Latest / The Copywriting Podcast with Fexingo: Sales Letters, Headlines, and Persuasive Writing / How A Pencil Mark Drove Two Million In Sales
Transcript
- Lucas: So picture a direct mail envelope in 1985. Inside is a four-page fundraising letter for a medical research foundation. Standard stuff — problem, emotional appeal, ask, reply card. But someone on the production team took a pencil and, right next to the reply card, drew a small checkmark in the margin. Luna: A checkmark. Like a human being had reviewed it and approved? Lucas: Exactly. And that single pencil mark — not printed, not stamped, actually drawn by hand — lifted response by 42 percent compared to the control. That translated to roughly two million dollars in extra donations over the campaign's run. Luna: Two million from a pencil mark. That's the kind of story that makes a copywriter stay up at night wondering what else is possible. Lucas: And it's not an isolated case. Before we go deeper, I want to mention something. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, that's great. We deliberately keep this show ad-free because we think the ideas should speak for themselves. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the archive open and the episodes free. Lucas: So back to that checkmark. Why did it work? The prevailing theory then — and it holds up today — is that a handwritten element signals personal attention. In an age of mass-produced glossy mailers, a pencil mark looked like someone had looked at your letter just for you. Luna: It's the opposite of the template. It says, 'This isn't a form letter.' Lucas: Right. And there's a deeper psychological layer. The mark is imperfect. It's slightly crooked, the lead is a little smudged. That imperfection is actually more persuasive than a perfectly printed checkmark because it signals human effort. Luna: Effort. We trust things that cost someone something to produce. Lucas: Exactly. Behavioral economists call it the sunk cost heuristic — we value what we perceive others invested in. A printed checkmark could be added by a machine in milliseconds. A hand-drawn one took a second of someone's time, but that second is visible. Luna: So the medium becomes the message. The pencil mark isn't just an instruction — it's a proof of humanity. Lucas: Now, let's fast-forward to 2024. A startup called Pencil — no relation — ran an A/B test on their email newsletter. The control was a clean HTML layout with a button saying 'Read More.' The variant had a screenshot of the same email, but with a red pencil circle around the headline and a handwritten arrow pointing to the button. Luna: Wait, they literally put a picture of a marked-up email inside the email? Lucas: Yes. And the click-through rate tripled. Three times. On a B2B newsletter with a fairly sophisticated audience. Luna: That's remarkable. It suggests that even a simulated human touch — a digital image of a pencil mark — still carries the same persuasive weight. Lucas: Maybe even more, because the contrast is so stark. Everything else in the inbox is polished and automated. Then you see this rough circle and arrow, and it feels like someone actually read that email and thought it was worth your time. Luna: It's almost like the opposite of the uncanny valley. We trust things that look human-made, even if we know they're not. Lucas: There's neuroscience behind this. A study out of Stanford a few years ago used fMRI to look at brain activity when subjects read handwritten versus typed messages. The handwritten ones activated more areas associated with social cognition and emotional processing. Luna: So our brains literally process handwriting differently. It's more personal, more real. Lucas: But here's the twist — the pencil mark doesn't have to be real handwriting. In the 1985 case, it was real. In the Pencil startup case, it was a screenshot of a digital pencil mark. Yet both worked. The brain seems to respond to the visual cue of imperfection, not necessarily the actual graphite. Luna: Which opens up a lot of possibilities for digital campaigns. You can simulate the effect without the production cost of actually mailing a letter. Lucas: And some companies are doing exactly that. I saw a landing page recently — for a SaaS product — where the headline had a hand-drawn underline in a slightly wobbly line. I clicked. I think a lot of us would. Luna: But you have to be careful. If it looks too perfect — if the simulated pencil mark is too clean — it backfires. It has to look like a real person did it, not a designer's vector. Lucas: Absolutely. The Pencil startup test actually failed when they used a clean digital circle. It only worked when they used a brush stroke that looked like a real marker. The imperfection was the active ingredient. Luna: So the lesson is: if you're going to fake it, fake it convincingly. Use a real pencil, scan it, or use a high-quality brush texture. Lucas: Or don't fake it at all. One of the most successful direct mail campaigns in the last decade came from a nonprofit called Waterwell. They sent a letter with a handwritten note in the margin that said, 'I read this — it's good. - Sarah.' Sarah was a real staff member. Response rates hit 18 percent on a cold list. Luna: Eighteen percent. That's unheard of for cold direct mail. Most campaigns are happy with two or three. Lucas: And the note was short, it was vague, it was almost trivial. But it worked because it signaled that a real person had vetted the letter. It's the same principle as the checkmark, just more explicit. Luna: It makes me think about the digital equivalent. Could you have a real employee add a personal note in an email? Not a merge field, but a genuine sentence? Lucas: There are companies trying that. One e-commerce brand, I'll keep the name off, had their customer service team add a handwritten 'Thanks!' in the margin of packing slips for high-value orders. Repeat purchase rate went up by 14 percent. Luna: That's not exactly copywriting, but it's the same idea. A small human gesture in a transaction that's otherwise sterile. Lucas: Right. And I think that's the broader takeaway from the pencil mark. Copywriting is about creating a connection. The most powerful connections often come from showing you're a person, not a corporation. Luna: So what would you advise someone listening right now? A marketer who's writing emails or landing pages. Should they go buy a pencil? Lucas: I'd say test it. In a low-stakes way. On your next email newsletter, add a simple handwritten underline to the subject line in a preview image. Or on your landing page, have a real teammate handwrite a testimonial quote and scan it. A/B test it. You might be surprised. Luna: And if you're in direct mail, just literally use a pencil. It's cheap, it's easy, and as we've seen, it can be worth millions. Lucas: Exactly. The pencil mark isn't a gimmick — it's a signal of humanity. And in a world of ai generated copy and automated everything, that signal is only getting more valuable. Luna: So the next time you're about to hit send on a perfectly polished message, maybe ask yourself: what would a pencil do? Lucas: I think Sarah from Waterwell would approve. And with that, we'll leave you to ponder your own margin notes. Thanks for listening.