About Jodi Kaplan

What Do Email Lists Have in Common With Bank Vaults?

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

The door to the walk-in vault in the Winona Sa...

Image via Wikipedia

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied, ‘That’s where the money is.”

Direct marketers have been saying essentially the same thing for years. “The money is in the list.” For a while, many on the internet (including me, I’m embarrassed to say) got caught up in RSS feeds and subscriber numbers. Wrong.

The money is in the list

Turns out that your email list is more profitable than your RSS feed. And, since Google shut down its RSS reader, and WordPress updates broke RSS plugins, it’s getting harder to even retrieve an RSS feed.

People who are willing to let you into their mailbox trust you more than those who check your RSS feed. And that trust will eventually translate regular readers, followers. and subscribers into buyers.

Email has the best ROI

Campaign Monitor reports that email earns $38 for every dollar spent. It’s far more effective than Facebook or Twitter too. Not to mention that you can target your audience more effectively, break it up into segments, and even split test headlines or other message components to see what’s most effective.

Talk to the right people

You can run ads on TV on all day about your pig chow, but if the ads are only seen by people who live in large cities, your sales will be dismal. The same thing will happen if you try to convince a web developer to buy heavy duty shipping supplies and packaging. Wrong audience=lousy results.

Know your tribe

Who are your fish? What kind of people need what you offer? What drives them nuts? Are you solving a problem they have? Or is your product a solution without a problem? Market to those people (and only those people). Farmers whose pigs have poor appetites (is there such a thing?).

Choose wisely

If you run an ad, rent a list, post on Facebook, or use Google – choose wisely. The cheapest option isn’t the best option. The best option is the one with people who most closely fit your tribe, your ideal customer, and the people (or businesses) with a problem that your product or service solves.

Just don’t rob any banks. They don’t like it.

What Email Response Rate Will You Get?

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

Image via Wikipedia

If I ever write a book on email marketing and email response rates (oh, wait I did, ahem, another book) it might be called “It depends.”

What’s a good email response rate?

It depends.

How many people will click?

It depends.

How many people will open it?

It depends.

Same for pop-up conversion, signups to newsletters, direct mail, AdWords….

It depends.

There are many variables that can affect your email response rate: the list quality, the offer, the bounce rate, deliverability, copy, call to action, time of day, day of the week, how often you email, your industry, and many other factors.

Out of these, the three with the biggest impact are:

Your email marketing list

The quality of the list you use is the single biggest factor, whether you are using email, snail mail, advertising on TV, or putting an ad in a magazine. There are several factors to consider when choosing an outside list, or sending an email using your own in-house list.

First, how clean is it? Have you updated the list regularly? That means removing addresses that regularly bounce, people who have unsubscribed, or people who simply haven’t open your emails in a while (say six months to a year).

Second, how well do the names on that list fit your ideal customer profile? Are they the right demographic? Does everyone on your list have an interest in this particular offer? Or, would it be better to send it to only a portion of your list?

Third, is it your own list? Or a list you rented elsewhere? Your own list should get better results.

The offer

Is your offer any good? An offer doesn’t necessarily have to be a “sale” or a discount. It can be a free ebook, a paid consultation, or an app. It’s simply whatever the person responding gets in return for a response.

How well does your offer fit your target audience? Does it solve a big problem that they have?

Is the offer free free? Or is it paid? How expensive is it? Free offers will generally get a higher response rate, than something that costs money. And, the more expensive, the lower the response rate (but possibly the higher the revenue).

Is the offer exclusive or new? Or is it something that is common everywhere? New, limited edition, or exclusive products will attract more people, more interest, and get higher response rates.

The creative

By creative, I mean everything the person reading your email sees. That includes the words, the typeface, the layout, the subject line, any photos or illustrations, buttons, button text, and the call to action. Changing the colors, altering the text on the buttons, testing subject lines, or from lines, and switching your calls to action can all have an effect on your response rates. Which will work best will also depend on your audience and your particular products and industries.

A few general rules for improving the response rate from your creative:

Make the call to action buttons a different color than the rest of the website. This will help them stand out.
Use ‘you” and “your” more frequently than “me”, “my” or “our”
The “from” line should come from a real person
Send any questions or replies to a monitored email box (and answer them)

Every time you send an email, track it, monitor the results, and analyze what happened. Did emails sent on Tuesday do better than those sent on Monday? Did you get more replies when you changed your offer to $5 off instead of 10% off? How many bounces did you get? If your audience is big enough, test your copy and offers on a small portion of your list to see which does better. Once you have results, send the winning option to the rest of your list.

How to Design Ads That Get More Sales

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

In Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy wrote, “Most copywriters think in terms of words, and devote little time to planning their illustrations. However, knowing how to design ads is just as important as knowing how to write them.

Image via Wikipedia

The illustration often occupies more space than the copy…it should telegraph the same promise that you make in your headline” (for those under fifty, the telegraph was the 19th century’s version of instant messaging).

The way your ad looks is just as important as what it says (Yes, I know copywriters and designers clash about this. I’ve already written about marketing vs creatives. That doesn’t mean the words aren’t important too. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a later post).

Use photographs (not illustrations)

Photos draw more attention. You want something that says clearly and immediately what your ad is about – something that tells a story. Try before and after photos or an empty chair with a book nearby. Or a dog gazing out the window.

Skip the pretty pictures

Avoid softly lit and carefully composed images. You don’t want award-winning, you want sales winning!

Make the logo bigger

I know it’s sacrilege, but it does work, especially if your clients and customers already know and trust you. It activates the “warm fuzzies” in their heads.

Try “direct marketing ugly”

This means starbursts, Courier or Times Roman type, and minimal colors. It often works better than something ‘pretty.” Test it and see. Some scoff at this, but it’s been working well since Claude Hopkins set down the principles of Scientific Advertising in 1920.

Add captions under the photo

People read them (more often than they read the article).

Use subheads – and bold them

Some people read everything, others scan. Give the scanners enough to look at so they still get the story – and want to go back and read the bits they missed.

Keep your type at a readable size

11 or 12 points is best in print, make it 14 online. Smaller than that and people can’t read it (if your audience is older err on the side of larger!). In print, a serif font (like Times or Baskerville) is better. Many prefer sans serif (like Arial) online, because the resolution of pixels on a monitor is harder to read than a printed page.

Light background, dark type

You can use black on white, dark blue on pale grey, or whatever colors appeal to your audience – just don’t reverse out (white type on dark background) large blocks of type. It’s really hard to read. You want people to keep going (not slow them down or frustrate them).

Break up the copy

Avoid one or two big blocks of square text. It’s pretty. but it’s harder to read and follow along. Use bullets, arrows, and numbers to help readers follow along – and highlight the important stuff. If it’s long copy, add some boldface subheads, block quotes or other eye-catchers to break it up.

Add leading

Leading is the space between lines (named after the actual lead that separated lines of type back in the days when it was set by hand with metal letters). It’s easier to read the copy.

Oh, and these tips work online too.

How to Tell A Business Story (and Why Your Business Needs One)

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Jodi Kaplan

red riding hood, via wikipedia

Once upon a time….No wait, not that kind of story. I mean how to tell a business story (a story about your company, and how you started it and how it grew).

Not the kind of business story where you brag about the five new people you just hired, or the free snacks in your employee lunchroom.

You want a story story that’s meaningful to people reading your web site or your blog post or your ad. A story that draws readers in and increases their interest in your business (and your services).

How to tell a business story

An ad (or a web site) are really stories. A story that you tell about yourself, your company, and your customers. A story about why you’re different.

Here’s an example of a (fictional) poor business story:

The Acme Landscape Company has been in business for 47 years. We pride ourselves on great service to our customers. We can work on business properties or homes. Sign up for our gardening newsletter and get monthly tips.

They may be great landscapers, but their story is lousy. There’s no reason to care that they’ve been in business a long time. They don’t seem to specialize in anything, and they’ve asked me to sign up for their gardening newsletter without telling me much about what I’ll get when I do.

Good business stories draw people in

A good business story, on the other hand, packs an emotional punch. It’s interesting, it incites curiosity, and it’s relevant.

Before writing your own story, ask yourself, is it something my customers (or potential customers) care about? Does it attract attention? Or is it a big snooze?

What if that landscape company had said,

“We believe in green thumbs and we’ll show you how to get one.”

Or, how about something like this:

“It started with a single seed. One single tomato seed that became an empire.”

Or this,

“Insurance agents you’ll actually enjoy talking to.”

These are essentially, mini-mission statements. The story idea also applies when you’re telling stories about how your company got started, or how you’ve helped your customers.

Most about pages are boring. Instead of going on about your years in business or your credentials, explain how you started in a garage (and grew into a multi-billion dollar company). Or highlight how a chance encounter in a parking lot led to a big idea.

Borrow Your Business Story from Movies and Books

Use the elements we associate with fairy tales, movies, and novels: metaphors, the hero’s journey, reversals of fortune, and conflict. This is one version that Pixar uses:

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally _

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Red Riding Hood. One day, she set off to visit her grandma. Because of that, she met a wolf in the woods. The wolf ran ahead to grandma’s house, swallowed her, and then lay in wait for Red Riding Hood. When she arrived, he ate her too.

Because the wolf fell asleep and snored after he ate, a passing huntsman went in to check on grandma. He saw the wolf, and was about to shoot it when he realized the wolf might have eaten grandma. Finally, he slit open the wolf’s stomach and freed them both.

When you write your own story, share the obstacles you overcame, and how you succeeded. Describe how you help your customers vanquish their own wolves, and how they feel about that. It’s even better if you can show others how to do the same thing (and have proof).

Much more interesting, isn’t it?

Do you have a business story?

What is it?