Ask a room what the offer is and someone will say “20% off.” That’s one setting on one of five dials. It’s like being asked what car you drive and answering “blue.”

The confusion is expensive. A brief that says “new customers, 20% off” leaves the creative team guessing which product to show, what to promise and who it’s for. The ads come out generic, the test comes back flat, and the team concludes the discount wasn’t deep enough. The next brief says 30%.

The five decisions

1. The productThe thing, or the set of things, a stranger buys first. Not your catalog, and not necessarily your best seller. This is where demand lives or doesn’t: no mechanic rescues a first product people don’t want.
2. The doorThe level you sell at. The brand (“shop our jewelry”), a collection (“the everyday gold collection”), a hero product (“the layering necklace”) or a use (“what to wear to the interview”). Every ad is pitched at one of these whether you chose it or not. Strangers mostly walk in through a hero product or a use; brand-level doors work for people who already know you.
3. The price and the mechanicThe sticker price plus whatever is layered on it: a discount, a bundle, a gift, free shipping, a trial, a guarantee, a payment plan. The mechanic’s job is to raise what the offer is worth to the buyer or lower what it risks. Chapter 10 matches mechanics to objections.
4. The promiseWhy this product at this price is worth it to this person, in words they’d use. Not the ad’s angle; the angle is how you dramatize the promise. The promise usually comes out of your five-star reviews, and it’s often the thing worth guaranteeing.
5. The next stepWhat the first order sets up. A refill date, a full size after the sample, a second piece that completes the first, a membership that makes reordering the default. The first four decisions win the first order. The fifth decides whether there’s a second, and it’s the one most offers leave blank.

The first four decisions win the first order. The fifth decides whether there’s a second.

Five offers, one table

Here are offers this book takes apart, laid out on the five decisions. Read down the last column.

Dollar Shave Club and Chewy built the next step into the mechanic. Costco sells the next step as the product. Warby Parker’s next step moved into its stores, which is why it could retire the try-on (chapter 11). Gallery Furniture’s offer, which I helped run while leading retention there, was built for one moment, and its next step was the story people told about it.

What an offer is not

• Not a discount. A discount is one possible mechanic. “20% off” with no product, door or promise isn’t an offer; it’s a coupon looking for one.
• Not the creative. Two ads with different hooks and the same product, door, mechanic and promise are the same offer. Chapter 20 keeps offer tests and creative tests apart.
• Not the audience. On today’s ad platforms the creative and the offer choose the audience. The awareness level an ad reaches comes from what it says, not from a targeting setting.

Why the fifth decision gets skipped

Acquisition and retention usually sit on different teams with different scorecards. The paid team is judged on the first order, so it builds the first four decisions. The email team inherits the customer afterwards, so it writes the reorder campaign. Nobody owns the handoff, and the customer meets the full price for the first time in a reorder email written by someone who didn’t choose the first discount.

The fix is organizational before it’s creative: one person signs off on all five decisions at once. That person writes the offer in two sentences (chapter 23 gives the template) and the paid and retention teams both work from it.

Do this

• Write your current first offer as five lines: product, door, price and mechanic, promise, next step.
• Circle any line you had to guess. If the next step is blank, read The Offer After the Offer before you change anything else.