What You Need to Start
Nothing unusual. You need an account (the 7-day free trial requires no credit card), a piece of copy you want to score or a description of copy you want to generate, and a working description of your target audience. That is it.
The audience description does not need to be a psychometric study. "VP of Sales at a mid-market B2B SaaS company" is enough. "Procurement manager at an enterprise manufacturing company, detail-oriented, conservative" is better. You refine the profile over time. The first run just needs enough to produce a working OCEAN score.
Most users run their first scored analysis within 10 minutes of creating an account.
Step 1: Define Your Audience Profile
When you log into COS for the first time, the first thing you do is create an audience profile. This is the benchmark COS uses to score everything you write to that segment.
Start with what you know: job title, company size, industry, and any behavioral signals you have. "Director of Marketing, mid-market B2B SaaS, focuses on pipeline and revenue metrics" gives COS enough to infer an OCEAN profile. The system maps that description to the five personality dimensions and creates a scoring baseline.
You are not locked into the first profile. Every profile is editable. Most users treat the first profile as a starting point and refine it after the first few analyses, once they see how the scores match their own intuition about the audience.
What if you have multiple audience segments?
Create a separate profile for each. A profile for enterprise buyers and a profile for SMB buyers score the same piece of copy against different benchmarks. A message that scores 81 on Conscientiousness for enterprise procurement may score 44 for the same dimension with an SMB marketing audience. Same copy, different fit. That gap is the information.
Step 2: Paste Your Copy or Request a Draft
Two paths. If you have existing copy you want to score: paste it into the analysis field, select your audience profile, and run the analysis. If you want COS to generate copy from scratch: describe what you need (an email subject line, a landing page hero, a cold outreach opening), select your audience profile, and COS generates a draft grounded in that profile from the first word.
For first-time users, scoring existing copy is usually more useful than generating new copy. It gives you a baseline: here is how your current copy scores against this audience before any optimization. That baseline makes the rewrite suggestions concrete.
Run your first analysis free. No credit card required.
Start Free TrialStep 3: Read the Coverage Scores
The analysis returns a 0 to 100 score for each of the five OCEAN dimensions, weighted by your audience profile. Here is how to read them.
| Dimension | What It Measures | High Score Means | Low Score Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Openness | Novelty, conceptual thinking, ideas | Copy introduces a new angle or framing | Copy is conventional and evidence-only |
| Conscientiousness | Specificity, process, proof | Copy delivers detail, evidence, and structure | Copy leads with benefits and vision, not proof |
| Extraversion | Energy, social proof, boldness | Copy is confident, action-oriented, visible | Copy is neutral or understated |
| Agreeableness | Team outcomes, peer validation, trust | Copy acknowledges others and builds consensus | Copy is individual-focused with no social proof |
| Neuroticism | Risk reduction, reassurance, stability | Copy addresses fear, risk, and uncertainty | Copy ignores risk and worst-case scenarios |
The target score for each dimension depends on your audience profile. Copy to a high-Conscientiousness audience (CFOs, procurement leads, compliance officers) needs a Conscientiousness score above 70. Copy to a high-Openness audience (product managers, innovation leads, early adopters) needs an Openness score above 65. COS flags any dimension below the threshold for your defined audience.
Step 4: Apply the Rewrite Suggestions
For every dimension that scores below the threshold for your audience, COS provides a specific rewrite suggestion. Not "make this more persuasive." Something concrete: add a peer adoption data point (Agreeableness gap), open with a risk-reduction proof rather than a feature list (Neuroticism gap), replace the vision statement with a process description (Conscientiousness gap).
Apply one suggestion at a time and rescore. You will see which changes move the needle and which do not. Over 5 to 10 analyses, most users develop a clear picture of which structural patterns consistently score well for their audience type.
How long does a typical revision take?
For a 150-word cold email: under 15 minutes for the first revision cycle (analysis, review suggestions, apply one or two changes, rescore). For a 500-word landing page section: 30 to 45 minutes for a full revision cycle. The time-to-impact is usually smaller than the time-to-revision, because most gaps are addressed with 1 to 3 specific changes, not a full rewrite.
Support and Training
What onboarding looks like
There is no required onboarding sequence. The workflow is: create profile, paste copy, read scores, apply suggestions. Most of that is self-explanatory within the first session. The FAQ at /faq/ covers the common questions that come up in the first few days.
If you want a walkthrough of COS against your specific use case, email us. We run those conversations at no charge. The goal is for you to understand what the scores mean for your specific audience and copy type before you commit to a paid plan.
Email support
Email response within 24 hours on business days. For questions about audience profile setup, score interpretation, or rewrite application, we walk through it directly. Team and Enterprise accounts get priority support. We do not route you to a knowledge base and call it support.
What the paid plans include
The Solo plan ($24.50/month) includes 50 analyses per month, one user seat, and PDF exports. The Team plan ($99.50/month) includes unlimited analyses, five user seats, and all export formats. Both start with a 7-day free trial, no credit card required. The 30-day money-back guarantee applies if you start a paid plan and it is not the right fit.
Common Questions
Do I need to know what OCEAN scores mean before I start?
No. COS explains each dimension in context within the analysis results. You do not need to study personality psychology before your first run. The scores and suggestions are designed to be actionable without a background in the Big Five model.
Can I score copy that someone else wrote?
Yes. Paste any copy into the analysis field: drafts from your team, output from other AI tools, existing campaigns you want to audit. COS scores the text against your audience profile regardless of where the copy originated.
What if the scores disagree with my instinct about the copy?
Trust the specifics. If the Conscientiousness score is 18 on copy targeting a procurement audience, the copy is almost certainly missing concrete evidence, process detail, or proof points. Check whether your instinct is about style preference (subjective) or psychological calibration (measurable). The score measures fit to the audience's documented psychology, not whether the copy reads well by a general standard.
Where do the 860+ peer-reviewed studies come from?
The COS scoring framework is grounded in published research across seven psychology disciplines: Big Five personality theory, persuasion science, cognitive psychology, social psychology, behavioral economics, communication psychology, and consumer behavior. The Science page at /science/ covers the research base and specific citations.
Ready to score your first piece of copy?