Storytelling VS Reason-Why Copy – What Is Your Experience And Thoughts?

[Dien Rice]

Hi Mike,

I thought I'd add a comment on humor in copy...

There are many places you can find people saying that there is NO place for humor in copy.

A famous saying is...

"Don't use humor. There is nothing funny about separating a man from his money."

https://web.archive.org/web/20040614...m/3/stein4.asp

But I want to say... Au contraire, mes amis!

("On the contrary, my friends!" See how talented I am... That high school French has finally come in handy... )

The right kind of humor is a great way of achieving rapport... and getting your prospect to like you.

Robert Cialdini has his six principles in Influence (and I think he added one more)... One of them is "Liking."

If people like you, they're more likely to wanna do business with you...

Okay, I'm off of my soap box for now...

Toodles*

Dien

* "Toodles" is a British way of saying sayonara...

Originally Posted by Dien Rice

Hi Mike,

I tend to focus on writing the kind of promos I like to read myself...!

So, what I like to do is to make sure I give value... I like the idea that someone can read one of my promotions, and still benefit, even if they don't buy...

I'm not saying you have to do it this way - many people don't...

However, I seem to have a very low "unsubscribe" rate on my email lists... I think that's because I try to give value with every email...

Because of unsubscribes, you have to give value with your emails. However, another "formula" I know that others use is to give value in some emails, and have pure "sales" copy in other emails...

Often I give value by telling stories that people can benefit from...

By the way, I'm not sure if you should write emails just for the sake of writing emails.

I'm on the email list of one copywriter, who emails every day. Often, they're about something that happened to him that day... which is often something that doesn't seem all that important to me...

The problem is, I don't find all those emails valuable... So I find I'm reading his emails less and less.

On the other hand, there are other copywriters / marketers whose emails I always look forward to...

Personally, that's what I aim for!

I think you always need to give a "reason why"... It seems crazy to me not to have one! But you can easily have both a story, and a "reason why"...

It's harder to write a story, admittedly. But... the good thing is you can accumulate an "archive" of your stories, which you can then use in other places... Like on social media, if you choose to. Or, if the stories are good enough, you can even compile it into a book...

Best wishes!

Dien