Category: Growth Marketing

Breakthrough-or-bust emails

Best practices create mediocrity.

That’s my take, at least.

It’s also Dilbert’s take, I’ve just discovered:

Something performs well a thousand years ago or twelve days ago, and it becomes a better practice. The repeated use of it turns it into a best practice – folks start to see it everywhere and think, Well, that’s gotta be THE way to do X. And then they start spreading that best practice in some part of their world, whether that’s within a five-person marketing department or across a 2000-person audience

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How I Turned Dozens of Bad Reviews into Hundreds of New Customers

Unhappy customers appear out of nowhere.

Usually online. Usually passionate. Usually vocal.

Nobody likes getting negative reviews. And I’m not advocating that you go out and try to stir some up. But here’s what a lot of people miss about getting bad reviews:

You can write some really great copy – and optimize your offers – using what unhappy customers tell you.

I did exactly that.

What I’m about to share works great for small businesses, freelancers, even established companies. If any of these scenarios rings a bill, you’ll want to

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The User-Centric Delight Audit for SaaS

What makes people love your product so much that they want to spread the word about it?

Is it clever marketing?

No. You can have the best marketing in the world, but it won’t always turn your customers into evangelists.

Is it price? I mean… we all love a good deal.

Sure, competing on price will make the bargain hunters happy, but it’s never a good idea to race to the bottom.

Is it celebrity/influencer endorsements?

Well, your product may look cooler if Justin Bieber is slinging it, but it’s not the surefire thing

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I’ve Helped Create 150+ Case Studies. Here’s (Almost) Everything I’ve Learned.

FLAMING HOT TAKE ALERT: creating case studies is like flossing.

(The dental hygiene version, not that idiotic dance kids are into these days.)

Everybody knows they should be doing it. Almost nobody does. And when they finally do, it’s a painful, bloody, but oddly rewarding experience that has them vowing to do it again soon.

Because it just so happens that case studies are the single most powerful sales asset you can possibly have.

And I’m not exaggerating.

“Bold Claim, Klettke. Can You Back it Up?”

Abso-friggin-lutely.

Let’s start with the psychology behind

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Inclusive Buyer Personas: Where new product ideas live and growth happens

Cutting a piece of paper seems like a simple enough task.
But for much of my childhood, I got anxiety every time I had to do it.
From the time I was in kindergarten, any piece of paper I cut looked a hot mess.
The problem? I’m left-handed. And most scissors are made for people to use their right hands to cut. So if you use “traditional” scissors with your left hand, your paper ends up looking like this:

As a kindergartener with perfectionist tendencies, I thought something was wrong with me.

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Forget the Images: Long Facebook Ad Copy Works

Famous American investor Jim Rogers took a trip to Ethiopia.
It was during one of the worst famines in recorded history.
Foreign assistance to Ethiopia was, according to Rogers, commendable… but destined to fail.
See, 3 million Ethiopians were starving. But the country produced enough food to feed 60 million people.
They didn’t necessarily need more food.
They needed an infrastructure to carry the food they had from the rainforest to the desert.
So what’s that got to do with Facebook ads?
FB advertisers find themselves in similar situations when trying to troubleshoot ad campaigns

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How I grew CoSchedule into a $5MM+ SaaS company using this framework

I was half a decade into an agency job I was supposed to love.
On paper, that job was a great fit.
But in reality, there was this problem:
I didn’t fit in.
My work was my art. My coworkers, well, they couldn’t quite say the same – no one really seemed to care about what they were creating. It didn’t take long for my “dream job” to morph into a nine-to-five cage.
My (future) business partner and I were paddling in the same boat at this agency. After a couple beers one

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How I slashed my evergreen course refunds with 7 gamification hacks

Right now is a fantastic time to create an online course and teach others.
Case in point:

Celebrity-taught online course platform, MasterClass, just raised $15 million
You literally have 10+ awesome course platforms to pick from
This e-learning industry’s value is expected to exceed $25 billion by the year 2023

Chances are, you’ve heard that making an online course is your path towards an impressively profitable business:

Derek Halpern runs Social Triggers, a 7-figure business, using online courses
Copy Hackers grew into a 7-figure business when they optimized our courses
This math teacher made $1,000,000/year
Way back in 2014,

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How to Listen: A guide for marketers who want to know what their customers want

As humans, we suck at listening.
And that’s bad for marketing and copywriting.
One study found that 50% of adults couldn’t describe the content of a 10-minute oral presentation just moments after hearing it. Results from 48 hours after hearing the talk were even worse: 75% of the listeners couldn’t even recall the subject matter.
But it’s not our fault.
We can safely blame science. The science of listening actually prevents you from being a better listener. Turns out our brains have the capacity to digest up to 400 words per minute of

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How I turned my wedding into an email marketing case study (with a slightly epic mistake)

“Yeah, I love you too,” I said. My boyfriend and I were boating on the lake I grew up on. In Texas. In the blistering summer heat.
“But it’s SO HOT. Why did you stop the boat? Can we please go?”
Then I realized why he was saying so many sweet things to me – he was proposing. To marry me.
And I got excited.
About the usual stuff: a gorgeous white dress, table full of presents, wedding cake, the 200+ peeps who I wanted to celebrate that day with me, the

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