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Is Displaying *Today's Date* a Turn-Off?

by Hasan Barbary
8 replies
I have a sales letter for an ebook that I modified from a PLR template. It's coverting well for targeted traffic (just under 6%), but the volume is small.

With social traffic it's doing almost nothing (< 0.5%)

Another Warrior friend privately mentioned that the common day/date scripts you see everywhere are played out. He suggested that I roll back the date a couple of days to make it seem less contrived.

What do the pros think? Are prospects too saavy, too jaded, esp. in the "make money" niche?

I don't have enough traffic to conduct a statistically meaningful split-test, so I was hoping for some informed advice before I started changing things around too much. Should I remove the date entirely?

Thanks in advance,

~ hasan
#date #displaying #today #turnoff
  • Profile picture of the author RLeger
    I wish I could call myself an expert, but I'm far from it.

    I can say that I see alot of these current day/time scripts on Sales Letters. My take is to absolutely roll back that date 3-5 days. It won't fool a seasoned IM'r, but it will look like you have current content to the new visitors. Using the current date is just too obvious.
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  • Profile picture of the author Vanquish
    Hasan

    I would say the *today's date* feature is relateively minor overall.

    If you are marketing to newbies they are not aware of this feature but it doesn't play a role nearly as big as the headline which captivates the reader and makes him want to read down the headline.

    Seeing as you are focusing on the make money market, a product appealing to newbies wouldn't really matter if the clock was in it or not since a newbie isn't use to seeing many sales letters and will usually see the *todays date* feature and pay no attention to it.

    If you're producti s advanced and aimed at marketers wishing to polish up their current skills they will see this feature man times before and i think they too will skip over it because the message of your letter is much more important than the date.
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    Nothing to sell, only value to give and new knowledge to learn.
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  • Profile picture of the author Marilyn Etzel
    I'm a newbie here, but I like the idea of rolling back the date. I think "today's date" is obvious, but a date 3 days ago would make it look more real.

    Good luck! At least you have something converting, and can now tweek it!

    Marilyn
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    Cofounder of www.WebBizVictory.com

    and the From Passion to Profitable Telesummit

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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Scott
    Hasan,

    In my experience it's not exactly a huge variable... so you probably wouldn't see much (if any) difference either way.

    With regards to the posters who said that it makes them "cringe"... it does the same to me. However, so does the whole "$97 $47 $37 $27" Thing (with the first three numbers with a strikethrough) and that has been proven, for the most part, to improve conversions.

    So, to sum up, I don't think it really matters either way... this is so far down on the "testing foodchain" it's more or less insignificant.

    -Dan
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    Always looking for badass direct-response copywriters. PM me if we don't know each other and you're looking for work.

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  • Profile picture of the author Raiel Schwartz
    If your in the Internet Marketing Niche or Make Money Niche the whole date/time thing will definitly be spotted as a script. I don't know if it would negatively effect your sales though as it seems to be of minuscule importance.

    However, in a non-IM related niche (or targeted to non net-savvy people), it may give the visitor the feeling of updated content, especially if it is a membership site or community website.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheGodfather
    My take on this is that you should use only the current month and year, but if you have a mailing list that jumps at your command to visit a page, then you could use the current date if you direct them to the page, that would work as if it would look like you posted them an email to a page that was set up today. IMHO i think that would work best, however I'm no expert... that's just my ¢2
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    TheGodfather

    Perception is reality

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