Created the web site, including direct response sales copy and graphics, for the immune system health-focused web site RemedyOfChoice.com/immunesystemreboot/
I created the web site, including all direct response sales copy and graphical elements, for the immune health-focused web site RemedyOfChoice.com/immunesystemreboot/
This was a personal project of mine spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. I decided to use the knowledge I had acquired over the course of a decade of so about respiratory infectious disease to create a health product focused on supporting the immune system.
Project Goals
There were 3 separate goals with this project.
The first goal was to develop the product itself, which came to be known as Immune System Reboot. It consisted of 3 ebooks.
The first book was devoted to building the resilience of the immune system to fight off infectious respiratory disease.
The second book was more general in nature and addressed the pandemic.
The third book looked at the history of influenza pandemics for lessons to be used in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and preparing for the arrival of the next great influenza pandemic.
The second goal of the project was to develop a web site to host a sales letter for the product, and of course write the associated sales copy.
The third goal was to develop a suitable lead magnet for the product. This turned out to be a quiz designed to assess an individual's susceptibility to serious complications should they contract COVID-19.
Writing The Sales Letter
I will skip telling you about the work required to build the web site as it is not particularly illuminating. For this product I placed it under my general purpose health-focused web site RemedyOfChoice.com
For the sales letter I concentrated on an unusual feature of certain respiratory diseases such as the one caused by the emergence of the 2020 coronavirus.
This oddity was the fact that the virus was able to overstimulate the immune system of many people, causing an unusual amount of internal damage to the organs of the body, often resulting in the individual's death.
This characteristic of some coronaviruses is also seen with some influenza strains, notably the one which took the lives of an estimated 50 million people in 1918 and the year or so which followed it.
I was able to draw upon the parallels between the diseases caused by these viruses and the lessons learned over the years about influenza pandemics to offer insight into how one might go about fortifying their immune system.
These insights were based on numerous scientific studies published over the years involving both influenza and coronavirus strains.
Developing The Quiz
It turned out that I was not the only person interested in developing an easy-to-use assessment tool for COVID-19 susceptibility.
A risk mitigation group made up of ivy-league mathematicians had at the time published an algorithm for determining the risk of a serious complication due to becoming infected with the pandemic strain.
I took their algorithm and created a quiz which used the algorithm to assess one's COVID-19 Vulnerability Index. But I can't take any credit for the effectiveness of the quiz, as it came directly from a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
But I did do an excellent job implementing it. Inspection showed that it predicted the same amount of "vulnerability" as did a similar quiz developed by the mathematical group (who gave me permission to use their algorithm).
Unfortunately, due to paranoia at the time about charlatans peddling snake-oil products claiming to ward off the ill-effects of COVID-19 it was not possible to put the quiz in front of anyone. So no one benefited from learning whether they should be extra careful with their sanitization precautions.
Writing An Email Nurture Series
As part of development for the immune system health promotions I created a series of follow up messages for anyone who might have taken the quiz I created.
I wrote about a dozen of these, one of which I am providing below.
NOTE: This email is on the longer side of what I write. Today I try to keep my messages less than half the length of this one. However, it is a good example of how you can borrow the authority of better-known voices to amplify your own point of view and promote your own offers.
Sample Email Message #9
SUBJECT LINE:
[IMMUNE] Could Wonder Woman save us from COVID-19?
BODY:
I stole that subject line from someone who writes articles on crime and politics named Elie Mystal.
Mystal was watching television with his 7 year old son when the younger Mystal decried the villainous character of the virus that had kept him from interacting with his friends.
Might a super hero, he asked his dad, be able to rid the world of this evil-doer?
No such luck, thought Elie.
The weapons which crime fighters (even the "supers") depend on to extricate themselves from sticky situations are no match for the slippery antics of microscopic characters like COVID-19.
But the question lingered in the justice correspondent's mind until he remembered what it was that made Wonder Woman so different from her crime fighting contemporaries...
Only she possessed a "truth telling lasso".
Now you may be thinking to yourself, what use is a piece of rope when all it can do, when it is tied around someone, is force them to tell the truth?
But to Mystal the power of Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth was obvious.
"The thing that is killing us, more than any novel virus, is the lies."
"Our leaders lie to us with impunity."
Like other observers of America's strange yet undeniable attraction to alternate
realities it is hard for Mystal to understand why the presumed greatest country in the world has 22 percent of the COVID-19 cases but only 4 percent of the population.
We have more than FIVE TIMES the incidence of disease than the rest of the world.
But why?
America used to be the nation others turned to first in times of pandemic crisis.
The difference, Mystal decided, is that in most other countries today the people in charge are not afraid to tell their citizens the truth.
They do not fear the repercussions of admitting they are not fully in control of the situation.
And that they need the people to play their part in bringing the virus to heel.
With the Lasso of Truth applied you would not hear proclamations from those in charge of the (nonexistent) U.S. national coronavirus containment strategy that "one day the virus will just go away, like magic..."
Instead you would more likely be told some less convenient but actual microbe-killing truths.
Such as:
You need to wear a face mask when you join others in public - and even then you should keep your distance (of at least 6 feet).
You need to wash your hands with soap and water, frequently.
If you are feeling the least bit unwell you need to avoid leaving your house until you have fully recovered.
If you have come into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus then you need to quarantine yourself for at least 14 days because even asymptomatic people can spread the virus.
And even after a vaccine begins making the rounds it still takes another year or so from that point before the safety measures can be dispensed with.
%FIRSTNAME%, I do not have a truth telling lasso.
I cannot convince anyone you might be listening to to tell you the truth about what you need to do to stay safe, or when coronavirus will no longer be perceived as any more threatening to the public health than seasonal flu is today.
But I can promise to tell you everything I have uncovered about respiratory infectious diseases and the way they interact with your immune system.
Better yet, I can assure you that what I have to tell you is not based on what I think is likely to be true, but on what the weight of scientific evidence suggests is likely to be true.
The great thing about science as a truth-revealing enterprise is that it has a 400 year history of success to back it up.
Scientists frequently get their facts muddled and a fair few of them even do shoddy work.
But those efforts do not stick.
They get washed away by the relentless and critical stream of scrutiny the science community directs at them.
That's why you don't have to worry that the ideas you'll find in "Immune System Reboot" are in any sense suspect.
Because they did not originate with me!
For the most part they come out of peer-reviewed science journals.
The rest is derived from countless hours and pages of often arcane but sometimes highly informative webinar and book material put together by accomplished scientists who have gone the extra yard.
These are the ones who use non-scientific channels to try to reach others in their field through whatever means they can (after all, few people, even scientists, have the time or the willpower to only read through dry science journals!)
These people have important ideas to share on topics like infectious disease and how best to keep yourself healthy when unwelcomed microbes begin crowding into your life.
Inside the pages of "Immune System Reboot" you will come across some of the personalities who managed to grab my attention with their unusual and very compelling stories.
I am not a big fan of regurgitated scientific evidence simply because I value "the truth before all else".
I want the truth, but I also want to share a bit of the wonder that keeps my science heroes returning to the lab (or the deep jungle, as may be the case for some of them) every day.
So don't worry.
If you grab a copy of "Immune System Reboot" and the other titles which come with it, you'll be getting a taste of the behind-the-scenes stories of the scientists whose results I think are worth telling you about.
They may not be as glitzy or as awe inspiring as the Amazonian princess, but in their own way they are just as bold because they don't stop to weigh the consequences of telling you the truth - which you very well might not want to hear - they just go ahead and do it.
And that's exactly the kind of heroic behavior Elie Mystal thinks is missing right now from those who should be leading us.
I like to think that's a little of what you'll be tapping into when you begin reading the books in my "Immune System Reboot" collection, the details of which you can find here: