Archive for April, 2008

Practice makes perfect: Part 3 of a Writing Series

Posted April 24, 2008 * Comments(0)

In this post, let’s get practical with this writing thing. What do most writers need to do better on the Web and in EMs? If you ask me, it’s headers. (Or ‘leads’ for you PR types. Or ‘H1s’ for you SEMers. Or ‘titles’ if you’re in the 9th grade.)

Let’s workshop a header or two, then. The way a writer does at her desk. And let’s start with an example from somewhere out there……………. How about Microsoft?

HEADER: Download Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008
SUBHEAD: Get it free and start saving time on everyday tasks

Let the revisions begin………….. Read more »

CONVERS[AT]IONS

Posted April 22, 2008 * Comments(0)

 Simply: conversations = conversions

Ads are dead. They don’t convert. People don’t see them (a la banner blindness). Stop kidding yourself, AdMan.

Here’s a quick list of what you need to do to get more out of your marketing budget: Read more »

Getting Dialogue Right: Part two of a writing series

Posted April 16, 2008 * Comments(0)

You already know that social proof (a la testimonials, statistics/data, user reviews) speaks a million times —- yes, a million times —- louder than most of the marketing copy you could write and put online.

So why aren’t your testimonials helping to build trust and convert? I mean, dammit, you spent all this time tracking down happy customers, getting their testimonials, getting them to sign off on them and putting everything through legal —- and now that it’s on your site, it just doesn’t feel right. What went wrong? Read more »

“Full price? Are you mad!?!” - How today’s customers expect to save online

Posted April 14, 2008 * Comments(0)

I write a lot of emails/EMs for clients in the software/hi-tech industry. Of course, at the end of the day, they’re all in the people-/customer-/user-focused industry. At least, they want to be. No, sorry, at least they say they want to be.

When you’re sending out multiple EMs to segments of 50,000 or 100,000 subscribers, you can do a lot of testing. And that’s usually good… except when it leads to overlooking common sense. CASE IN POINT: Testing offers.

Testing one offer over another is good. But what’s not as good —- for the customer, that is —- is testing an offer vs. no offer. Read more »

Your ideal agency - a video

Posted April 2, 2008 * Comments(0)

iMedia Connection had a great piece in their mailing today: What the perfect agency looks like, a video of brand managers revealing how agencies can (and should) evolve to meet their needs. Have a watch.   Read more »

Show, don’t tell: Part one of a writing series

Posted April 1, 2008 * Comments(0)

I’ve been wondering lately why I’m so bothered by a client asking me to write his landing pages with headers proclaiming that his company is #1. It just felt wrong, telling people that. But why did it feel so wrong?

One of the companies for whom I do a bit of work sent its executive team to a two-day storytelling workshop in February. 

My first thought: What do they care about storytelling? (I was jealous I couldn’t go, which lead me to…) Read more »