The Web Copy Blog

Sometimes copywriters think they know their audience well, but, in actuality, they don’t.

Similarly, copywriters can guess what the target audience’s hot buttons are, but if we don’t know why people arc buying the product or service, we won’t know how to rewrite the ropy if it isn’t pulling in sales.

If you are the web copywriter hired to write the copy for a flat fee, you may not care much about this, except that you might not get repeat business.

If, however, you’re a web copywriter who is getting a percentage of the sales, or an Internet marketer who writes web copy for your own products and services, this will matter a great deal.

Surveying customers is so much simpler on the Internet. You no longer have to phone 100 people.

All you need do is send a well-designed e-mail to those who bought the product and ask the following questions:

  ”What are the reasons you bought this product or service, or what motivated you to buy?”

  ”Can you list the top benefits of the product or service that convinced you to act?” Alternatively, you may prefer to list the main benefits and say, “Here are a few of the benefits of our product or service. Please rank them in order of importance.”

For those who don’t buy but have left their contact infuriation and for those who return the product they bought, try asking the following questions:

Why didn’t you buy?

What, if anything, was confusing about the offer?

Why did you return the product?

When you survey your customers, you often discover that the top benefit is something you buried somewhere in the middle of your web copy.

Writing online classified ads, e-zine and newsletter ads, signature files, banner copy, and other advertising copy for use on the web requires strategies a little different from offline ad writing.

Where an offline ad might feature a strong benefit-laden headline, or give the product or service’s unique selling proposition, writing your online ad requires a different kind of discipline-the same kind required to create an editorial as opposed to an advertisement.

It’s so easy to use short, punchy copy reminiscent of classified ads in the offline world, such as “Lose weight while you sleep. Click here to learn more,” or “Learn a foreign language in 30 days. Click here for more information.”

When you have only two to five lines in which to generate a response (such as in an online classified ad, advertising banner, or e-zinc ad), it’s tempting to resort to the tried-and-true techniques of advertising language.

But do you really want your ad to say, “I’m an ad-read me?” No! On the internet, you’ll probably be ignored.

The trick is to stand out above the other ads in the medium in which your ad is placed. This is accomplished not by screaming the loudest or using hype, exclamation points, capital letters, and so forth, but by featuring something newsworthy in your ad.

Many editorial-style headlines could double as copy for online ads, with a bit of retooling, as necessary. For example:

$2 Million Scientific Project Unlocks the Secret of Aging: How You Can Become Biologically Younger!”

You can turn back your body’s aging clock and be able to prove it with a simple at-home test. Read entire article here: http://www.domain.com.

You might think that getting someone to click on a link should be relatively easy. After all, clicking on a mouse seems like a virtually effortless task, doesn’t it?

It may appear so, hill not when you consider that every commercial enterprise on the Internet is asking your prospects to do the same thing.

The web population has learned to become selective about what they click on, particularly in view of the endless choices and the limited time at their disposal.

You have to give them a compelling reason to click. Here is another example of an editorial-style ad.

9 Facts You Must Know Before You Buy Any Product
That Promises to Grow Hair or Stop Hair Loss
Protect yourself from hair fallout and other horrors–and learn how to choose the right hair restoration product for your needs. Send a blank e-mail to 9fact@domain.com to receive free report.

The same applies to writing copy for banners, search engine listings, or SIG files.

Three Tips for Writing Online Ads

1) Make your ad look different, and articulate it differently from the rest of the ads in the medium where it runs so that yours will stand a chance at grabbing your audience’s attention. Don’t blend in with the rest.

2) Inject an element that will spark curiosity to get your audience to click.

3) Get prospects to opt-in, if possible, instead of trying to sell in the ad. In the offline world, this is called the two-step approach.

Only amateurs and fools run three- to five-line classifieds and try to make a sale from that one ad.

There’s just not enough space in a few lines to make the sale. Use the ad as a lead generator to get people to opt in to receive a free report, a free course or a free eBook.

That way, you acquire another qualified prospect to add to your mailing list.

If you write an ad where readers must click to go to your webpage, they might choose to ignore it, and then you’ll have nothing.

On the other hand, if you offer to give readers something for free, if they do not visit your website you at least have their contact information.

This is gold on the Internet because you can be in constant communication with them until they finally buy your product-and, more important, buy many other products from you.

Instead of directing readers to a download location, you can opt to have them send a blank e-mail to your autoresponder to get the freebie.

Either way, you will capture their e-mail address, because your web host sends you the e-mail address of everyone who sends a message to your autoresponder.

The disadvantage here is that you don’t get the person’s first name just an e-mail address-so you won’t be able to personalize subsequent e-mails.

However, the “send-a-blank-e-mail” method should not be discounted, because in online ads, SIG files, and bylines at the end of promotional articles, it is often easier to get people to send a blank e-mail to receive a freebie than to get them to click through to your website (where you can capture their first name and e-mail address via a form).

So much of your success depends on what you do after people visit your website. I estimate that up to 90 percent of your total sales will come from the skillful application of these follow-up marketing communications, combined with the e-mail strategies.

Only a small number of visitors will become customers on their first visit to your website, but when you have mechanisms in place to capture the contact information of as many prospects as you can and start an e-mail relationship with them, that’s when the real selling begins.

Once you have captured the names of those people you entered with the free report, what do you send them via e-mail? 

Send a series of follow-up e-mails using the autoresponder mechanism.

Most web hosts allow you to use e-mail addresses that automatically call up a prewritten e-mail that you upload to their server.

When someone sends an e-mail to that address, your web host’s server automatically sends out the prewritten e-mail that you uploaded.

Taking this a step further, there are e-mail programs, shopping cart programs, and services that allow you to send a series of prewritten e-mails to your opt-in list at predetermined intervals, say, every three days. This automates the follow-up system for you.

Marketers often use the rule of seven, which has its roots in radio and television advertising. The rule states that prospects must see or hear your message seven times before they consider buying.

It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, just a rule of thumb. It applies not only to radio and television advertising, but to online advertising as well.

When you use autoresponders to send out seven or more marketing e-mails at predetermined intervals, you increase the chances of the prospect buying from you.

Crafting Autoresponses to Your Opt-in Offer
Step 1: Get recipients to consume what you just gave them for free. What’s the use of getting them to download three free chapters, receive a free report, or download free software if you don’t get them to read or use it?

Most people don’t read or use what they send for. If you don’t get them to read the free chapters, they’ll never buy the entire course.

If you don’t get them to read the free report that shows them how to save money, you’ll never get them to sign up to join the discount buying club.

Step 2: With every subsequent e-mail, highlight a different benefit of your product(s) or service(s) and explore a different angle that slides smoothly into a compelling reason why the recipient needs to buy what you’re selling.

Autoresponse number 2 reminded prospects that they could receive 30 to 70 percent discounts on the things they bought that week or month and, in addition, would receive free shipping.

The third reminded them that they would receive rebates on all the purchases made by friends and family that they bring into the club.

The fourth stressed that they were losing money each day they were not a member. Autoresponse number 5 told the engaging story of how the shopper’s club started out in a small apartment above a garage, how its membership grew to more than 3 million, and how the combined buying power of its members means more savings to the prospect.

Autoresponder e-mails are not only for prospects. You can create a series specifically for purchasers of your product or service to help multiply one sale into a stream of ongoing backend sales at the same time it reinforces the sale and minimizes buyer’s remorse (and returns).
What procedures you would consider while writing Autoresponder E-Mails?

Writing free reports or promotional articles can be one of the most profitable things you can do to promote the product or service you’re selling on your website.

When you write a free report or promotional article, you can use it not only as your opt-in offer, but you can also offer its content to websites, newsletters, and e-zines.

The more it is picked up, the more traffic it will pump to your website. Information is the Internet’s main commodity, so when you have good content to offer, you’ll find many takers.

A promotional article titled “Warning: Do Not Buy a Computer Until You Read This-Or You Might Get Ripped Off” offered compelling reasons for consumers to be wary when buying a computer.

It listed six of the sneakiest-and even illegal-schemes employed by unscrupulous computer vendors to take advantage of unsuspecting buyers.

Nowhere in the article was there a commercial slant; it consisted of only solid, informative content.

The author’s byline, however, provided the opportunity to plug her book about how to save $500 or more on a computer purchase.

To achieve its goals, a free report or promotional article must:

  Provide useful, bona fide content related to the product or service you’re offering.
  Be written in a way that positions you as an expert in your field.
  Include a byline or resource box that points to your website.

The important thing to remember is that the body of’ the report or article must contain information of value to your target audience.

The sales pitch is introduced only after identifying the author (you) in the byline or resource box.

Most e-zine and newsletter publishers are looking for articles of between 500 and 800 words. Some publishers are very strict about your article not being a sales pitch in disguise.

The key to writing successful free reports or promotional articles is to keep them factual, unbiased, informative, and, most important, engaging.

Make them revelatory, if that’s possible with your subject matter. Avoid making a sales pitch, no matter how skillfully you think you can disguise it, and above all, never identify the name of your product or service in the article.

That’s a telltale sign of sell-promotion. Finally, don’t use superlative adjectives and phrases (amazing, incredible, world’s best, taking the world by storm, spreading like wildfire causing quite a stir, etc.), which will expose your commercial intent.

Guidelines For Writing Newsletters And E-Zines
For the following reasons, publishing your own newsletter or e-zine is one of the best and most economical ways to build traffic (and sales):

1. It’s free. Anyway, it’s almost free. It costs little or no money to produce and deliver a newsletter or e-zine no matter how many people you send it to.

2. It’s profitable. You can easily build rapport and credibility with your subscribers and quickly be acknowledged as an expert in your field through your newsletter or e-zine.

In turn, anything you promote or endorse will have a greater impact than any advertisement.

3. You have a captive audience. One thing that people consistently do online is check their e-mail.

People may not have time to visit the millions of websites that are out there, but most people do check their e-mail regularly and read selected items in their e-mail box.

Your e-zine would therefore be more likely to have the undivided attention of your audience than would your website.

4. It keeps you in touch. Your newsletter or e-zine enables you to stay in constant contact with your audience, and it constantly puts your business in front of your prospects.

It is a great way to remind people to do business with you or to visit your website, without sounding like an ad.

Since newsletters and e-zines are all over the web, you need to make sure you offer one that has unique content of great interest to your target audience.

More important, to attract the most subscribers, your offer must have a compelling promise, but at the same time be able to deliver on that promise.

As with all e-mail writing, don’t be tempted to put the whole kitchen sink in your newsletter or e-zine.

While providing values is something to strive for, don’t be tempted to litter your publication with a multitude of subjects and topics. 

It may not always be easy to stick to a single message in a multipart publication, so the best thing to do is to have a cohesive theme that will enable you to lead your readers down your intended sales path.

Needless to say, the content you offer in your newsletter or e-zine must be related to the products or services that you are selling.

Make sure you always provide bona fide content. Give your subscribers something worthy of their devotion, not just some disguised sales pitch, in return for giving you their undivided attention.
If you have something to say about the guide lines mentioned, please do write me.

Converting web visitors into customers is rarely completed during the website visit.

But by crafting an irresistible opt-in offer and following up with e-mail messages designed to build rapport and a relationship with the prospects, conversion rates of 15 to 25 percent (and sometimes greater) can be achieved.

Capturing contact information is fundamental to the success of any business enterprise. As web marketer, entrepreneur, or copywriter, your primary goal, at the very least, should he capturing your web visitors’ e-mail addresses.

Without this information, you have in effect wasted all the time, money, and effort it took to get them to your website. 

For this reason, I can’t overemphasize that constructing your opt-in offer is infinitely more important than crafting the offer for your primary product.

It’s apparent, therefore, that you need to make your opt-in offer copy as compelling as possible in order to convince visitors to give you this personal information.

A good way to do this is by providing a benefit that gives visitors an incentive to give you their e-mail address.

One method is to ask them to sign up for a free report (with an irresistible title), a free newsletter, a free course, free product, free chapters of your book-in other words, something that requires no financial commitment.

The following opt-in offer was designed as an exit pop-up (a window that pops up when the visitor leaves the site).

The objective of this opt-in offer is to capture the contact information of as many web visitors as possible so that, through a series of follow-up auto responder e-mails, prospects can be encouraged to sign up for a membership.

The opt-in offer is designed to prequalify prospects. In this case, it means that anyone who signs up to receive this free report is interested in getting discounts and saving money on purchases.

And therefore is someone who might also be interested in signing up for a paid membership to the discount buying club to get even more discounts on a wider variety of products and servers.

Five Keys to an Opt-in Offer That’s Impossible to Refuse
In addition to creating an offer that prequalifies prospects, there are five elements that winning opt-in offers contain:

1. Compelling title that speaks to the needs of your target audience
2. Appetizing benefits
3. Ease and speed (instant gratification)
4. Assurance of privacy
5. Form for obtaining e-mail address and, at least, a first name

A free subscription to a newsletter or e-zine is the most common item featured in online opt-in offers.

There was a time when free subscriptions were desirable, but because practically everyone is offering a free newsletter or e-zine nowadays, people are not as eager as they once were to sign up for them. 

A growing number of people regard free newsletters and e- zines as contributors to their already cluttered e-mail boxes, particularly since the content of most leaves a lot to be desired.

Since the objective of an opt-in offer is to get as many web visitors as possible to sign up, you must offer something irresistible that people can’t wait to get their hands on right away something that offers instant gratification instead of a promise of monthly or weekly issues of publications of dubious value.

You conceivably could offer a free newsletter that gives irresistible content, but I don’t recommend it as the primary opt-in offer.

I don’t mean to imply that newsletters and e-zines are no longer viable marketing vehicles.

On the contrary, when written effectively, they’re still a major marketing communication by which companies stay connected to their prospects and customers.

However, for the purpose of capturing the contact information of as many web visitors as possible, they should be regarded as secondary opt-in vehicles.

Presenting the Offer
An opt-in offer doesn’t have to be in the form of a pop-up window. It can appear as part of a webpage.

An abbreviated form of it can even be featured in an online ad, embedded in an e-mail signature file, or announced in discussion boards and forums.

Here is an example of an online ad designed for tax preparers that incorporates an opt-in offer:

Discover *The Best Tax Break* that can give your small business and Schedule C clients a net tax savings of $1,800 to $2,125 every year. Send for the Free Report that reveals this secret by sending a blank e-mail to report@domain.com.
What is your primary opt-in to offer to your website visitors?

Seven Elements of E-Mails That Sell

Element 1: A Compelling Subject Line.
The subject line should be irresistible and must beg to be opened, not because of hype or overly commercial language, but because it is compelling.

What’s more, your subject line must not appear to an advertisement, which, even if it somehow got through the filters, would have the same effect as asking readers to watch a TV commercial.

Remember that each of us is bombarded with an average of 3,500 commercial messages per day-from TV, billboards, radio, the Internet, and practically everywhere we turn.

The last thing we want to see when we open our e-mail (or visit website) is yet another ad. Yes, that applies even when we gave a company permission to send us e-mail.

Here’s a simple exercise that will give you the best education you can get when it comes to writing subject lines that are impossible to ignore.

This exercise puts you smack-dab in your prospects’ shoes or, more precisely, in their frame of mind.

Go to your e-mail box and check your incoming e-mail. You need to actually do this; don’t be tempted to just do it mentally or you’ll defeat the purpose of the exercise. This is positively eye opening.

Once you have your e-mail in-box in front of you, what do you see? You see the sender, subject, date, and size columns.

Where do your eyes go first? Some people glance at the sender column, but if you’re like most people, you’ll tend to scan the subject column to see which e-mail you want to open first right? 

Which subject times are most likely to open first, and why?  All the tests I’ve been involved in show that people are more likely to open those that have the appearance of personal e-mail versus commercial e-mail and those that have a friendly tone rather than a corporate, businesslike tone.

Which of the following e-mails would you open first?

Subject: Online Marketing Gazette
Subject: Avon Spring Specials
Subject: Dinner’s on me …
Subject: 30% Discount on Eyewear!
Subject: Holiday Bonanza
Subject: Save up to 70% off at Overstock, 40% at Amazon, and more!

I’m betting you’ll open the e-mail with the subject line, “Dinner’s on me . . .” first.
It’s obvious which e-mails are personal and which are commercial, and it’s easy to see that if the subject line of your e-mail looks like it’s coming from a friend, it’s more likely to be opened first.

Here are a few more examples of subject lines that give the appearance of personal e-mail; that is, they have a friendly tone rather than a corporate or commercial tone.

Subject: <fname>, this is barely legal …
Subject: This is unpublished . . .
Subject: Wait ’til you hear this …
Subject: Who said this?
Subject: This finally came …
Subject: Not sure if you got this?
Subject: This makes sense …
Subject: About your website, <fname>
Subject: Here’s what I promised .
Subject: Here’s the formula …
Subject: I almost forgot …
Subject: Sorry, I goofed …

When your eyes zero in on the subject line, for instance, they also dart quickly (if not peripherally) to the sender field of the in-box.

Therefore, the subject and the sender must agree with each other. Suppose you craft a subject line like the following in an attempt to trick the recipient into thinking it is a personal e-mail:

Subject: Hey, was that you I saw?

If the name in the sender field is “Internet Profits Weekly,” your otherwise friendly and curiosity-provoking subject line is it negated when your recipient realizes it’s a ploy. Above all, be real.

Some say that this technique is deceptive because the recipient is not really your friend, but rather a prospect, a customer, a subscriber, or just someone who has opted into your list.

The fact is, your e-mail recipient should perceive you as a friend. That’s the heart of relationship marketing.

That’s the reason you ask viewers for their e-mail addresses in the first place-to start a relationship with them so they can get to know you, trust you, and eventually buy from you.

There’s a very thin line between creating a riveting subject line and one that is deceptive. If you use trickery to get recipients to open your enticing message, they may bite once or twice, but when they recognize the pattern, the game’s over.

They’re likely to ignore all future e-mails from you, and they may even ask to be removed from your list altogether.

There are no hard-and-fast rules in e-mail. When you do your own intelligence work, the frame of mind of your audience will become apparent to you, and writing subject lines that are noticed will be a snap.

When you get a feel for the language used in e-mails that get maximum readership (personal e-mails), you’ve won half the battle.

Reading this, you might think that creating a personal sounding e-mail does not seem difficult.

After all, you e-mail your friends all the time. Shouldn’t it be a simple task to write marketing e-mails the same way?

One would think so, but it’s not. Somehow, when we sit down to write marketing e-mail, many of us try to be clever and creative, or we inject a big dose of markets and, as a result, lose our friendly, personal tone, as we subconsciously switch to writing in a commercial or corporate style.

That puts us way off the mark when it comes to e-mail communications.

Element 2: The First Sentence.
The next thing you need is an opening line that identifies who you are and establishes rapport.

Your e-mail must have a real person behind it; it can’t be a faceless piece of communication. 

You can start by saying something that you would say to a friend. I’ve seen an Australian newsletter publisher; for example, start an e-mail by describing the wonderful weather they are having in Australia and briefly describing the idyllic setting where he lives and works.

A famous Internet marketer started an e-mail by saying that he just got back from a successful trip, followed by a short description of that trip.

Brevity is the key; just a couple of ice-breaking sentences should suffice. Some copywriters and marketers skip this seemingly insignificant gesture because they want to get to the point and not waste their audience’s time.

As a result, they miss the opportunity to bond with their readers and gain rapport with them.

Some of the most successful e-mails are the ones that elicit the reaction from people that makes them say, “I feel like I know you!”

This is your opportunity to get your audience to like you, and if they like you they’re more inclined to buy from you.

Element 3: Stay on Point.
This is the gist of your marketing message or the promise of a benefit to come. A good way to do this is by using a journalists’ device called the inverted pyramid (an upside-down triangle with the narrow tip pointing down and the broad base at the top).

The broad base represents the most significant, newsworthy information, and the narrow tip the least important information.

Following this method, you put the most important information at the beginning and the least important information at the end of your e-mail.

As with most journalism, brevity and clarity get high marks, so get right to the point. Your readers are busy, and they don’t want you wasting their time.

Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake many Internet entrepreneurs make and start your e-mail with a lengthy reminder that the e-mail is not unsolicited, that the recipient has agreed to receive your mailing or newsletter, and then offer instructions on how to opt out.

While this statement acknowledges the permission-based aspect of your relationship, it wastes the first screen of your e-mail, which is the prime area for starting your sales process.

Put instructions for opting out at the end of your message.

Element 4: Just One Message.
Don’t litter your e-mail with a slew of subjects and topics. Stick to a single message so that you can lead your reader down your intended sales path.

When average recipients receive an e-mail, particularly a lengthy one, they don’t read it sequentially.

They scan it looking for things that may interest them. If three or four topics grab their attention, they make a mental note of them and start reading the one that interests them most.

As they read that part of your e-mail, the Zeigarnik effect kicks in, and their brain is unable to pay full attention to what they’re reading.

Various other ideas start competing for attention. This can easily work against you, especially if you are trying to sell something.

Not only will you not have your readers’ full attention, they are not likely to go down your intended sales path or take action of any kind, because the brain is compelling them to read the other things that attracted them.

Multiple messages in a single e-mail, combined with the fact that e-mail readers have short attention spans, makes for an unholy alliance when it comes to e-mail marketing.

Element 5: Provide Value.
Give your e-mail recipients something of value in return for their undivided attention. This could be something free or at a discount, or some useful information or a special offer.

Element 6: The Benefit.
It’s not enough just to tell your readers what your offer is; you must demonstrate how it will benefit them.

An easy way to do this is to state the offer and follow it up with “. .. so that you can [fill in the blank].” A travel website, for instance, can say, “Try our free fare-tracking service so that you can be informed weekly of all the unpublished, hard-to-find bargain fares to Boston-without having to scour the web.”

Element 7: A Call to Action.
Many e-mail marketers go to great lengths to create well-crafted e-mails that make a compelling selling argument about their product or service.

But at the last moment, when the prospect is just about ready to take the next step, they drop the ball by failing to ask the prospect to take action.

The action can be a request to click, sign up, register, or buy, but whatever it is, you must make sure you tell the reader what to do next.

This is true not only for your e-mails but for your website and all marketing communications.

Do you have additional techniques of writing e-mail to (create a dialogue and deepen intimacy with customers) other than the ones mentioned above?

Which one of the suggested elements you would like to argue for or against?

Reticular activating system (RAS), in essence, is the attention center in the brain. It is the key to turning on the brain and is considered the center of motivation. It determines what we pay attention to.

Here’s an example of how the reticular activating system (RAS) works. Do you remember the last time you decided to buy a new car?

Let’s say you decided that you wanted to buy a Ford Explorer. All of a sudden you started seeing more Ford Explorers than you’d ever seen before.

That’s not because people are buying Explorers in record numbers; it’s because the RAS of your brain made you aware of them, whereas you previously ignored them.

The RAS receives thousands of stimuli and messages every second, and since it is not possible for our brains to pay attention to everything, the RAS filters or blocks out most of the messages, allowing only certain ones to come to our attention. ¨

You can immediately see how valuable it would be if you could get your e-mail messages to rise above the avalanche of messages that your recipients receive.

Here are some of the ways you can stimulate your prospects’ RAS in order to transition them to a receptive frame of mind:

1. Ask your reader to write something down. The act of writing something down helps trigger the RAS.

In her book, Write It Down, Make It Happen, Henriette Anne Klauser wrote, “Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: `Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail! ”

What you ask readers to write down will depend on the nature of the product or service that you sell.

The simple act of writing down the items puts them at the forefront of your readers’ minds and makes them receptive to go the next step and do what you ask them to do.

Think back on your own experience. Isn’t it true that whenever you had a written list of things you needed to buy (whether you carried that list with you or not), your mind subconsciously zeroed in on those items when they came into your field of vision?

Your mind may have tuned out those things had you not written them down.

2. Create a small, but entertaining or interesting, activity. This provides a refreshing diversion from the usual barrage of commercial e-mail.

Make sure the activity leads up to a well-crafted marketing message that invites readers to click through to your website or otherwise carries them along your intended sales path.

When you lead off with a noncommercial activity, you get recipients to agree to something.

When you subsequently get them to click through to your website, that’s another yes. In effect, you are breaking a large buying decision into several manageable steps to which the reader can say “Yes!”

Professional salespeople use this technique all the time.

One marketer who sells software for installing website audio sends out an e-mail inviting the recipient to send a free personalized audio postcard to three friends.

It is an Ingenious (and fun) activity that also demonstrates the ease of producing an audio recording, displays its excellent sound quality, and thereby paves the way to the sale of the software.

3. Invite your recipient to participate in a quick poll or a one question survey. This is an involvement device that gets your readers to pay attention to a subject on which you want them to focus.

The subject of the poll or survey should be one that is of particular interest to your list members, as well as one that gives you the opportunity to segue into your marketing message.

As an incentive, you may offer to give participants access to the poll or survey results.

4. ”Please forward.” The Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) discovered a technique for encouraging pass along readership of its newsletter.

AIM simply added “Pls. Forward” to the end of its newsletter subject lines. The association reports that this little device has more than doubled its circulation numbers.

What do you do to get your e-mail messages to rise above the large amount of messages that your recipients receive?

Forrester Research analyst Jim Nail underscored how important it is (or e-commerce players to use e-mail to create a dialogue and deepen intimacy with customers in order to maintain the response rates that e-mail marketing often enjoy. 

He emphasized the importance of starting slowly and gradually building rapport, which allows you to gain additional personal information that in turn helps you fine-tune your marketing and sales message.

Creating a dialogue, deepening intimacy, and building rapport take us to the importance of knowing your prospects’ and customers’ frame of mind.

Once you’ve identified and written down all the aspects of your own list members’ frame of mind, you are ready to write an effective e-mail.

The following technique takes the struggle out of writing e-mail.

Step 1: Write down the three words that best describe the message you’re trying to convey.

Not a three-word sentence, mind you, but three individual words or phrases that summarize the thought you are trying to communicate-for example, a smell, a benefit, an emotion, a color, a mood, a texture, a sound, a flavor, an adjective that describes your message.

If I were writing a letter about a hair restoration product, I might choose patent, scientific, and side effects. Or maybe clinical, success rate, and track record.

Your three words help narrow your focus and keep you grounded. After you select the words, start writing your e-mail letter, paying attention to these simple rules:

  Focus on the frame of mind of your audience, and write in a way that appeals to that frame of mind.

  Write the way you speak.

  Don’t try to be creative or formal.

  Write the letter as though you’re writing it to one person only and that person is your friend.

Step 2: Give yourself five minutes to write the letter, making sure you use your three key words in the letter.

Don’t edit the letter as you write. Here’s a trick that will make editing your letter painless: When you are finished writing, e-mail it to yourself.

The perspective you’ll gain from this experience is priceless. You’ll see firsthand how you’d perceive your subject line relative to other subject lines in your in-box.

Would you pick it out among the rest of your incoming e-mail? Would you open it and read the letter?

You’ll read it in a whole new light: from the point of view of your recipient. With every sentence, ask yourself, “Is this something that I would say to a friend?” If the answer is no, revise what you’ve written.

Similarly, you will discover the nuances of language and whether you’ve succeeded in gaining rapport and persuading your prospects into taking the action you want them to take.

All the rough areas that need work will become apparent, and you will see exactly what needs to be fixed.

Adapt as Your Audience’s Frame of Mind Changes
When you send a series of e-mails to your list, the recipients’ frame of mind is slightly altered with each mailing, as your previous communications influence their expectations and predispositions.

They may have warmed up to you and begun to trust you more, or, if you have misread their frame of mind, maybe just the opposite.

All too often, marketers assume that each e-mail gets the same kind of attention as those that went before.

This is a mistake. You must never write in a vacuum or regard each e-mail as an isolated piece. You must think of each e-mail as part of a conversation in an ongoing relationship.

When you have a good grasp of your prospects’ frame of mind at every stage, you are in a better position to monopolize their attention.

Since you know what your prospects’ predispositions and expectations are, you have the opportunity to find ways to engage them.

For instance, you can use the element of surprise to delight or intrigue them, or you can find ways to arouse their curiosity in order to make them look forward to future e-mails.

The variations are practically infinite. Just consider the unique frame of mind of your own list members and you can come up with ideas that may have never occurred to you before and that are custom-made for your list.

Do you have any other techniques that take the struggle out of writing e-mail?

Anyone who has been online for any length of time is aware of the alarming proliferation of spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE).

The trend is expected to continue, as an increasing number of marketers, eager to cash in on the free E-Mail Marketing medium, exploit the situation without giving any thought to the bandwidth they are wasting and the people they are annoying.

Spam and virus filters have become standard on most e-mail servers, permanently blocking suspicious and obviously unsolicited e-mail.

Some people are predicting that, with the rise of flooded e-mail boxes and spam filters that block even legitimate opt-in messages, the demise of e-mail as a marketing and publishing channel is not far behind.

Marketers need to become more sophisticated about the medium in order to make their e-mail marketing as effective as it was prior to spam phobia.

How To Make Sure Your E-Mail Is Delivered
Do you know the most important thing about e-mail? Many experienced marketers say, “Getting your e-mail opened.”

Actually getting your e-mail opened is the second-most-important thing. The most important is getting your e-mail delivered.

As a service to their users, more and more e-mail providers offer filters intended to radically reduce the amount of sham their users receive.

What is a legitimate e-mailer to do?

Let’s say you send a mailing to your opt-in list, some of whom have services that block bulk mail and redirect it to the recipients Bulk Mail box, the equivalent of sending it to Siberia.

This happens frequently, especially if you have a huge mailing list. If your list is large, you may avoid such filters by breaking up your mailings into smaller chunks.

In addition to blocking bulk mail, a majority of e-mail programs allow their e-mail users to filter out spam and other junk mail.

People can, for instance, ask to have e-mail that contains certain words such as sex or girls or one-time mailing in the subject.

More and more people are availing themselves of such filtering capabilities. People can also filter out specific mailers.

This is good and bad news, since they can also opt to let certain e-mailers in, but this often takes a specific action.

Some e-mail programs, like Outlook, automatically filter out e-mail that has the word free mail capital letters in any part of the e-mail if they find sales@anydomainname.com in the Form field.

How to Avoid the Spam Blockers
Before you press the Send button on your promotional e-mail, newsletter, or e-zine, see if it contains any of the following offending words and phrases:

Amazing  Money
Buy now  New
Congratulations Opportunity
Dear friend Order now
Free  Powerful
Great offer Profit
Guarantee Sale
Investment Special Promotion
Maximize Winner

In addition, customary phrases like “Click here” (or “Click below”), “Unsubscribe” or “To be removed” are also blocked, because these phrases are frequently used by spammers and other purveyors of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

If you’ve included any of these words-or any dollar signs, exclamation points, or anything in all capital letters, for that matter-in your outgoing e-mail, you may want to rethink what you have written.

That’s because SpamAssassin (or similar systems) may inadvertently identify your e-mail as spam and block it from being delivered. 

SpamAssassin, one of the most popular open  source antispam applications, has several hundred spam filters and allows mail administrators to customize which e-mails get through and which ones are automatically blocked and sent to spam limbo, meaning they are redirected to the recipient’s Bulk Mail bin or purged altogether.

Even if the e-mail you are sending is legitimate opt-in e-mail that the recipient has requested and wants to receive, it can be hijacked by e-mail providers or Internet service providers (ISPs), who are becoming increasingly watchful about protecting their clients from junk e-mail.

You can see how easy it is to get caught in the crossfire and end up in the same dump as spammers.

The sad fact is that some legitimate e-mail marketers and newsletter and r-zinc publishers don’t even realize that their e-mail is being rerouted to spam limbo, and they wonder why their click-through Mid conversion rates are dismal.

How do you get around this?

You can either play by the rules and not use the offending words and phrases altogether, or you can devise creative ways to conceal the words and phrases from the spam radar. 

For example, you can insert symbols within the words; for example, use “free” or “fr” “ee” instead of “free.”

Don’t get too creative; your sentence or thought must still be understandable to your readers”.

If you want your e-mail to be read and not filtered out as spam or junk mail, you must pay attention to these guidelines and keep up with the constant changes providers make.

Does Your E-Mail Test Positive as Spam?

You could make use of a strategy for sanitizing your e-mail of items that may trigger a false positive by running it through Lyris’s ContentChecker before sending it out.

This is a free service that uses SpamAssassin’s rules to rate your e-mail.

You can find it at www.lyris.com/contentchecker.

When you get there, paste your text into the form provided on the website, and you’ll instantly get a score.

If your score is greater than five, it’s an indication that your e-mail strongly resembles spam and might be blocked or filtered by major e-mail providers or ISPs.

If it’s less than five, you can be assured that your e-mail will be delivered without incident.

Lyris will also send you a detailed analysis of what led to your score, identify the offending elements, and make recommendations on how to revise your message to conform to industry anti spam criteria.
Is e-mail marketing on its way out?

What guidelines are you using to make your e-mail be read and not filtered out as spam or junk mail?

Many people ask if web copy has to consist of multiple pages in order to sell–especially since most people don’t read on the web. 

While there will always be companies, products, and services for which abbreviated web copy is both suitable and adequate, I believe that when you’re trying to convince people to invest any amount of money or time (or both), you need to assure them that they are making the right purchase decision.

Most often, you simply can’t do that in a single page or less of copy.  That would be like expecting a customer to walk into Circuit City and walk out five minutes later with a brand-new printer after spending 60 seconds with a salesperson pitching that particular brand. 

That’s just not how buying decisions are made, and that’s just not the anatomy of the sales process.

How long should web copy be?  My answer used to be this:

“Web copy should be like the length of a woman’s skirt–long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.” 

Although that answer may sound clever, and does hold seeds of truth, a more accurate reply is, “Web copy should be as long as it takes to make the sale Period.”

This policy holds true in offline copywriting as well. 

In his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy wrote:  “All my experience says that for a great many products, long copy sells more than short . . . . Direct response advertisers know that short copy doesn’t sell.  In split run tests, long copy invariably short copy.”

In his first Rolls-Royce advertisement, Ogilvy used 719 words, and he found that the advertisement was thoroughly read. 

Spurred on by the success of long copy in garnering attention, he used 1,400 words in his second Rolls-Royce advertisement, also with excellent results.

Another well-known example demonstrating the effectiveness of long copy is the Schlitz beer advertisement written by legendary copywriter, Claude Hopkins. 

Hopkins wrote live pages of text, and, as a result of that campaign, Schlitz moved up from fifth place to first in beer sales.

Never have I seen a high-ticket item sold in less than several pages of copy–either online or offline. 

As a rule, the higher tile price of what you are selling, the longer the web copy should be. 

When you learn the principles of writing long direct response web copy, you will be able to write short web copy easily. 

It’s similar to going to medical school and specializing in surgery.  If you were a brain surgeon who later decided to become a general practitioner, you could do that.

However, the length is not always dependent on the price of the product or service you are selling. 

The more practice you have writing web copy, the better feel you will have for rhythm of the sale and the sentiments of your audience, and you’ll know instinctively how long or short your web copy needs to be. 

There may be people who will read something that long, but generally speaking, that length will overwhelm most people. 

Above all, don’t use long copy as an excuse to babble on and on. Your web copy needs to be a lean, mean selling machine, even if it is disguised as editorial content. 

It pays to remember what advertising master John Caples once said about the length of copy:  “It can’t be too long, only too boring.”
What is your comment on the long-short dialogue?