Onward with our story.

We jump in with the copy legends discussing what they're doing today with headlines and campaign leads (i.e. the first 300-500 words of copy).

Donnie French opens the discussion by talking first about headline formatting...

"One of the first things we consider is where the headline is going to be used. Is it going on mobile? Is it going on desktop? Is it on an ecomm page? I start from there because that informs what the headline needs to do," Donnie said.

Rich Schefren agrees. "Since mobile is the primary platform most people use, it's important to write for mobile first, then go to desktop."

Donnie responds.

"Yeah. Our headlines are all different for all those different platforms because they each have a different purpose."

Donnie then went on to share what changes he makes with a headline, and why, for each of the different platforms. 

This was followed by a little discussion of how to best use formatting to drive consumption of the headline and lead. Fascinating, insightful stuff.

Then, David Deutsch jumped in to share his 5-point approach to testing headlines and leads.

"So I have this concept," Dan said, "of what I call T testing, which would be horizontal versus vertical." 

What followed was a pretty robust explanation of Dan's process.

So let me try to quickly sum it up for you:

Dan starts by testing horizontally to find the winning headline and lead appeal which resonates with the market best. Horizontally means he's testing a variety of different headline and lead approaches. Similar to what David does.

Then, once a winning horizontal approach is found, Dan begins by testing vertically. Vertically just means he's now optimizing the winning headline by testing new variations of that winning headline.

Make sense?

Good.

Onward.

Dan, of course, explained the types of tests he runs when he's doing his T testing. And, gave some examples for everyone.

Everyone in the room appeared to really dig it. 

As we continued to hear from more copy legends, Kyle Milligan jumped in to quickly share his go-to approach today with leads (i.e. the first 300 - 500 words of the copy). 

If you don't know Kyle, he's an Agora-trained copywriter, was an Agora Financial copy chief, and has created some monster campaign winners in the financial publishing industry, including the infamous Trump Checks promo. 

"I believe the three most reliable go-to openers for any sales message are: the visual pattern interrupt, the question pattern interrupt, and the bread crump pattern interrupt."

Kyle continued...

"I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They're looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention. Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says 'look at this' and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time tested methods there is."

David Deutsch agreed. "That's Sugarman."

Kyle kept going...

"If you don't know what else to do for an opener, go with 'Take a look at this.' It's like old faithful."

Kyle got a lot of agreement from the group. A lot of head nodding.

This discussion of headlines and leads continued to go on for another 40 minutes or so. 

Lots of next-level strategies and techniques were shared, to say the least.

In fact, Kim Schwalm, another world-renowned A-list copywriter, shared how she's seeing tremendous success using leads that enlarge the mechanism. And how she does this by presenting the Unique Mechanism as bigger and faster than competitive options.