It is critical that when a prospect goes to your website (whether they are driven from direct mail, an ad, pay-per-click or any media) that you avoid a common blunder most marketers make. Navigation could mean death to your salesMillions of dollars are wasted when people are drawn to sites that destroy sales. In fact, over 84% of people have said they've been disappointed in sites they've visited. Remember—good marketing starts with good direct response strategy.
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As I reported in last week’s issue of Direct Marketing Update, Time magazine refunded $4.5 million to previous subscribers in 23 states. They also agreed to hand over $200,000 to 18 different states for investigations after it was alleged by the government that they were wrongly charged for renewed magazine subscriptions in the period between January 1, 1998, and May 31, 2004. I believe there are many critical issues involved with this settlement, but the number one damaging effect to direct marketers is to those of you who are currently using “till-forbid” charges and wish to be compliant with state requests.
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If you’ve been doing direct marketing for any length of time, you know that a powerful P.S. can dramatically increase direct mail response. And everyone who knows direct marketing rules agrees. But most experts do a P.S. wrong. Tips to failproof your P.S.The main blunder many direct marketers make is failing to understand the psychology behind the P.S. They don’t use it as a hook to get customers intrigued or motivated to read the letter.
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Many direct marketers depress results by not creating powerful online or hard-copy Positive Acceptance Statements on their order forms. Get your prospects to say YES!A Positive Acceptance Statement on your order form could prevent your marketing campaign from falling short of its deserved response. What is a Positive Acceptance Statement?It is part of your order form that you may recognize as the “Yes” box. But more important, it is the section of the order form where your prospect can read a recap of what he gets in return for his response. It is a powerful statement that should motivate even the most reluctant prospect to say “Yes, I want your product. Sign me up!”
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I often find that just one word or small change to your copy has the potential to make a big difference in response. In a recent test done by Marketing Experiments for an online publisher, two almost-identical sentences located near the order button were tested to see which would better impact the conversion rate. The Test: Test Sentence A read: “7 Days Free or continue at just $24.95 for eight weeks at a savings of 50%.” Test Sentence B read: “7 Days Risk Free then continue at just $24.95 for 8 weeks (50% savings).” What changes do you notice between the two sentences?
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It has just been announced that the publisher of Time magazine agreed to pay nearly $4.5 million in refunds to 108,000 subscribers in 23 states who claimed that they were being charged for subscriptions they never ordered. Between 1998 and 2004, Time required readers to cancel a subscription instead of giving readers an opportunity to renew. In doing this, Time charged people's credit cards for subscriptions they never ordered.
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In direct mail, the return address is one of the five things a prospect will look at on an envelope. They want to know who sent your letter as they determine to open it immediately, open it later or worse...simply throw it away.
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General Mills Yoplait brand has a website called SoGoodGirls that targets women interested in losing weight. I was interested in how this site gathered information from its prospects to build a database. Good information—Poor Direct Response StrategyI was surprised to find that of the nearly dozen places to click-through, there were only a couple of links that asked for my information.
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Last week, we talked about the benefits of using Post-its; on your envelopes and how they can increase your response by 15% to 30%. One of our readers, Steve, wrote that he had considered using Post-its on his envelopes, but was concerned about the post office machines tearing them off.
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Online and offline direct response copy must be relevantHere are several things to think about when creating your direct response copy.
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Like the teaser copy on an envelope, the goal of the email subject line is to create curiosity about the email’s content, to entice your prospect to open it and read further. We know that 35% of recipients cited the subject line as the most important factor motivating them to open emails. (Not surprising, since the average person weeds through more than 2,200 spam emails every year—and that’s after more than 90% of them have already been stopped at the IP level.) The Test: We recently tested two different subject lines that we created for Northwestern, one of our clients.
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Short copy kills responseThat's right, long copy usually produces better response. But I do believe something in the copy must be short. In fact, many direct response copywriters make a vital blunder in starting copy on a direct mail letter, email, ad or website with a long first sentence.
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Up to 29.5% of paid search traffic may be fraudulent. While it is unlikely an individual committing pay-per-click fraud by clicking an ad over and over will go undetected by Google, when more sophisticated systems of software are used, only a small portion of the fraud is detected. There is no question that these fraudulent clicks can drain your budget. Therefore it is vital that you take this problem seriously and be equipped to detect it.
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Back in the 1990s, I experimented with putting yellow post-it notes on the outer envelope of my clients' direct marketing campaigns. In those tests, we saw a 12% to 30% increase in response. The post-it note was effective for both consumer and business-to-business mailings. However, this direct marketing technique was most effective with business to business.
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The Test: This week let’s look at two pay-per-click ad headlines for the book, 46 Ways to Raise Prices. Headline A read: "The easiest price increases you’ll ever make or your money back." Headline B read: "The secrets of making customers happy to pay more." Before you read on...take a minute to guess which headline sold more books. The Results: Headline B pulled 67% more book sales than headline A. But what was even more dramatic, was the results from the website sales. The website offered a “basic” package at $75 and a premium package at $99 Prospects who saw headline B were more likely to buy the premium package. The difference in profit was 81% more for headline B. Why the difference?
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Recently, Frontier Airlines announced the launch of 10-minute TV, a new medium that airs original, short-format lifestyle commercials. A different kind of commercial Most of the airlines will sell time on the in-flight video to commercial marketers. These commercials are in the format of a lifestyle segment that's like a mini-infomercial without hard sales or an 800 number. It's a great way to kick off product introduction or to complement a direct marketing program in other media or run an ad or insert in an in-flight magazine.
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In previous issues I've told you the importance of giving your prospects the benefits of your product or service instead of the features. But sometimes copywriters have trouble finding the benefits. So over the years we've deveoped some easy ways to help you find the benefits in the features...
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Several issues ago I raised what has turned out to be a fairly controversial issue. That of dishonesty in our industry. I have had a number of comments from readers about whether my concern over letter shops and other vendors is justified. There was a theme in the comments that we should only be working with vendors that “we trust.” My response to that is that I started out trusting my vendors...but have learned the hard way that I must take precautions to ensure that my trust is warranted.
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The fact is an average of 35% of nonprofit original contributors give a second gift. So what about those other customers? How to keep them coming backCreating an ongoing relationship with your existing customers can be key to your company's bottom line. Customers need to be reminded of your product and your service. And you should aggressively up-sell and cross-sell your database working to increase your profits. Truth be told, resoliciting existing donors is nearly 10 times more profitable than acquiring the same number of equally generous first- time donors.
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I’m really excited about a new trend in direct marketing you should look at. It involves all the new technology breakthroughs with video. Google is now looking at pay-per-click video direct marketing ads. If you’re using pay-per-click, this is a new tactic you should consider. Outlets for Direct Marketing Internet Video
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