When a sales page is not performing up to your expectations, the worst thing you can do is nothing.

In most circumstances, there are steps you can take to alter the copy to improve your results immediately. By taking action and making changes, you can strengthen your copy quickly and improve your sales conversions.

The key to this process is testing to boost your outcome.

However, when most people start testing their sales copy, they immediately think of something they can add or tweak. Or they’re confused as to what to test, particularly what to test first.

I’ve found that the best and most efficient element to test is to actually first remove the things that are stopping people from ordering. In other words…

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The other day I was asked the following question: “Should I use active or passive voice in sales copy?”

The answer may surprise you.

The premise behind this question is simple. Traditional copywriting rules state that writers should use active voice. And it makes perfect sense.

Active voice engages the reader and makes it easy for them to quickly understand the copy. They don’t have to sort through a sentence to understand it.

Writers are told again and again to focus on using active voice. But I’m telling you that, in some cases, you shouldn’t. And here’s why…

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With spam incessantly inundating our inboxes and people’s attention spans constantly shrinking, some have claimed that email marketing is on the way out.

I say “nonsense.”

In fact, it’s because of those very reasons that email marketing is now stronger than ever before. I personally know of some marketers who have made literally millions of dollars with email marketing alone in recent weeks.

I’m talking about legitimate, law-compliant, optin email.

Remember, the most common use of the Internet is still email — not instant messenging, social networking, or browsing websites. It’s often the very first thing people do when they log onto the web.

Granted, the biggest stumbling block is to increase your “open rate” (i.e., the percentage of people who actually open your emails). And to do so you first need to get your emails delivered and overcome overzealous spam filters.

But once they do reach your readers’ inboxes, the most important step in getting your messages through to your audience is with good copy. And like a good headline in sales copy, it all starts with the subject line.

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I already talked a lot about headlines. There are quite a few blog posts about them here. But here are some additional tips.

There are two huge mistakes people make when they write headlines. Either they are too bland and don’t say enough (such as when they attempt to simply summarize), or they say too much to cover all the bases.

In both cases, you will lose readers.

1. The True Purpose of The Headline

The headline is more than a mere summary of the sales copy. Unlike the title of a book, for instance, it’s not meant to introduce the story. It’s meant to generate readership in the first place.

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Some of the tests results I love to follow are those from The Poynter Institute. Their eyetracking studies are some of the largest ever conducted in this space.

While their tests are primarily done for, and funded by, major newspapers, their studies are incredibly revealing nonetheless. For instance, they've tested how readers read stories in three different formats: tabloid-style (folded vertically), broadsheet (larger size, folded horizontally), and online.

Of course, my interest is certainly focused on the online version. But their newspaper studies are very revealing in terms of what captures people's attention, how they read, and how much of it they do read.

Their website has come out with five key findings. (Their full report is due out in a few more weeks from now.) But let's take a closer look at these findings, and my interpretation of what they mean for the web.

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They say that the headline is the most important part of your online copy. But your deck and lead copy are just as important. These often make up the the section called “above the fold,” which is the topmost section of your website’s page, without any scrolling.

(Think of the front-page headlines and pictures of a newspaper, folded on a newsstand. This section is vital, for it’s the section that sells papers.)

Online, it’s the first screen your visitors see when they hit your site. The deck copy is usually the portion immediately following your headline (also known as the “subheadline”), and the lead is the opening of your letter. (Usually the first few paragraphs if not sentences of your body copy.)

There are many things you need to take into account when developing your “above the fold” section. Adding a picture, grabbing attention, perhaps even incorporating audio and video.

But for the purposes of this article, I want to explore the concept of communicating your core idea, benefit, claim or promise, and doing it in the most powerful, persuasive, and productive way possible, in that vital above-the-fold section. It’s called…

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A lot of people ask me how I write copy. I don’t mean the content-writing process (such as how I come up with headlines, bullets, offers, etc), but how I tackle the actual task of composing a new salesletter from scratch.

Everyone is different. My writing process is one developed over many years, and many people may adopt or dislike the same techniques. But in the hope that knowing my process may be helpful to some writers, I’d like to share it with you.

Of course, if I were to describe all of the steps, there would be way too much information to squeeze into one article. But for now, I can offer you a basic look at my methodology by giving you a short list of the seven steps I take.

Here they are.

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