in. Like, hey you just signed up for this thing, here's the link. I know you forgot. You have 50 emails that just came in. Before I prepare tomorrow's emails, I'm curious, what's the number one thing you want help doing in Nusii right now? Great source of voice of customer research. Let me know. And if you want to dive straight in, you need tutorials, sort of like tertiary ask. You can start by yourself. I'd really love to know why you're here and if you would rather watch tutorials, you can do that. You see how that's easier to do than just being like, here are nine separate ways to engage with my product in one email. So, everywhere you're writing copy, ask the question, what is the next step? most important thing for them to do? Only get them there. That is the function of every sentence in a piece of copy. Get them to the next sentence and then the next one. And if you have some extra sentences in there, you know what to cut. Here is Bark onboarding me recently. I do not have kids, but I signed up for this app and used one of my cats' names as my kid's name. So, it keeps being like, do you know what Space Ghost is doing on the internet? And I'm like, I don't know, but I hope he's having a great time. He's 16, he could do whatever he wants. — Let's get started with your free trial. You'll need your credit card, but only to verify your Space Ghost Guardian. You won't be charged today. Very chill. We're going to ask you for your credit card, we're going to add some friction, but here's why. Do this one thing for us. Okay. We made it through 95 slides. I'm going to recap for you. This is my hilarious recap slide. If you get it, you get it. Don't do these things in your copy. Cool? Cool. That's it. Thank you so much. — All right, we're here. Pascal. Hey. So, two truths. You're super funny and it's really unfair for all of us that — But it's a benefit to you because all of us are going to hire you. — I'm single. — Um

### Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00) [40:00]

So, what's the role of comedy in writing punchy copy? Oh. And how can we connect to our inner funny to write good copy? I promise I didn't pay him to ask this. What's the role of writing funny? Why there are so many roles. I have a whole separate whole talk about that. — I've upset the speaker demon. Um Funny copy, when used in the correct places at the correct doses, builds a sense of affinity between a reader and the brand. It can reduce anxiety. Uh so, if you're asking someone to take like, "Hey, we need your credit card information. " Uh Mike Tabor is here. Long ago, I wrote the copy for Bluetick, which you should all be using. Uh and it said, "We do ask for your credit card, but only because we have some online shopping to do. " And it's just like the exact opposite of what you'd expect. And again, like there was a human here, right? Like money. Um there's so many ways to use humor to build that lasting connection so that, especially if things happen to go wrong, people remember that this isn't just a faceless software. This is, you know, Max Rosen of Online or Not or Pascal Laliberté, uh who's made this product, who's actually behind there caring about it. Does that answer your question? It does. Tight. Do we have time for one or two more? I know I went a little bitty over. — Not just one or two, three more. [snorts] — Oh, yes. Depending on length. Uh-oh. Hm. Should I just yell? Oh, there we go. Uh for we copy, um is it always um would it be appropriate when you're trying to say that you're part of that group? Like, we all know what it's like when the server crashes. We Like, if I'm selling to other co-founders or something like that. — Yes. — is that is you better or is we better in that case? — That's such a great question and I should have had that on the slide. Yes, when you are showing that you are part of the group that you're speaking to, that's a huge trust builder. Yeah, so I love that you asked that question. Yeah, we all know. But then do get back to you at some point because you are selling them something. Hello. Hi. So, I'm all for humor in copy and having that work for you and I get it. — There's a butt coming. However, — my concern is that then you would have to have that same sensibility infused everywhere else or otherwise it might seem out of place and um disproportionate. That's not a question, but uh Okay. — What do you say to somebody who — Who's concerned about that? — that, but doesn't want to necessarily change the Yeah. Cuz if we're going for corporate customers, not that we can't have any humor, but there's a certain kind of company that I can imagine that does that everywhere or nowhere. — Yes. — Is there anything in between? Yes, there is. Oh my god, I should have just done the other damn talk. Uh — So, think of humor like a spectrum, right? It's not a switch. You're not like funny or not funny. It's a spectrum. And like over here is Cards Against Humanity and over here is like dry corporate boring jargon. You can be right here and be a little bit friendly and start small and slow and like try a joke in an email subject line or try it in a PS. Like, start as close to your customers with your most trusted VIPs and test things and ask them, "Hey, like what's funny to you? " So, you can make references that they appreciate and then build back out from that. Like the way that you should write any copy, really, is like start close to the money, optimize there so you don't have a leaky funnel, and then once you're at the point where you can like run crazy ads, you know that everything else is airtight. Does that make sense? Cool. We have time for one more question. — Ooh. Almost there. — Iliana. Hi. Thanks for a great engaging talk. Yay. You seem like the right person to ask this question. Uh-oh. So, — If it's, "Will you be my mommy? " or, "Will you sit on me? " the answer is no. — no, no, no. No, don't worry. It's all very It's all very relevant to the presentation. — I have been asked that second one. So, I noticed — I noticed that many of the kind of onboarding email Many of the emails used as examples were like onboarding emails. — Mhm. Do people have to opt in to receive those or can you just Ooh. — Good question. Uh I can't really speak to like GDPR stuff. I kind of think you should just send them, uh but there's probably a checkbox somewhere and you can probably look at that checkbox copy and make it less formal and gross and more fun. Um Oatly has a really good privacy policy uh microcopy piece that says, "I've read and memorized Oatly's privacy policy and I'm totally cool with it. " I'm like, nailed it. Thank you. Yeah. —