Humanize your sales page copy

The other day I found something interesting.

I was reading a Gary Halbert Letter issue about grabbers. Grabbers are some physical objects they use to mount to the top of their sales letters.

They were mainly used to get the prospect's attention - as the name “grabbers” suggests - and get them to read the first line.

Gary used them a lot.

Generally coins, one-dollar bills, or pretty much anything else he could tie into his story.

It’s safe to say that he popularized this term too.

But in today's economy, it doens’t have much use, unless you are mailing snail mail letters which I would doubt you do.

By this time everybody went online.

And you don’t get much use of grabbers online.

Maybe you could attach a photo of a coin to the top of your website. That would get their attention pretty well and they might as well would read your first line.

That might work.

But it wouldn’t be as effective as a physical coin glued to a physical letter.

For multiple reasons… One of which is also reciprocity.

But there was another technique Gary mentioned… One that might win you more cheese today.

He said mailing out photos of himself - or the person selling the product - was effective in humanizing the letters.

Now this is interesting.

A physical photo doens’t have much value, not like a coin or a dollar bill.

So it’s only 2 functions would be…

1. Grabbing the attention

2. Humanizing

With the second one in mind, we can circle back to sales pages that are written nowadays.

Not all of them, but I have seen plenty of them that had a photo and an introduction section for the product owner.

Those sections do the same thing Gary did with his photos.

They Humanize.

They make the copy more personal. More warm.

This isn’t a must section of a sales page of course - and I don’t really see how you could use this in other mediums - but if your copy is everything but personal, you might want to add a section like this…

And the fact that it is still used today is just the cherry on top.