Email Marketing Strategies - The Subject Line MessageWritten by Marl K. Atkins
If you've tried to use email marketing strategies you know how hard it can be. Getting recipients to open your email can be very challenging. I'm going to show you a technique that does NOT require that recipient open email at all. When you open your email In Box in morning and 'weed out' SPAM, how do you do it? By reading subject line. Unless an email is blocked by a SPAM blocking application, user reads subject line and decides whether they should open email or delete it. If you can provide valuable information in subject line, rather than a 'pitch' you stand a much better chance of getting them to open it. Here's an example of what I mean. WatchThisStock.com We did a campaign a couple years back for a domain: WatchThisStock.com . The objective was to promote stock tickers on site for paying clients. The challenge was to get investors to log onto site to see tickers we were promoting and buy them, without our advising them to do so. We did this by providing best stock picks our 'stock pros' could find along with our clients' tickers and suggesting that our visitors 'watch' them. WatchThisStock.com provided potential investors with tickers to 'watch' that our stock pros expected to go up (or in some cases down, suggesting a 'short'). Investors would log onto WatchThisStock.com to find out what tickers they might want to buy, though site never suggested that anyone ever buy any stock. The challenge was to get investors to consistently visit site to see what tickers we had picked and what our 'target' for each stock was. I need to define 'target' in terms of stock picks for you to understand this example. The 'target' is price which you expect price of stock to climb or fall to. One might say, current price per share for BRXY (just an example, not actual fact) is $3.24 and our 'target' is $4.27. They would be saying that they expect BRXY's price per share to climb from $3.24 to $4.27. If you were to buy stock on this advice you would sell when stock reaches $4.27 (or falls instead). We began purchasing and cultivating email addresses of investors who had 'opted-in' to recieve email about stocks. We sent a weekly newsletter from WatchThisStock.com to all investors in list. Now, just because they had opted in, doesn't mean they opened email. Most of them recieved hundreds of stock related emails because they had opted in to recieve them. We would send out an email twice a week. The first email's subject line would read something like (again just an example): WatchThisStock.com - BRXY currently: $3.24 -> Our target: $4.27 The second email of week would read something like: WatchThisStock.com - As we predicted: BRXY currently over $4.27 Usually, ticker we predicted at beginning of week wasn't same as ticker we claimed in second email. It was one from a previous week. That didn't matter much. This subject line strategy did a number of things. First off, name WatchThisStock.com tells a whole story all by itself. Second we 'proved' our ability to pick stocks on a weekly basis and let our readers know where they could find more picks. Third, it was amusing for reader because each week, they were mildly interested in knowing whether or not our stock hit its target. That kept them from being quite so quick to hit delete button. Of course, subject also gave them a potential pick, without 'pitching' it. It also got them to actually buy stock. After about a month of getting these emails, an investor woud start taking us more seriously.
| | Pay-per-Click Marketing Copy: Tactics to AvoidWritten by Dave Felts
The marketing message you send will influence who clicks on your PPC ad and why they click. Your goal in writing ad copy should be to put yourself in mind of searcher and present an ad that will give them information they need to make an informed decision as to whether or not you offer what they want. The goal is not to get clicks, goal is to get qualified clicks.Ad strategies to avoid: Free
Free is a meaningless word and invokes skeptecism. Consumers are smart enough to know that nothing, ever, is really free. While you might increase your click rate, clickers aren't going to be people looking to spend money, they are going to be people looking to see if it really is free. About only Free that works is Free Shipping, but if you drive a consumer to your site on a Free Shipping message and then present a qualifying amount to get it, you risk irritating them and wasting your money. If you need to order $50 for free shipping, say so. 'Free Shipping on $50 or more'. Listing a Price
Don't list a price unless you absolutely, positively have lowest price. Nothing is worse from an advertising perspective than listing your widget for $19.99 when you're right next to an ad that lists same or comparable widget for $17.99. Plus, if you list a price and your prices changes, you're going to have to go back and edit all your copy. A 'Starting From" price can work, but only, again, if you have lowest price and only if you don't mind editing if starting price changes.
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