Weekly Round Up #121
Your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
Welcome to the 121st edition of the Weekly Round-Up — your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and more!
In this week’s issue:
Copy Tip: You can’t persuade someone who isn’t paying attention
AI Tip: Ask Claude to rewrite your copy at 3 different awareness levels.
9 Ways to Improve Marketing Messaging Performance (via Zeta Global)
Customer messaging playbook: 7 trends to act on now (via Customer.io)
How to Send Fewer Emails and Get Better Results (via One Signal)
I wrote this for you (via The Copy Minimalist)
Podcast Pick: Why Earning Trust Beats Clicks in Modern Marketing (with Amanda Natividad)
Swipe File Additions
Copy Tip of the Week
You can’t persuade someone who isn’t paying attention.
Sounds obvious, but watch how most copy is actually written.
The offer shows up in sentence two.
The benefit is buried in paragraph three.
The CTA arrives after three sections of features nobody asked about.
That’s not a writing problem, but rather a sequencing problem.
Attention is a prerequisite to communication – not a given, and it doesn’t hold indefinitely. Every sentence either earns the next one, or it doesn’t. The moment you lose someone’s attention, the rest of your copy doesn’t exist.
This is why the best copywriters think about order as much as content. What you say matters, but when you say it matters more.
The principle: Attention Precedes Action.
Earn the read before you ask for the click.
AI Insight of the Week
Ask Claude to rewrite your copy at 3 different awareness levels.
Most copy fails before the first word lands because it assumes the reader knows more than they do.
Eugene Schwartz mapped this out decades ago: your prospect exists somewhere on an awareness spectrum, from completely unaware of their problem to ready to buy.
Where they sit determines what your copy needs to say first. Get it wrong and it doesn’t matter how good the writing is.
Here’s the move: take a draft you’ve written and ask Claude to rewrite it at three awareness levels — Unaware, Solution-Aware, and Most Aware. Don’t just collect three variants. Study what changed!
It shows you what assumptions you baked into your original and whether you’re actually meeting your reader where they are, or where you wish they were.
Most of the time, you’ll find your draft skews later in the awareness spectrum than your actual audience sits.
And that’s the gap that could be costing you conversions.
Must-Read Articles
9 Ways to Improve Marketing Messaging Performance (via Zeta Global)
Why I recommend it: Your email, SMS, and push messages aren’t the destination — they’re the door. Nine practical rules for writing marketing messages that earn the click: follow the Rule of One, design for scanning, use microcopy over full sentences, and make every word accountable to the outcome.
Customer messaging playbook: 7 trends to act on now (via Customer.io)
Why I recommend it: Seven shifts reshaping customer messaging in 2026 — plain text beating designed emails, behavioral triggers beating demographics, conversion metrics beating opens — each paired with specific AI prompts and tactics you can test this week.
How to Send Fewer Emails and Get Better Results (via One Signal)
Why I recommend it: Not every message belongs in email — but when email is your only channel, everything gets forced into the inbox whether it fits or not. This presents a simple framework for deciding what actually belongs in email vs. what should move to push, SMS, or in-app, so the emails you do send earn their place.
You Might Also Like:
Talking Too Loud
Why Earning Trust Beats Clicks in Modern Marketing (with Amanda Natividad)
🎧 Listen on iTunes | Listen on Spotify
Why I recommend it: The internet has shifted from a click-through environment to in-platform consumption — but most marketers are still optimizing for the click. Amanda Natividad of SparkToro breaks down why the best content now earns trust, recall, and preference without needing the click to prove it worked.
🔓 Want access to my entire swipe file database?
Subscribe here to unlock the magic link.Pretty Fly Copy
GORUCK
Format: Email
Why I like it: Raising your prices is never easy, especially when you already make a premium product. But I thought GoRuck handled this well. It gave people a glimpse inside of how their business operates, which explains the why behind price increases.
DOMINOS
Format: Ad
Spotted By: The Ads Professor
Why he likes it: They saw a competitor headline and flipped it in real time. Same format. New punchline. No new creative needed. Just speed and awareness.
VIRGIN ATLANTIC
Format: Email
Why I like it: Virgin’s copy across the board is always entertaining and lighthearted. On my recent overseas flight, this was the email confirmation I received after making my meal option. “nom nom nom”.
That’s it for this week! If you have questions or comments — drop a note below.
✌️
Matt
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