Copywriting Case Study: How Encyclopedia Brittanica increased conversion 103%

you go away saying I know what to do next as I start my next offer page keeping that in mind let me talk to you about an experiment you'll recognize the company it's Encyclopedia Britannica we worked with the senior leader and their management team years ago as they were challenged with the digital age encyclopedia branica had a digital subscription offer this is a long story I could spend an hour explaining it but it's a lovely way to talk about the importance of crafting proper copy and you can see the original the control this was their best performing page and on this page is essential information that will help you make the decision to purchase a subscription I have to say that while it's difficult to discern this particular offer had a rich value proposition even in the face and yes I'm going to say a dirty word in in the branic world I suppose not that they've ever said that but and I like them but um both groups but in sort of the age of the internet and particular Wikipedia they still had an offer with significant value but understand there's a difference between reality and perception and for the the prospect perception is reality so the question became how do we communicate this in a more effective way now I'd like to tell you the series of experiments the conversation we had with them there was a sort of research Grant in the form of a bonus on top of the normal research sort of budget that we had to work with based on achieving what they felt was a stellar number 20% they felt it would be the highest number we could achieve together we did sort of talk them into after much laughter uh a grant based on 50% and then we did something rather ridiculous we asked what would happen if we could help you achieve 100% now 100% means a doubling of Revenue you would recognize that a doubling of revenue for a digital offer which of course entails a great deal of profit the leaders on the britanica side were intelligent they were capable and they were determined to do whatever it takes to make a difference so we teamed up and I could again unpack all of the changes that were made but this is to help you understand the significance of recrating critical expressions and so if you look at the first page and then you look at the treatment you'll notice that there's a new headline the sub headline uh the uh describes exactly what you get there is a dramatic difference between the two I'll show them to you in just a moment side by side but there's a dramatic difference between the two bullets are used to emphasize the valuable features specificity is brought in instead of vague claims the graphic is redesigned to communicate the essence of the value proposition and yes we do something that might be crash in today's uh world of design Beauty we used a caption but if you just look at the graphic and read read the caption in one moment you capture the essence of the offer I could say so much more but there's enormous amount of Science in this treatment and I could talk about the way we emphasize the savings see that yellow highlight that's not something we did on the slide that was done on the original page because at the precise moment we asked you to start your free trial we remind you that if you continue you'll save X hundreds of dollars over $1,200 off the price of the print editions now by the way we arrived at that number on our own by asking lots of questions it didn't appear on the original page in fact I don't think it was clear to anyone that you were getting full access to the complete encyclopedia Banica ass set and when you start comparing the cost of a free trial which was remarkably low it looked like 11.95 a month compared to the enormous savings off the print edition knowing that you're also getting much more dat upto-date information etc etc etc in formats that are more useful I could go on and on WE suddenly had something very powerful to say it was just a matter of asking the right questions one of those questions we ask is well how much does a print edition cost we had an interesting series of answers to that but eventually we got to the bottom line and compared the differential and began to craft that little statement with a yellow highlight in bold text I could say a great deal more all I want you to see not so much learning from this case study yet I just want to make a point I want to make a point that when you compare the original which had two years of optimization work before we got involved and lots of copywriting expertise from expert copywriters and you compare the treatment there's a dramatic difference in the way we interact with the thought sequence of the person reading the copy I don't believe in optimizing web pages I believe in optimizing thought sequences and that's what occurred here and without going into too much more detail you can read a full explanation of the case study at marketing experiment.com look at the difference the new page produced a 103% increase in conversion that's rich many of the classic copyrighting approaches were completely eliminated on this treatment lots of the in fact the kinds of words that we so so frequently see sprinkled into our our power copy those words were missing but they weren't missing because we overlooked them we tore them out with a ruthless intent because they were in the way of the messaging and what you see as a result is essentially a doubling of Revenue now here's a point if you've never been on one of these clinics please know this I'm not interested in pressing you with the scientists at Mech Labs or marketing experiments nor is it important for us to Simply Entertain You in the time that we have this is to ground what I want to say next in data and to draw out some critical points that you need to understand that will power the step-by-step process that's getting ready to unfold for you the first is this when it comes to crafting effective copy Clarity Trump's persuasion I cannot say that often enough