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Email is fast, cheap, and if done correctly, incredibly effective. That’s why so many businesses, online and offline, want to use email as part of their marketing.
The downside is that unlike many other media, the technology for email marketing hasn’t progressed much over the last few years. In many ways, it’s gone backwards.
You never know what platform people will be using to access their email. You don’t know the size of their screen. You don’t know if they’ve turned off images or have a strict spam filter set up or if the email will even be delivered.
Compared to other types of marketing, email marketing can be pretty primitive. You can’t take anything for granted. And it’s wise to keep things simple.
So when you need to write email marketing messages, and you want people to click on a link (which is almost always the goal), you want to keep a few basic ideas in mind.
My grandfather’s chicken-plucking secret of success
Today is Thanksgiving. In the U.S., this is the day when we give thanks for all the important things in our lives.
I’m thankful for many things, one of which is my late grandfather.
In his simple way, he taught me the most important secret of success in my life.
My grandparents lived in the heart of West Virginia. As a child, I spent many long summer days at their home, running in the wide green yard and splashing through the creek looking for crawdads.
I’d play until my grandmother called me in for dinner.
The meals were never fancy but always fresh because my grandparents raised a lot of their own food, including corn, potatoes, green beans, strawberries, grapes, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, onions, and a few chickens.
One afternoon, I was sitting behind the house with my grandmother, who was peeling potatoes and stringing beans. She asked me what else I wanted for dinner. I told her chicken.
Sharpen your writing skills with the stopwatch challenge
Most people who gravitate toward copywriting love words. Dishing up lots of them is relatively easy. The real challenge is editing to achieve a tighter and more lively style.
So if your writing has become bloated and sluggish, perhaps what you need is a little challenge to trim the fat and energize your selling copy.
The exercise I have in mind is based on radio advertising and will challenge you to write a complete, action-inducing sales pitch that can be spoken aloud in 60 seconds.
I have a background in writing radio advertising. And I got the idea for this challenge while writing radio ads for several products. It occurred to me that while this form of writing uses few words, it takes incredible discipline to make those words sell.
This is especially true when you realize that the words are fleeting. Unlike print advertising, your target audience cannot go back and review the copy. They have to hear it, understand it, and respond to it after just 60 seconds.
A 9-step copywriter’s guide for taking effective notes
Many people think of copywriting as a creative act. It’s true that all forms of writing fall into the general area of creativity.
However copywriting is creativity with a purpose. It’s all about crafting the right message, getting a profitable result, and meeting tight deadlines.
I’ve found that the key to efficient and effective copywriting is organization and preparation. And it all starts with taking good notes and organizing those notes into useful chunks.
Here are some tips on how to take good notes.
Collect all the information you need before you start writing. You can use my copywriting checklist to get you started. Having information at your fingertips will save you time and make your writing more specific and relevant.
Write your notes in a notebook. Yes, you could type them. But writing out notes in longhand forces you to slow down and focus your mind so that you can become familiar with the information. This is something I learned in a former life as a teacher. The physical act of writing helps you learn faster, with more retention and comprehension.
Should you join a freelance or writers union?
Writing can be a lonely way to make a living.
This is especially true if you’re a freelancer, but it’s also true if you have a full-time corporate position.
Writers create the messages that communicate, persuade, and sell. Yet they are too often underpaid and disrespected by those who directly benefit from the skill and experience writers bring to the business world.
I cannot personally complain much about this, but I’ve had my fair share of prospects who have expected me to essentially be their slave, work for nearly nothing, and bask in the joy of it all.
Some of this has come from pure ignorance about what professional writers do. Though some comes from outright disrespect. Though I try to be polite, I have little patience for this and am not shy about expressing my opinions on the matter.
When this disrespect takes the form of cheating you out of fair pay, breaking contracts, or ignoring copyright protections, it may be time to consider joining a union. And I’d like to introduce you to two of them.
Storytelling and the greatest sales letter of all time
People love stories.
We like to tell them. We like to hear them. This is the way our brains are designed to take in information.
It’s why back in grade school, you could solve math problems more easily when it was explained to you as a story instead of just an equation.
Smart copywriters have long known that storytelling in sales letters can dramatically boost interest, comprehension, and response.
Telling a story in a letter can be tricky, though. It must be crafted well and used appropriately. But when it works, it can work big.
Perhaps the best example of storytelling in a sales letter is the famous Wall Street Journal letter written by Martin Conroy. It worked like magic and remained the Journal’s control for decades. It’s charming, though not original.
Like many great works of advertising, the idea was borrowed, or as we say in the business “swiped.” The original story letter idea came from the pen of advertising legend Bruce Barton back in 1919.
7 surprisingly easy ways to fight burnout and recharge your writing batteries
Did you see how I mixed a metaphor in that headline?
I’m tired. It’s after 9 p.m. and I’m still working. Frankly, I’m feeling a little burned out and it’s affecting my writing.
I know I’m not alone. You feel it too, don’t you?
Sure, we writers don’t do backbreaking work like moving furniture or digging ditches, but we do brainbreaking work. Reading. Researching. Notetaking. Writing headlines. Turning features into benefits. Proofing and editing. Juggling projects. Meeting deadlines.
It’s tiring. Do this day after day for months, and you’re going to suffer the consequences.
So what can we do? Here are a few ideas.
POWER Copywriting: How to write any ad in 5 steps
Some time ago, I taught a copywriting class at The Ohio State University.
It was the first time I had ever tried to teach anyone how to write copy and found it was extraordinarily difficult. That’s because many of the things I did naturally from experience or instinct were a complete mystery to my students.
So I devised a simple method for writing ad copy for novice writers. I called it POWER Copywriting, an acronym for the five steps in the copywriting process: Prepare, Organize, Write, Edit, and Review.
This represents years of copywriting experience boiled down to the basics. I won’t promise that this will help you create a masterpiece of copywriting brilliance. But it can help guide you toward better and more effective sales writing.
Since most of the people in my class wanted to write “ads” for their business, the method is built around the idea of writing simple print ads. However, since all forms of advertising use the same basic elements, it works for any kind of copywriting.
When freelancing fails: 5 questions to ask yourself
As this blog becomes more popular, more people are sharing their personal freelancing stories with me. And one recent theme has been freelance failure.
You almost never hear people talk about this. Most of the freelancing information out there is upbeat: “Freelancing is great. You should start freelancing now.”
But for some people, there’s another side to freelancing: “I tried it. It didn’t work out for me.”
My heart goes out to these people. I know how hard freelancing can be. I started with nothing. I had no money, no job, no contacts, no clue what freelancing was or how to make it work. I began my freelancing career in desperation and out of necessity. It worked out for me, but it was a hard road.
So I cast no blame, nor do I make any judgments about those who couldn’t make freelancing work.
