Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

If you are sending out an email message to hundreds or thousands of recipients, first send it to yourself as a test. This seems obvious, but many neglect this step. See how many characters appear in your subject header while it is in bold type before it’s opened. How does the text version look? Then show your email to someone who doesn’t know a thing about what you do or what your email is about. Can he or she make sense out of it? If so, then people within your target audience should get your gist faster. If it doesn’t make sense to your test reader, you may want to revisit the layout, copy, offer – or all of it.

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This is a serious question. When devising content for your site, you need to be honest with yourself. Why? Because if you don’t value your own intellectual property, the chances are pretty good no one else will either. I read each issue of Web Digest For Marketers three times. If a review or tactic bores me, I get rid of it. I use my own website daily as a way to locate and recall Internet marketing sites I have forgotten about. If I see something out of date, it’s a goner. This constant attention and pruning of one’s own content makes for what I call editorial freshness. That freshness and usability is one reason why thousands of other sites point to www.wdfm.com.

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Be prepared to test your assumptions on a regular basis. If you came from traditional media, you know there’s a fair amount of unlearning going on right now because consumers are redefining how they consume media. For example, many people now use TV like radio. They’re surfing the Net with the TV on in the background. So visual payoffs on a TV spot miss the mark. In Internet marketing, things that were true once upon a time aren’t true anymore, and vice versa. People used to prefer and be more responsive to text newsletters over html. Now, for the most part, the opposite it true. The point is, nothing is written in concrete anymore. Yes, certain human behaviors and habits will remain the same. People will always operate out of their own self interest. But usage patterns, popular sites, and ad themes are no longer a forever thing. Remember the Pointcast network? Remember how hot Friendster was? Email frequency, SEO tactics, mobile marketing and the rest will never settle into “forever mode”. The tumultuous media landscape is the new constant. Might as well get used to it, and plan to revisit assertions that were once considered indisputable.

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Some of my best ideas for Web Digest For Marketers come from my readers. Over the years, I’ve met thousands at trade shows. My tendency is to ask lots of questions and not say much. I ask why you read Web Digest and what you like. One of the most interesting bits of consistent feedback I get is that many readers have a folder in Outlook in which are stored back issues of Web Digest. I tell people the reviews and tips are all available at www.wdfm.com. They don’t care. They want the content on their own hard drives. This also explains why the ads in each issue keep accruing clicks many months after each issue was released. The idea for our Best of Google Tools and Tips for Marketers perennial issue came from a subscriber, as did our annual Internet Marketing Consultant’s Toolbox issue. On the whole, I notice Internet marketers talk a lot. Like a number of DM wizards I know, I’m finding it more advantageous to spend more time taking in information because it helps me fine-tune the information I put out. LC PS – If there is a topic you’d like to see Web Digest devote an issue to, let me know. Reply to this email and tell me about it.

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Hundreds of millions of people search the Internet daily for help on how to do thousands of different tasks, such as fixing up a home, buying a boat or prepping for the next job interview. This is why “How To” ads and editorial work well on the Net. “How To” also works well in search marketing because people are apt to search for “How do I …” Keep this in mind when writing your ad or editorial copy. You may be giving answers, but people more often search in the form of a question, fully or partially phrased.

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You hear a lot about search engine optimization. But all too often, page deliverability optimization is totally forgotten. More and more, I’m hearing from those in the know that one of the main reasons people leave a site is because they get impatient with the time it takes for the pages to load into their bitemsers. Often, there are things your webmaster can do to speed up the delivery of a page without change its look and feel, though sometimes pages are way too overloaded with bells and whistles that slow down delivery time. Page delivery can never be too fast. Do everything in your power to speed it up, because your response rates will suffer (or are suffering already). Why? People can’t respond to offers they don’t wait around to see.

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You know not all traffic is created equal. What good is it to have tons of traffic that comes, looks and leaves, never to be seen by you again? When building your link strategy, think about the affinity your site has with those you want linking to you. At the end of the day, you want traffic to convert to subs, sales, or to view ads on your site. If you have low-rent traffic, the ad sales will be nominal, the sales will be sparse and cheap, and the subs to your list will eventually wind up not converting to any meaningful degree. Link building is like building a network of pipes into your site. Be sure you set that network up to feed a high-quality flow of visitors to you. In short, think about the back end before you set up the front end.

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Back in the bad old days when ad sales were a heck of a lot harder than today, I used a retail “twofer” offer to drum up business. Turned out media buyers love a bonus. For each ad they bought, I gave them some other ad avail at no charge. It didn’t matter how small or large the firm buying the media, everybody just likes a bonus. Nowadays, I still make sure that all buyers walk away with something more than they bargained for. It helps strengthen relationships for the long term. In this case, the value-add bonus is directly related to what is being sold, which is ad space. But often enough there can be a “non-linear” incentive offered that seemingly has nothing to do with what is being sold. The non-linear concept was made apparent to me by the late great Mac Ross, who now has been gone for one year, and I miss him no less, perhaps more.

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