I first learned about “unused capacity” from email genius, Ben Settle.

“Before infomercials,” he said, “t.v. networks would just put a test signal on all night. There was no programming, no content. Until they realized they could sell that time, that ‘unused capacity.’”

In marketing and advertising, “unused capacity” is, basically, wasted time or space, wasted opportunity. 

As a copywriter, I see it constantly — and one of the most common examples might surprise you:

Image captions, or the lack thereof. 

Every time you fail to caption an image on a landing page or blog post, you are wasting incredibly valuable real estate. 

Valuable because, believe it or not, image captions are the 2nd-most-read copy on any page (after the headline).

I was skeptical, too… 

Then I checked the data on VeryGoodCopy: 

I was surprised to learn most of my subscribers converted on the small, light grey, 8-point CTA I put in the caption of each article’s image — and not the relatively huge, bold green, 30-point CTA I put at the end of each piece. 

Short term: Go add some conversion copy to your image captions. Ask for an action. It’ll pull responses better than you think.

Long term: Don’t leave money on the table. Always audit for unused capacity.

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Hey there, thanks for reading. :)

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Enjoy!

Eddie Shleyner 
VeryGoodCopy, founder

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