A few years ago, some­thing hap­pened that pro­vided incon­tro­vert­ible proof of the impor­tance of an infal­li­ble rule in copy­writ­ing. I knew it all along but never saw it proven to me in such a per­sonal and direct way.

What am I talk­ing about?

No, it’s not the head­line. It’s not being emo­tional. It’s not ben­e­fits. And it’s not split-​​testing, either. In fact, my open­ing para­graph gave you a clue.

Sure, the head­line, the ben­e­fits, and all those things are impor­tant. Very impor­tant. But the one ele­ment I’m refer­ring to, the one ele­ment that can trans­form flimsy, “yeah-​​right” copy into a sales-​​inducing pow­er­house, is…

… Proof.

Other than poor tar­get­ing and shoddy copy, the lack of proof in your copy is what prob­a­bly (and most likely) causes it to fail. But when I talk about “proof,” I’m not just talk­ing about one or two types, but seven. Yes, seven dif­fer­ent types of proof!

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Now that the wed­ding and hon­ey­moon are over, I want to share with you some impor­tant news, as there are many things I need to explain but didn’t want to share until today.

After much reflec­tion, we decided to make this infor­ma­tion pub­lic for a vari­ety of rea­sons. One is to offer our apolo­gies. Another is to cre­ate aware­ness about an incred­i­bly impor­tant issue.

First, the apologies.

You may be expect­ing us to see us speak at an upcom­ing event — such as the Focus 4 The Future in the UK this week­end, in Las Vegas at the World Inter­net Sum­mit, or in Bal­ti­more at the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Main Event in September.

How­ever, we’ve decided to make some dras­tic changes to our plans for the next few weeks. And that includes can­celling our travel and speak­ing sched­ules for Sep­tem­ber and early October.

Here’s why…

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