Taking on the dreaded expense report

Expensify

Expense reports that don't suck!

Lost receipts, misplaced corporate cards, arcane expense report software. The dreaded expense report is the bane of so many business travelers and freelancers. But a few high tech services have an answer, albeit with a dash of low tech too.
The mobile applications Expensify, Shoeboxed, and Lemon Wallet, all released over the past two years scan receipts, automatically turn them into spreadsheet files—and also automatically generate expense reports and even sophisticated financial analysis tools.
These time-saving receipt tools work thanks to top-notch scanner recognition. And the low-tech surprise of many of the receipt scanning apps: The use of human labor to verify auto-scanned receipts for expense reports.
Shoeboxed is open about human eyes looking at your receipts—promotional materials boast about "human-verified data extraction" of receipts at facilities in North Carolina and Australia. Both Expensify and Lemon Wallet also have verification of receipt data by human employees, although both use them to differing degrees. Lemon Wallet's co-founder Wences Casares said that the company initially used employees to input receipts, but switched to automatic scanning because of the cost and because too many errors were being made.
Alex Fitzpatrick, a political journalist at the website Mashable, swears by Expensify. "Expensify connects my credit and debit cards so I automatically submit expense reports, similar to how Mint works. But some expenses—especially cabs in Washington, D.C.--are still paid with cash. If I ask a cabbie for a paper receipt, Expensify's scanner does a great job of reading the handwriting on it," Fitzpatrick said.
When a user photographs a receipt, the receipt then undergoes a scanning process which transforms the image of a receipt into usable text which can be plugged into expense reports. This takes anywhere from five minutes to an hour, since receipts are typically photographed under a variety of lighting conditions (the technology used is nearly identical to depositing a check through a mobile phone).
"The scanned receipt is uploaded to our server and then goes thru a number of processes. Our imaging system cuts the receipt into a lot of little rectangles and uses these to identify the merchant name, phone number, and other important information." Caesares said. "Then this information goes through scanning for every small rectangle; we apply an algorithm confidence level to this and pass it if it is more than 50 percent."
Expensify, Shoeboxed, and Lemon Wallet then all verify data against a customer's previous records to make sure it hasn't been entered yet. Because the scanner process is resource-intensive for these service providers, users are typically limited in the number of free entries they can make monthly: All three charge for premium accounts with unlimited receipt uploads.
Shoeboxed's Corey Post said that the occasional mistakes made by OCR readers justified manual entry. Employees working in shifts at Shoeboxed's North Carolina headquarters manually proofread OCRed receipts. However, this takes longer than Lemon Wallet or Expensify: While most receipts take an hour or two to process, they can take up to 24 hours. "We try to balance instant gratification with keeping all employees in-house in the United States," says Post.
One of the largest target markets for expense report-generating apps is the freelancer community. According to a 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, there are approximately 10.3 million independent contractors in the United States. Many of these independent contractors work for multiple clients, all of whom typically require separate invoices. All three companies target their products at independent contractors and employees on business trips.
Ultimately, each service has distinct advantages and disadvantages. Lemon Wallet is by far the easiest to use, but has limited functionality. Shoeboxed offers an array of options and integration with Evernote, Quickbooks, Freshbooks, and a host of other external services, but takes much longer to process receipts and has more of a learning curve. Expensify, meanwhile, shares the service integration of Shoeboxed but has prices that could add up for small businesses with more than a handful of employees.
So should users feel secure with the use of human labor during the input process of their receipts?
Expensify's own website warns users not to upload sensitive information, or "a picture of anything you wouldn't be willing to throw into the trash."
(The author is a Reuters contributor) (Editing by John Peabody, Ryan McCarthy and Brian Tracey)http://expensify.com

How to Get Free Money – These 17 Companies Will Give You $1,820.25

1. Look at Your Budget on PersonalCapital.com – FREE $10.00 PersonalCapital.com, a portfolio management site, will give you $10 just to open a free account! For those of you who aren’t familiar with PC, their site reminds me a lot of Mint.com. Basically, you input your account information and then their website helps you track your investments, credit card balances and changes to your checking/savings accounts. 

The layout is pretty cool too – a number of full-color charts & graphs lets you easily visualize all of your financial accounts at once. Here’s how to grab the $10… 1. Sign up for PersonalCapital.com using my referral link. The bonus is paid out via Paypal, so my advice is to signup for Personal Capital using your Paypal email address. 3. Add your financial account(s) to your Personal Capital dashboard. You must link at least one account in order to get the bonus. 4. Wait 30 days. Unfortunately, this bonus takes up to a month to pay out, but it’s free money so can I really complain? **You must be a legal resident of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia and 18 years or older in order to claim the bonus** Read more about it here: “Free $10 for Signing Up at Personal Capital”   

  2.  Trade Stocks at MotifInvesting.com – FREE $100.25 Motif Investing is unique among online brokers, because instead of picking individual stocks, you invest in a cluster of stocks (usually 20 to 30) from a similar field.  Sort of like a mutual fund, but the motifs range from Clean Energy, to Republican Companies, to Healthy and Tasty, to Obamacare.  Basically any interest you have or trend you’d like to invest in can be found on Motif… Even, better they’re giving away a ton of cash right now. If you open a new account and make one trade, you’ll earn $50. Make 3 trades, and you’ll earn $75. Make 5 trades, and you’ll earn $150! Now Motif charges $9.95 for each trade you make, so after making 5 trades, you’ll still be netting $100.25 in extra cash.  That’s like getting all of your transaction fees free AND earning $100 extra.  Sweet! Signup here - Free $150 Motif Promotion. Read more about it here: “How to Make $100 This Week with Motif Investing”  

 3. Download the Mobile Expressions App on Your Smartphone – FREE $15.00 MobileXpression is a research company that studies internet trends and reports to their clients about the popularity of different mobile phone websites. They are currently looking for a few thousand cell phone users to share some of the websites they are browsing on their mobile devices. All of the sharing is done with a special software that is installed on your phone and it doesn’t require any real work from you. Plus, they’ll give you a free $15 just to give it a try. Even better, you can also uninstall the software at any time if you decide you no longer want to participate. How it works… 1. Sign up at MobileXpressions here – You’ll need to share a little bit of information about your demographic which is similar to signing up as a Nielsen household. You’ll also need to tell them what kind of cell phone you have, because their software is only compatible with certain types of phones. 2. Download their software – It seems to be pretty easy and it runs in the background of your phone just like any other cell phone app. The site says it will have no affect on your mobile phone performance. 3. Send your data – This step doesn’t really require any work from you as the software automatically send the relevant data to MobileXpression. They don’t monitor your phone calls or personal information but they do check out the web pages you view, the links you access, and the usage times for certain device activities (e.g., text messaging, call lengths, and web browsing). 4. Collect your rewards – MobileXpressions will send you a $15 Visa gift card just for signing up and downloading the software. They also reward members with weekly contests and will have a drawing for $100,000 jackpot at the end of the year. Read more about it here: “Get Paid $15 to Share Your Favorite Website”  

 4. Try Banking at Capital One 360 – FREE $50.00 About a year ago, Capital One took over ING Direct and started offering free online checking accounts. What’s even cooler is that they’ll give you $50 just to open one. I’ve already got a checking account that I’m pretty happy with, but I don’t mind opening a second one for some free cash. Here’s how to do it: 1. Open a free checking account with Capital One 360. 2. There’s no minimum deposit with this account, but you’ve got to make at least 3 purchases with your Capital One 360 debit card during the first 45 days of opening the account. 3. On the 50th day, Capital One 360 will deposit a free $50 in your account. Sweet! For those of you who aren’t familiar with Capital One 360, they are a pretty popular virtual bank that gives spectacular interest rates. It’s completely free to open and maintain an account with Capital One 360. Go claim your $50 and take yourself out to lunch. Read more about it here: “Free Money Alert: Get $50 from Capital One 360” 

 5. Open a Netspend.com Account – FREE $20.00 This is another easy $20 just for requesting a prepaid, reloadable card from Netspend. I’ve tested this one and over 200 hundred readers have cashed in on this, so you know it’s a good one. 1. Click HERE and ”Open a NetSpend account” for FREE. 2. You will receive your NetSpend “Visa” Debit card within 10 business days. Mine made it here in 4 days. 3. Once you receive the card, simply log into NetSpend and activate it. 4. In order to get the FREE $20, you’ll need to load the card with a minimum of $40.00 using PayPal, a bank account or one of the other many options. 5. Once you load the $40.00, NetSpend will add $20.00 to your available balance on the card. I confirmed this myself with my own card. 6. Go to the ATM and withdraw the $60.00 total from your card or spend the funds at your local store, online, or wherever you can use a credit card. Yes, if you withdraw the money via ATM or cash back, you’ll be hit with the $2.00 fee for a PIN transaction or a $2.50 ATM Fee (would only be $17.50 – $18.00 bonus in this case). But, you can avoid the fee by ACH transferring it for free back to your bank Read more it here: “Free $20 Cash for Signing Up at Netspend”  

 6. Do Your Shopping via Ebates.com – FREE $10.00 The folks over at Ebates.com, the cash-back shopping site, are giving away $10 gift cards when you sign-up as a new member. You can choose either a $10 Target, Walmart, Macy’s, or Kohl’s gift card. You need to make a $25 purchase at any of the stores on their shopping list in order to qualify for the free gift card. I certainly don’t recommend spending $25 just to get a $10 gift card, but if you have plans to buy something online anyway, I would definitely cash in on this… Especially if you’ve got a gift card from a birthday or Christmas that needs to be spent. Look at this as a way to get a little bit extra back on your purchase. Some of the cash-back offers I use frequently include the 3% back on iTunes purchases, 1% back on Apple store purchases, and 3% back on Target purchases. But there are a ton of stores to pick from as well. Read more about it here: “Get a FREE $10 Target Gift Card from Ebates.com”  

 7. Open a Free Account at Plink.com – FREE $10.00 Plink.com is a new cash-back site that lets you collect rewards just by shopping at the places you already do. Right now they’re offering a sweet promotion that will pay you to $10 signup at Plink and then make a purchase a Mcdonalds. Since you do have to buy something, your actually profit might be a couple of dollars less, but my advice is just to buy an iced tea or an ice cream so you can keep most of the $10. One of the cool thing about Plink is that you earn rewards without having to carry any extra rewards card, coupons or special codes. Simply pay with your credit or debit card that you link to your Plink account. Your rewards will automatically be credited – it’s pretty cool! 1. Sign up with Plink.com – It’s FREE! To qualify for the FREE $10 Gift Card, you must be a new user of Plink. 2. Register your debit or credit card with Plink. 3. Make a purchase at Mcdonalds before 11:59 P.M. on Sunday, September 9, 2013. There’s no minimum purchase amount. 4. Wait for the 1,000 bonus points to apply to your Plink account (can take up to 7 business days). Finally, click the “Rewards” button and pick which gift card you want. That’s it! Enjoy. Read more about it here: “Get a Free $5 Gift Card to Amazon When You Join Plink.com” 

 8. Open an Account at Serve.com – FREE $50.00 Serve is American Express’s version of a prepaid, reloadable card and they are offering $50 when you open a free account, sign up for direct deposit and have two direct deposits put in your account. That’s a FREE $50 for about 5 minutes of work. Sweet! And here’s a tip: You can direct deposit a number of things besides your regular paycheck. I like to keep my paycheck going to my primary bank account, but for bank bonuses, I use other sources of income to fund it. Try to think of another place that you get monthly income from. Do you get a social security check? Insurance check? Second job income? Mystery shopping payouts?  A number of the “paid-to-email” sites also offer direct deposit. I know that Fusion Cash does, because I get a nice cash-out from them on the 20th of every month. Here’s a link to the promo page:     Serve.com $50 Bonus Read more about Serve.com here: “How to Get a Free $50 from Serve.com” 

  9. Take 5 Minutes and Open a Betterment.com Account – FREE $25.00 Betterment is a simple, online tool that allows anyone to invest in stocks & bonds without incurring transaction fees. It’s become pretty popular with small investors who want to start saving, but can’t afford the expensive fees you find at places like Etrade.com and Merrill Lynch. Plus, they’ll give you a free $25 just to signup! 1.) Open a free account at Betterment.com. The form takes about 90 seconds to fill out, so can literally do this while sitting in the doctor’s office or while watching television. 2.) You need to make an opening deposit of $250 or more within 60 days of opening your account. If you’re not ready to make a deposit right now, my advice is that you go ahead and fill out the Betterment promotion form today. You can always make the deposit later, but this way you’ll have the promotion locked in, just in case the promotion ends. 3.) Once you’ve deposited $250 (and waited 60 days), Betterment.com will deposit a FREE $25 bonus into your account. How easy is that? You can then withdraw your entire account balance or you can keep the $275 invested and earning interest with Betterment. Right now this is USA only. Read more about it here: “How to Make $25 While Sitting in a Waiting Room”  

10. Transfer Your Prescription to a New Pharmacy- FREE $25.00 If you’re one of the 70% of Americans with a monthly prescription from your doctor, I’ve got an easy way for you to make $25 bucks. Several of the national grocery and drug store chains have been know to run promotions where they will give you free cash or a gift card when you transfer a prescription to their store. For example, this month Walgreens is running a promotion where they will give you a $25 gift card for transferring a prescription to your local Walgreens. You can usually find these coupons in your Sunday newspaper circulars or on coupon blogs like DealSeekingMom.com and MoneySavingMom.com. You can even repeat this deal every month with a different pharmacy. Read more about it here: “Here’s a Neat Trick to Make $25/month if You Have a Prescription” 

 11. Sign Up an Account at OptionsExpress – FREE $100.00 Here’s another great way to make some free cash. This one is through OptionsXpress, a Charles Schwab affiliated brokerage house where you can trade stocks and options. From now until December 31, 2013, OptionsXpress is offering new US customers a $100 bonus when you open an Individual or Joint account and fund it with at least $500. 1. Open a new Individual or Joint account (IRAs, other tax-exempt, linked, or shared accounts are excluded from this offer). 2. Fund your new account with at least $500 cash or securities transferred from a brokerage firm other than OptionsXpress. 3. Make at least 3 trades within 12 months of account opening. 4. The $100 bonus will be deposited into your account within one month of meeting the terms and conditions of this offer. 5. Maintain at least $500 in your account for 6 months (excluding trading losses), if not, the $100 bonus will be deducted from your account. Read more about it here: “Look! OptionsExpress is Giving Away a Free $100 to New Account Holders”  

12 – 16. Sign Up for a New Credit Card – FREE $1,375.00 One of the best ways for a Penny Hoarder to make some serious extra cash is to take advantage of credit card sign up bonuses.  Of course, to get the most benefit, you should have excellent credit, and you should routinely pay off your credit card in full each month so you’re not paying interest.  (After all, every time you pay interest, you’re losing some of the positive effects of the bonuses.) Just recently I received over $1,300+ in credit card bonuses by selectively choosing new cards to apply for and use.  All I had to do was put my regular spending on the credit card over the course of a few months. US Bank FlexPerks Card –  $175 Signup Bonus Chase Sapphire Preferred Card – $400 Signup Bonus Barclaycard Arrival – $400 Signup Bonus Citi ThankYou Preferred Card – $200 Signup Bonus American Express Gold – $200 Signup Bonus For those of you wondering, here’s a great article on how to do this without hurting your credit score: How Opening and Closing Credit Cards Affects Your Credit Score Read more about it here: “5 Credit Card Promotions That Made me $1,375”   

17. Get Paid to Complete Tasks at InboxDollars.com – FREE $30.00 There are a number of sites on the web that will pay you to read advertiser’s emails, sign up for offers, and take surveys. I’ve tried about a million of them, but there are only a few of them that I would recommend. Inbox Dollars is one of those companies and I want to show you how I made $30 in a little over an hour completing offers on their site. It’s free to join Inbox Dollars and best of all, they give you $5 just for signing up! Inbox Dollars just requires that you accumulate $30 in earnings before you can “cash-out” and they pay you by sending a check. Some sample offers include one that asks you to sign up for a email newsletter from AMF Bowling. That pays 50 cents and takes about 15 seconds. Another offer asks you to sign up for a free account at Turbotax.com to earn $3.50. These are simple and there are nearly a hundred of them to choose from. One way to get to $30 in earnings in only a few minutes is by taking advantage of the book club offers. There are a half a dozen book clubs that are offering $10 if you try out their club. Signing up for a book club does require you to put some money forward which is why I suggest this method for more advanced users. If you don’t want to continue your membership in the book club, you will need to simply mark “Cancel- Return to Sender” on the outside of your first package and return it to the postman. The book club will give you a full refund and you get to keep your $10 for trying it out. If you are interested in giving Inbox dollars a try, visit the sign-up page here to get started.

15 WEBSITES WITH ENGAGING USER EXPERIENCES

1. Black Negative (http://www.blacknegative.com)

2. Adidas Design Studio (http://www.adidasdesignstudios.com)

3. Project Re: Brief by Google (http://www.projectrebrief.com)

4. The Interactive UK Energy Consumption Guide

 (http://www.evoenergy.co.uk/uk-energy-guide)
 

5. Beyonce (http://www.beyonce.com)
 

6. Reebok (http://www.reebok.com)
 

7. Optimo Hats (http://www.optimohats.com)
 

8. Piccsy Pitchdeck (http://www.piccsy.com/investors)
 

9. Captain Dash (http://captaindash.com)
 

10. Orange Sprocket (http://www.orangesprocket.com)
 

11. WWF Earth Hour 2012 (http://assets.wwf.org.uk/custom/foodstory)
 

12. Onst Creative (http://www.onstcreative.com)
 

13. Nike Air Jordan (http://www.nike.com/jumpman23/aj2012)
 

14. Tim Roussilhe Portfolio (http://timothee-roussilhe.com)
 

15. The Thomas Oliver Band (http://thethomasoliverband.com)
 

Inspired to add interactivity and engagement in your designs? Have a favorite from this list? Let us know in the comments!

By Jessica Mooni

Eluding the Illusion of Time: Douglas Karr on Priorities, Resources, and the Value of Quality

When your goal is to meet a deadline for a project, time can sometimes become your biggest enemy.

It’s not that I don’t understand the work involved to complete a particular task at hand; it’s all of the other unanswered questions that come along with working with clients and teams. I don’t know if my client will provide the resources in time. I don’t know that our team’s resources will be consistently applied. I don’t know if we’ll run into problems with the technology. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll be held accountable. The problem is that I won’t be held accountable for the result – I’ll be held accountable for the deadline.

When Will it All Get Done?

Recognizing this, I pad project schedules for safety. That said, I am putting my contract and relationship with my client at risk by taking my time estimate, doubling it, and doubling it again… eventually ending up at 4 times the original estimate.

It’s not that I’m lying or trying to delay the project — it’s that I want to ensure it’s done correctly and exceeds the expectations of the client. And, of course, I want to ensure that the client will get the hand-off when they expect it. There are often downstream repercussions when a project isn’t completed on time. This is the critical moment in our relationship. If the client asks their internal staff, the staff will say it takes a fraction of the time. If the client asks a competitor, they’ll undercut me for sure. It’s a critical moment because the only reason why the client would accept my estimate at this point is because they trust me. If they trust me, we’ll move forward. If they don’t trust me, we’ll end the relationship.

It has nothing to do with time and very little to do with the results. Time is an illusion.

What’s Your Hourly Rate?

When I started my business, I responded to one ornery prospect with a rate of $250.00 per hour. He grimaced and literally berated me for the next five minutes or so. He said he could hire someone for one-tenth that rate and there’s no way he would pay it. I asked how much he would pay. He responded $75.00 per hour. So, I told him that I could do it for $75.00 per hour, but that it would take me three times as long as my original quote. I smiled. He didn’t. So I walked.

The illusion of time appears again. Within that discussion, the value of the project at hand wasn’t discussed — only my hourly worth as a human being. If he interviewed 10 people who ranged from $25.oo per hour to $250.oo per hour, I’m confident that the $25.00 per hour contractor would get the contract. I’m also confident that the results were disastrous. Just about every day, we meet with clients who have completely blown their budgets on cheap contractors who couldn’t get the job done.

We don’t manage retainers nor track hours anymore. We set budgets with our clients and have them hold us accountable that the value we generate is greater than the monthly subscription we charge. We like to measure that in increased visibility on search, social, improved conversion rates, and – ultimately – more dollars to the bottom line.

How do you Manage Time?

I don’t. Ten years ago, I started the Marketing Technology Blog and grew a sizable following online. The authority I built, combined with the following, began to drive demand for my services. The demand was enough that I launched my agency 5 years ago. Suddenly, I was a CEO and a blogger. I was recruited to write Corporate Blogging for Dummies. My influence grew, my network grew, and my business grew.

On a daily basis, I have to respond to a dozen or so tweets, a handful of Facebook status updates, dozens of PR pitches, hundreds of emails, a few phone calls an hour… and I need to execute for the clients who are paying my agency. I am surrounded by an amazing team that barely keeps me from drowning and thankfully keeps our clients afloat.

You can’t balance a checkbook when you don’t have enough money to cover the checks. The same goes for time management. When the demand for your time exceeds the number of minutes in the day, there is no time management. At that point, we’re not really managing time — we’re managing priorities.

Prioritization over Preservation

Some folks tell me that what this means is that I’m not charging enough, or I need to grow my business, or I need to say no… but that’s not who I am. I want to stay affordable to most businesses. I want to help more clients improve their marketing results. I want to stay engaged with my following on social media. I want to read every email from a new startup or a public relations professional. I love my disaster of a life!

The result is that I turn away business. Not because of the time it will take or the money it will pay, but because it’s not a fit for my style of work. I’m sure many of you are shaking your heads and some of you probably think I need psychological help, but I don’t. I’m absolutely content with finding and working with businesses that appreciate the value and commitment I bring to their company, instead of holding me accountable for over- or underestimating timelines made for self-preservation.

And I’m not alone. Virtually every client I work with is resource-challenged, and the demands continue to grow. Our service, sales, and marketing staff now balance a plethora of social mediums, a barrage of emails, and the interruption of meetings. They face increased expectations of developing content, nurturing leads, improving customer retention, and acquiring new business — all with less money, fewer people, and just a handful of tools.

Visualization Management

The key to our success isn’t managing time, it’s managing priorities. We balance our publication, our speaking schedules, our sponsors and sponsorships, our audience and our community alongside our clients’ demands. Because of these myriad responsibilities, we use a ton of visualization tools. From cashflow in our accounting platform, to analytics for our audience, to email visualization tools to handle bulk actions (check out Mailstrom), to MindManager and ProjectDirector for identifying obstacles and opportunities to drive business results.

In my opinion, time management is as dead as the corner office, the personal assistant and the flashy gold watch. It’s simply not how we’re working anymore. We have a fixed amount of resources, not a flexible amount of time. The challenge for every successful business is to prioritize their resources effectively — not based on deadlines, but on results.

Copywriting based on the science of persuasion

If you’re ever going to sell anything online, copywriting is a much needed skill.The conventional copywriting wisdom says that you should more or less try stick to the following formula:

1. Tell the reader you understand their need,
2. Tell your prospect why your product is the best solution they can buy,
3. Offer all kinds of proof like testimonials, charts and so on,
4. Explain all the ways the product will benefit the customer,
5. Present the price in a way that makes it sound like a great deal,
6. Give a (better than) money-back guarantee,
7. Add bonus products to really motivate the customer to buy,
8. Make it a limited time or quantity offer,
9. Ask for the sale and tell them exactly what steps to take.

Is the exact sequence that persuades people or why should this work? What scientific data is available to use about persuasion? Which research can we rely on to make our writing more persuasive?

Here’s a summary of the most prominent books and publications on the matter.

The work of Robert Cialdini

Mr. Cialdini is undoubtedly the biggest authority on the field. His books are bestsellers and have been in the “must-read” list for marketers and copywriters for years.

Cialdini came up with six scientific principles of persuasion that will help guide you to become more effective at getting people do what you want. In case you have no idea what those principles are, then here’s the summary:

Principle 1: ReciprocityPeople feel obligated to give back to others who have given to them.
How to use it: teach your prospect something useful in your copy, give away free stuff and better yet – add value to your prospects long before you even start to sell them something.

Principle 2: LikingWe prefer to say “yes” to those we know and like.
How to use it: talk/write like a human, connect with the reader, share details about yourself. Blog. Be friendly and cool (like Richard Branson).

Principle 3: Social proofPeople decide what’s appropriate for them to do in a situation by examining and following what others are doing.
How to use it: show how many others are already using your product. Show off your numbers. Use testimonials. Link to 3rd-party articles.

Principle 4: AuthorityPeople rely on those with superior knowledge or perspective for guidance on how to respond AND what decision to make.
How to use it: Demonstrate your expertise. Show off your resume and results. Get celebrity (in your niche) endorsements.

Principle 5: ConsistencyOnce we make a choice/take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressure to behave consistently with that commitment.
How to use it: Start small and move up from there. Sell something small first (a no-brainer deal), even if you make no money on it. They now see themselves as your customer, and will be much more likely to return to make a larger purchase.

Principle 6: ScarcityOpportunities appear more valuable when they are less available.
How to use it: Use time or quantity limited bonuses. Limit access to your product. Promote exclusivity.

SEOmoz has a great illustrated article on all of these principles. Naturally you can get the full picture of these principles from his book Influence. His other book – Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive – builds on that and adds some practical ideas. See the list of these 50 ways here.

Robert Gifford and five elements of an effective message

Mr. Gifford is a professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. He is co-author of a relatively recent American Psychological Association report that examined the interface between psychology and climate change.

He explains what makes people receptive and how to get messages across effectively:

• It has to have some urgency.
• It has to have as much certainty as can be mustered with integrity.
• There can’t be just one message: there must be messages targeted to different groups.
• Messages should be framed in positive terms. People are less willing to change their behaviour if you tell them they have to make sacrifices. If you tell them they can be in the vanguard, be a hero, be the one that helps — that works.
• You have to give people the sense that their vote counts and that their effort won’t be in vain.

While his work focused on the message of climate change, it will work in your sales copy too.

The art of persuasion by Angela Lee and Brian Sternthal

Research by Kellogg professors Angela Lee and Brian Sternthal offers insight into effective messaging. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, Kellogg professors say the key to an effective message is finding the fit between the consumers’ goals and the level of abstraction.

The researchers found that when consumers aimed to fulfill aspirations and satisfy achievement goals, more abstract messages — for example, those highlighting the freedom TiVo provides — stimulated favorable brand evaluations. On the other hand, consumers who sought to fulfill their responsibilities and satisfy their security goals were more persuaded by concrete messages, such as those emphasizing TiVo’s replay and slow-motion features.

So this means that first you have to figure out the emotional vibe of your prospect – or figure out what kind of motivations you’re targeting with your product. If you get it right and the level of abstraction fits the goal, people understand messages better and are more easily persuaded.

Messages that stick

Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”

Isn’t that true? Some stories – especially urban legends, conspiracy theories, and scandals circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people who really try to spread their ideas – businesspeople, scientists, politicians, journalists, and others – struggle to get anyone to remember what they said.

Two brothers, Chip Heath (a Stanford Business school professor) and Dan Heath (a corporate education consultant at Duke) found after extensive research that the ideas that ‘stick’ all share the following six principles:

1. Simplicity – Your message has to be simple – stripped down to it’s core intent. You must come up with a profound compact phrase that would summarize your whole premise.
2. Unexpected – In order to capture someone’s attention, you need to break a pattern – in other words to present the unexpected. You need to understand and play with two essential emotions – surprise and interest. Surprise gets our attention and interest keeps our attention. Got a conventional product? Get a new one.
3. Concrete – People won’t remember vague stuff. What helps people understand new concepts is concrete language. Concreteness is an indispensable component of sticky ideas. Don’t say ‘fast acceleration’, say 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds.
4. Credible – You need somebody who people trust to confirm your case. The trustworthiness of your source makes all the difference. People need something / someone credible in order to believe you.
5. Emotional – Feelings inspire people to act. If you story does not invoke any emotions, you’ve lost.
6. Stories – How do you get people to act on your idea? A credible idea make speople believe. An emotional idea makes people care. Put both of them together into an idea as stories have the amazing dual power to stimulate and to inspire.

Remember to read their excellent book ‘Made to Stick‘.

Buy buttons in the brain

Research in neuromarketing (put together in this book) reveals interesting things about our brains. As it turns out, we have 3 brains. Well, not really, but the brain does have 3 layers. Each layer has it’s own functions: the “New Brain” thinks, the “Middle Brain” feels and the “Old Brain” decides – it reviews input from the other two brains and controls the decision making process.

The ‘Old Brain’ is the part that humans (and it’s predecessors) have had the longest – like 160 million years or so. So the part of the brain that controls decisions is pretty primitive and mostly concerned with survival.

We’re usually trying to talk to the ‘New Brain’ – the sophisticated one – but it’s the brute that makes all the decisions, so we need to dumb it down. Here’s the formula:

Selling probability = Pain x Claim x Gain x (Old Brain)³

First you need to identify the prospect’s pain (the greater the pain, the higher the chance of sale) and make sure they acknowledge the pain before you start to sell them anything. Second, you’ve got to differentiate your claims from your competitors. The strongest claim is the one that eliminates the strongest pain.

Next you have to show convincing proof of these claims. The ‘Old Brain’ is resistant to new ideas and concepts, so your proof must be very convincing. Show tangible evidence, data, testimonials, case studies.

And finally – deliver to the ‘Old brain’. You need to start with a ‘grabber’ – something that really gets the  attention (‘if you’re selling fire extinguishers, start with fire’, like Ogilvy said). Second – the ‘Old brain’ is visual, hence start with a big picture.

Remember – the ‘Old brain’ is concerned with survival. So it only cares about itself and not anyone else. Your message needs to be entirely about the prospect.

Get the book to find out about all the other ways to push the right buttons in the brain.

Last but not least

You can find lots of good stuff from a book that is now freely available (as it was written in 1923) – Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins. Here’s the link to the free pdf download.