Not many people fully understand the value of the research done by Bluma Ziegarnik.

I too had never heard of her until one of my copywriting mentors introduced me to a powerful sales letter strategy called the Ziegarnik effect… As soon as I applied this strategy (actually I’d call it a secret weapon) my sales letter conversions started rocketing.

In fact all of my advertising, solo ads, landing pages, headlines – anything that I touched with this weapon soon succumbed to higher conversions and I’d recommend that you start using it too. I’ll even be as bold as to say that if you don’t use the Ziegarnik effect in your sales letter you’ll be leaving massive profits on the table…

So what is the Ziegarnik effect and how can you apply it to your sales letter?

Well before I tell you that I think it’s important for me to tell you a little bit more about Bluma Ziegarnik and what she discovered.

Born in Russia back in 1900 Bluma went on to become a respected Psychologist with a string of credits to her name.

It was while she was sitting in a Viennese café in the nineteen twenties that she noticed a phenomena that later became known as the Ziegarnik Effect. Whilst waiting for her order to be fulfilled she observed that the waiters were not writing anything down.

They simply memorised all the orders that they received, five, ten fifteen of them – it didn’t matter – they were all remembered wholesale. But as soon as they were fulfilled they were instantly forgotten.

This intrigued Bluma so much that she carried out further studies and found out that every single waiter could remember an endless string of uncompleted orders, but not one could remember a completed order.

In 1927 she published the results of her studies stating that ‘we remember unfinished business approximately twice as well as finished business.’

This is all very interesting you may think but how can it help you?

Well think about things you watch on TV for a moment… every news broadcaster employs this technique and all the soap operas use it as well…

What they do is to start off a story then leave you ‘hanging in mid air’ …

“Coming up later we tell you how a ten year old girl saved her grandfather from a band of armed thugs…”

might be the first headline the news presenter reads before starting to tell you other, perhaps less interesting stories.

Of course this lead story has captured your attention so much that you have to keep on watching the ‘boring’ news until finally the presenter comes to the interesting part…

A tension has been built up inside of you and you have to keep on watching just to find out the ending to get release.

Look at any Soap Opera on TV and you’ll see that each episode stops right in the middle of some extremely interesting story – you have to watch the next episode just to find out what happened.

This makes you feel such an excruciating longing to find out just what is going to happen next, so much so that you feverishly wait for the clock to tick away so that you can find out the answer… It’s almost as if there is nothing more to life than the answer to the unfinished part of the previous episode, you’re on autopilot completing whatever tasks you have to do while your mind dwells on what is going to happen next in the story…

This is how powerful the Ziegarnik effect can be and why you must use it in your sales letters.

As you know stories capture peoples attention and you should always have a story of some kind in your sales letter, but the trick is not to finish the story immediately.

Tempt your prospect, pique their interest, keep them hanging on for the answer while you go on to explain other benefits about your product. They’ll have to keep on reading to find out the answer to the unfinished business you agitated in their mind earlier.

In the same way, your headlines and sub-headlines must never give a complete solution to your readers problems, they should only serve to capture their interest and make them want to keep on reading.

Using the Ziegarnik effect in your sales letter will give you increased sales for your product but don’t trick you customers.

If your sales letter offers something , even if it’s simply the answer to a question you’ve raised in someone’s mind you have to supply the answer otherwise you’ll create a resentment in them that will prevent them from buying from you.

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Stuart Elliott is a world class copywriter who has written numerous stories on sales letters and copywriting. Drop by:
http://howtowritekickbuttcopy.com to pick up a free copywriting power guide.

Article copyright Stuart Elliott 2006 all rights reserved. You may only reprint this artitcle in it’s entirety and you must include this resource box.

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