it can't be this simple, can it?

👉 the "A" that makes all the difference to getting attention with your emails

I recently shared how I got over 3x my normal engagement on a Linkedin post by harnessing the classic AIDCA formula.

(In fact the post has now got over 10x my normal engagement).

In particular, it was the A that made all the difference.

Attention.

And without going all sciency, the thing that drives attention is contrast.

We notice things that stand out from what's around them. Because back in the day, things that were unusual and different were quite likely to eat us.

So the lucky folks who were good at spotting them survived and passed on their difference-spotting genes to us, their descendants.

In fact, not only do we pay more attention to things that are different, we don't even really see the things that look similar to their surroundings. They never enter our consciousness. They're filtered out before they get there.

So if you want someone's attention your first impression has to be one of contrast.

On Linkedin my comic book imagery looked very different to 99.99% of the dullsville content usually posted.

With Facebook it's similar: people pay attention to posts with "different" images. Only over there, what looks different to the rest of the feed is different to what looks different on Linkedin.

Apologies for that last sentence. I didn't mean it to sound like Dr Seuss, but I couldn't find better words :)

On email, the place to stand out is your subject-line and pre-header.

Traditional best practice says your subject line needs a benefit - otherwise why would someone open the email?

But the reality is that pure benefit subject lines have been done to death. Once you've read 7 emails about how to double your sales in 2023 you kinda stop opening them.

That's why it's often a good idea to set up a throwaway email address and subscribe to a bunch of newsletters from your competitors or other people your clients are likely to follow.

That way you'll know what their inbox looks like.

Close enough anyway.

And that means you'll be able to deduce what would look different for them.

Like a lowercase headline with a weird question for example.

Of course, you need to deliver on the promise of the headline too. Hopefully I've managed to show that yes, it can be this simple. At least when it comes to getting attention.

How are you going to feed that into your next newsletter?

- Ian