I received a warm email about my David Ogilvy Tribute Page which made me think I should update this blog more often. Congratulations if you found your way here, because Google increasingly penalizes us for broken links in long-ago posts. (Memo to fellow bloggers: use images or links to your own files when you refer to external material, because the reader will get a broken link alert if the external link goes away.)
Otis A. Maxwell Advertising (though not its proprietor) has been laid down, as Quakers say, and I am no longer actively seeking clients. I do some volunteer work for causes that are important to me and still do a fair amount of food writing. (I also maintain an active food blog, Burntmyfingers.com, in which I share experiences and recipes.) And very occasionally I do a commercial project which is just too appealing to pass up. (If that describes your project, please drop a line to otis@otismaxwell.com.)
I get a lot of requests for advice from people who are just beginning a career as a copywriter, or want to know what to look for in a copywriter, and I always direct them to our Copywriting 101 category which contains the essence of the copywriting class I used to teach for the Direct Marketing Association. This category also includes posts providing examples to learn from, many now with broken links per above.
You can get much of this content in Kindle format by ordering Copywriting that Gets Results from Amazon. It’s only $6.99, a true bargain in these inflationary times. The book was published in 2011 so it’s heavier on print and lighter on electronic media than the same book would be today, but the fundamental principle of effective copywriting is unchanged: It’s not creative unless it sells.
Don’t click on this t-shirt unless you want your inbox filled with spam!
I collect t-shirts with food on them (literally and graphically), and I like Boston though I don’t live there, so I was attracted to a Facebook ad selling a “Wicked Hungry” t-shirt as a fundraiser for beleaguered Boston restaurants. Clicked through and quickly lost interest when I discovered my XXL would cost $40 plus $8 for shipping. But I had gone far enough to put in my email address, and in the subsequent 24 hours I was bombarded by no fewer than three abandoned cart emails.
One such email is probably okay and it’s ok to frame it around “did you forget something?” And in fact the email from Jonathan Holden, owner of Purely Boston, seem heartfelt as he explained why he was doing this. But just five hours later he was back with “I’m really having trouble thinking of why you haven’t claimed our Massachusetts Restaurant Fundraiser Shirt?” I responded to this one, explained the price was the barrier and asked him to stop contacting me.
Then this morning he was back again to explain he had been “looking through support emails” (apparently not including mine) and wanted to proactively answer the questions I hadn’t asked. This inspired me to visit Jonathan Holden’s website, PurelyBoston.com. Not surprisingly, it’s an online store selling Boston tourist merch. Surprisingly, the T-shirt which seems to have become a generous obsession is nowhere listed.
Now I’m wondering if I will continue to get spam emails from Purely Boston after this promo is over. And my charitable curiosity has changed from “hmm, maybe” to a resounding “no way!”
P.S. I know Bostonians have a reputation for being in-your-face, but I was offended by the subject line of the second and third emails, “Everything OK?” and “Are you confused?” Direct marketing 101: it’s never a good idea to lead by insulting your customer.
Over the years, I have known a number of clients who didn’t do market testing or didn’t think it was worth the effort. Often these are overworked employees of medium-to-small companies who have a lot of balls in the air; how can you justify spending hours to analyze a past campaign when it’s all you can do to get the current one out the door? I’m frustrated by this attitude as a copywriter because results are what I get paid for; if I can’t prove my effort outperformed your control then you’re less likely to hire me for a future project.
I like clients who live and die by market testing and are willing to follow its learnings even if results conflict with their gut or the preferences of their boss. Such a client recently asked me to write a number of variations of an email inviting investors to an introductory workshop. This organization has plenty of data tracking how registrations for this event turn into a future revenue stream. Increasing registrations costs nothing more than the few dollars you pay the copywriter to come up with a fresh message and the benefits go directly to the bottom line.
I crafted the test messages based on input from focus groups and polling of prospects who had registered for a previous event but did not show up; if we could find anomalies in these groups compared to the profile of their typical student and speak to those, maybe we could increase the perceived value of the workshop and make them more likely to register and then attend. I also did a series of messages based on an earlier successful test in which we emphasized that the event lasted just three hours and made that seem like a trivial commitment and a good use of their time.
Result: virtually all my emails beat the control and the most successful nearly doubled it measured by the percentage of recipients who signed up for the workshop. The creative was the only variation in the promotion, proving that yes, people really do read the copy. The messages will be retested, refined and rolled out, potentially bringing in a lot of motivated new prospects to be nurtured and developed into committed, profitable students. Market testing is definitely worth the effort.
If you need to sell the value of market testing internally, you might use the example of MoviePass. This company had the bright idea to buy unsold tickets in movie theaters and then wrap them into a membership plan where you can watch x movies a month for a fee of y. According to a recent interview with the CEO of its parent company, MoviePass did test y but apparently not x. They just decided to offer unlimited movies… which meant MoviePass would end up buying its members a full priced ticket if a discount was unavailable for a popular movie. The CEO didn’t see a problem with a burn rate which was then $21 million a month even though MoviePass only had $43 million in cash on hand.
Shortly after this interview (which went live on July 18 of this year), MoviePass announced the number of movies you could see per month would be reduced from unlimited to… three. The result was a sharp decline in its stock price and a feeding frenzy from competitors and the media. All of which could have been avoided with some simple market testing.
Would you like a free copy of Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins? Sure you would, because this marketing classic is as relevant today as when it was published in 1923. Here are four principles from the book, as summarized on the Marketing Experiments blog:
1. People are selfish.
2. Generalities are worthless.
3. Advertising is salesmanship.
4. Advertising is a science.
The last is obviously to self-justify the book. But would you disagree with any of the others? Of course not, for reasons we have written about here many times. The world may change, the delivery mechanism certainly does, but people are still people with universal wants and fears.
Since the book is long out of copyright, a number of links to free downloads are available on the web. My favorite is this page by Roy Furr which showed up last week in my LinkedIn feed. Furr is a disciple of Jay Abraham who will of course use the podium to sell his own works while he has you engaged. But there’s no obligation, and I will take it on faith that opt-out requests will be honored.
You can go to this page and get full exposure to Furr’s marketing message, which is classic long form copy though a little long on analytics and short on emotion for me. In true Jay Abraham fashion, he really massages the info premium. Scroll to the bottom, and not only can you get the PDF download, but you can get an audiobook which Furr “recorded for my personal use”. The reader is pretty professional sounding, whether it’s Furr or somebody else.
My own publisher, FastPencil, is not so smart about freebies. They’ve discontinued the preview download feature whereby I offered the first ten chapters of Copywriting that Gets Results! at no charge. But a complete PDF is just $6.99, and since you’re saving so much on Claude Hopkins why don’t you just buy a copy?
I’ve recently moved into a house which, two owners ago, was tricked out with all the bells and whistles available in the early 1990s. Most of these tchotchkes have fallen into disrepair and must either be abandoned (like the in-wall coax cabling throughout the house) or gussied up. This has caused visits by a stream of spa guys, pool guys and sprinkler guys and I’ve noticed something interesting and consistent in the way they address my wife and me which can help in selling freelance creative.
“See the three holes in the top of that sprinkler head?” says the sprinkler guy. “That’s a Toro. They require a special tool to open the head, so you have to call a service to do it for you. I’ll replace all those with Rainbirds you can adjust yourself.”
“This is junk,” says the pool guy as he turns the handle on the filter tank. “$125 for a new one.” Water starts to ooze out. “Look at that.” As the gaskets become saturated, the leaks stop. “Well, maybe it’s good for one more season. But keep an eye on it. If you lose your prime [which for some reason is what they call pressure in the system] then your pool will become filled with algae.”
What’s happening in both these instances is that the contractor is sharing a do-it-yourself tip to make me, the client, feel in control while simultaneously instill fears, uncertainties and doubts that I’ll actually be able to do it.
“Write like you talk,” you might tell a client who thinks they can do their own copywriting. “Short sentences, no more than 10 words on average but break those up with an occasional one- or two-word sentence. Paragraphs no longer than five lines, but break them up with an occasional one-line or even one-word paragraph. And your vocabulary should be plain English. No words over ten characters if possible.”
Now who’s going to remember all that? The guy is going to dutifully write it down, and possibly try it, but will quickly abandon the effort and call you. And you may well be able to ease your estimate a bit higher because they now have more appreciation of your craft.
This is why I shake my head at creatives who present their work as a black box and refuse to open the kimono and explain what they’re doing. The more you tell them, the more they will respect and trust you, and the more likely they are to hire you to do it for them. Now I’ve got to go down in the basement, because the last owner loved to tinker with his sprinklers and I’m pretty sure he had one of those special Toro tools.
Blurbage in an email from Writer’s Digest, selling a copywriting course from their partner AWAI:
“Learn how to generate a professional Creative Brief, write headlines and tag lines that sell, apply emotional techniques to persuade an audience, find and secure work as a copywriter, and more in the Breaking Into Copywriting writing course.”
As readers of this blog know, writing a creative brief is one thing a copywriter should NEVER do, except for your own benefit in the privacy of your home or cubbie. Fortunately, the promise is repeated nowhere in the linked course description so it looks like the email is simply the work of an overeager account person who hopes to lure a few copywriters over to the dark side…. RESIST! DON’T DO IT! GO TO THE LIGHT!
I was paying my quarterly visit to a client when the online marketing manager mentioned he needed quite a few SEO articles written. I asked if I could help. No need, he said, I’ll just order them on TextBroker for ten cents a word and run them through copycheck to be sure they weren’t plagiarized.
I’ve always had a smug attitude toward the link bait that pops up when you search on a technical topic. It’s pretty obvious they’re partly machine-written and/or English is not the writer’s primary language. So to have my own client go this path was a bit unsettling. I signed up for my own TextBroker account and commissioned an article on Bengali cuisine for my food blog. The author would have to say what makes Bengali cuisine unique (specific spices and ingredients used) and provide a defining recipe as an example. All this for a maximum of $75.
2 days later, _Liz came through. She hit all the markers and the article is good enough that with a couple of tweaks I’m going to use it. The cost? $65.08, for something that would have taken me the equivalent of $500 or more at my hourly rate to research and write. By the way, why did I choose that topic? Because I assumed the writers were South Asia based and I might get lucky and find a real subject matter expert. But TextBroker tells me their writers are 100% in the USA.
Here’s the other reason we copywriters might as well trade in our keyboards for flip-flops. The Wall Street Journal, which I rely on for sports perspective for some reason, has twice reported in the last few days on organized races with declining registration. First 10Ks, now “mudder” type obstacle courses. The explanation? Those darn millennials. Studies show they don’t enjoy competition as much as previous generations, hence less interest in organized competitions.
Of course, the reason we as copywriters get paid what we do is that we convince readers they can rise above the competition—whether you define that by economics, status or ability to do a job better—with the help of our client’s product or service. If the reader no longer cares, where does that leave us?
A long weekend in New Orleans is looking mighty good right now.
Save the Children outer envelope has lots of good ideas
It’s great that you are brimming over with good ideas. Unfortunately, your prospect is not nearly as enchanted with your creativity as you are. They’ll sit still for one powerful marketing statement, perhaps supported by a call to action subhead, then it’s off to the deleted messages folder or the recycling bin. When you put out too many good ideas, you run the risk of getting none of them across.
This Save the Children appeal is an example of too many good ideas. On the front of the outer envelope is this headline: “What if your donation had 4x the impact for children in need?” That’s a very legitimate teaser and it’s supported by the subhead “learn more inside…” Unfortunately, the reply-by date is a complete non sequitur. Does the 4x benefit cease on that date? Then there’s the free notecard statement which I’m aware is a popular fundraising technique in today’s society, but it appeals to greed which is a different motivator than wanting your gift to do the most good so it’s misplaced here.
Still more good ideas on the back of the same envelope (click the photo to enlarge and read the quotes)
On the back there are MORE good ideas. Here’s a quote from Bill Gates that would support a package all by itself. When asked to recommend a top philanthropic cause on the Today show, he replied, “you can go to Save the Children—they help mothers have safe births… It’s amazing. You can be sure that [this organization] will put your money to good use.” A minor quibble, not everybody knows who Bill Gates is so I’d set the stage by saying he was the world’s richest man until he started giving away his money. Then we’d have a very nice setup for a direct mail pack or maybe a long form print ad.
Unfortunately, the Bill Gates quote is diminished by a quote from the Save The Children’s own president, in the same size type. Since she has maybe a tenth the credibility of a legendary philanthropist in this context, that should be the weight of the two quotes—or, better yet, leave it off. And we’re not done; the envelope needs to tell us that Save the Children has earned its 14th consecutive 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. For what? Hopefully it’s for using my money efficiently instead of spending it on administration and marketing. But tell me; don’t just show me the Charity Navigator logo.
Save the Children is a fabulous organization that really does great work; I was quite familiar with some wonderful packages written by my mentor Robbin Gehrke at Russ Reid. But this isn’t a winning effort. It falls victim to too many good ideas.
Coming to DMA &then in Boston? We’ll be talking about this and other examples of marketing milestones and miscues in my interactive Ignition session, Devilish Details: Looking for an Advantage in Your Copy and Design. It’s at 4:45 pm on Monday, October 4. See you there!
Direct mail has a unique benefit, compared to other direct marketing media: the opportunity for stage management. You can control the user experience by the way you design the components and deliver your message. You can decide what your user will see first when they open the envelope (which is why you should always give your mail house a folding dummy, stapled together with the components in the correct order) and then lead them through a compelling story.
This is the Mutual of Omaha “keepsake”
This Mutual of Omaha burial insurance package has a great example of stage management. The OE teaser says, quotes included, FREE“Family Keepsake” ENCLOSED. I despise unnecessary quotes, which often make their way into peppy corporate manuals (e.g. “huddle” with your team) but here they have a place because they call attention to the rather intriguing phrase. I’ve got to know what this “family keepsake” might be so I rip open the envelope.
Components of Mutual of Omaha “keepsake” package
Turns out the keepsake is a pretty two-fold on card stock which is for recording your family tree. Without commentary, on the flap Mutual Omaha provides some lines to write in the contact information for people who should be notified in the event of your demise. See what they did there? They got me thinking about my family and how they would be affected by my death, and I realized I don’t want them paying for my funeral out of pocket so I better buy this insurance.
Fresh Air Fund OE
In contrast, a missed opportunity for stage management comes from our old friends the Fresh Air Fund. I have to give credit, first of all, for a much better teaser than in past years. When I hold the package there’s an odd heft to it. Something extra is in there. I open the package and… it’s a note pad, with the logo of the Fresh Air Fund on it and nothing more.
Components of Fresh Air Fund package with noet pad on top
What else could they have done? Invite you to write down a message to the kid you’re sending to camp, maybe. (The first page would be pre-filled, then when you tear it off you’ve got a usable notepad.) Or ask you to write down your own favorite camp memories, which brings alive the value of summer camp in the same way the “family keepsake” brings alive the reality of funeral expenses. Plus they should have their contact info on there, since the note pad will stay around long after the other components have gone.
Fresh Air Fund Tickets
In addition, the reply device is a series of “tickets”. That’s the right idea: your gift directly contributes to a child’s camp experience and this is the embodiment of that benefit. But let’s make them look like tickets, instead of calling them tickets and then making them standard response devices. For example, instead of
Good for: One Round-Trip Bus Ticket
Mr. Maxwell, please give a child a ticket to adventure!
Yes, I want to help send an inner-city kid to camp….
And help him or her discover hidden strengths and talents
It might say
Round-Trip Bus Ticket to Camp
Provided through the generosity of: Otis Maxwell
Please use my contribution to help send an inner city to camp.
[ ] $21 pays for one bus ticket.
[ ] I want to help more kids and I am enclosing my contribution of [ ]
Or, given a little more budget (which might be provided by eliminating the note pad) I might print very authentic-looking tickets without an ask, then put them inside a carrier sleeve of some kind. It would then be very credible and an involving experience to have the donor indicate on the sleeve how much they are giving and how they want the gift to be used. Stage management.
I am working on a book, and before sending it out I wanted to eliminate as much sloppy language as I could. I’ve been experimenting with a tool called AutoCrit which I recommend to anyone who writes long form copy–and best of all you can try it for free.
The sample free report (which is limited to 500 words, but you can chop up your copy and make three submissions per day) will identify overused words and tell you how many to eliminate, and also identify cliches and redundancies. I was particularly happy at how often it flagged “it”, a trouble word that slows down readers because they have to take the time to figure out what “it” refers to if it’s not obvious.
The paid versions, which start at $47 for a year’s subscription (you can currently get 10% off with the promotion code fb2013), also identify repeated words and homonyms. Sometimes we repeat words intentionally, but sometimes it’s accidental, and the result is that the narrative loses texture and the reader might actually notice the repetition when the flow of your narrative should always be seamless with all grammatical tricks behind the scenes.
Homonyms are words that sound like other words–eg “in” which sounds like “inn”–and they’re mostly innocuous. But this feature will also catch words which can have more than one meaning, and those are deadly–“lie” being an example; the skimming reader might not know whether it refers to something in a prone position or someone who’s not telling the truth. (Something it doesn’t catch, but you should be vigilant against, is words that look similar to other words so they can be mistaken by the reader–“through” and “though” being an example pair.)
Seeing your text in the context of the report also helps you look at it with fresh eyes, and catch typos or awkwardness you might otherwise miss because you’re too close to it. I took perhaps 10% of the suggestions AutoCrit had for me, but that 10% has definitely improved my manuscript. Check it out.
