Writing on the Web from Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad

Email Marketing Promotions: How to Be Annoying

It's a curious thing, email marketing promotions. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. I feel it's my part of my job to email people to tell them about good opportunities, but many times there's a price tag involved.

Some people don't like to buy anything, ever, no matter how good. And others only want things in their own particular niche and get mad when you promote anything that doesn't concern them and their needs.

I'm full of insecurities and nervous ticks every time I pull the trigger on an email broadcast.  Why? Because I know I'll get some unsubscribe notices and the occasional complaint from someone who feels email promotions to be annoying.

I hate to annoy people, especially since I feel as if I know my subscribers. 

This past week, I was particularly "annoying," according to one person. I really wanted people to sign up for the iFlashVideo membership service (and I still do, it's that good!).

Well, I did one final reminder email, and sure enough he unsubscribe AND sent me a negative email. I'm telling you this to sort of relieve my bad feelings and to explain myself. I know I shouldn't worry about one email, but I do.

Does Your Content Marketing Have Personality?

Do you use creative images to represent yourself and your business? Joan Stewart does a great job of branding herself as The Publicity Hound, using a dog on her blog and sites.

I've used a lot of images from iStockPhoto.com and Shutterstock on this blog. An interesting picture can magnetize readers into your post to find out more.

On my other site I use a blue man because I love the whimsical nature that it adds to an otherwise heavily-text based website.

Here's a fun site that offers you the possibility to create your own graphic image of yourself, adding hair, clothes, accessories for a reasonable price: DesignherGals.com. Here's what I recently created and purchased for use as a personal email signature:

My friends tell me it looks like me, and it's fun. There's even a pic of Huey my cat...

3 Key Content Questions You Must Answer

To paraphrase Doug Kessler, Velocity Marketing:

While there’s a lot of craft in the practice of content marketing, the core of the discipline is very, very simple: you have to be able to answer three questions quickly, clearly and compellingly:

1. Who the hell are you?
2. Why should I care?
3. Why should I believe you?

If you can answer these three questions well, you’ll have done the hardest and most important part of your content marketing job. You'll also make the other parts of your job a lot easier.

While Doug writes this as part of his Holy Trinity of Technology Marketing, these questions are foundational for writing any kind of marketing content.

The devil is in the nuances, of course. I'll give you a bad email marketing sample of how NOT to do this:

Use Client Comments in Your Content Marketing

Are you using client comments like you could and should for content marketing? There's power in people's praise, but also in their comments and email messages.

Remember that there are six universal principles of social influence, as identified by social psychologists, notably Robert Cialdini in the book Influence:

1. Reciprocation
2. Authority
3. Commitment/consistency
4. Scarcity
5. Liking
6. Social proof

Your prospects are probably wondering if you can help them. Until you share what others' experiences have been working with you, how can they know?

How to Get Read Online: Broken feet, desserts, money and words

I'm a skimmer. In the 20 minutes since I got my coffee and opened my email, I've learned what happened to these friends and colleagues:

• Kathleen Gage broke her ankle training for the Portland marathon
• What Sherman Hu had at his barbeque for dessert
• That an internet marketer made $21,365
• How to avoid throwaway lines in article writing

Which of these messages or posts do you think I opened first? Which got my attention the most? The least? (I sound like Keith Olbermann's MSNBC opening line, "Which of these stories will we be talking about tomorrow?"

Easy, I put them in the order I remembered them, and that's the order in which they got my attention.

Here's why, here's the lesson you need to pay attention to if you're writing blog posts or sending email messages to make an impact.

7 Ways to Leverage Your E-Newsletter Content

Michael Katz and Chad Board are experts at teaching professionals how to write and publish a successful e-newsletters. Today they reviewed ways to re-purpose newsletter materials and get the most marketing power out of your publication.

There was a lively discussion on the teleseminar, open to members of their E-Newsletter Success Program. As some of you know, I'm a big fan of Michael and Chad: I really believe that they've got the e-newsletter training stuff down to a tee, and are teaching it well.

I took some notes. They came up with 7 ways to leverage your e-newsletter content:

1. Submit your main article to online article directories. My favorite is Chris Knight's Ezine Articles. Be sure to put your name and blog URL in your resource box so people can find you on the web.
2. Re-purpose your main article for blog posts. In some cases, one newsletter article can be turned into a series of posts, depending on the length. Of course, this goes both ways. I've often turned blog posts into newsletter material.
3. Create a special report or e-book, or an e-course delivered by autoresponders. What do your newsletter readers want to know more about? Are there "7 insider secrets" in your industry that you can share with them?

Great Options: How to create a no-brainer

I just read something in Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely that blows me away. The Economist offered 3 options on their website for subscriptions:

1. Economist.com subscription - $59 for online access
2. Print subscription - $125 for printed issues
3. Print & Web subscription - $125 for both print and online editions

Wait a minute. Logically, this makes no sense. From a potential subscribers point of view, it's a no-brainer to choose option #3. Which is precisely what the magazine wants you to do.

This is really good marketing. It seems as consumers, we don't really understand the value of something unless it's relative to something else. When you can see options in context, it's easier to make a decision.

"In the case of the Economist, the decision between the Internet-only and print-only options would take a bit of thinking. Thinking is difficult and sometimes unpleasant. So the Economist's marketers offered us a no-brainer: relative to the print-only option, the print and Internet options looks clearly superior."

How can you apply this to your content writing? Well, if you're writing to get people to take some sort of action, give them options. Then make one option vastly superior.

E-Newsletter Success: How to painlessly learn to be profitable

Launch a Profitable E-Newsletter with E-Newsletter Success

I haven't been this excited about ezines since blogs burst on the scene. I still believe in the power of sending out a regular, well-crafted e-newsletter for your business.

It's just that email deliverability issues and the time to put one together...you know what I'm talking about...unless you know what you're doing, an emailed newsletter can cost you time and worry.

You can just STOP thinking like that. This is the swift solution to learning quickly and inexpensively everything you need to know to craft an ezine that works, that brings in business and makes money for you. This is pain-free, folks.

I'm a huge fan of Michael Katz of Blue Penquin Development. You've heard me gush about his clever writing before: His E-Newsletter on E-Newsletters is a first class production. If nothing else, if you just copied what he does, you'd have a spectacular ezine.

Yesterday Michael announced he's teamed up with Chad Board. They've just launched their E-Newsletter Success training membership program.

If you're thinking about starting an ezine to grow your business, start here. If you're thinking about abandoning yours, don't do it. Learn what you need to know and turn your e-newsletter into a profit machine.

3 Ways to Write Content that Brings In Business

Denise Wakeman answers a question over on our Build a Better Blog site that's an important key to effective business blogging: 3 Ways to Motivate Blog Readers to Take Action.

This is a key piece of the content marketing puzzle: how do you write so that readers become clients or customers? How do you provide valuable content that educates readers yet also works to bring in new business?

Denise"s response is this:

1. Connect with readers on your blog
2. Interact with them on your blog
3. Move readers off your blog to a deeper experience

This same good advice can apply to other things you write. After the main body of an article, email broadcast, newsletter or blog post, provide opportunities for people to get more involved: download a free report, attend a teleseminar, or meet in person at conferences and workshops.

How to Write an Email Promotion Message... 6 Rules to Guide You

This is my follow-up to yesterday's post: How NOT to Write an Email Promotion Message. It's so easy to pick out what's wrong with something; the real crux is in correcting an email to make it sizzle.

Pat McGraw of McGraw Marketing contributed a great comment which sums up what is wrong with the previous email message: "This laundry list of stuff has no clearly stated benefits and is more about the Famous Guru that it is about the recipient of the offer(s)."

I agree with Pat about what's wrong:

1. No greeting, nothing with my name
2. No reason given why this is important to me
3. Only give me one thing to think about at a time, otherwise too many choice, no action will be taken.

There are others, but clearly the biggest one is not addressing the needs or wants of the reader. What's in it for me?

Even if I know who is sending me a message, I still need the reasons to care to be spelled out. Why? We're all busy with our own stuff. So if you don't spell it out for me, fuggitaboutit, I delete and move on.

Rule #1: Grab my attention. Here's a clue. I scan email headlines to decide what needs to be read. If your subject line isn't compelling, I ignore your email.