This insight is brought to you by… Modash

Everyone talks about how much the creator economy is worth. But what does a good influencer marketing salary look like these days? That’s data that’s rarely been transparent.

Modash surveyed 500 influencer marketers to map real salaries across geography, experience, niche, and workload,  including how overtime and job conditions affect pay.

💡 The biggest finding? The job is wildly misunderstood, and influencer marketers feel globally underpaid.

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Topic: Sales | Customer Experience 
For: B2B
Research date: June 2026
Universities: Ruhr University Bochum

📈 Recommendation

If you’re selling a simple product (e.g. standardized steel pipes) focus more on remote selling. 

If your product is complex (e.g. highly customized ERP software), include more in-person interactions with customers. You can then gradually decrease the share of in-person meetings as the sales rep gets to know the customer better.

Your sales team will perform better, leading to more sales.

If a customer prefers to meet remotely, accommodate that regardless of how complex your product is.

🎓 Findings

• As part of an analysis of 15,172 sales interactions with 3,565 sanitary product customers (e.g. plumbers, architects, contractors), researchers found that:

  • For simple products (e.g. standardized pipes), holding about 1 in 3 meetings in-person (37.9%) boosted sales performance by 27.3% (vs only in-person meetings)

  • For complex products (e.g. custom-sized vanity), customers prefer in-person meetings. Doing only remote meetings reduced sales performance by up to 32.4%

  • For medium complexity products, the optimal number of in-person meetings was 64.1%

🧠 Why it works

• Remote calls are more efficient but make it harder to build trust and share concerns. When we meet someone in person, it helps build a relationship and understand needs.

• When we buy a more complex product, we need to trust the seller, understand their value, and feel they’re meeting our needs. This is done better in-person. 

• When we find in-person meetings too resource-intensive or inefficient, we appreciate it if a seller adapts to our needs to meet remotely.

✋ Limitations

• This research focused only on relationships with existing customers. It may change for new customers where there is no prior relationship or trust.

• Different types of meetings are likely better for different stages of the sales cycle (e.g. exploration, proposals, negotiation, renewals).

• The study looked at a single manufacturer of a wide array of sanitary products for construction. It likely varies by industry (e.g. tech companies may prefer remote meetings while the construction industry may value in-person interactions more).

👀 Real-life example

RemKliq offers a standardized, plug-and-play product to automate payment follow-ups for companies.

❌ Issue: Despite being a straightforward product without significant customization, their demos include an option for an in-person walkthrough at the office of potential customers.

✅ Solution:

• RemKliq should focus on, and push for, online meetings to increase the efficiency of their sales team. 

• To accommodate customers that really want in-person meetings, they can include a small line underneath the online demo option (e.g. “Click here if you’d prefer to meet us in-person instead.”)

• This is a good page to include their number of sales, or pageviews, to provide a social proof of their effectiveness (e.g. “Automating payment follow-ups for over XX companies”).

• On their video calls with prospective customers, their team should use an unblurred background that shows off the salesperson’s personality and carefully observe and copy the body language of the person they’re speaking to (e.g. lean forward when they do).

📖 Research

Ergun, D. & Schmitz, C.Hybrid Selling: The Optimal Mix of Face-to-Face and Remote Sales Calls with Existing B2B Customers. Journal of Service Research (June 2026).

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus: Trivia

Check your knowledge from previous insights (for paid Platform members only).

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🎓 It took our team of PhDs and me 14 hours to accurately turn this research into this 3-min insight. 

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🗓️ Tomorrow: Join us and Squarespace for our Live Q&A on effective social proof for your website!

A couple of weeks ago, we released our free, science-based playbook on social proof, in partnership with Squarespace (thank you for all the great feedback! 🎉).

On September 30th, Serkan (lead research analyst on this project) and I are joining Squarespace to share the most impactful tips from the playbook, and answer - live - any questions you have.

Worth joining if you’re wondering how to use social proof on your website as effectively as you can. It’s free.

Want to sponsor Science Says to get in front of 30,000+ subscribers? Here’s all you need to know.

Topic: Messaging & Copy | Ecommerce 
For: B2C, can be tested for B2B 
Research date: June 2026
Universities: Dalian University of Technology

📈 Recommendation

Narrow down your product name and description so that it clearly reflects how people can use it (e.g. “windbreaker for scooter commutes”), instead of a more general product name (“windbreaker”). 

People will be more interested in buying it.

🎓 Findings

• Across 4 experiments, scientists found that when product descriptions were narrowed down to the specific use or product type (e.g. “sleep-aid scented candle”), rather than a more general description (e.g. “scented candle”), people:

  • Were up to 9.5% more likely to say they would buy

  • Saw the product as 9.7% more useful

• The effect is stronger for people who are looking for a specific product (vs just browsing).

🧠 Why it works

• Narrow descriptions help us better understand how we would use the product.

• This helps us imagine ourselves using it.

• Which makes us want it more.

✋ Limitations

• Scientists looked at only a few products (e.g. detergent, kettles). It’s likely the effect holds for other kinds of products and services.

• Narrowing down too much might backfire, as it might make it relatable to very few people (Traveling scented sleep candles for moms of newborns).

👀 Real-life example

The North Face’s backpacks are often used for different purposes.

❌ Issue: Only one of their names and descriptions is use-case specific.

✅ Solution: The North Face could:

• Explain what the ideal use of every backpack is, as they do with Vault (e.g. “Hiking backpack”, “Commuting backpack”)

• Help people decide easily by grouping products into categories differentiated by use (e.g. hiking backpack, city backpacks, travel backpacks)

• Make the website more persuasive by saying who the product is not for (e.g. “not for multi-day hikes”)

📖 Research

Jin, Y. and Zhao, J.  Narrow or Broad? How Categorization Breadth of Product Description Influences Online Purchase Intention. Journal of Consumer Behaviour (June 2026)

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus: Trivia

Here is how else Science Says can help you:

• 📈 Join the Science Says Platform to unlock all 300+ insights and exclusive playbooks

• 📘 Boost your results with Science-based Playbooks (for Pricing, Ad Creatives, Ecommerce, or SaaS)

• 🔬 Get science-based content for your brand. Publish groundbreaking insights about AI, marketing, or management that your customers will love.

🎓 It took our team of PhDs and me 12 hours to accurately turn this research into this 3-min insight. 

If this was forwarded by a friend, you can subscribe below for $0 👇

Join us and Squarespace on our live Q&A on effective social proof for your website!

Last week, we released our free, science-based playbook on social proof, in partnership with Squarespace (thank you for all the great feedback! 🎉).

On September 30th, at 12pm ET / 6pm CET, Serkan (lead research analyst on this project) and I are joining Squarespace to share the most impactful tips from the playbook, and answer - live - any questions you have.

Worth joining if you’re wondering how to use social proof on your website as effectively as you can. It’s free.

Want to sponsor Science Says to get in front of 30,000+ subscribers? Here’s all you need to know.

Topic: AI
For: Both B2C and B2B
Research date: June 2026
Universities: University of St. Gallen, University of Lausanne

📈 Recommendation

Use AI to help you develop your ideas (e.g. a new product, an ad creative):

• If your idea is mature (e.g. you know the storyline of your ad), ask AI to describe the final output in text

• If your idea is still vague, ask AI to visualize it in an image

AI will help you be even more creative with your idea.

🎓 Findings

• Scientists found that when people used AI to refine ideas, their ideas were rated (by AI and human raters):

  • Overall 30% more creative (vs no AI use at all)

  • 18% more creative when ideas were mature and AI refined them through textual descriptions (vs images) 

  • More creative when ideas were vague, and AI helped visualize them by creating an image

🧠 Why it works

• Images make us feel like an idea is complete and final, so we don’t think too much about refining it.

• However, when we read text, we have to use our imagination to fill in the gaps.

• This makes us think more creatively.

✋ Limitations

• Experts (e.g. creative directors) might be equally creative when using AI as a visual or text-based tool, regardless of the maturity stage of the idea.

• Scientists only tested creativity, we don’t know if that relates to higher quality ideas and results (e.g. sales).

👀 Real-life example

VizualizeAI lets people reimagine rooms in a few clicks.

❌ Issue: They ask people to select styles but have no step where they refine ideas.

✅ Solution:

• Ask questions and provide textual feedback before the final output.

• Create different user journeys for early-stage and mature ideas.

• Recommend designers to let people know the AI was used as part of a more complex brainstorming exercise, and not laziness as people might think.

• Add a disclaimer advising designers to avoid making the use of AI the core value proposition.

📖 Research

Gordetzki, P., Blohm, I., Clegg, M., Schakols, & F., Hofstetter, R. Agency Configurations in Generative AI Ideation: How Textual and Visual Idea Concretizations Shape Idea Creativity and Ideator Effort. Information Systems Research  (June 2026) 

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus: Trivia

Check your knowledge from previous insights (for paid Platform members only).

Here is how else Science Says can help you:

• 📈 Join the Science Says Platform to unlock all 300+ insights and exclusive playbooks

• 📘 Boost your results with Science-based Playbooks (for Pricing, Ad Creatives, Ecommerce, or SaaS)

• 🔬 Get science-based content for your brand. Publish groundbreaking insights about AI, marketing, or management that your customers will love.

🎓 It took our team of PhDs and me 11.5 hours to accurately turn this research into this 3-min insight. 

If this was forwarded by a friend, you can subscribe below for $0 👇

This insight is brought to you by… Modash

On October 21, Modash is bringing the people behind some of the world’s best creator programs together for Return on Influence, a free, one-day virtual festival.

Hear directly from the people doing it every day at ŌURA, Stanley 1913, Adobe and more on four stages, and leave inspired by practical sessions, candid conversations, and real-world case studies.

Want to sponsor Science Says to get in front of 30,000+ subscribers? Here’s all you need to know.

Topic: Messaging & Copy | Social Media
For: Both B2C and B2B
Research date: July 2026
Universities: Stanford University

📈 Recommendation

Use statements for your headlines and titles (e.g. “When you need to optimize for AEO”), not questions (e.g. “Do you need to optimize for AEO?”).

People will be more likely to engage with your content.

🎓 Findings

• Across 3 experiments, and an analysis of over 22,000 news articles, 3,000,000 academic articles, and 53,000 Reddit posts, researchers found that when titles used a question (vs statements), the content received:

  • 71.6% fewer comments

  • 53.7% fewer upvotes

  • 12.6% fewer clicks

  • 4.9% less academic citations 

• The effect is the same regardless of the type of question (e.g. direct, rhetorical, open-ended).

🧠 Why it works

• We look for clear and certain information when deciding whether to read something.

• Questions suggest uncertainty, so we see them as less informative and valuable.

✋ Limitations

• The effect might be different when people are reading for leisure.

• The study analyzed Western media. The effect may be even stronger in more uncertainty-avoidant cultures (e.g., Central Europe, Latin America).

👀 Real-life example

❌ Issue: Zapier’s “App comparisons” guide collection uses a format with questions. This likely lowers engagement with the content.

✅ Solution: 

• Pick a different format with a repeatable statement (e.g. “X compared to Y”)

• Make it sound certain with assertive words (e.g. “Zapier is always better than Y”)

• Always check that the changes are not hurting SEO when rewriting titles.

📖 Research

Fang, D. & Wheeler, S.C. Titles framed as questions reduce reader engagement. Journal of Consumer Psychology (July 2026).

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus: Trivia

Check your knowledge from previous insights (for paid Platform members only).

Here is how else Science Says can help you:

• 📈 Join the Science Says Platform to unlock all 300+ insights and exclusive playbooks

• 📘 Boost your results with Science-based Playbooks (for Pricing, Ad Creatives, Ecommerce, or SaaS)

• 🔬 Get science-based content for your brand. Publish groundbreaking insights about AI, marketing, or management that your customers will love.

🎓 It took our team of PhDs and me 11 hours to accurately turn this research into this 3-min insight. 

If this was forwarded by a friend, you can subscribe below for $0 👇

TL;DR: We partnered with Squarespace to turn the latest, most effective scientific evidence on how to boost your website conversions using social proof into a practical playbook. Download it (for free!) here.

Or first check out some of my favourite insights from the playbook below 👇

After 6 years of Science Says and many, many thousands of studies analyzed, some of what my team and I found here still surprised me.

I think you’ll love this.

🎓 Everyone uses social proof. Almost nobody knows how to use it effectively

You already have reviews, testimonials, and ratings on your website. The hard part is knowing which ones to show, and how. 

For example (3 of the 36 recommendations in the playbook):

• The reviews you should highlight are rated 4 to 4.5 stars, not 5. Products in that range outsell the ones rated 4.5 to 5.

• Reviews containing a swear word were rated up to 37% more useful. Don't discard them, highlight them.

• If you're new and don't have customers yet, say how many you expect to have. It increased inquiries by up to 20%.

None of these is a ‘growth hack’ or an opinion. Each one comes from a peer-reviewed, scientific study, carefully and manually vetted by our team of PhDs.

🧠 Your gut feel on how to use social proof is usually wrong

Everyone’s instinct when using social proof is to try to look as good as possible. But that’s not what works.

One of the 7 scientists my team and I interviewed for the playbook, Prof. Rebecca Wang from Lehigh University, puts it like this:

But the evidence on how to do it right does exist. It’s just buried in academic papers like needles in a haystack.

So we teamed up with Squarespace to dig them out.

📘 Introducing: The Science-based Playbook for Effective Social Proof

My team and I reviewed thousands of studies on social proof and reviews, took the 45 that were the most high-impact and least used, and condensed 800+ pages of research into 36 practical recommendations.

I then went to 7 of the scientists behind the studies, from Oxford, Boston University, and Northeastern University, among others, to ask them for their recommendations on how to best apply their findings.

It covers three things:

• Picking effective reviews. Which ones to handpick and showcase (see image below), and what the best ones should say.

• Displaying reviews and social proof. How to show them so they feel credible, and what to show alongside them.

• How to ask for effective reviews. What to ask, and when, down to the day of the week.

  

  From the playbook: which reviews to feature

Plus: you’ll get a ready-to-use AI prompt that picks your best reviews for you (if you have thousands you need to sift through!).

⬇️ Get your free copy

It took my team and me months to put this together. It'll take you a few minutes to apply the first recommendation.

And it’s completely free 👇

Thomas
Founder, Science Says

P.S.: Want a preview of the playbook, or have any questions about it? On the 30th September, we’re doing a Squarespace Circle Live episode where I share some of my favorite insights, followed by a live Q&A. You can sign up here.

P.P.S.: Want your own science-based playbook like this in your area of focus? We regularly create science-based marketing, management, and AI insights for some of the best brands in the world, such as Squarespace, ServiceNow (example), or Wharton (example). Find out more here.

View and purchase the Wharton Blueprint for Effective AI Chatbots, it helps you design Chatbots that people trust and want to use👇

It’s free to download.

📝 Context

Topic: Customer Experience | Sales
For: B2C
Research date: April 2026
Universities: Monash University

We’ve talked in the past about the importance of personalizing customer service, humanizing your front-facing employees and making your customers feel like they matter, and aren’t just a number. 

But when was the last time you were addressed by name when receiving a service?

The science says calling customers by name does improve the experience, as long as you can make sure they don’t feel embarrassed or manipulated.

P.S.: Making a customer’s experience feel personalized (e.g. sending a handwritten thank you note with an invoice or highlighting an option specifically for them in a brochure) can increase satisfaction and sales.

📈 Recommendation

Encourage your employees to call customers by their names when interacting with them. 

Train them to use it naturally when talking to customers (e.g. “What would you like to order today Mr. Smith?”) and make sure names aren’t used in a scripted or repetitive way (e.g. using the name in every sentence ), so the interaction feels genuine. Avoid using customer names in embarrassing or uncomfortable situations (e.g. at a pharmacy or a doctor’s clinic).

People will spend more and be more satisfied with the service.

🎓 Findings

• People spend more, are more likely to accept upsell offers, and are more satisfied with their experience when service employees refer to them by name.

• As part of an experiment at a suburban Australian restaurant and 3 online experiments, researchers found that when customers were addressed by their name:

  • Average spending per person increased 17.3% (from $28.67 to $33.64).

  • Upsell offers were accepted more than twice as often (from 22.6% to 48.4%).

  • Customer satisfaction was 15.9% higher.

• People were 17.2% more likely to accept an upsell request when their name was randomly used during the interaction with a waitress (vs not at all), but not when their name was used immediately alongside the upsell offer.

• The effect:

  • Strengthens when employees introduce themselves by name before asking for the customer’s name

  • Reverses if the name is used in an embarrassing situation (e.g. at a pharmacy seeking hemorrhoid cream)

  • Reverses if the name is used too often. Compared to not using a customer’s name at all, using it in every other sentence increased customer satisfaction by 9.1%, but using it in every sentence canceled out this effect and caused discomfort

🧠 Why it works

• When a service employee uses our name, like at Starbucks, we feel more valued as a human being, instead of just a source of revenue. 

• This builds rapport between us and the employee, making us happier with their work and more open to their suggestions. That’s similar to how we tip more if we exchange names with our waiter and address each other by name.

• When the use of our name feels forced, unnatural or like it’s being used to upsell to us, that breaks this rapport.

• If our name is used during an embarrassing situation, or when we’d prefer privacy (e.g. buying medicines for an STD) that makes us uncomfortable and destroys the benefits.

✋ Limitations

• The study looked at the people in the US, UK and Australia. It’s possible that in other cultures, customers might appreciate formality or social distance and prefer not to be called by name.

• The research didn’t differentiate between addressing people by first name or family names with a title (e.g. Mr. Smith). It’s likely that people might react differently to being addressed in different ways (e.g. it may feel forced to a college student to be referred to as Mr. Smith, while an elderly man may not appreciate a teenage waiter calling him “John”). Similarly, for some settings (e.g. a bank or luxury store) more formal titles might be more appropriate.

• It’s unknown whether addressing repeat or regular customers by their name would continue to result in increased satisfaction and spending or whether the effect would diminish after repeated interactions.

• The study included a field experiment and online experiments where people looked at online scripts of a conversation. It wasn’t tested, but it is possible that this means the effect would carry over to using someone’s name in online support chats as well.

👀 Real-life example

Qatar Airways cabin crew often address customers in their premium cabins by name during their time onboard.

❌ Issue: Cabin crew welcome premium customers by name, but often use the name in a formal, forced manner.

✅ Solution: Qatar Airways can further increase customer satisfaction by:

• Ensuring cabin crew introduce themselves to customers in premium cabins.

• Training cabin crew to ask younger customers whether they prefer to be referred to by first name, to make the use of their last name seem less forced.

• Making customer experiences memorable by adapting customer service based on the purpose of a traveller’s journey (e.g. giving champagne to couples flying together, giving a notebook or pen for business travellers to use in meetings at their destination).

• Apologize for trivial issues that are beyond the control of the cabin crew (e.g. “sorry for the long walk to the gate”) to come across as more warm and increase engagement.

🔍 Study type

Online experiments and field experiment (sales and upselling behavior at 127 tables of a suburban restaurant of a major Australian city).

📖 Research

Call me by my name: The effects of addressing customers by their names, the underlying mechanisms, and the boundary conditions. Journal of Retailing (April 2026). 

🏫 Researchers

• Sri Vishnu Srinivasa Raja. Monash University.

• Yimin Cheng. Monash University.

• Tracey S. Danaher. Monash University.

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.