17 Proven Emotional Trigger Words
That Drive Curiosity
By Sandy Franks

It’s a word I hadn’t heard before, but one that seems perfectly fitting: Informavores.

That term refers to creatures that search for and digest information, just like carnivores hunt and eat meat.

The creatures are, of course, people.

And those people include the prospects you write to on behalf of your clients.

We all spend a heck of a lot of time looking for and consuming information online.

In the U.S. alone, the latest stats show that adults spent at least 470 minutes a day on digital media. That works out to 7 hours and 50 minutes of their time searching for information.

And that’s up from last year, which was 413 minutes. That’s a 13% increase in the amount of time people spend online.

They spend that time looking for information, listening to the news or music, browsing the internet, reading books or magazines, and more …

We do this because humans are curious beings. Famed American philosopher, historian, and psychologist William James once called curiosity “the impulse towards better cognition,” meaning that it is the desire to understand what you know that you do not.

The fact is, our brains are hardwired to be curious. It’s part of our evolution. Neuroimaging studies show that when people are curious about the answers to trivia questions or watch a blurry picture become clear, reward-related structures in their brain are activated.

Those reward-related structures are almost identical to the response that happens inside an animal’s brain when they seek the elements needed to survive, such as finding food.

So it’s no stretch to say that information stimulates our brains in the same manner as when we find food and shelter.

When it comes to your prospect’s need to seek out information, you can use certain trigger words that amp up their curiosity. Here are 17 emotional trigger words to use:

1. Secret
2. Banned
3. Illegal
4. Taboo
5. Hidden
6. Covert
7. Exposed
8. Undercover
9. Censored
10. Unbelievable
11. Invitation-only
12. Insider
13. Private
14. Members-only
15. Exclusive
16. Behind-the-scenes
17. Classified

When you start putting trigger words in your copy, your prospect becomes more engaged. They’ll stay on the page longer. And the longer they spend reading what you write, the greater the odds they’ll hit the buy button.