Internet Direct Marketing Tip of the Day

If you have an email newsletter, don’t assume you’re just talking to people who know you. Assume many of your subscribers forward it to non-subscribers. Old-school marketers call this “pass-along,” and it is amazingly overlooked.

Invite your new readers to subscribe themselves. You may want to tell them the advantage of doing so. The best promotional tool I have for my Web Digest For Marketers is the newsletter itself. Why? Because it gives newbies a chance to sample the content, understand its value and subscribe themselves thereafter.

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Most blogs I see do not make it clear whose point of view is being presented. This is especially true of company blogs. Personal blogs tend to make this more obvious.

When formatting your blog, assume a visitor has never visited a blog and doesn’t know the difference between your posts and third-party comments.

Even if a blog identifies whose it is, more often than not there is little or no information on that person. I often find myself leaving the blog site and doing a search on that person to find out more about him or her. This is self-defeating, since a blog is supposed to help promote people and companies. By all means, tell people who you are and how you and your company make money. In short, give me context.

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I let all of my print subscriptions lapse because I want to see what those publishers will do to win me back. They often have existing win-back programs in place so the rep on the phone can offer you some deal in order to get you back on board.

Publishers won’t advertise win-back programs because everyone will then know to let subscriptions or memberships to just about anything lapse. The publishers don’t want to encourage this, but need such a program on hand for that last ditch effort.

As a marketer, you can get some interesting ideas from such programs and see exactly how much the provider wants you. To a major daily newspaper, I know someone who just got the very same subscription for half off, and then the publisher sent her a bathrobe. They really needed her in order to keep their circulation figures up for ad rates.

I’ve seen this practice online, too. ISPs use it. Online retailers employ it. For example, if they know your email address and see you bail out of their shopping cart, you just might get a follow-up email enticing you to go back and buy that which you initially decided to pass on.

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I’ve seen advertisers rewrite copy and even create a new offer in order to resonate with something going on in the industry or in the world. When copy is timely, it can blow the doors off response rates. I’ve seen it many times in Web Digest For Marketers.

On the other hand, I recently saw an ad in a newspaper with the headline, “Time to Indulge.” At the time of this writing, I assure you many people are not thinking about indulging. They’re thinking about how to cut back.

The “Time to Indulge” was part of a larger campaign from this firm: “Time to Relax,” “Time to Meditate” and so on. The ad was created a long time ago and slated to run before times got tough. It stood out like a sore thumb, and I seriously doubt it did well.

The lesson here is to monitor the environment in which your ad is running and pivot on a dime to take advantage of changing times. Nimble ads that respond to these changing times could get you great response rates.

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If you have an email newsletter, you probably have co-registration deals with similar types of newsletters. When vetting such partners, you want to have a good idea of where their traffic is coming from.

When researching co-registration partners, examine the following criteria:

1. Inbound links to their site from which they draw traffic. Are they good or bogus sites?
2. What promotional campaigns they employ to get new subscribers and visitors to their site.
3. What type of advertisers currently run ads on their site and in their newsletters. Are they paying advertisers or affiliate programs?
4. What other co-registration partners do they have?

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Here’s a copywriter’s insider tip: if you’re having trouble starting your copy, write the last line first.

When you write the last line first, you then have a destination to shoot for when you go back to the beginning.

Often, the last line of copy is a call to action. So you may want to write that call to action down, and then write a line or two of copy that directly precedes your CTA.

Some writers write the entire copy backwards. Others write the end, then the middle, then the beginning, and fill in the spaces thereafter. There’s no one right way to do it.

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Lots of firms have house email lists and send messages out to them regularly. But how many of these firms really pore over the numbers? Who are the heavy responders? Who responds to what?

When you regularly review your email stats, you learn more about your audience. I spend hours looking at past transmissions of Web Digest For Marketers. Different subscribers react to different types of content and ad offers.

Recent subscribers tend to be very active, much the same as someone just entering a trade show or party room. A recent newsletter issue I ran on Twitter had a large number of “.edu” responders.

I’ve spotted very well known people responding to both editorial and ads in my newsletter. I see competitors clicking on other competitors’ ad offers, and then requesting ad rates from me.

The point is, it may seem tedious to go over such data on a regular basis. But you’ll be surprised what invaluable marketplace feedback there is from your email transmissions. It’s time very well spent.

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It is clear that much of the Web 2.0 or Social Media channels don’t easily lend themselves to paid sponsorship. But this doesn’t mean Web 2.0 doesn’t have a firm place in the marketing mix. Far from it.

Web 2.0 invites the user to interact. This interaction is a fantastic way to listen to your marketplace. You may not always like what you hear. But this unfiltered feedback gives you valuable information on how you and your products are being accepted or not accepted.

Many marketing cultures aren’t geared for marketplace feedback. In fact, many would prefer not to hear it at all because it challenges internal assertions. But if you don’t pay attention closely to what people are saying about you in Web 2.0 channels, it can and probably will hurt you down the road.

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At the time of this writing, it’s a tough retail environment out there. I recently bought a chandelier, but I didn’t pay the sticker price. I wanted the salesman to offer me something extra to seal the deal.

There was a moment of silence between us. I then remembered the price on the store’s website was $50 cheaper. I said, “How about selling me the chandelier for your “Internet price?” He quickly agreed.

I felt good about the purchase; I just hate paying retail. The precedent for the retailer to sell that chandelier for $50 less was already established, so he could easily say yes to it.

If you notice someone balking before buying in a store, or abandoning their shopping cart online, try a little extra value-add in order to win back the sale. It doesn’t have to be a price discount, either. It could just be a little thoughtful bonus that charms the buyer. That last-minute value-add might just help seal the deal and cut down on buyer’s remorse and subsequent returns.

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