Latest / The Copywriting Podcast with Fexingo: Sales Letters, Headlines, and Persuasive Writing / When a Typo in a Headline Tripled Click-Through Rate
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a moment in copywriting where you think you've made a mistake — your heart drops, you rush to fix it — and then you look at the data and realise the 'mistake' just tripled your click-through rate. Luna: That's a terrifying and delightful feeling. What's the example you're thinking of? Lucas: Late last year a mid-market e-commerce brand — sells holiday decor, ornaments, that kind of thing — ran a simple A-B test on their homepage headline. The control was 'Christmas Sale: Up to 40 Percent Off.' The variation was identical except one word: 'Chrismas Sale.' Misspelled. No 't'. And the variation drove two hundred and three percent more clicks. Luna: Wait — 203 percent? That's not a rounding error. Was it a fluke? Lucas: They ran it for two full weeks across thirty thousand visitors. Statistically significant at the ninety-nine percent confidence level. The misspelled headline didn't just win — it crushed. Luna: Okay, so why? What's the psychology there? Because my first instinct is that it looks careless. Lucas: Right, and that's the counterintuitive part. The psychology goes back to something called the von Restorff effect — also known as the isolation effect. Essentially, anything that stands out from its context gets encoded more deeply in memory. A typo in a headline is a visual anomaly. Your eye catches it, your brain pauses, and that extra split-second of processing can tip the scales toward action. Luna: So it's not that people liked the typo — it's that they noticed it. And noticing is the first step to clicking. Lucas: Exactly. But there's a second layer here that's specific to 2025, 2026. We're drowning in polished, ai generated copy. Everything looks perfect. And perfect starts to feel generic. A deliberate imperfection — a missing letter, an odd capitalization, a slightly awkward phrase — can signal that a human was actually in the room. It's a authenticity shortcut. Luna: That reminds me of the whole 'weirdly specific subject lines' trend in email marketing. Like, 'Your cat's birthday is tomorrow' — even if you don't have a cat, it's so odd you open it. Lucas: Same mechanism. The brain craves novelty. And a typo is one of the cheapest novelty levers you can pull — provided you do it intentionally and test it. Now, the Christmas Sale test is a clean example, but it's not the only one. I've seen a B2B SaaS company test a headline that read 'We Make Your Team More Productive' versus 'We Make Your Team More Productiv.' No 'e'. The truncated version increased demo requests by thirty-one percent. Luna: That's wild. But I'm guessing there's a line. You can't just sprinkle typos everywhere and hope for the best. Lucas: Absolutely. There's a difference between a deliberate, strategic imperfection and genuine carelessness. The Christmas Sale typo works because it's a single letter omission in a word everyone knows how to spell. It's clearly an intentional wink, not a mistake by someone who doesn't know the language. If you misspell 'Christmas' as 'Krismas' — too far. If you have a typo in the middle of a technical term your audience takes seriously — like 'encrytion' instead of 'encryption' — you lose trust. Luna: So it's context-dependent. What's the framework for deciding when to test a flaw? Lucas: I'd suggest three criteria. One: the error must be immediately recognizable as an error to your target audience. Two: the error should be minor — one character changed or omitted, not a whole word mangled. Three: the context should be low-stakes or playful. A holiday sale headline? Perfect. A legal disclaimer? Absolutely not. Luna: That makes sense. And you'd want to test it against a clean control, obviously. Don't just ship a typo into production without data. Lucas: Right. The company I mentioned ran the test precisely because someone on the marketing team accidentally left the typo in a draft, and before they could fix it, the variant had already outperformed. That lucky accident turned into a repeatable technique for them. They now routinely test one deliberate imperfection in subject lines and hero headlines. Luna: Has anyone tested this on landing page CTAs? Like, 'Add to Cart' versus 'Add to Cartt'? Lucas: Interesting question. I haven't seen a public study on that exact pair, but there's a related test from an apparel brand. They tested 'Shop Now' versus 'Shopp Now' — double 'p'. The variant increased click-throughs by eighteen percent. Not as dramatic as the Christmas example, but still a win. The theory is that the double 'p' adds a visual weight that makes the button feel more substantial. Luna: So it's not just about novelty — it's about the specific visual disruption. A missing letter creates a gap; an extra letter creates density. Both break the pattern. Lucas: Exactly. And this is where copywriting meets typography and cognitive psychology. Your brain processes familiar word shapes holistically — it doesn't read every letter. When a shape is off, your brain has to engage in a slower, more deliberate processing. That extra engagement can be the difference between scrolling past and clicking through. Luna: But isn't there a risk that some people will think you're just sloppy? Especially in more formal industries — finance, law, medicine. Lucas: Huge risk. I would never recommend a deliberate typo in a financial services headline. Trust is the only asset in that space, and an error — even an intentional one — looks like incompetence. But for consumer goods, entertainment, lifestyle, even some B2B software? It's worth testing. The key is to know your audience's tolerance for imperfection. Luna: So it's a tool in the toolbox, not a universal rule. Let's talk about another dimension: does the placement matter? Is a typo in the headline more powerful than one in the body copy? Lucas: Generally, yes. The headline is the first — often the only — thing people read. An anomaly there has maximum impact. In body copy, the effect diminishes because readers are already engaged. That said, I've seen tests where a deliberate typo in a bullet point — say, 'Saves you 10 hors a week' instead of 'hours' — boosted conversion by single digits. It's a smaller lift, but it's there. Luna: And what about email subject lines? That's where a lot of people would start testing. Lucas: Subject lines are a natural playground. They're short, they're isolated, and they're fighting for attention in a crowded inbox. A friend of mine in e-commerce tested 'Your order is on it's way' — with a misplaced apostrophe — against the correct 'its'. The error version had a twenty-two percent higher open rate. People clicked in to see if the rest of the email was as sloppy, I think. Curiosity gap. Luna: That's brilliant. The typo becomes a hook. Your brain goes, 'Wait, they made a mistake' — and you open the email to confirm. Lucas: Right. And once you're inside, they've got you. The rest of the email was clean, by the way. So the typo was a bait and switch — but a benign one. Luna: That makes me think about the broader conversation around authenticity in marketing right now. With AI writing so much copy, a flaw can be a signal of humanity. But it's a double-edged sword — if every brand starts doing it, the flaw itself becomes a pattern, and then it stops working. Lucas: Exactly. The von Restorff effect relies on rarity. If everyone uses typos, no single typo stands out. So this is a tactic that has a shelf life. Use it while it's novel in your niche, test it relentlessly, and be ready to retire it the moment the lift disappears. Luna: I think what I love about this is that it's a reminder that copywriting isn't about following rules — it's about understanding how attention works. And sometimes breaking the rules is the most effective way to follow the deeper principle. Lucas: That's a perfect summation. And it ties into something I've been thinking about: if these conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own writing — a test you ran, a headline you tweaked, a new way you think about persuasion — that's the whole point. This show stays ad-free because of listeners who find value in it and choose to support it. If that's you, you can buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep these conversations going, and it genuinely makes a difference. No pressure — just an open door. Luna: Yeah, I second that. We love digging into these experiments, and knowing they're useful to you is what keeps us at it. Lucas: So back to the typo tactic — one last layer. There's a fascinating study from the Journal of Consumer Research a few years back that found moderate typographical errors in a persuasive message actually increased the reader's perception of the writer's effort, as long as the message was easy to understand. The theory is that readers subconsciously think, 'This person worked hard and made a small slip,' rather than 'This person doesn't care.' That's a powerful nuance. Luna: So it's not just about attention — it's about empathy. The flaw humanizes the writer. Lucas: Exactly. In an era where so much copy feels sterile and robotic, a small flaw can be a bridge. But — and this is crucial — the study also found that if the message was difficult to understand, errors tanked persuasion. So the baseline requirement is clarity. You have to earn the right to be imperfect. Luna: That's the practical takeaway. Get the fundamentals right first, then test a single, deliberate imperfection in a high-traffic element. Measure, learn, iterate. Lucas: And if you run that test and it works, don't get too attached. The moment you see the lift decay, it's time for a new tactic. Copywriting is a living craft — what works today is a cliché tomorrow. Luna: So maybe the next episode should be about when a tactic stops working. How to know when to retire a winning formula. Lucas: I like that. Let's dig into that next time. For now, the takeaway: a typo isn't always a mistake. Sometimes it's the most intentional thing in your copy.