The Michel Fortin Blog

The greater portion of my career has been in copywriting, selling, and direct marketing. And one of the common denominators I've found in any successful piece of copy is the power of risk reversal. That is, taking more of a risk from the sale...

A member in my coaching program asked a question about the legality of using an alias or pseudonym in copy. In other words, a pen name. That is, is it legal to write the copy in the voice of a fictitious character, or telling the story of a...

Recently, Terry Dean wrote an awesome article, entitled "Copy is King and Other Common Lies." The article boils down to the fact that the market and the offer come first. Copy is still important. Design plays an important role, too. But copy...

One morning, you go into your mailbox and discover there's an envelope waiting for you from an unknown source. You bring the package into your living room, tear open the envelope, pull out what's inside, put on your reading glasses, unfold the...

Lately, I'm seeing a lot of posts in public forums and blogs these days about people getting sick and tired of seeing "crappy," "hypey," used-car, Ginsu-like, looooong copy. Some of them come from guru-bashing naysayers who hate marketing, which...

The other day I was asked the following question: "Should I use active or passive voice in sales copy?" My answer may surprise you. The premise behind this question is simple. Traditional rules of good writing state that we should use active...

I covered headlines many times already. You can find posts about headlines here. But here are some additional tips. There are two huge mistakes people make when they write headlines. Either they are too bland and don't say enough (such as when...

In an earlier blog post, I talked about the fact that lately I've been leaning a lot more towards testing the reduction in bottlenecks. Some of the results are staggering! In short, the more I increase the sense of security and trust, better...

A recent study found that 65% of online shoppers are "window shoppers," and take on average up to 33 hours to make a purchase -- often over security concerns. Some interesting findings show that most people who abandon their shopping carts don't...