Writing for the web

I started writing this blog because I had so many ideas whipping around in my head (picture Texan dust storms… but hopefully with a little more weight than dust has) that I just had to start putting them down in writing. I’d been reading a lot of blogs and, where I felt I had something to add, responding. To me, starting a blog seemed like a great way to put my thoughts out there. I wanted to write it for me.

 I didn’t even think about what might happen if someone were to READ my blog. Oh, and what if they were to comment?

A few weeks ago, I got my first comment from a woman in the US with a similar blog. She posted a comment on my ‘old’ blog (where it was previously hosted), so it didn’t make its way onto this blog. …And that was it for traffic.

Until this morning. Read more »

Why write great email copy if no one’s ever going to read it? Get the subject line wrong, and don’t even bother writing the email copy. Get it right, and help your company bring in $1000s more.

Use this checklist to write winning subject lines – and increase not only your open rates but also your conversions.

• Fewer than 50 characters with spaces. In fact, the shorter, the better – without sacrificing clarity, of course. Remember that every letter that falls after that 50 character drop-off is wasted. Don’t believe me? Believe EmailLabs Read more »

I recently wrote a series of text emails for a client with a large customer base that was negatively affected by issues the madness of simultaneous product launches caused. The issues weren’t big enough to put the organization into a tail spin or to render them “in crisis”… but they were significant enough that they required a formal apology.

I wrote V1 of the emails. Seemed to me that the problem, although not a PR issue, required the application of PR principles. Recall “The Page Principles: Seven Proven Principles that Guide Our Actions & Behavior”:

1. Tell the truth. Read more »

What movie posters can teach email marketers

If Hollywood studios are following certain rules in making their posters and, in turn, are making billions, then there must be something email marketing can learn from them, no?

Movie posters work. There’s a formula to them, and that formula can make even the most impossibly dull film come to life – not to mention what it can do for films that are actually good.

Is the same true for emails? Read more »

On the wall beside my computer monitor, I have four words written in black marker on a Post-It: Get to the point. It’s something of a mantra for the working copywriter.

Why? Because “no one reads copy”. You’ve got the first few words and the last few words of a paragraph to catch a user’s eye while she scans the page in the traditional (still relevant?) F-pattern. No one reads because they’re too busy to bother – they just want to get to the point.

That’s what I’ve understood for… oh… since I got serious about copywriting 5 or 6 years ago.

Problem here: I got ‘serious’ about it. Read more »