Posted by:
Daniel Levis
October 31, 2007
Issue #269
In this special interview issue:
- The most important thing to test on any landing page (no, it’s not the headline) …
- What makes a great headline …
- What to do when your target market is fed up with hype and inflated claims …
- The secret to writing a great lead … long copy versus short copy … and how to use graphics for increased response …
- Plus more!
Dear Web Business Builder,
One of the most esteemed members of my board of advisors is of course, John Caples. Not a week goes by that I don’t think silently to myself, “What would Caples do”, when confronted with this online marketing challenge or that.
And indeed, rarely does his advice fail to help. It’s only fitting then that I interview him, and bring you his wisdom in the pages of Web Marketing Advisor.
Daniel Levis: So John, why don’t we start by having you give our dear readers a little background on you? How did you get into this racket?
John Caples: After leaving the naval academy in 1924 I went to work for New York Telephone and it bored the daylights out of me. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I didn’t want to be an engineer at the NY Telephone Company, or anything even close.
So I paid a career counselor a tidy sum to help me figure out what kind of a career suited me, and that I could be happy in. Her written report was full of my shortcomings and unsuitability for most of the areas I had indicated an interest. Yet at the very end – I suppose in an effort to add some encouragement to an otherwise dreary assessment – she offered, “I would not discourage you in your ambition to become a writer.”
I took her advice, and enrolled in courses in copywriting at Columbia University, and in the fall of ’25 I was offered a job at a mail order agency at $25 a week, $6 less than I was making at the phone company. Of course I jumped at it.
Most of the copy I was writing was for home study courses. You know, things like improving your mind, learning a new language, improving your business skills, and of course, learning to play the piano.
Today, I think you call those info-products.
I loved my new job. I still remember my first big homerun. The headline went, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano – But When I Started to Play!” That ad put me on the map. Not because it was cute or clever, but because it produced results. Orders!
Mail order was a lot of fun. I’ll never forget the time I went home for Christmas one year. I could feel the pride welling up inside me as I showed my dear Mother my proof book, which contained some of the ads I had been working on at the time. I thought she would be so pleased with what I had achieved.
But her response just about knocked me off my chair. She read my headlines OUT LOUD, and with increasing concern …
"Fat men … Try This New Reducing Belt"
"Overnight, I Stopped Being The Underdog!"
"60 Days Ago They Called Me ‘Baldy’!"
Then she asked me questions like, "Can you really learn to play the piano through the mail?" and "Does this book really give you a magnetic personality?" Before long she closed the book up and said, "You had better not let your father see this".
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Posted by:
Troy White
October 30, 2007
Issue #268
In this issue:
-
6 time-tested secrets of generating new ideas and marketing breakthroughs in a flash.
-
Your own customized formula for creating new promotions ideas, product or service ideas, and big strategy concepts you can use to build your business faster.
-
12 Steps to a million dollar business enhancer.
- Print-it-and-post-it creativity hot sheet that is guaranteed to give you new ideas that work (complete with 168 quick-scan ideas to get you going).
- And Much More!
Fellow business builder,
It happens to all of us.
Getting “stuck” on a new campaign or marketing idea can be extremely frustrating, but there are simple techniques you can use to get through it.
When I left the corporate world of selling computer systems 6 years ago, I felt uncreative and completely ‘blah’. I knew I needed to rediscover my creativity if I was to survive in the small business world.
Through lots of trial and error, countless books on creativity, and many a night with pen and paper at my side … I found a path to generating better ideas faster.
Through this process of re-discovery, I also found that working on my ability to be more creative helped me:
- Eliminate writer’s block
- Become more productive
- Easily shift from one project to another
- Take my motivation to the next level
- See things I never saw before, in the least likely of places
The first thing I did, which you may have heard before – is to start journaling. Nothing fancy, just a simple notebook that you put your thoughts in, with a daily commitment. The key is to just spit out what’s on your mind on a regular basis. No editing, no critiquing, just get your thoughts down. You can write about anything and everything here. Just spit it out.
Ultimately it gets very easy
to just sit down
and have the words
flow from pen to paper.
Some other things I found that worked really well for those “out-of-the-box” ideas are:
- Listening to the right music. I find some upbeat Jazz or Baroque (Mozart, Beethoven) ideal. I am also trying "The Writer’s Mind" CD, which uses binaural beats to help your right and left brain synchronize themselves.
- Going to the library and immersing yourself in the knowledge of thousands of authors, experts, and historians. When was the last time you visited your local library?
- Visiting your local magazine shop. Pick up a handful of specialty magazines that you would normally never read. Look for niches that you know nothing about – you will be amazed at the new ideas you pick up on.
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Posted by:
John Newtson
October 27, 2007
Issue #266
Dear Business Builder,
No happy, feel good stuff today.
This is about your bottom line.
You do all that work to build your list and convert your prospects into customers. Then your customer stops buying.
You already know the main ways to increase sales …
- Get more customers
- Increase profit per sale
- Increase purchasing frequency
Notice how two out three is about what you do AFTER you get a customer.
(more…)
Posted by:
Julie McManus
October 26, 2007
Issue #265
Dear Business Builder,
Happy Friday and welcome back to In the ‘Net Trenches. One of the most mysterious or confusing of the direct response metrics is customer lifetime value (LTV). When you ask many a direct marketer if they know the lifetime value of their customers, their answer usually starts with “Well (insert long pause) … we know they continue to buy, but we just don’t know exactly how much.” And that’s because lifetime value can be difficult and time-consuming to calculate.
In today’s issue, I’m going to try to clear the confusion and give you a good understanding of lifetime value, how you can start to calculate it, and exactly why this key metric is so important to your marketing efforts.
Understanding Customer Lifetime Value
Knowing customer lifetime value is truly where the rubber meets the road for any direct marketing business. Give a lifetime value report to a seasoned direct marketer and watch his eyes light up and get positively giddy with the possibilities. But what exactly is lifetime value?
Lifetime value simply gives each new to file customer in your database an average future value beyond their first order. It is a predictor of future sales and revenue. In active direct marketing businesses, it’s typically calculated in time increments of first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months and a year.
At this point, you might be asking yourself (or your computer monitor), “how the heck am I supposed to know what my brand new customer’s next purchase is going to be and when … I’m not a psychic!” And neither am I, but herein lies the great beauty of direct marketing – unlike the current all the rage diet plan – all things considered equal, past results are indicative of future results. And that means we can analyze the transaction history of our current active customers to determine what our new to file customers are likely to spend in the future.
Are you starting feel like I might just be handing you a crystal ball?
Now, you might be thinking to yourself “but I’ve got hundreds (or thousands) of customers, how can I possibly look at every single thing they’ve purchased beyond their first sale?” And the answer is you can’t … and you don’t need to. But what you can do is start by looking at the specific channels you use to acquire new customers (e-mail, pay-per-click, direct mail, etc.) and as long as you’re tracking those individual efforts separately and your customers transactions are grouped under individual customer numbers, you have what you need to start your lifetime value journey.
You’ll start by selecting a few campaigns within a specific channel. Then take that sub-group of customers and analyze their individual purchases beyond the first transaction. Break the transactions down into 30, 60, 90 days, 6 months and one year increments (don’t worry if you don’t have a full years worth of data). Some will buy nothing more, some will jump out at you for the sheer volume of additional products they’ve purchased and some will be mediocre. That’s okay; the goal is to come up with an average. Then total the sales for each time increment and divide by the total number of customers in your sub-group to get the average for each specified time frame.
Congratulations you’ve just calculated a very top line customer lifetime value for that specific channel. You now know what a new customer that comes on file under a specific channel after buying a specific product is likely to spend in the future.
With that, I hope you’re starting to see the sheer power of understanding your customer’s lifetime value.
Four ways customer lifetime value
can make a big impact
on your marketing plans
Now that you’ve acquired an actual value per new customer beyond the first sale, you can start to determine how that value affects and shapes your future marketing plans.
Here are 4 big ways this metric can immediately impact your bottom line:
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Posted by:
Carline Anglade-Cole
October 25, 2007
Issue #264
When I told my co-worker Howie I was leaving Phillips (now called Healthy Directions), he asked me what kind of copy I planned to write.
“I dunno” I said, “but I know what I’m NOT going to write: magalogs – they’re just too scary.”
I figured I could make a decent living writing renewal promotions and 2-page sales letters.
Well, guess what? Nine years later – “magalogs” … and their oversized cousins called “tabloids” … not to mention their midget uncles known as “digests” – still scare the beejeezus out of me every time I THINK about writing one!
So how come over 90% of my projects are magalogs, tabloids and digests?
Simple.
I learned a few simple tricks to help me conquer my fear of these Goliaths – and you can too!
In fact, I’m going to show you step-by-step how I tackle these projects – and in no time flat, you’ll be well on your way to writing killer copy for these “Big Dawgs” (hey, I live in Georgia and it’s football season – I had to do it!)
The #1 secret lies in this ancient, Chinese proverb:
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