Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Roll for persuasionI've started playing Dungeons & Dragons. Not something I ever expected to write, but here we are. For those unfamiliar, D&D is this tabletop roleplaying game where a group of people sit around telling stories, rolling dice, and pretending to be fantasy heroes. My girlfriend got me into it and convinced me to join her family's game night. Now I'm playing a half-elf paladin (think holy warrior with pointy ears), complete with my own set of dice and everything. And you know what's funny? Between battles with orcs in abandoned fortresses (don't ask), I've noticed some interesting parallels with my copywriting work. In D&D one person - the Dungeon Master - creates and guides the whole adventure. They describe each scene, control how the story unfolds, and keep players engaged through hours of gameplay. And watching our DM work, I've realized he’s using a lot of the same principles I use when crafting conversion copy for B2B clients. Take your typical B2B software company who needs website copy. What if instead of leading with features and specs, we'd take a page from our DM's playbook? He’d build tension before revealing what's behind that ominous dungeon door… We’d paint a picture of what keeps our prospects up at night. The endless back-and-forth emails, the version control nightmares, the Friday afternoon scramble to figure out who has the latest update. Those moments when a CEO asks for a status update and nobody knows where to find it. By the time prospects hit the product details, they're already nodding along, seeing themselves in the story. That’s because both D&D storytelling and conversion copy work best when you:
And it works. Sales demos booked without endless follow-ups. Cold outreach that gets enthusiastic replies. Homepage bounce rates dropping like a stone. Sure, maybe not as exciting as rolling a critical hit in the heat of battle (fellow D&D players, you get me), but watching those metrics climb is its own kind of victory. I never thought tabletop gaming would give me insights into B2B copy. But that's the beauty of this work. Sometimes the best inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. Besides, both us marketers and a dungeon master share the same core goal: guiding people through a journey they actually want to take. DISCOVERYUse AI to cut your research time and cost in halfI just published a ~40 minute video where I dive deep into my Empathy Engineering™️ framework for researching customers and writing copy that converts using AI. As I say, AI can write content, but it lacks context. This is how you do it right. 10-min podcast snack on AI copy? YumYumYumYesterday I jumped, almost literally on the Nohacks podcast for a 10-minute, one-question interview. Loved it. And I'm thinking of tweaking the format of my podcast too. More coming soon. Conversion Alchemy has grown in 2024, here's howMost people are afraid to share their numbers. I'm an open book. I just published my annual update on Starter Story. You can check it out here to peek at what we've done last year, and some thoughts on what's up for 2025. RESONANCE"people fail to realize that every positive thought holds a negative seed. This is why almost every great success comes after great failure. If you want to be happier, you need to expose yourself to more negative experiences that allow you to create the positive ones." Dan Koe, The Art of Focus Have a great weekend! Cheers, Chris 🙌🏻 Let’s be friends (unless you’re a stalker) When you're ready, here's a few ways I can help |
I'm the founder and chief conversion copywriter at Conversion Alchemy. We help 7 and 8 figure SaaS and Ecommerce businesses convert more website visitors into happy customers. Conversion Alchemy Journal is the collection of my thoughts, ideas, and ramblings on anything copy, UX, conversion rate optimization, psychology, decision-making, human behavior, and -often times - just bizarre, geeky stuff. Grab a cup of coffee and join me. Once a week, every Friday.
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. I've been working with several private equity firms lately, helping their portfolio companies clarify their messaging. What I keep hearing in strategy sessions is not “let’s improve our copy or fix our CRO” anymore. It's a big shift in how these companies need to position themselves. The trigger? Something called the Rule of 40. If you're not familiar, the Rule of 40...
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. Most teams treat messaging like a moodboard. Disjointed. Decorative. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Each new landing page, sales deck, or onboarding email feels like starting from scratch. They’re mixing and matching taglines, rephrasing value props, rewriting what’s already been written—because they don’t have a system. They think they’re iterating, but...
Read online Welcome to this week's issue of Unpacking Meaning. If you received this from a friend and enjoy it, subscribe here. I recently received my voting cards from Italy. As an Italian living in the UK, this isn't unusual, but what struck me this time was how absurdly hard it was to understand what I was being asked to vote on. Here’s one of the ballots: And here’s a literal translation for your eyes to bleed on: “Do you want the repeal of Article 8 of Law 604 from July 15, 1966, titled...