What is the Trellivance Test?

The Trellivance Test is a seven-criterion rubric that scores a landing page, homepage hero or cold email out of 21 on whether it has reached trellivance. It takes about two minutes and requires no email address.

What is a good Trellivance Test score?

0–7 is pre-trellivant: the message is still about the writer. 8–13 is approaching: reader focus is intended but not yet felt. 14–18 is trellivant: a reader in the target situation will recognise themselves. 19–21 is fully trellivant and is rare.

Where does the word trellivance come from?

The prefix comes from trellis, a framework upon which growth occurs. The ending blends relevance, resonance and advance. The related forms are trellivant (adjective) and trellivate (verb).

Can I use the Trellivance Test in my own work?

Yes. The rubric is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, so it may be copied, adapted and taught with credit to the Trellivance Test by Jerry Suhrstedt, SumoLab. The word trellivance itself carries no conditions at all.

The Trellivance Test

Q: What does trellivance mean?

Trellivance (pronounced treh-LIV-ance) is a noun meaning the point at which a message becomes genuinely relevant — the instant messaging shifts from company-focused to reader-focused in a way the audience can emotionally perceive. It was coined by Jerry Suhrstedt, founder of SumoLab Total Marketing, and published on 7 August 2026.

Seven criteria. Two minutes. No email required. Score any landing page, homepage hero or cold email out of 21 and find out whether it has actually landed.

Trellivance (treh-LIV-ance), noun: the point at which a message becomes genuinely relevant — the instant messaging shifts from company-focused to reader-focused in a way the audience can emotionally perceive.

Coined by Jerry Suhrstedt, founder of SumoLab Total Marketing, and first published on 7 August 2026. The full definition and etymology are at sumolab.co/blog/trellivance/. Related forms: trellivant (adjective, having reached that point) and trellivate (verb, to bring a message to that point).

Most copy advice tells you to be customer-focused. Almost none of it tells you how to know whether you have succeeded. This test is an attempt at a threshold rather than an aspiration.

How to run it

Take the first 50 to 100 words of the page or email you want to test — the hero, the opening paragraph, whatever a reader actually sees before deciding to keep going. Score each of the seven criteria below from 0 to 3. Add them up. Maximum 21.

Score what is on the page, not what you meant. If you have to explain your intention to justify a score, the score is lower than you think.

The seven criteria

1. Subject of the first sentence

Who or what is the grammatical subject of the opening sentence?

0 — the company, its history, or its founding
1 — the product or its features
2 — the market or the category
3 — the reader, or the reader's situation

2. The we:you ratio

In the first 50 words, count first-person plurals (we, our, us, and the company name) against second-person pronouns (you, your).

0 — we/our outnumber you/your
1 — roughly equal
2 — you/your outnumber we/our
3 — you/your outnumber we/our by 3:1 or more

3. Named moment

Does the copy describe a specific, recognisable situation the reader has actually been in?

0 — no situation described
1 — a generic business situation ("growing your business")
2 — a situation specific to the reader's role
3 — a situation so specific the reader could name the day it last happened to them

4. Cost of inaction, in the reader's currency

Does the copy state what it costs the reader to change nothing?

0 — not stated
1 — stated in the company's terms ("you're missing out on our solution")
2 — stated in generic business terms (time, money)
3 — stated in terms the reader personally feels (their credibility, their workload, their board meeting)

5. Claim specificity

Could the central claim be falsified?

0 — the claim would be true of any competitor ("world-class service")
1 — the claim is directional but unmeasurable
2 — the claim is specific but unproven
3 — the claim is specific and falsifiable

6. Proof adjacency

How far must the reader travel from the claim to the evidence?

0 — no proof anywhere on the page
1 — proof exists, but on another page
2 — proof is on the same page, further down
3 — proof is within one paragraph or one scroll of the claim

7. Obvious next step

After reading, does the reader know exactly what happens next?

0 — no call to action, or a vague one ("learn more")
1 — a call to action with unclear consequences
2 — a clear call to action with a clear outcome
3 — a clear call to action, a clear outcome, and the effort or risk of taking it is explicitly stated

What your score means

Score	Band	What it means
0–7	Pre-trellivant	The message is still about you. A reader can tell within one sentence, and most will not read the second.
8–13	Approaching	The intent to be reader-focused is visible, but the reader cannot yet feel it. Most B2B copy sits here.
14–18	Trellivant	The message has reached trellivance. A reader in the target situation will recognise themselves in it.
19–21	Fully trellivant	Rare. The copy is doing the reader's thinking for them.

Fix one thing, not seven

Find your lowest-scoring criterion. Ignore the rest for now. Do the matching instruction below, then re-score. Fixing one criterion properly beats half-fixing all seven, and it is the only version of this anybody actually completes.

Lowest criterion	Do this
1. Subject	Rewrite your opening sentence so the first noun is your reader or their situation. Delete the company name from the first line entirely.
2. We:you ratio	Rewrite your first 50 words to cut every "we" you can, replacing it with what the reader gets or does. Target three "you"s for every "we".
3. Named moment	Replace your generic setup with one specific scene. Name the room, the deadline, or the meeting where this problem shows up.
4. Cost of inaction	Add one sentence saying what it costs the reader to change nothing — in their terms, not yours.
5. Claim specificity	Find your main claim and ask whether a competitor could truthfully make it too. If they could, it is not a claim. Replace it with something only you can say.
6. Proof adjacency	Move one piece of evidence to sit directly beneath your biggest claim. Not further down the page — directly beneath it.
7. Next step	Rewrite your call to action to state exactly what happens after the click, and how long it takes.

A worked example

Before — a real pattern, lightly disguised, from a B2B services homepage:

"Founded in 2011, we are a full-service marketing partner delivering world-class results for ambitious brands. Our team of specialists combines strategy, creative and technology to help our clients grow."

Subject: the company (0). We:you ratio: four first-person plurals, zero second-person (0). Named moment: none (0). Cost of inaction: unstated (0). Claim specificity: "world-class results" is available to every competitor (0). Proof adjacency: no proof (0). Next step: none in view (0). Total: 0/21. Pre-trellivant.

After, fixing criterion 1 first and letting the rest follow:

"You have a board meeting in six weeks and the pipeline number is not going to look better by then. Most of the gap is not lead volume — it is that your homepage takes four sentences to say what you sell. Here is a two-minute test that shows you where it loses people, and what to change first."

Subject: the reader (3). We:you ratio: three second-person, zero first-person plural (3). Named moment: a specific board meeting on a specific horizon (3). Cost of inaction: stated in the reader's currency (3). Claim specificity: falsifiable — either the homepage takes four sentences or it does not (3). Proof adjacency: unchanged in this excerpt (0). Next step: clear, with the time cost named (3). Total: 18/21. Trellivant.

Licence and reuse

The Trellivance Test is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Use it, adapt it, teach it, put it in your onboarding docs, build a better version. The only condition is attribution: credit the Trellivance Test by Jerry Suhrstedt, SumoLab, and where it is practical to do so, link to sumolab.co/trellivance-test/.

Copy-paste credit line

If you are putting the test in a deck, a client report or a blog post, this is the line to paste. It is the attribution, already written.

The Trellivance Test by Jerry Suhrstedt, SumoLab — https://sumolab.co/trellivance-test/

And the HTML version, if you are embedding it on a page:

<p>Scored with <a href="https://sumolab.co/trellivance-test/">The Trellivance Test</a>,
a seven-point rubric for <a href="https://sumolab.co/blog/trellivance/">trellivance</a>
by Jerry Suhrstedt, SumoLab. CC BY 4.0.</p>

About the test

Written by Jerry Suhrstedt, founder of SumoLab Total Marketing, who coined the word trellivance on 7 August 2026. The word is new. Nobody was using it before that date, and this page makes no claim otherwise. It exists because there was no short way to say "the message has stopped being about you and the reader can tell," and a rubric with no name for the thing it measures is hard to talk about.

If you think a criterion is wrong, say so publicly. A rubric that nobody argues with is a rubric nobody used.

Want a second opinion on the page you just scored?

SumoLab is a fractional CMO practice. If your score came out lower than you would like and you would rather not fix it alone, get in touch.