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Copywriting Tip — Swipe Exact Wording from Prospects' Notes

July 22nd, 2004

We’re hiring (yes, again), so I’ve been plowing through stacks of resumes emailed in response to ads I’ve placed.

The quickest way to sort the pile is by glancing at cover letters to see if they refer to specific skill sets from the ad.

I’m dismayed by how many applicants spotlight their favorite talent in their cover letter (“I’m great with people” “I love writing”) even though it’s not a skill our ad mentioned.

So there they are singing and dancing about how wonderful they are at something, but it’s not the thing my ad very specifically said we were looking for. The tiny percent who took the time to craft a letter that said, “I’m great at X, Y, Z that you say you want” are the ones who we call for interviews.

My top runners all used the exact wording we put in the ad itself to describe the job. So if I said, ‘You must be good at spread sheeting’, they don’t reply “I’m good at Excel.” They use the exact term “spread sheeting.”

Copying exact terminology not only can help you land a job, it also applies to: – search engine marketing (and how!) – ad headline writing – reply notes to RFPs and enquiries from business prospects

In fact, if you’re in b-to-b, you could try training your sales reps to cut and paste key words directly from prospect’s inbound requests when reps reply.

The nice thing is, it’s such easy copywriting. No brain required. (So why doesn’t everyone do it?)

eBay to start selling audio downloads

July 21st, 2004

According to new from Peter Zollman over at Classified Intelligence Alert, eBay is about to test selling music downloads. Which will no doubt throw the RIAA into a tizzy. I also wonder if the folks at Audible (who sell digital audio downloads to bestsellers, newspapers, and their own original content) will soon find themselves competing with “used” copies of their audiobooks, kinda like the print book world.

We just did a case study on music downloads this week. Steve Winwood is giving away an eight-minute song free for file sharers from his latest album in hopes it will raise CD sales. I’ll bet you a dollar that somebody sticks that song on eBay, and another buck that somebody else is dumb enough to buy it there because they don’t know you can get it free at RazorPop….

Oh yeah.

How Tough Are Corporate Spam Filters?

July 21st, 2004
Pretty tough, based on what 168 IT executives of major North American companies told Forrester Research in a study sponsored by email delivery consultant Return Path.

Here“s what you“re up against when you send email to corporate addresses. Since the numbers add up to more than 100%, you can assume companies are using more than one tactic to block suspect email:

1. 61% of IT execs said they use a readymade commercial filtering application or appliance.

2. 49% said they create their own rules to block spam based on message weight /size, keywords, attachments or message type.

3. 37% said they run each message sender through their own blacklist, while 34% said they use public blacklists. The most frequently cited blacklists are Mail Abuse Prevention Service (MAPS), Open Relay Database (ORB), SPEWS, SpamCop, Spamhaus and WireHub/Easynet.

4. 27% use a client-side application like Norton Anti-Spam (about a quarter of respondents said they use that application, the largest single bloc in the study)

5. 10% use an open-source application like SpamAssassin.

A couple other findings:

— Nearly half of respondents who filter say they customize the settings on their filtering application or appliance to be more stringent than the default settings.

— 23% of the people who said they use a public blacklist to screen out spammers didn“t know which blacklist they use.

Return Path has packaged the findings in a free three-page whitepaper which you can download here.

'Spam King' Fined $50K

July 20th, 2004
Scott “OptInRealBig” Richter“s final fine, levied by New York State, will end up costing him $50,000, or about a quarter-cent on the dollar. Or maybe the proceeds of one spam mailing.

Oh, and he also has to stop using bogus headers and deceptive routing and domains from now on, and turn over customer records and copies of all emails he sends so that Spitzer“s office can monitor him for three years.

NY Attorney General and anti-spam firebrand Eliot Spitzer made big news last December when he sought a $20 million fine against the self-described Spam King, a figure he said at the time would “wipe out whatever profits he made.”

The fine breaks down to a $40,000 fine plus $10,000 to cover lawsuit costs.

Survey Says: Shoppers Would Sacrifice Privacy for Personalization

July 20th, 2004

How much data can you extract from your customers and prospects on your mailing list before you scare them away? More than you might think, especially if you market to a younger audience.

More than half the respondents to an online survey said they would give up some personal info in order to get more relevant shopping and content, and people under age 35 are more likely to blab than the over-35 set.

Here are a few data points from a new survey on online-personalization from ChoiceStream, a Cambridge, Mass. company that specializes in designing personalization systems for e-retailers and online content providers, as reported Monday in Internet Retailer’s email newsletter:

— 64% of people who filled out an online survey said they would share some of their personal preferences in order to get “a more personalized shopping experience” online

— 56% would hand over some demographic data for the same end.

— 71% of the 18-34 age group would provide personal preferences and 63% would share demographic data.

— In contrast, 57% of everybody over age 35 would specify preferences, and 49% would share demographic data.

— Although people were less likely to permit Web sites to track their clicks or purchase histories (40% said that was okay), younger people had less of a problem with (47% to 32%).

Age also determines the kind of personalized content people want online. The youngest online adults (18 to 24) wants personalized recommendations on music (45%), DVDs (29%) and books (26%).

Personalized Web search results ranked highest with over-50 respondents (35%), followed by books (30%), news (22%) and travel (21%).

Boosting Newsletter Open Rates with Reply Required Contest

July 20th, 2004

Chuck Woodbury, editor at RV Travel newsletter is testing adding a regular reader contest as an involvement device. (We do the same thing at our SherpaWeekly.)

Chuck’s taken it one step further and stolen an idea from radio. If you win his contest, you have to click on a link to fill out a form to get your $50 prize. Which means you have to watch your email like a hawk, looking for a note from Chuck to see if you’ve won.

Plus, he gives a reply deadline. And he notes “And for the record: this newsletter is typically issued at 8:45 a.m., Pacific Time, every Sunday” so folks know when to start watching their in-boxes.

Great idea! We’ll contact Chuck to see how things are going with this in a couple of months when he has some good before-and-after data.

It's 2004. Do you know where your leads came from?

July 19th, 2004

Everybody knows spammers are bad, and the only people who are worse than spammers are the uneducated goobers who help make the spam problem worse, and you would NEVER go into business with a spammer, right?

(The correct answer here is “Right!” in case you’re unsure.)

Well, not so fast. Where are you getting your business leads from? We’re not even talking about rogue affiliates but lead-generation services whose collection practices might not stand up even in the weak glare of CAN-SPAM.

A story in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune outlined the business practices of Ryan Pitylak, 22, of Austin, Texas, who apparently is responsible for a big chunk of those emails offering to refinance your mortgage, sell you health insurance or a burglar alarm or extend your car’s warranty.

Instead of actually doing the deal, though, the emails from any of over 200 shell companies Pitylak and a partner set up directed clickers to a form that collected name, address, household income and other identifying data.

Pitylak and his partner then sold the information as leads for $3 to $7 each. Companies the Trib ID’d as buying the information include IndyMac Bank, ADT Security and MEGA Life and Health Insurance.

Although the Trib couldn’t get Pitylak on the record to talk about his business, one of his clients had no problems discussing it.

“‘I just buy them from the lead companies,’ said Kathy Mobley, regional director for MEGA Life and Health, based in North Richland Hills, Texas. ‘I don’t know how they get them. And I don’t care. As independent contractors, we can market our business however we want to by legal means.'”

Legal? Maybe. But the practice definitely creates a murky permission trail, since nowhere in the Trib story does it say that the emails notify the respondents about the companies that will be getting their personal information.

Martha Stewart Changes Email From Name

July 19th, 2004

Yes, MarketingSherpa is on Martha Stewart’s opt-in list (we’ll join anything to gather samples and look for stories for you.) Anyway, today we got our first broadcast since the prison sentence was announced on Friday.

Before now the emails always came “from” Martha Stewart. But today the name that popped up in our inbox was, “Martha Stewart The Catalog for Living”. Can you say brand separation? Now we’re wondering if open and click rates will differ….

It's 2004. Do you know where your leads came from?

July 19th, 2004
Everybody knows spammers are bad, and the only people who are worse than spammers are the uneducated goobers who help make the spam problem worse, and you would NEVER go into business with a spammer, right?

(The correct answer here is “Right!” in case you“re unsure.)

Well, not so fast. Where are you getting your business leads from? We“re not even talking about rogue affiliates but lead-generation services whose collection practices might not stand up even in the weak glare of CAN-SPAM.

A story in Sunday“s Chicago Tribune outlined the business practices of Ryan Pitylak, 22, of Austin, Texas, who apparently is responsible for a big chunk of those emails offering to refinance your mortgage, sell you health insurance or a burglar alarm or extend your car“s warranty.

Instead of actually doing the deal, though, the emails from any of over 200 shell companies Pitylak and a partner set up directed clickers to a form that collected name, address, household income and other identifying data.

Pitylak and his partner then sold the information as leads for $3 to $7 each. Companies the Trib ID“d as buying the information include IndyMac Bank, ADT Security and MEGA Life and Health Insurance.

Although the Trib couldn“t get Pitylak on the record to talk about his business, one of his clients had no problems discussing it.

““I just buy them from the lead companies,“ said Kathy Mobley, regional director for MEGA Life and Health, based in North Richland Hills, Texas. “I don“t know how they get them. And I don“t care. As independent contractors, we can market our business however we want to by legal means.“”

Legal? Maybe. But the practice definitely creates a murky permission trail, since nowhere in the Trib story does it say that the emails notify the respondents about the companies that will be getting their personal information.

Gmail Watch Week 9: All Quiet on the Western Front

July 15th, 2004

Either people are all talked out over the opportunities and challenges that Google’s email service Gmail presents, or else everyone’s going quiet as Google heads into the final stretch leading up to its IPO.

It also looks as if Google has reined in its viral expansion program for now — we’ve received no new invitations to pass along for over a week. Previously, new ones would be handed out as soon as the old bunch were used up.

Some big emailers have been stressing over the possibility that the emails they send to Gmail addresses will pick up contextual ads from their competitors, but let’s consider that problem in reverse:

If YOU are a Google Adwords advertiser, YOU are the one who could end up on a competitor’s page.

Another big potential headache can also turn into a benefit: Your competitor could be featured for free in the list of “Related Pages” that appears under the sponsored text ads to the right of the email’s message.

This can also happen in reverse: At least once in the last week or so, an entry for MarketingSherpa.com has shown up in the Related Pages list on the daily email messages from our friends at MarketingVOX.com.

We’re still checking to see if our site saw any kind of traffic spike on that day.