Weekly Round Up #125
Your once-a-week digest filled with copywriting insights, AI tips, must-read articles, pretty cool copy examples, and much more!
Welcome to the 125th 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: Your copy isn’t just your words.
AI Tip: Voice-to-text + Claude
What does writing with AI actually feel like? (via Psychology Meets Writing)
Suggest Practical Items to Reduce Cart Abandonment (via Science Says)
Your Users Give You 30 Seconds: Here’s How to Make Them Count (via OneSignal)
Podcast Pick: How to Generate Your Best Ideas (via Simon Sinek)
Swipe File Additions
Interested in sponsoring an issue of the Weekly Round Up? Beginning this summer, I’m accepting select sponsorship opportunities. Click here for details.
Copy Tip of the Week
Your copy isn’t just your words…
It’s how fast you respond to a support ticket.
It’s the font you chose.
It’s the placeholder text in your form fields.
It’s whether your 404 page sounds like a human or a legal department.
Every element of your brand communicates something. None of it is neutral.
That’s what “Everything Speaks” means. And most brands only think about copy when someone’s actually writing words, which means they’re ignoring 80% of what’s actually being communicated.
Your customers don’t separate “the design” from “the message.” They experience all of it as one thing. And they form an opinion about who you are based on all of it.
So the question isn’t just what does our copy say?
It’s what does everything say?
AI Insight of the Week
Voice-to-text + Claude is the fastest ideation loop most people haven’t tried.
Typing slows thinking. You edit as you go, second-guess word choices, and lose the thread. By the time the idea hits the page, it’s already been filtered.
That’s not *always* bad, but it is slower.
Voice doesn’t do that. You talk the way you think — messy, fast, associative. The idea stays intact.
Dictate into your phone, drop the transcript into Claude, and tell it to pull out the core idea, clean up the structure, or turn it into a draft.
You’ll go from raw thought to usable output in minutes without the friction of a blank page.
It’s not really a writing hack. It’s a *thinking* hack that happens to create a workable first draft.
Must-Read Articles
What does writing with AI actually feel like? (via Psychology Meets Writing)
Why I recommend it: A grieving writer couldn’t find the words for nine stories until she started writing alongside GPT-3. By the ninth draft, only two lines belonged to the AI. The follow-up to the MIT study piece, this one explores “rhetorical load sharing” and why your writing with AI will only ever be as good as you.
Suggest Practical Items to Reduce Cart Abandonment (via Science Says)
Why I recommend it: A cart full of fun purchases triggers guilt, and guilt triggers abandonment. Recommending one or two practical items alongside indulgent ones reduced cart abandonment by up to 21%. Based on 14 million ecommerce sessions, not guesswork.
Your Users Give You 30 Seconds. Here’s How to Make Them Count. (via OneSignal)
Why I recommend it: Your users open the app for 30 seconds between meetings… not for a 12-step onboarding tour. This is a practical walkthrough of “micro-journeys”: short, cross-channel sequences where every single touchpoint stands on its own and delivers value even if it’s the only one they see.
You Should Read This Too:
SIMON SINEK
How to Generate Your Best Ideas
📼 Watch on YouTube
Why I recommend it: Ask for 15 ideas in 48 hours — because the first three or four are obvious and the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth are where the real gold lives. Simon Sinek walks through his “dog pile” brainstorm method: no judgment, no senior leaders in the room, and a green/yellow/red sort that gets the best ideas into execution fast.
🔓 Want access to my entire swipe file database?
Subscribe here to unlock the magic link.Pretty Fly Copy
AIR TRANSAT
Format: Ad
Spotted By: Joel Holtby
Why I like it: The power of comparison on full display.
BELLROY
Format: Email
Why I like it: I know I’ve been featuring Bellroy quite a bit lately, but this is a powerful campaign where they leverage the power of affirmations in such a way that it positions their products as a central role in each one. I wish I had thought of this…
GORUCK
Format: Email
Why I like it: Another that I’m sorry for including so frequently here, but whoever’s taken over GORUCK’s email program is killing it with story-based campaigns. This one shows how a 3-star review led to an entire pivot within a product line.
Classifieds
That’s it for this week! If you have questions or comments — drop a note below.
✌️
Matt
Are you new here? Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what else you can expect.