How Much Can Changing a Headline Multiply Ad Returns?

David Senra, reading Claude Hopkins, says changing the headline can multiply an ad's returns by five to ten times. The identical ad, run with different headlines, differs tremendously in its returns. Senra calls a gap of that size an ordinary result. In books he places about two or three decades later, David Ogilvy had seen returns of 19 to one. Returns vary enormously because of headlines.

The whole return can depend on attracting the right person, and the headline is how you do it. Senra's picture of that is the iPod line, a thousand songs in your pocket. The promise is the reason to stay for the rest. He pairs it with Hopkins's line that you cannot save souls in an empty church. Salesmanship has no chance unless the headline brings someone in. Address the people you seek, and them only.