We’ve just received a very well written and nicely laid out email from London Launch promoting their trade exhibition in London.  Here is the email they sent out:

but for the mailmerge that has gone wrong!  Sadly LondonLaunch’s attempt to personalise on the senders company name has given them the lovely line of  “All of London’s best venues and suppliers will be there – will Londonlaunch?”. Oh dear!

It’s easy to see they have merged their own company name in place of the recipient’s.  So, beware mailmerge and get someone else to read your marketing emails before they get sent out!

Have a great weekend…

The debate on using long copy versus short copy never seems to end. Usually it is a newcomer to copywriting who seems to think that long copy is boring and, well…long. “I would never read that much copy,” they say.

The fact of the matter is that all things being equal, long copy will outperform short copy every time. And when I say long copy, I don’t mean long and boring, or long and untargeted.

The person who says he would never read all that copy is making a big mistaking in copywriting: he is going with his gut reaction instead of relying on test results. He is thinking that he himself is the prospect. He’s not. We’re never our own prospects.

There have been many studies and split tests conducted on the long copy versus short copy debate. And the clear winner is always long copy. But that’s targeted relevant long copy as opposed to untargeted boring long copy.

Some significant research has found that readership tends to fall off dramatically at around 300 words, but does not drop off again until around 3,000 words.

If I’m selling an expensive set of golf clubs and send my long copy to a person who’s plays golf occasionally, or always wanted to try golf, I am sending my sales pitch to the wrong prospect. It is not targeted effectively. And so if a person who receives my long copy doesn’t read past the 300th word, they weren’t qualified for my offer in the first place.

It wouldn’t have mattered whether they read up to the 100th word or 10,000th word. They still wouldn’t have made a purchase.

However, if I sent my long copy to an avid die-hard golfer, who just recently purchased other expensive golf products through the mail, painting an irresistible offer, telling him how my clubs will knock 10 strokes off his game, he’ll likely read every word. And if I’ve targeted my message correctly, he will buy.

Remember, if your prospect is 3000 miles away, it’s not easy for him to ask you a question. You must anticipate and answer all of his questions and overcome all objections in your copy if you are to be successful.

And make sure you don’t throw everything you can think of under the sun in there. You only need to include as much information as you need to make the sale…and not one word more.

If it takes a 10-page sales letter, so be it. If it takes a 16-page magalog, fine. But if the 10-page sales letter tests better than the 16-page magalog, then by all means go with the winner.

Does that mean every prospect must read every word of your copy before he will order your product? Of course not.

Some will read every word and then go back and reread it again. Some will read the headline and lead, then skim much of the body and land on the close. Some will scan the entire body, then go back and read it. All of those prospects may end up purchasing the offer, but they also all may have different styles of reading and skimming.

This article is courtesy of PLR content that by the time it reached me had lost the author’s name. If anyone knows who originally wrote this, please let me know and I’ll attribute it.

There is a disconnect between sales and marketing. Different discussion groups are debating this now. However the fact remains that marketing is about generating interest in a product or service and sales is about turning a lead into a sale.

Marketing happily pass interested contacts to sales. Sales then call them and find “most of them aren’t ready to buy now“.

So, there is a gap to bridge. That is to take expressions of interest and move them AT THEIR PACE towards qualified leads that sales can deal with.

But how?

Here is our take…

We mainly use email marketing for our clients to identify contacts interested in their products or services. But this is only transitory interest, not a desire to buy.

So, the next stage is for us to call all those contacts that have shown they have a level of interest. They demonstrate their interest by following certain links in our emails, or by email open / click patterns over a period of time.

The phone call is not a sales call, rather a “customer service” call with the intention of discussing the issue in question with the contact and qualifying their interest.

This extra step means that only qualified contacts with a defined need get passed to sales and the “interested but not yet” get regular contact without feeling sold to or being qualified out.

We’ve found that adding this extra step into the handover process helps everyone… and even starts to close the gap between sales and marketing.

Nothing here is complicated, clever or difficult.  It just needs to be done consistently.  Do these steps consistently and I guarantee you will be successful.

You will see that we have illustrated how we can help with each step.  Yes, this is a sales message, but you can also do each step for yourself without paying us or anyone else.  If you want help, call me, text me or email me – I won’t charge you for my time – promise!

Step 1 – Be visible
You will only get enquiries from people that know you exist!  That may be obvious, but how many times have you had the conversation with someone who said “if only we’d known you were here…”?

So, are you visible to your target audience if they choose to go looking?

• Ensure that your website looks great.  If it doesn’t, change it or remove it.  No website is better than a bad website.
• Have a blog that you update weekly, as a shameless example here’s ours
• Consider other social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, etc.

So, follow these steps and you will be visible and credible should your ideal client come looking for you.

Step 2 – Be Credible
If your potential clients do go look at your public presence (website, blog, brochure, etc), will you look credible?  Will they feel like getting in touch?

Here is what we recommend:

• Have great testimonials on your website, blog etc.  Nothing is more compelling than having others saying nice things about you.
• Actively solicit testimonials from past clients.  (Hint: tell them what you want them to say.  Write it for them and just ask them to put their name to it.)  Most will happily oblige if you gave them a good experience.   From these testimonials create case studies that you can put on your website and send to prospective clients.
• Make sure that your phone is always professionally answered by a human being who can answer questions about your business.  Answer phones and calls diverted to mobiles will lose you both business and credibility that you will never recover.  If you want help with this, we’ll happily put you in touch with a great telephone answering service.

So, follow steps 1 & 2 and you will be visible and credible should your ideal client come looking for you.

BUT you cannot rely on potential clients to find you once they have a need for your product or service.  They should know about you first so you come to mind when they have a need.

Step 3  – Be Memorable
It doesn’t matter how great your products or how wonderful your service, if no one knows about you, they are not going to buy from you.  So, step 3 is to make sure that your target audiences always think of you when they have a requirement.

Start with your target audiences: who are they?  Be specific.  For example:  Businesses within 40 miles of you with more than 10 employees; Accountancy practices in Southern England; UK charities; and so on.  It’s fine to have more than one target audience.  Next identify the people in these audiences that are likely to make an enquiry.

Once you know who you want to talk to, you can talk to them in lots of different ways.  My experience is that the most economical and effective method is to email them initially then follow up by phone with the ones that are interested.

Here is what we recommend:

• Acquire lists of contacts in your target audiences to add your existing contact database. (We can help you find relevant contacts if you are struggling).
• Email them regularly (each month) with short, simple messages linking to more information. DO NOT SEND THEM A NEWSLETTER this is the sales equivalent of getting a megaphone and shouting in a prospect’s face!
• Analyse the responses to your emails, tracking who opens and clicks on the links.
• Target the best responders for follow up in step 4 below.

There are many email marketing packages available but most are quite complicated to use.  We recommend a couple that work well. Contact me if you want to know more or if you want our help with email marketing.  We can do as little or as much of the process as you want.

Step 4 – Be persistent
You must send out these emails every month.  Your potential clients will only take action when they have a requirement, so you need to ensure that you are always in the front of their mind.  This is why you need to keep your emails short, light and chatty – so they don’t offend those who don’t have a requirement right now.  We can help you write these emails.

Step 5 – Be Personal
If you know anything about your potential customers, use this in your communication with them – make the emails as specific and personal as possible.  If you know their name, use it in the salutation and maybe even the subject line.  If you know someone is interested in one aspect of your business, send them content relevant to their interest.

Remember: it’s about them not you!!

The more personal and relevant you make your communications, the more interest you will generate.  But you need a more advanced system to add levels of personalisation to your emails.  And this can add cost.

We’ve developed a specialism that creates targeted and personalised emails to help clients generate more business from their email marketing.  If you want help, just ask.

Step 6  – Be consistent
Through your awareness raising in steps 3 & 4, you will have a list of people expressing interest each month.  Call these and record the outcome of the call.  Most importantly, if you have committed to doing something during the call do it!

The trick here is to set aside time each week to make the calls and take the actions.  Schedule it in your diary, turn off email and all other distractions and just get on with it.

Do it. Measure it. Evaluate it. Change it. Do it again.

Here is a great example of poor email marketing.  There is so much wrong with it, I don’t know where to start.

Let’s look at the sending email address.  Nice of them to advertise Pure 360 as their email marketing provider!

Subject line is OK, but they’ve missed the opportunity to mention the Open, which finished yesterday…  And how about mentioning the winner, or something else related to Golf?

Then you look at the message, or lack of message in this case!

Not very clever eh?  Just push the images to the bottom of the message, if you really must include them and put your text at the top of the screen where it can be read and recipients engage with the text.  Once a recipient has read something from you, they may feel inclined to download your images…

I’ve had a long history  in the events industry, most recently promoting a range of unusual and unique venues.  So when I got this email, I wanted to help.

Lucy has lost her wedding venue when it went bankrupt, so can you help her find another one?  This is what she says:

Hi Simon,   I wonder if you or your team could help a bride in distress, we recently discovered that our wedding venue has gone bankrupt. The date is set for 4th September with 100 guests invited to a country house wedding in Dorset.

We would love to find a venue that can accommodate the same with 40 staying over.   We are looking for a venue anywhere in south England/London that is available on the 4th September.  Ideally we want something special or a bit different.

Do you know of anywhere that may work that is available on 4th September?  If so, please get in touch with Lucy on lucykane@icqmail.com.

Please also forward a link to this blog onto anyone that may be able to help Lucy.

Thanks, Simon

When we talk with clients initially one of the key points they bring up is to ensure that their brand is fully “implemented” into their email marketing programme.  This often involves including multiple images, background colours, etc.

Our view is that this is a waste of time.  Email is designed to communicate a message from individual to individual and the most successful campaigns are those that emulate this personal one to one style.  Branding the email immediately marks it as “promotional” and something to be treated with suspicion.

So, when I received the message below from CommuniGator, I saw it as good news and a vindication of our viewpoint.

From CommuniGator:

When Outlook 2007 was released by Microsoft one of the most significant changes was the switch to using Word as the email authoring tool over IE. In Outlook 2010 Microsoft has affirmed its stance that the users ease of composing professional looking text based emails outweighs the rendering of received email, created using alternative email clients, specifically those written in HTML and containing CSS. Microsoft has stated that it currently plans to continue using Word to render HTML emails and it seems, on initial inspection, that HTML support in the current Word engine has not been improved in any way.

So, what does this mean for the email marketer? The below summarises HTML/CSS functions that are no longer supported;

– Animated Gifs

- Flash or Other Plugins
- CSS Floats/Positioning
- Use of images as bullets in unordered lists
- Background images
- Forms
- Background colours
- Alt tags

In short, you can expect the rendering of all HTML email communications to suffer significantly as a result of the changes.

You may be thinking this is nothing new, as Outlook 2007 has been around for a while, but well over half of MS Office users are still using the 2003 or even earlier versions. It is also worth nothing that over 8.6 million users have tested the beta version of Office 2010, more than 3 times the number of any previous version, suggesting a much faster adoption rate and a large number who are planning on making a jump from 2003, straight to 2010, probably at the same time as upgrading to the new Windows 7 operating system.

Thanks Microsoft

Also known as the unique selling position, the USP is often one of the most oft-misunderstood elements of a good sales letter. It’s what separates your product or service from your competitors. Let’s take a quick look at some unique selling propositions for a product itself:

1)   Lowest Price – If you’ve got the lowest prices, shout about it. Asda has made this USP famous lately, but it’s not new to them. In fact, selling for cheaper has been around as long as capitalism itself. Personally, I’m not crazy about price wars, because someone can always come along and sell for cheaper. Then it’s time for a new strategy…

2)   Superior Quality – If it outperforms your competitor’s product or is made with higher quality materials, it’s a good bet that you could use this fact to your advantage.

3)   Superior Service – If you offer superior service over your competitor’s, people will buy from you instead. This is especially true with certain markets that are all about service: long-distance, Internet service providers, cable television, etc.

4)   Exclusive Rights – My favorite! If you can legitimately claim that your product is protected by a patent or copyright, licensing agreement, etc., then you have a winner for exclusive rights. If you have a patent, everyone must buy it from you.

Ok, what if your product or service is no different than your competitor’s? I would disagree, because there are always differences. The trick is to turn them into a positive advantage for you. You want to put your “best foot forward.” So what can we do in this scenario?

One way is to present something that your company has devised internally that no other company does. Look, there’s a reason why computer store “A” offers to beat their competitor’s price for the same product by X%. If you look closely, the two packages are never exactly the same. Company “B” offers a free scanner, while company “A” offers a free printer. Or some other difference. They are comparing apples to oranges. So unless you find a company with the exact same package (you won’t…they’ve seen to that), you won’t be able to cash in.

But what if you truly have the same widget for sale as the guy up the road?

Unless your prospect knows the inner workings of both your and your competitor’s product, including the manufacturing process, customer service, and everything in-between, then you have a little potential creative licensing here. But you must be truthful.

For example, if I tell my readers that my product is bathed in steam to ensure purity and cleanliness (like the cans and bottles in most beer manufacturing processes), it doesn’t matter that Joe’s Beer up the road does the same thing. The fact that Joe doesn’t advertise this fact makes it a USP in your prospect’s eyes.

Want some more USP examples?

• We are the only car repair shop that will buy your car if you are not 100 percent satisfied with our work.
• Delivered in 30 minutes or it’s on us!
• No other furniture company will pay for your shipping.
• Our recipe is so secret, only three people in the world know it!

As with most ways to boost copy response, research is the key with your USP. Sometimes your USP is obvious, for example if you have a patent. Other times you must do a little legwork to discover it (or shape it to your target market).

Here’s where a little persistence and in-person selling really pays off. Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean:

Suppose your company sells beanbag chairs for kids. So you, being the wise marketer that you are, decide to sell these beanbags in person to prospects before writing your copy. After completing twenty different pitches for your product, you discover that 75 percent of those you visited asked if the chair would eventually leak. Since the chairs are for kids, it’s only logical that parents would be concerned about their youngster jumping on it, rolling on it, and doing all things possible to break the seam and “spill the beans.”

So when you write your copy, you make sure you address that issue: “You can rest assure that our super-strong beanbag chairs are triple-stitched for guaranteed leak-proof performance. No other company will make this guarantee about their beanbag chairs!”

This article is courtesy of PLR content that by the time it reached me had lost the author’s name.  If anyone knows who originally wrote this, please let me know and I’ll attribute it.

We regularly collect great examples of what NOT to do with your email marketing.  You may also find it easier to see bad examples and how to avoid them rather than trying to follow good examples.

This email has two of my pet hates in it:

• Loads of images at the top of the email
• it talks about the sending and nothing about the recipient.

What do you think:

we don't like this!

If you were to receive this, the first thing you may notice is the from email address “mailings@efx.co.uk”.

Does this sound like a communication that is going to be of value or interest to you?  I don’t think so.

The next thing you may notice on previewing the message are the two large blue boxes at the top of the email.  This is where images should be – but most email programs don’t display them, replacing them with a red cross and warning message.  Not ideal!

Finally, I’ve highlighted “we” & “our” within the email.

This is all about the sender.  The recipient gets one mention at the end “you can search…” but that’s it.

So, what to do differently?

1. Change the sending email address to something a little more customer friendly
2. start with text at the top of the email then put the images at the bottom of the email.  At least then recipients will know why they are being asked to download the images and may feel more inclined to do so.
3. re-write the text to focus on the recipient and the recipient’s issues, not just a recounting of how great the senders’ website is.  Ask “what benefit will the recipient get?” and answer that question in the email.

Happy emailing…

When your prospect reads your ad, you want to make sure he believes any claims you make about your product or service. Because if there’s any doubt in his mind, he won’t bite, no matter how sweet the deal. In fact, the “too good to be true” mentality will virtually guarantee a lost sale…even if it is all true.

So what can you do to increase the perception of believability? Because after all, it’s the perception you need to address up front. But of course you also must make sure your copy is accurate and truthful.

Here are some tried and tested methods that will help:

• If you’re dealing with existing customers who already know you deliver as promised, emphasize that trust. Don’t leave it up to them to figure it out. Make them stop, cock their heads, and say, “Oh, yeah. The ABC Company has never done me wrong before. I can trust them.”
• Include testimonials of satisfied customers. Be sure to put full names and locations, where possible. Remember, “A.S.” is a lot less believable than “Andy Sherman, London, England” If you can also include a picture of the customer and/or a professional title, that’s even better. It doesn’t matter that your testimonials aren’t from somebody famous or that your prospect does not know these people personally. If you have enough compelling testimonials, and they’re believable, you’re much better off than not including them at all.
• Pepper your copy with facts and research findings to support your claims. Be sure to credit all sources, even if the fact is common knowledge, because a neutral source goes a long way towards credibility.
• For a direct mail letter or certain space ads where the copy is in the form of a letter from a specific individual, including a picture of that person helps. But I’d put the picture at the end near your signature, or midway through the copy, rather than at the top where it will detract from your headline. And…if your sales letter is from a specific individual, be sure to include his credentials to establish him as an expert in his field (relating to your product or service, of course).
• If applicable, cite any awards or third-party reviews the product or service has received.
• If you’ve sold a lot of widgets, tell them. It’s the old “10 million people can’t be wrong” adage (they can be, but your prospect will likely take your side on the matter).
• Include a GREAT returns policy and stand by it! This is just good business policy. Many times, offering a double refund guarantee for certain products will result in higher profits. Yes, you’ll dish out more refunds, but if you sell three times as many widgets as before, and only have to refund twice as much as before, it may be worth it, depending on your offer and return on investment. Crunch the numbers and see what makes sense. More importantly, test! Make them think, “Wow, they wouldn’t be so generous with returns if they didn’t stand behind their product!”
• If you can swing it, adding a celebrity endorsement will always help to establish credibility. Heck, if Alan Sugar recommended your product and backs up your claims, it must be true!
• When it makes sense, use 3^rd party testimonials. What are 3^rd party testimonials? Here’s some examples from when there weren’t many customer testimonials available:

“Spyware, without question, is on an exponential rise over the last six months.”

-         Alfred Huger, Senior Director of Engineering, Symantec Security Response (maker of Norton security software)

“Simply clicking on a banner ad can install spyware.”

-         Dave Methvin, Chief Technology Officer, PC Pitstop

A deployment method is to “trick users into consenting to a software download they think they absolutely need”

-         Paul Bryan, Director, Security And Technology Unit, Microsoft

Do you see what I did?

I took quotes from experts in their respective fields and turned them to my side. But…be sure to get their consent or permission from the copyright holder if there’s ever any question about copyrighted materials as your source.

Note that I also pushed an emotional hot button: fear.

It’s been proven that people will generally do more to avoid pain than to obtain pleasure. So why not use that tidbit of info to your advantage?

• Reveal a flaw about your product. This helps alleviate the “too good to be true” syndrome. You reveal a flaw that isn’t really a flaw. Or reveal a flaw that is minor, just to show that you’re being “up front” about your product’s shortcomings.

Example:

“You’re probably thinking right now that this tennis racket is a miracle worker—and it is. But I must tell you that it has one little…shortcoming.

My racket takes about 2 weeks to get used to. In fact, when you first start using it, your game will actually get worse. But if you can just ride it out, you’ll see a tremendous improvement in your volleys, net play, serves, …” And so on.

There’s a tendency to think, with all of the ads that we are bombarded with today that every advertiser is always putting his best foot forward, so to speak. And I think that line of reasoning is accurate, to a point.

But isn’t it refreshing when someone stands out from the crowd and is honest? In other words, your reader will start to subconsciously believe that you are revealing all of the flaws, even though your best foot still stands forward.

• Use “lift notes.” These are a brief note or letter from a person of authority. Not necessary a celebrity, although that can add credibility, too. A person of authority is someone well recognized in their field (which is related to your product) that they are qualified to talk about. Lift notes may be distributed as inserts, a separate page altogether, or even as part of the copy itself. As always, test!
• If you are limiting the offer with a deadline “order by” date, be sure the deadline is real and does not change. Deadline dates that change every day are sure to reduce credibility. The prospect will suspect, “if his deadline date keeps changing, he’s not telling the truth about it…I wonder what else he’s not telling the truth about.”

• Avoid baseless “hype.” I discussed that in my previous tip. Enough said.

This article is courtesy of PLR content that by the time it reached me had lost the author’s name.  If anyone knows who originally wrote this, please let me know and I’ll attribute it.