Want to 3X Your CTR? Don’t Test Hooks…Just Do This

Summary

Brain Driven Brands Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Want to 3X Your CTR? Don’t Test Hooks…Just Do This
Host: Sarah Levinger
Release Date: November 26, 2024

In this engaging episode of Brain Driven Brands, host Sarah Levinger and co-host Nate Lagos delve into a compelling neuromarketing tactic that promises to significantly boost click-through rates (CTR) and purchase intent for e-commerce brands. The conversation is both insightful and entertaining, providing listeners with actionable strategies grounded in psychological research.

---

1. Introduction to the Marketing Tactic [01:25 - 03:02]

Sarah Levinger opens the discussion by presenting a fascinating study that reveals how a subtle change in formatting can lead to remarkable increases in marketing performance. She poses a challenge to Nate, teasing him about guessing the specific tactic that can triple CTR and raise purchase intent by 31%.

Sarah Levinger [01:25]: "This particular psychology tactic increases clicks by 3x. What is the specific thing that they are changing to do this?"

Nate takes a few guesses, suggesting elements like email subject lines and formatting changes. The conversation sets the stage for unveiling the tactic: the strategic use of italics in marketing materials.

---

2. Unveiling the Power of Italics [03:02 - 08:18]

Sarah reveals that the tactic revolves around italicizing text, specifically using a pronounced slant of up to 35 degrees. This form of "extreme italics" diverges from the standard 12 to 16-degree italics commonly seen in most fonts.

Sarah Levinger [03:39]: "Okay. Italics. Using italics can increase clicks by 3x and increase purchase intent by 31% using italics."

Nate expresses skepticism, questioning how such a minor change could have a substantial impact. Sarah explains that this effect is rooted in psychological responses; the steep slant of the italics implies forward movement, subconsciously nudging consumers towards taking action.

Sarah Levinger [07:01]: "According to Thomas's research, these italicized fonts, when they slant so much to the right, it's implying kind of forward movement. So psychologically, the font is basically leading you to the next logical step of whatever they're trying to tell you it is."

This section emphasizes the importance of understanding subtle psychological triggers in consumer behavior and how typography can influence decision-making processes.

---

3. Psychological Mechanisms Behind Italics [08:04 - 09:36]

Sarah delves deeper into the psychological underpinnings of why extreme italics are effective. The pronounced slant is interpreted by the brain as a signal for progression and forward movement, which in turn can increase engagement and the likelihood of making a purchase.

Sarah Levinger [08:12]: "Like reaching the fonts for it."

Nate compares this effect to how drivers follow the lines on the road, highlighting how the brain often follows visual cues without conscious awareness.

Nate Lagos [08:43]: "Similarly, in cars where you're just following the line of cars, what if the car in front of you is going the wrong way and everybody in the line is just following?"

This analogy underscores the powerful subconscious influences that design elements can have on consumer behavior.

---

4. Practical Applications and Real-World Examples [09:36 - 12:04]

The hosts discuss how to implement this tactic across various marketing platforms. Sarah cites an Old Navy ad as an example where italicized text was used effectively without appearing overtly slanted.

Sarah Levinger [09:53]: "The ads that they're referencing here is this Old Navy ad... all of the text on here, with the exception of this 'shop sale' at the bottom, all of it is this italicized kind of font."

Nate humorously contemplates overhauling his own email subject lines with extreme italics to test the strategy's efficacy.

Nate Lagos [10:47]: "I'm about to send the most unhinged email to my Flavio rep and be like, hey, I need to write subject lines in italics. Specifically at 35 degrees."

Sarah encourages listeners to experiment with italics in their own marketing materials, emphasizing the potential for significant improvements in engagement and sales.

Sarah Levinger [11:10]: "If you can actually increase clicks by 3x and increase purchase intent by 31% just by changing it to italicized font. Why not?"

---

5. Encouraging Listener Engagement and Testing [12:04 - 13:13]

To foster community involvement and validate the tactic's effectiveness, Sarah and Nate assign "homework" to their listeners. They urge e-commerce marketers to take their best-performing static ads and apply extreme italics to headlines and copy, then share the results.

Nate Lagos [11:44]: "Go take one or two or three of your best performing static ads. Italicize the headlines and copy on them, and we'll all run them together. Yeah, let's do it. Tweet it at us when you post them."

This call to action not only reinforces the practical application of the discussed tactic but also promotes collaborative learning and sharing of results within the community.

---

6. Conclusion and Teasers for Future Content [13:13 - End]

The episode wraps up with a brief mention of upcoming content and an invitation for listeners to engage further by reviewing the podcast and following the hosts on social media. Sarah hints at dedicating a future episode to her business, Tether Consumer Insights, which leverages consumer psychology to aid e-commerce brands.

Sarah Levinger [13:17]: "I need to do a whole episode on what I'm building over at Tether Consumer Insights."

Overall, the episode offers a blend of scientific research, practical marketing advice, and engaging dialogue, making it a valuable resource for e-commerce brands looking to enhance their CTR and sales through subtle yet powerful psychological tactics.

---

Key Takeaways:

1. Extreme Italics as a Marketing Tool: Utilizing italics with a pronounced slant (up to 35 degrees) can triple click-through rates and increase purchase intent by 31%.

2. Psychological Impact: The slant implies forward movement, subtly guiding consumers towards taking action without altering the core message or offer.

3. Practical Implementation: Brands can apply this tactic across various platforms, including email subject lines, ads, and website copy, to test its effectiveness.

4. Community Testing: Encouraging marketers to experiment with extreme italics and share their results fosters a collaborative environment for validating the tactic.

5. Future Insights: Listeners can anticipate deeper dives into consumer psychology and practical strategies in upcoming episodes.

By leveraging such nuanced design elements, e-commerce brands can tap into subconscious triggers that drive consumer behavior, ultimately leading to increased engagement and sales.

Transcript

[Nate Lagos]

Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands. This is Sarah Levinger's podcast. I'm Nate, your co host. This is brought to you by Tether Insights because we're officially sponsored, and it's a sponsor that hits super close to home because it's actually Sarah's new business.

[Sarah Levinger]

Is that allowed, do you think? Can I just sponsor my own content and be like, hey, we know this.

[Nate Lagos]

One'S already sponsored by Grain too, right?

[Sarah Levinger]

So, truth. I mean, this is basically an original grain case study for the next, like, however long we just decide to do this. Yeah. 100. Thank you. Welcome to the show, Nate.

[Nate Lagos]

Sarah has a business that helps you make a ton of money. Check it out.

[Sarah Levinger]

I do. Well, we can talk about that. I need to do a full episode on it. I also need to do more promotions. We're gonna. We're gonna jump right in today because this is apparently sponsored by Tether, and I have another marketing quiz. Marketing quiz. Look, Homer, just take the test and you'll do fine. Now I'm a little worried because, like, sometimes I. If you follow my tweets, you might know all of this stuff already. So I'm like, maybe don't read my tweets so that we can have you. You in particular, I don't think.

[Nate Lagos]

I don't really.

[Sarah Levinger]

Everybody. Okay. All right. So how dare you, first of all. Second of all, it's fine. I don't follow me either. So, you know, we're. We're in the same boat over there. All right, all right. You ready for this one?

[Nate Lagos]

I'm ready.

[Sarah Levinger]

I'm gonna give Nate context as to a study that I found that is fascinating. And I think everybody should test this particular marketing tactic, this psychology based tactic. But he's not gonna know what it is, and so I want to see if he can guess what it is. So this particular psychology tactic increases clicks by 3x. What is the specific thing that they are changing to do this? Increase three clicks increases clicks. So in experiments, three times more people clicked on an email and were 31 more likely to say they would buy just by changing this one little thing.

[Nate Lagos]

What. What's the medium here? This, like, email subject lines is like added call to actions.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yes. How do I do this without giving it away? Okay, so this particular psychology tactic is changing something about the way something looks. The way something looks was changed. So they didn't change the offer. They're not changing any sort of, like, messaging. They're not changing whether it's emotional or not.

[Nate Lagos]

I got it.

[Sarah Levinger]

Okay, what is it?

[Nate Lagos]

Starting with a Lowercase letter.

[Sarah Levinger]

Oh, that's actually a really good guess, but no, that's not it. Really good guess though. Like, very solid. You're. You're on the right, right trajectory.

[Nate Lagos]

So it's something like with the format, not necessarily the words.

[Sarah Levinger]

Formatting is able to increase clicks by 3x and people are apparently 31 more likely to say they would buy. So purchase intent increases by 31 just by changing a little bit of formatting.

[Nate Lagos]

I don't know. I'm a big colon guy in my headline. I don't know if that helps out. I'll be like, new Colon again. Two new watches.

[Sarah Levinger]

I'm sorry, I'm a 13 year old boy. That's hilarious.

[Nate Lagos]

Oh, you were thinking colon like the.

[Sarah Levinger]

That's immediately what ran through my head. I was like, colon. What are you talking about?

[Nate Lagos]

The button on the keyboard like that you're prioritizing. You do like colon parentheses, like, just.

[Sarah Levinger]

Glad you're prioritizing your colon health. Everybody just eat more fiber is really what we're talking about today. Now. Did I just tell you what it is?

[Nate Lagos]

Go ahead, tell me what it is.

[Sarah Levinger]

Okay. Italics. Using italics can increase clicks by 3x and increase purchase intent by 31% using italics. Now, it's a very specific type of italics.

[Nate Lagos]

Okay?

[Sarah Levinger]

So we can, we can dive into this, this specific research paper, which again, we'll link it in the show notes, but this specific paper is talking about the fact that I guess what they call, like extreme italics is what's driving this particular behavior. Anything up to 35 degrees and above. So for those who are not like font nerds, like I am, most italics usually slant at about a 12 to 16%. Like degree of area of degree. What do they call it? Angle of degree? Right. 35% would be like a lot like very slanty italics. Extra slanty italics apparently is like, feels.

[Nate Lagos]

Like one of those things where you're testing me on how far I'll follow you because you're going to make me send a creative brief to my designer today and be like, hey, man, like, do an ad with extra slanty eye talent and you're going to see me post it in a week and you're going to be, I can't believe that guy. Listen to me on that.

[Sarah Levinger]

I need you to test it though. Like, I need you to. This is a real thing. It's a real study. This was by me, J. Richardson. What is it published in Scientific Research, February 2020. A Journal of Retailing is where it was published. So. And I need you to Test this. Because somebody on Twitter came at me, bro, and was like, did you test this before you posted this study for everyone to see? And I was like, it's a study, sir.

[Nate Lagos]

It's dumb bitch. Sorry, who was it before I caught.

[Sarah Levinger]

I don't know. I don't know. It was just some random guy. And he was like, you. Did you even test this yourself before you randomly posted the study? And I was like, sir, do you know how studies study?

[Nate Lagos]

Yeah, you'll test it and then I'll.

[Sarah Levinger]

That study things in a test before they publish it.

[Nate Lagos]

Ecom, Twitter does not really understand Agree tests, myself included.

[Sarah Levinger]

Grain of salt, everybody. There are studies out there yelling at.

[Nate Lagos]

Me about statistically significant CRO tests. And I'm like, we're making more money, dude. I don't care. But no, people. I think. I think people know that everything we talk about on this podcast starts with like a research backed, published, peer reviewed.

[Sarah Levinger]

I'm just, I'm very careful with the ones that I share because again, in any. In any area where humans are involved, there is a slight risk of people being shady with data. And there's lots of studies that they've had to like, basically recall. Right. Because it wasn't done correctly. But I try really hard to make sure that the ones that I'm sharing are incredibly well vetted. This is a part of seven experiments with 20, 26 participants.

[Nate Lagos]

All right, I've got pretty good questions on this because I understand half of it. I understand it increasing clicks just on the theory of, like, it's probably a great pattern breaker. Like, it looks different than everything out there.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yep.

[Nate Lagos]

But increasing intent to purchase and increasing conversions is, like, crazy.

[Sarah Levinger]

That's so just off of an italicized font. Yeah.

[Nate Lagos]

Yeah. How is it? Like, did they give a reason as to why that makes more people likely to buy? I'll put our whole site in italics. I don't care if that's what it takes.

[Sarah Levinger]

I mean, please don't do that because it would look so weird. It would be an interesting test, but it would be weird as hell. So, okay, I get all. Most of the stuff that I find is off of a site called Science says this is fantastic. It's by. What is that guy? Thomas McKinley is the guy who runs this. Right. So he's a very prominent researcher and takes almost everything he's got on here off of like, Harvard and Business Review. Like, he's working with some universities, so it's not like he's just making this up, which is great. He also has, like, an entire site that's dedicated to showing here's the limitations of the study, here's what they were going after, here's what they were trying to find, and then this is why it works. So I always go down to this section of why it works. And according to Thomas's research, these italicized fonts, when they slant so much to the right, it's implying kind of forward movement. So psychologically, the font is basically leading you to the next logical step of whatever they're trying to tell you it is. Right. So subconsciously you link the movements to, like, forward movement in time or forward movement in behavior.

[Nate Lagos]

God, our brains are so dumb. Our brains are so dumb that they're like, oh, no, we're falling this way. Oh, no.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yeah, this is what I'm saying. We're like following.

[Nate Lagos]

And then you bought something just by.

[Sarah Levinger]

Like reaching the fonts for it.

[Nate Lagos]

So apparently that's unbelievable.

[Sarah Levinger]

This is literally just because the brain goes, oh, forward font, forward movement. I should probably do something with this. Which is bonkers if you think about it, because, like, it's. It's really. It's kind of tapping into this idea that our eyes just track to the next thing and the brain just follows it. Whatever it does, it's just kind of following. Same thing happens in cars where you're just following the line of cars. What if the car in front of you is like, going the wrong way and everybody in the line is just following? We're just going. Because the forward movement is moving that direction. Same thing with bong.

[Nate Lagos]

That's a little scary.

[Sarah Levinger]

Isn't it great? I love science and I'm terrified as well.

[Nate Lagos]

Wow. Okay. All right, so now I'm thinking, where can we put italic fonts? Cause I don't think you can do it in like, Facebook captions. I don't think you can do it in ads. No, I don't think you can do it anymore. It has to be like, either on your site or like in creatives. Like in the graphics.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yes, yes. I think especially this was testing, obviously, like email headlines and. Yeah, email context and copy. They're. I mean, their examples are almost all ads, though. So, like, they have an Old Navy ad that shows this kind of like forward facing plant that's a little bit more than italicized usually. I. I mean, I think you could put it basically anywhere and test to see if it would work.

[Nate Lagos]

I'm about to send the most unhinged email to my Flavio rep and be like, hey, I need to write subject Lines in italics. Specifically at 35 degrees.

[Sarah Levinger]

35 degrees.

[Nate Lagos]

Can you make it happen? Drinking on a Friday afternoon.

[Sarah Levinger]

Oh, my God.

[Nate Lagos]

Can I see some of the ads?

[Sarah Levinger]

Yes. Do you want me to show you? Okay, yeah, wait, let me see if I can just quickly share this screen. Yeah. So, and this is, like, the weirdest part. Is it just. I don't know, it doesn't seem like it should work. And this is the first time, like, Sarah's been a little incredulous. I'm like, does this actually work? So, okay, let me scroll down. So this is what he's talking about. So regular, right? Where it's just basically just straight up and down fonts. This is what they want you to do with. This is just like a little extra of this slam. The ads that they're referencing here is this. It doesn't look like. I mean, obviously, it doesn't look like an extreme slant to me. So this is an Old Navy ad. It's got two bars of green on it. It says big 40% off everything in the center of the ad, but all of the text on here, with the exception of this shop sale at the bottom, all of it is this italicized kind of font.

[Nate Lagos]

Well, we'll know soon, because I'm about to tell Chris, like, hey, let's go take some of our best ads, italicize the shit out of every character on there and see what happens.

[Sarah Levinger]

I think you should, because if you can actually Increase clicks by 3x and increase purchases debt by 31% just by changing it to italicized font. Why not? Why not?

[Nate Lagos]

Yeah. I'm gonna feel so dumb if it increases revenue by 30%.

[Sarah Levinger]

I hope to God it does. Wouldn't that be the funniest thing ever again? This all comes down to the psychological things that we've been talking about on this podcast for forever, which is humans are very sensitive to things. Very sensitive to things that we don't even, like, understand why they would be sensitive to that. Or like, just random things in the room, things that you're currently breathing in, like smells. Sounds like just. Humans are just sensitive little creatures. So stuff like this, even though it sounds dumb, I'm like, I would test it.

[Nate Lagos]

All right, listeners, you're getting homework from me this week. Everyone listening, go take one or two or three of your best performing static ads.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yep.

[Nate Lagos]

Italicize the headlines and copy on them, and we'll all run them together. Yeah, let's do it. Tweet it at us when you post them.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yes, yes.

[Nate Lagos]

And then in, like, a Month. We'll do a follow up. We're due for a follow up episode, by the way.

[Sarah Levinger]

We keep talking about.

[Nate Lagos]

There's been a bunch of stuff I've tested in the last 45 days that has worked out. So we gotta let everyone know. Like, hey, if you thought we were.

[Sarah Levinger]

The first time we tested it, we.

[Nate Lagos]

Crushed all of our K4 goals.

[Sarah Levinger]

So guy who came at me this week, we test this stuff, okay? It's not like we just, just tell people and then walk away anyways.

[Nate Lagos]

Are you getting haters on Twitter, by the way? Because I have one.

[Sarah Levinger]

I, I don't get many, but mostly because I think there's not a lot of people that understand psychology in depth. So I think they don't come at me as hard. Go try these. Go try these. Italics Firearms. Tell us how it works for you. Co host Nate. Where can people follow you? They want to find your.

[Nate Lagos]

Your range at Nate Lagos on Twitter, but only if you're going to be nice to me. And then you can listen to the Tactical and Practical podcast whether you want to be nice to me or not. I don't get comments on there. So be as mean as you want if you listen to that.

[Sarah Levinger]

I mean, they could review it. So don't be mean in the reviews though. Like, be nice, be kind. Also review this podcast. That would be really nice.

[Nate Lagos]

Yeah, drop us a quick five star review, guys.

[Sarah Levinger]

Yes. Okay. This is also sponsored by Tether, as Nate says. I'm going to do a whole episode on what I'm building over at Tether Consumer Insights. But we are a D2C consumer insights brand. We are using all kinds of the latest science to help you discover exactly what your customers need from a subconscious, conscious, emotional level so you can market better and really profit faster. How's that for a pic?

[Nate Lagos]

Love it.

[Sarah Levinger]

I did it.

[Nate Lagos]

Is this an extension of all the work you've done for us for the last couple years?

[Sarah Levinger]

It is. I've actually informed a lot of like the products that I'm currently using, so I appreciate your hail.

[Nate Lagos]

Let's go. And I'm still unpaid. Crazy. All right, good episode. See you guys next week. The Brain Driven Brands podcast is part of the Learn and Laugh series on the Quick Fire Podcast Network.