When writ­ing direct response copy, a few things can max­i­mize the respon­sive­ness of your mes­sage. The first and most impor­tant ele­ment that can turn any web­site, saleslet­ter, or adver­tise­ment into an action-​​generating mech­a­nism is, with­out ques­tion, the head­line.

But lately, I’m see­ing more and more head­lines that are limp, bloated, or sim­ply dead wrong.

A head­line is meant to do two vital things.

No more and no less. First, it needs to grab your reader’s atten­tion. That’s the pri­mary and most impor­tant job of the head­line. It’s not meant to sum­ma­rize an offer or be a para­graph in and of itself. It’s not meant to make a sale, either.

You know what I’m talk­ing about, right? Head­lines like these make me twitch…

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I first taught this tech­nique in 1998. While there have been tons of improve­ments since then, today I still see copy on so many web­sites, sales let­ters, or emails using a lan­guage that only the per­son who wrote them understands.

The bot­tom line is, most mar­keters and copy­writ­ers still seem to ignore the most impor­tant part of their sales copy…

… Their readers.

Abra­ham Maslow once com­mented, “If all you have is a ham­mer, every­thing looks like a nail.” Abra­ham Maslow may have been a psy­chol­o­gist, but he prob­a­bly knew more about copy­writ­ing and par­tic­u­larly sell­ing than what most peo­ple cared to admit.

Even now, most of the copy I cri­tique dis­obey this impor­tant rule the most. Their sales mes­sage doesn’t com­mu­ni­cate with their read­ers, par­tic­u­larly at their level. Now, I’m not talk­ing about a socioe­co­nomic or edu­ca­tional level. I’m talk­ing about the level at which they under­stand and, above all, make buy­ing decisions.

They fail to use what I call “upwords.” It’s an acronym that means…

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