Ancient Storytelling Trick That Increases Conversions

Cliffhangers are plot devices that end a story abruptly, leaving the audience in suspense. They are the single reason to captivate audiences for centuries.

Any thriller TV series ends with a cliffhanger to make viewers return. The Walking Dead uses cliffhangers effectively so you are on a binge watch of its episodes. So do Game of Thrones and Lost.

MrBeast uses cliffhangers throughout his videos to increase completion rates of his videos.

Netflix series like The Squid Game employ cliffhangers to hook the audience to its next episodes.

TikToks and Instagram Reels that use cliffhangers attract more followers. Cliffhangers remain a powerful tool to keep audiences engaged.

The Zeigarnik Effect: Why We Remember What's Not Finished

The Zeigarnik effect explains why cliffhangers work. This effect states that interrupted and incomplete activities are easier to remember.

Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin noticed that a waiter had better recollections of unpaid orders. However, after the completion of the task — after everyone had paid — the waiter was unable to remember any more details of the orders.

Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik first studied the phenomenon after Professor Kurt Lewin noticed it.

Zeigarnik then designed a series of experiments to uncover the processes underlying the phenomenon.

The Zeigarnik effect suggests that students who suspend their study to perform unrelated activities (such as studying a different subject or playing a game), will remember material better than students who complete study sessions without a break.

Ernest Hemingway, a world-class writer, had a habit of stopping mid-sentence to jumpstart his next writing session.

The Zeigarnik effect also explains why app onboarding works.

When apps tell you, "You're 65% of the way there," you want to complete the process.

The Zeigarnik effect explains why cliffhangers work as they are "incomplete stories, and studies show that incomplete things are easily recalled."

How to Use Cliffhangers

You can use cliffhangers for many different tasks.

Some SaaS (software as a service) systems use the Zeigarnik effect to onboard users faster. They often use gamification.

Progress trackers show users how close they are to completing a task. For example, a message saying "Your profile is 64% complete" makes users want to provide missing details. Checklists also create a step-by-step onboarding flow.

TV shows use cliffhangers by showing glimpses of the next episode. Movies and TV shows may tease a sequel.

For example, Squid Game teased a sequel at the end of season 1.

You can also use this on social media. For instance, you might say, "Tomorrow, I'll cover the breakdown of Lululemon, so follow me for more."

Incomplete stories get more conversions. For example, a content creator on Instagram got 12k followers from just 1 reel. She went from 13.9k followers to 38.7k followers using cliffhangers.

You can dramatically improve engagement and conversions on your content, SaaS, or apps by using cliffhangers.

Next time you pick up a book, try to end it abruptly before finishing a chapter.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

This 13-point thread has high signal-to-noise ratio, especially the first point. You want to create for fast-growing markets to ride the wave. There are so many people creating for non-AI markets when they should be just creating for AI markets.

2/

TIL Russia is a safe place to scam from since it has no extradition treaty with the USA.

This tracks as I've listened to one of the episodes of the Darknet Diaries podcast where they definitely said scammers were scamming people for fake coding certificates all the way from Russia.

Another case was people sending billion emails per day (yes, billion) from Russia. Beware of scams. Sucks because Russia has some high-quality alpha that you won't find anyplace else.

3/

Learn Prompt Engineering before everyone else does. Study and watch every single resource I've sent in previous newsletters and the ones I'll send in the future. It has top-quality alpha curated that you won't find anywhere else.

Rabbit Holes

1. Facebook Bonus Program Tips For 2024 by Alan Beck

2. I studied the most profitable indie apps ($100k+ mrr) to build this React Native boilerplate. Here's what I learned by /r/reactnative

3. Strong Advice vs Weak Advice by Breck Yunits

What’d ya think of today’s newsletter? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know.

First time? Subscribe.

Follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Dara Denney's YouTube Comment Section Hack (LINK)

2. Micro-Hack To Get Replies From Influencers (LINK)

3. Cody Schneider's Secrets to Capitalizing on Market Trends (LINK)

4. Julia Pintar's Viral Short-Form Strategy (LINK)