Want to know a secret?

“I’m going to tell you a secret but you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

It’s hard to think of a more seductive 16-word sentence in the English language.

Why is this?

What is it about secrets that makes us drop whatever we’re doing, look left and right, lean in to hear more clearly and shiver with anticipation?

There are two possible psychological levers being pulled here.

One is the influential power of scarcity.

A secret, by definition, is not widely known. Or even known at all. So knowing it means you have something rare. Something precious. It doesn’t really matter what the secret is about. The mere promise is enough.

Then there’s the sense of being part of the in-crowd.

If you know the secret, you are part of an exclusive – and small – club. We like to belong to groups. And the more privileged the better.

In fact, there may be a third lever.

The thought that we may be about to discover some juicy little titbit about someone we know is an itch just waiting to be scratched.

And it’s interesting that the word prurient, which means an unwholesome interest in sexual matters (the subject of many secrets), has a Latin root meaning “to itch”.

So given that secrets have this astonishing power to gain our attention, how can we make use of them in our copy?

Well, you could do a lot worse than use them in your headline.

If you have a product or service that has a definite advantage over the competition, you have a ready-made angle. It’s called “dirty little secrets” and it goes like this...

The office cleaning industry’s dirty little secret

Facilities managers won’t be able to resist reading on.

Or how about this...

The secret remedy for lower back pain (and why your doctor will never tell you about it)

Or, if you can give people information to help them do their job better, or enjoy life more, you could use a line like this...

Revealed, the secret technique for improving your memory known only to the ancient Greeks

Maybe you could spin a little story to entice your reader...

Could this secret brownie recipe be the real reason why MI5 arrested the editor of Bakers and Baking?

And I’m telling you this because?

However you choose to use secrets in your copy, from the headline on down, it’s a fantastically powerful device for overcoming reader resistance.

Whether you’re writing envelope copy, a subject line, a web-page or even a good old-fashioned brochure, using the s-word is a tried and tested way to get more people to read more of what you’ve written.