The Writing Desk · est. 201516 notes filed · 4 still runningVol. 04 · No. 12

The Desk

The working notebook — everything Ploom is learning, building, testing and proving.

LATEST · 94% CPL cut, full teardown · plain-text emails winning week 2 · the $400 course with two good ideas · a 9-word email to a dead list · killing the hero image · LATEST · 94% CPL cut, full teardown · plain-text emails winning week 2 · the $400 course with two good ideas · a 9-word email to a dead list · killing the hero image ·
Lead story · Proof · pinned

How I cut a cost-per-lead by 94 percent

By Ploom · 12 min · the full teardown

The actual account, the actual changes, the actual numbers. The reactivation email is now a template.

Read the full teardown →

The Archive

Every note ever filed. Searchable, sortable, and every one of them actually tested.

16
notes in the archive
312

Obviously Awesome finally made positioning click

Three positioning books bounced off me. Chapter three reframed how I write every landing page.

LearningJun 248 min
311

Lead scoring without a data team

A scoring model that runs on a spreadsheet and one agent. No warehouse, no analyst, no six-month setup.

BuildingJun 225 min
310

Plain-text vs designed emails: week two

The stripped-back version is ahead on replies, but it is close. The data so far, no conclusions yet.

TestingJun 204 min
309

How I cut a cost-per-lead by 94 percent

The actual account, the actual changes, the actual numbers. The reactivation email is now a template.

ProofJun 1812 min
308

The $400 course that had two good ideas

Eight hours of padding around two genuinely useful ideas. Pulled out so you can skip the rest.

LearningJun 156 min
307

A 9-word email to a dead list

A tiny, almost rude re-engagement email to a list everyone wrote off. Opens up, conversions not. Yet.

TestingJun 123 min
306

Rebuilding my own funnel in public

My site converts badly, which is embarrassing for a conversion person. Fixing it where you can watch.

BuildingJun 107 min
305

The vanity-metrics detox

How to tell the numbers that matter from the ones that just look nice on a dashboard. In normal words.

LearningJun 085 min
304

The reactivation email that pulled 251 percent

The exact email, the segment, the send time, and why it worked on a list that looked completely dead.

ProofJun 059 min
303

Killing the hero image entirely

Stripped the big header photo off the landing page to see what it was actually costing in conversions.

TestingJun 034 min
302

Re-reading Ogilvy, still right

The old advertising books keep beating the new growth threads. Here is what still holds up in 2026.

LearningMay 306 min
301

An AI agent that writes reports in my voice

It is too polite and over-explains, but it drafts client updates that I only lightly edit now.

BuildingMay 287 min
300

What an MQL actually means to a founder

Translating the acronym soup into the one question a founder actually cares about: will it pay rent.

LearningMay 254 min
299

LinkedIn docs vs carousels

Same content, two formats, four weeks. Reach and saves split in a way I did not expect.

TestingMay 223 min
298

237% MQL growth in 90 days

The 90-day play, week by week, including the two weeks where nothing moved and I nearly bailed.

ProofMay 1910 min
297

The deliverability rabbit hole

SPF, DKIM, DMARC and the boring infrastructure that decides whether any of the clever copy even lands.

LearningMay 168 min
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“Everything is vanity unless it converts. The Desk prints what converts.”

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