1. Your claim or promise appears to be sound.
2. The benefits are made crystal-clear.
3. Your USP is highlighted effectively.
4. A sense of urgency is created with a limited time or similar offer.
5. You’ve made it easy to read.
6. You’ve made it easy to respond.
some solid tests. Now it is time to get down to the nitty-gritty—the copywriting of the e-mail piece itself, which is an integral part to the entire campaign.
The team hired a freelance copywriter, who had experience writing for e-mail, to write their first promotion. Here is how they outlined the promotion for the copywriter:
• Promotion goals—Generate leads. Persuade prospects to start an ongoing relationship with GCC by introducing them to free and fee-based instruc- tional services.
• Promotional offer and call to action—Receive game improvement tips by e-mail and the chance to win golf swing video analysis by registering on the GCC Web site.
• Key offer benefits—Free game improvement tips from certified golf teach- ing professionals that are tailored to the prospects’ games.
• Target audience characteristics—Desperately want to improve their games and place a lot of faith in the abilities of golf teaching profession- als to help them do so; favor private over group lessons so that lessons can focus on their individual games.
After the team briefed the copywriter on the promotion, she outlined some of the techniques that she would use to help them generate the desired response:
• Start with an attention-getting subject line. It has to promise a benefit that appeals to golfers or many will delete it unopened.
• Lead with the offer and a click-through opportunity. E-mail users tend to scan messages. If you don’t tell your target audiences right away how the offer is going to help their golf games, many will delete the e-mail with- out reading the whole message. By including clickable text in the offer, you give golfers a chance to fulfill your call to action as soon as they see it—and many will!
• Keep the overall promotion fairly short and easy to scan. What’s short?
About 250 words or fewer—possibly much fewer. The powers-that-be at GolfCoachConnection.com felt that a short, compelling message would hit their market most effectively. They also figured they would need plenty of click-through opportunities (three is a good guideline).
• Emphasize benefits. This is particularly crucial in the short-attention-span world of e-mail. Emphasize how GCC is going to help golfers accomplish what they want most—to improve their games. And if it’s free help, even better!
Happy with this approach, the GCC team asked the copywriter to submit text as soon as possible so they would have time for revisions, if necessary, before sending it on to the designer. Used to the fast-paced world of e-mail marketing, the copywriter delivered text shown in Figure 9.6 within a few business days.
9 / Copywriting for E-mail: Best Practices
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101102
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Permission-Based E-Mail Marketing That Works FIGURE 9.6 Acquisition E-mail PromotionClient: GolfCoachConnection.com
Subject1: Save strokes! FREE Golf Tips from Your Coach Subject2: Win a FREE Golf Swing Coaching Video Session!
Does your golf game need an overhaul? Just some fine-tuning?
Whatever condition it’s in, you can get help from a profes- sionally certified golf coach . . . just like the touring pros. (But you don’t have to win big tournament purses to afford one!)
Get FREE Golf Tips from Your Coach . . . delivered by e-mail and customized to your game . . . from GolfCoachConnection.com, a countrywide network of certified golf teaching professionals.
Sign up at http://www.golfcoachconnection.com/coach by Aug.
XX, and you could also win a FREE Swing Coaching Video Session with a GolfCoachConnection.com teaching professional (a $39.95 value)!
Golf Tips from Your Coach cover all aspects of the game:
full-swing, short-game, putting, strategy . . . and more!
And Tips can be customized to meet any player profile.
Are you a beginner who tends to slice? A long-hitter who lacks consistency? A straight-hitter looking for more power?
Whatever your skill level or tendencies, Golf Tips from Your Coach will be tailored to improve your game. And colorful, clear illustrations make Golf Tips from Your Coach very easy to understand and apply.
Professional help for your golf game is just a click away!
Save strokes with personalized Golf Tips from Your Coach . . . FREE!
Sign up today at http://www.golfcoachconnection.com/coach, and you could also win a FREE Swing Coaching Video Session (a $39.95 value)!
❘ CHAPTER REVIEW/EXERCISES
Read the body copy in Figure 9.7. Then answer the questions that follow.
9 / Copywriting for E-mail: Best Practices
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103FIGURE 9.7 Copy Exercise
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1. Count the number of benefits to the prospect. How many did you come up with?
2. Are there a sufficient number of call to action links within this message? What other location within the text could have been a good place to fit another link?
3. Circle the blocks of text that make the copy easier to read.
4. What is this particular site’s USP?
104
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Permission-Based E-Mail Marketing That Works105
The Power of Design
OBJECTIVES
• Define effective design.
• Outline the “must-haves” of HTML design for e-mail.
• Learn how to format a text promotion.
• Define rich media and review its strengths and weaknesses for e-mail.
I
f you plan on promoting with HTML-enhanced e-mails, you must first and fore- most think of your promotion as an interactive print ad. That is, an interactive di- rect response print ad—meaning that the ad is not just for branding and awareness.In other words, there is a clear call to action within it as well. It is asking for sign- ups or sales now.
Many of the principles between a direct response print ad and a direct re- sponse e-mail promotion are the same when it comes to layout and design. Both have to be designed for easy reading. Both have to be clean and neat, with plenty of white space (but not too much) surrounding the text and images. Both must de- sign headlines that “pop” off the page and screen. And both must include calls to action that are noticeable.