If you create content to engage your target audience, you should know that there is more to it than just writing on a specific topic.
Here is an assumption: how about spicing your copy up with some trigger words – those are emotion-evoking words that can trigger particular emotions and prompt your leads to take action!
We’re not claiming that it’s a golden formula of course. There is no quick way to achieve results. However, you may consider it interesting to implement and see whether using trigger words can bring in any results.
So, in this article, we will look at trigger words and explain how they may work.
What are emotive action or doing words (trigger words)?
You’re not interested in articles being published on your website just for the sake of it, right? We always include a call-to-action (read more about CTA Linkedin) to make customers either click on a product page, sign up for a newsletter, etc. We want our content and messages to sell.
Trigger words (emotive words, reaction words, charged words) are special kinds of words that appeal to people’s emotions. This is the definition. They help to engage prospect customers by evoking certain emotions in them.
Trigger words do two main things:
- They help to hook prospects through a catchy headline (if an article pops up in Google search, ad or in social media for instance)
- They can prompt customers to take a particular action if included in the article (for instance, in a CTA section)
Why is this so?
Trigger words appeal to emotions. People are prone to react to something that evokes emotions in them.
It doesn’t mean that you need to manipulate your audience in a way. However, what if you’ve spent 5 hours writing an article and nobody will open and read it because of an unclear or very dry tagline? By beefing your headlines up with emotional triggers, you get more chances of your article getting opened.
Trigger words can be powerful also because they make people believe you. They state that you know something. People incline to trade their time to gain knowledge from someone who can walk the talk. If you add these words, you make a bold move: you make them believe that your particular content can solve their problems/get answers to their questions, etc.
Examples of trigger words
Trigger words appeal to different feelings. Here is the list of some common trigger words.
List of emotional triggers – divided by emotions they trigger
| Personal | Exclusivity | Excitement | Safety | Urgency | Authority |
| You | Elite | Ultimate | Trusted | Sale | Only |
| How | Insider | Discover | Boost | Limited | Top |
| Overcome | Secret | New | Proven | The only chance | Best |
| Before your forget | Limited | Imagine | Simple | Last minute | Proven |
This is the list of emotive words that appeal to a particular group of feelings. Triggers work like this:
- Safety triggers. People love to feel safe and particular safety-trigger words make them think that your content will help them feel safe.
- Exclusivity triggers. When something is exclusive, you don’t want to be a fool and miss on it.
- Personal triggers. When there is a lot of “you” in the article, readers may get the feeling that you care about them.
Yes, it’s a manipulative technique. That is why…
There is one important note to all this.
If your content is bad, no amount of trigger words will let readers stay on your pages.
If your content is BAD, not interesting, not targeted to a particular audience, not deep, but you think that you can trick everybody and hook people in using nice trigger words – you’ll gain pointless traffic. People will open your article and close it just after opening. Make sure you’ve worked on the quality of your content first. And then learn about what can help you promote it, including the trigger words we’re talking about here.
Trigger words for headlines
Adding trigger words to headlines is kind of a routine thing for marketers. If you want to sell a headline, you’ll need to understand what words can trigger particular emotions in your audience. They can be keywords. You can add them or opt for a broader, more generic list of trigger words that can appeal to any person, not exclusively your audience.
Read these headlines.
| How to Grow Peonies |
| 7 Tips to Get Your Article to the Top of Google |
| Guide to Going Vegan |
They are fine headlines. However, if you add trigger words in them, you can immediately see the difference.
| How to Grow Peonies Fast (Proven Formula) |
| 7 Insider Tips to Get Your Article to the Top of Google, Guaranteed |
| The Ultimate Guide to Going Vegan |
Which headline would you click on? From the first or second table?
We bet the second one. Because they’re more focused, ultra-specific and contain trigger emotive words in them.
The greatest formula of all times to make a catchy headline is using 4 Us:
- Usefulness
- Uniqueness
- Ultraspecificity
- Urgency
If you simply stick to this formula and build all your headlines with it in mind, then all your headlines might show better click rates.
Addressing pain points
A good headline can also promise to give answers to a very specific pain without dragging around. For example:
“Why are your reply rates so low?”
So, clearly to the point.
When a reader sees such a headline, they realize that it contains answers to their question. It has an answer to their pain point.
When you promise to give answer to a painful question, people are urged to click.
Just run through Amazon’s best sellers:
Of course, the author doesn’t know for sure how the world works. But he or she makes people feel like he or she is certain. That’s why it works. For a particular audience of course.
People overall don’t have much time to drag around: they’ll skip long and not specific headlines. Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone wants quick answers to questions and we became used to it. We’re used to be able to find quick answers through Google top, for instance, and won’t fall for a long and not specific headline.
Trigger words for email subject lines
Subject lines in emails are just like headlines. They should also be specific or create sense of urgency. They can also be curiosity-induced.
- 7 bizarre habits of millionaires
- Your subscription expires…
- 50% off ….
They can be funny.
- Licking your phone never tasted so good
Read More: Best LinkedIn InMail Subject Line
And you can also sprinkle in trigger words to make them catchy.
- 14 proven strategies to increase your sales
- Proven techniques to get B2B clients from LinkedIn
- 10 tested ways to engage leads on LinkedIn
- 9 essential tips for LinkedIn marketing
- Surge reply rates on LinkedIn: 5 proven techniques
- Sprinkle in these trigger words to boost conversions today
How do you measure the performance of your articles with trigger words in them?
To know for sure whether trigger words work or not, you need to test various headlines and then measure the performance of each headline. There are many tools that help you to track which headline gets more clicks. For instance, you can try IO analytics for this purpose. Just employ the code on your website and see what headlines your audience likes better.
There are various of other analytics tools for sure, just google what can help you measure the performance of headlines.
If you put trigger words in emails and want to see the difference, you can use your email automation tool to measure the performance of email campaigns. For instance, in Closely (automated lead generation platform) you can easily see which email campaign converted better and adjust either your message, audience, or subject lines.
Trigger words in outreach messages
Salespeople and marketers use LinkedIn and other channels like email to reach out to potential customers. When you compile a message to win attention of your potential customers, trigger words can help greatly.
Compare these two messages for LinkedIn outreach:
Hey {first_name},
Thank you for getting connected.)
I work for {company_name}. I see that you’re in {industry} too. I know your company and would also love to get acquainted a little bit more with your methods of (what methods).
Recently we’ve created the guide “How to Get Customers From LinkedIn”. We were able to get 100 and more customers using very simple strategies. I thought you might find it useful. If you want me to share the link, let me know 🙂
Happy and productive day to you! 😎
Hey there {first_name},
Thank you for getting connected with me 😊
I work for {company_name}. I see that you’re in {industry} too. I know your company and would also love to get acquainted a little bit more with your methods of (what methods).
Recently we’ve created the guide “How to get 200 Customers From LinkedIn in One Week: Proven 3-Step method”. We were able to get 100 and more customers using very simple strategies. I thought you might find it useful. If you want me to share the link, let me know 🙂
Happy and productive day to you! 😎
Which name of the guide caught your attention? I bet the second? By simply adding more specifics to the name of your guide + spicing it with some trigger words, you increase the chance of prospects getting interested in what you’ve written there. And of course, by making your content attractive and interesting, you can sell your product through it easily.
BY THE WAY, in Closely you can also easily track the performance of your LinkedIn campaigns. Look how easily it’s done:
Just figure out which campaign converts better (brings more replies to your Inbox) and change your messaging, audience or anything else you think might affect the success of an outreach campaign. Put trigger words in your messages and track how it performs with changes.
Closely generates hundreds of leads on autopilot from LinkedIn: just write your messages and hit “run”. It also auto-likes posts and auto-endorse skills if you choose such type of a campaign. Closely can help you establish a solid lead flow-in (20,30 + B2B leads per week coming to your Inbox) by automating message sending and lots of other things that are usually done manually.
Using it, you can relax and focus on closing deals. The tool will generate leads for you — just come to inbox to chat with them.
Generating B2B leads is now easier as never before!
Watch our DEMO on how to start acquiring 20+ lead per week from LinkedIn, completely automatically. Sit back and watch leads flooding your Inbox.
Negative trigger words: examples
Trigger words are also called charged words due to their ability to appeal to people’s emotions. They can also be divided into two groups: negative and pozitive trigger words.
Negative trigger words are strong enough to make people feel urgency to click. Here are some examples.
Llist of Negative Trigger Words:
- Never
- Limited
- Thousands
- End
- Dangerous
- Prohibited
- Cruel
- Greed
- Arrogant
- Bitter
Actually, those are all words that can trigger fear.
Pozitive trigger words – examples
Pozitive charged words, on the opposite, creates sense of light and happiness in people. They are urged to click not because of fear but because of the willing to stew in some pozitive feelings. If you promise something good by adding some pozitive charged words, – they’ll be prompted to click.
Llist of Pozitive Trigger Words:
- Free
- Boost
- Discover
- New
- Exciting
- How to
- Win
- Guaranteed
- Proven
- Imagine
- Fix
- Unlock
- Overcome
- Yes
List of Trigger Words — TOP100 Best Emotion Keywords
| Excitement | Pozitivity | Exclusivity/Authority |
| Near everyone | Cozy up | Top |
| Learn today | Free ways | Best |
| What if | You | Popular |
| How to | Wonderful reasons | Proof |
| Did you know? | New ways | Expert |
| Everyone | Simple steps | Research |
| Suddenly | Top skills you need | Statistics |
| Shocking | Did you know | Proof |
| Uncovered | Relax | Proven |
| Secret | Chill out | Tested |
| Discover | For you | Guaranteed |
| Find | Love | Topical authority |
| Bet | Have you thought | Confirmed |
| Thousands | Boost | Should you? |
| Transform | Successful | Pillars |
| Even more than | Cheap & effective | Actionable |
| Bonus | Improve | Simple tactics |
| Biggest | Promote | Premium |
| Save | Inspired | Competitive |
| Key steps | In awe | Top-tier |
| Easily | Holidays | Results |
| Best Free | Cute | Ultimate |
| Everything you need to know | Christmas | Only |
| Comprehensive | Peaceful | Insanely effective |
| Surefire | Saturday | Persuasive |
| Productivity | Romantic | Mind-blowing |
| Engaging | Joyful | Essential |
| Effective | Haha | Advice |
| Killer Tactics | Finest | Timely |
| Free ways | Enjoy | Rare |
| Free guide | Freedom | Special |
| Strategies guaranteed | Healthy | Opportunities |
| Ultimate guide | Profits | Powerful |
Conclusion
Trigger (emotive, charged) words are a must-have tool in a marketer’s arsenal. To be able to catch prospects’ attention, it’s best to insert words that appeal to people’s emotions. The best way to make your headline/subject line catchy is to use 4Us formula: making it useful, unique, ultraspecific & urgent. In email automation or LinkedIn automation tools as Closely you can see what messages perform better and alter subject lines/messages to gain even more profits. You can test various audiences/ messages and run outreach campaigns on autopilot.
Trigger words are not a silver bullet though. You can’t rely purely on them to increase the engagement in your articles or performance in your headlines. It’s not about it. Only engaging & useful content, mixed up with the right audience and lots of other factors will help you sell more! Trigger words are just nice spice to your whole marketing dish that consists of a whole lot other ingredients.
Check out our free guide on LinkedIn prospecting.
That’s it for today. We hope this article was insightful. Have a productive day ahead.
Closely Team.
