Tag: refunds
750 Days of Free Updates
Today's tweak to your sales letter:
Do you have any overused words like "unlimited" ... "lifetime" ... or "fast" in your sales copy? Those don't get attention because everyone uses words like that.
- If something is unlimited, tell visitors instead they can get "50, 100, even 10,000" of something.
- If something gets unlimited updates, make it 365 days or 1000 days or 10 years of updates.
- If something is fast, tell people your technique works within 5 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever applies.
- If something is easy, share the success rate (percentage), a testimonial, or a case study...
I guess it comes down to the show-not-tell approach!
As Jason Fladlien would say, if you're telling a story about how mean and tough a guy is... don't TELL people about how he's mean and tough.
SHOW them how he weighed 280 pounds, wore a big leather jacket, had a huge beard, and you could hear his Harley Davidson motorcycle coming a mile away... he screeched to a halt in front of your house leaving a thick rubber skid mark... and even today, 7 years later, you can step outside and see the rubber mark still in the street... cracked over the years but still there.
In my last few sales letters, at the very end, I've been saying one or both of these things:
- You can check out my product and get a refund at any time within the first 30 days. If you're still undecided, try it out for an ADDITIONAL 30 days before deciding if you want to keep it or return and get your money back. (This language is a lot more specific than the usual "60 day refund" explanation.)
- You get 750 days worth of updates. I used to tell people they get lifetime updates, but everyone says that, so I tried saying 365 days of updates... but that seemed too ordinary, so I made it 750 days of updates.
"Lifetime" is too ambiguous. Is it your lifetime, my lifetime, the lifetime of the product? (Is it Lifetime: Television For Women... with weekly made-for-TV movies starring Meredith Baxter?)
Does the "lifetime" only count for versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc... and when I switch the book over to version 2.0, that counts as a different lifetime? (I'm having Scott Bakula Quantum Leap time travel flashbacks here... "oh boy.")
You have to be different. Using your own numbers makes you unique. In your headlines, bullet points, offer, guarantee, even your update policy. Remember the movie "There's Something About Mary?" Harlan Williams says there is a how-to video called 7 Minute Abs ... so his big idea is to create a how-to video called 6 Minute Abs. "If you aren't satisfied with the first six minutes, we'll throw in an additional minute for free!"
When I told my subscribers that moving my upsell to AFTER the original sale boosted conversions from 2.6% to 5.5% it had a lot more impact than just saying, "It improved conversion rates."
As I close this up, the ultimate irony of today's story is that I didn't split test the "lifetime" versus "750 day" update offer. There just isn't enough time in the day to split test every little thing.
I'm a sloppy copywriter. My Fast Food Copywriting method says write it quickly and sloppily... get it out there... then go back later and fix it up. A really quick and easy patch-job is to remove ambiguity and add imagery... add numbers!
What's your best technique to add specificity to your sales letters? Comment below to tell me!
How to Reduce Refunds
Ben Prater is a guy I have never exchanged words with, unfortunately. He is an expert Internet marketer and has a way of reducing refunds that is pretty damn effective.
He is similar to me because he sells infoproducts in the "make your own software" niche, but he focuses more on the managerial, engineering part of that niche than I do. I am a do-it-yourselfer, he is an idea guy.
I'll never forget his best product… called,
"Software Secrets Exposed."
His sales letter sells you the story of what you can do with his book – his friend at Microsoft who worked in a high tech office and went to the Ferrari factory himself to make sure they painted his six-figure car the exact shade of purple he wanted.
I bought his book in 2003, before a lot of people had thought to direct sales into autoresponders or even save those leads at all. But Ben had thought of that.
You buy from him and you are automatically added to a follow-up series that sends you an automated, personalized message every few days.
When you first purchased, you got the book. After 7 days he sent a 30-page bonus report with a sample blueprint (just like the ones he talks about how to make in his original book).
He sent out more bonus reports after 14, 30, 45, and 60 day periods. They were either bonus chapters that wouldn't have fit anywhere in the book, or interviews with others – which are even easier to make than reports!
He didn't always simply give away the bonus materials… sometimes he asked for something in return.
For example, in one follow-up he offered a report on a related subject – but to get the report, you needed to provide a testimonial for his original "Software Secrets Exposed" e-book. Look at that sales page, it overflows with glowing testimonials!
If you can spread out the bonus items like he does, you will cut down on refunds because those people who refund immediately won't get the bonus items. If you can string them along for long enough, they might pass up the refund period!
When information is cut up into pieces it has a greater "thud" factor. Five twenty page reports all with their own sales letters have a higher value than a big 100 page book, even if contains the exact same information.
Spreading that information out over time gives it even MORE value, because your customer is more likely to read the information given to them in pieces than trying to sift through a huge pile of stuff the day they purchase.
I'll admit, I don't have a follow-up series for every product -- that would take time away from creating new products -- but every now and then I choose one product randomly and spend a minute or two writing a follow-up for it.
It doesn't have to be anything super valuable. You could:
- Remind them to download the product. (7-day followup)
- Ask what they thought of the product... which you can then use as a testimonial. (14-day followup)
- Offer an affiliate link and a solo ad they can copy and paste and send to their list. (30-day followup)
- Send a special discount link to another one of your related products. (45-day followup)
- Give them a surprise bonus report. (60-day followup)
That's how you reduce refunds. Advertise these items in the sales letter as a 7-day bonus, 14-day bonus, and so on.
On a forum I called this strategy:
"Turning a one-time product into a short-term membership site."
If you give a refund, immediately zap them from the update list and block their IP address from your site.
Recently, I paid through the nose for the rights to Software Secrets Exposed, setup a web site and an affiliate program, and added the bonus reports as autoresponder follow-ups just like Ben did.
Do you have any advice on how to reduce refunds? I don't mean legal issues like disputing transactions with PayPal, but ways to turn refunds into a good thing. (In this case adding more long-term value to a product.)
