From the book Cashvertising Online Strategies

The twenty-seven "Online Ad-Agency Secrets" are proven techniques for creating psychologically powerful online ads, emails, and web pages, derived from exhaustive studies and testing, aimed at skyrocketing response rates and sales.

Here is a short summary for each of the 27 secrets:

1. The Psychology of Peer Recommendation: Because buying is inherently stressful and scary, utilize positive reviews, testimonials, case studies, and user metrics (social proof) to quell prospect fear. Consumers trust recommendations from peers (92%) and strangers (70%).
2. The Psychology of Online Color: Leverage the psychological effects of color, as up to 62–90% of a purchase assessment is based solely on color. Different colors evoke specific emotions (e.g., blue for trust/security, red for fear/speed, yellow/orange for fun/cheapness).
3. How to Ramp Up Your CTAs So People Respond: Maximize conversion by utilizing the "Quick-Buy button" strategy, placing a call to action (CTA) early in the pitch (above the fold) to satisfy impulse buyers and give multiple opportunities to buy. Buttons are psychologically more potent than text links.
4. How to Persuade Online Influencers to Respond: Reach potential customers beyond your targeted audience by engaging nano, micro, macro, or mega influencers. Success requires short, personal emails that are complimentary and offer something of value (like free samples) to open a line of communication.
5. Endowment Effect: How to Make Them Love You: This effect dictates that people assign a higher value to an object after they feel ownership. Stimulate perceived ownership before the sale to boost perceived value by offering free trials, personalization, giveaways/coupons, or free versions of the product or service.
6. The Buffer Effect of Social Support and How It Saves Your Customers: Powerfully promote robust customer support to reduce customer stress and mitigate buyer's remorse. Provide omni-channel support (like chat and video demos), monitor social accounts for feedback, and use photos of real support staff.
7. The Psychology of Online Photos and Images: Use high-quality visual content because human faces are the most effective attention-grabbers (increasing likes by 38% and comments by 32% on platforms like Instagram). Use bright, colorful, professional images and avoid hyperlinking images away from the post.
8. How to Use the "Frequency Illusion" to Appear to Be Everywhere: Capitalize on the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (frequency bias) to make your brand appear more dominant than it may be. This is achieved through consistent textual and graphic design, along with media flighting and pulsing strategies, and aggressive retargeting of site visitors.
9. What a Study of 100,000 Facebook Messages across 800 Companies Revealed: Maximize Facebook engagement by prioritizing photos and crafting messages that are emotional and persuasive. Keep messages short and easily readable, and engage users with questions or fill-in-the-blanks to solicit comments. Links generally reduce engagement.
10. The Power of Polarization—A Daring Way to Stand Out: Attract a dedicated following by making a controversial statement (often relating to consumer advocacy) that splits the audience, aligning one segment strongly to your cause. This tactic powerfully stirs emotions, driving likes and shares.
11. Ethical Bribes: The Psychology of Buyer Incentives: Offering incentives (like exclusive previews, guides, discounts, or gift cards) acts as a value exchange to secure contact information (the "bribe"). Incentives increase the likelihood that consumers will later buy the advertised product.
12. How to Use Tested Design Psychology to Create Irresistible Facebook Business Pages: Use a design approach for Facebook posts where larger ads and more media elements increase liking, but note that increasing text length decreases liking. Always explicitly invite readers to comment or respond.
13. The Psychology of Persuasive Websites: Twenty-Point Action Checklist: Website design is the number-one factor (48%) in establishing business credibility. Key strategies include maximizing social proof/authority endorsement, creating a sense of scarcity, ensuring fast mobile loading, guiding attention (e.g., placing key info on the left side), and spreading CTAs throughout the page.
14. Seven Key Findings to Maximize Your Online Video Ads: For video ads to be effective, they must be watched. "Mid-roll" ads have the highest completion rates (97%). Since most viewers abandon videos early, the first few seconds must hook them with a powerful benefit statement (acting as the headline). Adding captions is crucial as 69% of users watch videos with the sound off, increasing view time by an average of 12%.
15. Multiple Studies Reveal the Best Days and Times to Post: Use the extensive, platform-specific research on optimal posting days and times (for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) as guidelines to ensure maximum noting, engagement, and to save time on random experimentation.
16. The Illusory Truth Effect and The Psychological Power of Repetition: Repetition increases the perceived truthfulness and credibility of claims (Illusory Truth Effect). This occurs because repeated information is processed more easily (processing fluency). Repeated exposure also suggests the product is of higher quality.
17. Killer Slogans: These Six Ingredients Make People Like and Remember Them: Slogans are best remembered and liked if they are clear, emphasize benefits, include creativity, rhyme, include the brand name, and are short (the top 10 most recalled slogans average 3.9 words).
18. The Psychological Power of Self-Referencing Headlines: The headline is the most important part of an ad. Headlines that are phrased as a question and include a self-referencing cue (the word "you") are substantially more effective at boosting readership than declarative statements.
19. The Psychology of Online Credibility and How to Boost Yours Fast: Since belief dictates buying behavior, boost credibility by making your site easy to use, touting experience, ensuring content is error-free, avoiding hype, making contact easy, and conveying solidity (e.g., showing real employees or a physical address).
20. How to "Discount Frame" and Change Their Perception of Value: Employ the Rule of 100 to express the higher numerical value of a discount. For products over $100, use dollars-off; for products under $100, use percentage-off.
21. Do They Trust You? What Consumers Find Most Important When Evaluating Your Website: While experts focus on content accuracy and reputation, general consumers prioritize visual appeal and overall design (46.1%) when judging website credibility.
22. Don’t Be Invisible! Choosing the Best Font for Mature Readers: When marketing to people over age fifty, select sans-serif fonts (like Arial or Verdana) set in 14-point size to ensure maximum readability and speed, as these are preferred over smaller, serif fonts.
23. Studies: How Uncertainty Reduction Saves Your Web Visitors: Consumers' Tolerable Waiting Time (TWT) for a page to load is extremely short (peaking around 2 seconds). Providing visual system feedback, such as a progress bar, increases patience (TWT) by distracting users and reducing their uncertainty about "endless" waiting.
24. How the Decoy Effect Encourages Higher Spending: Introduce a decoy option (a less favorable product or service), usually priced identically to the more expensive, target option, to make the target item seem far more attractive and reasonable by comparison, thereby encouraging higher spending.
25. How to Maximize Profits: Seven Studies on Psychological Pricing: Optimize pricing perception by using fewer syllables when writing out the price (e.g., dropping commas and decimals), leveraging color (red prices appeal strongly to male buyers), using smaller fonts to imply lower cost, and anchoring deals next to much more expensive options.
26. Expert Ways to Turn Cart Abandonments into Cash Orders: Since nearly 69% of online carts are abandoned, mitigate friction during checkout by ensuring guest checkout is easy to find, simplifying password requirements, providing an estimated delivery date, allowing users to easily edit order data, and numbering the steps in the process.
27. The Psychology of Email Subject Lines—Fourteen Facts and Stats: Subject lines determine both open rates and spam reports. The ideal length is six to ten words. Strategies that boost opens include personalization (using the recipient's name) and expressing urgency, while generic words like "Newsletter" and heavy focus on discounts should be avoided.