Freelance Copywriting, marketing and social media tips

If you have been following my blog, you’ll recall the last few posts dealt with the issue of email marketing.

Email remains one of the most cost effective methods for today’s small businesses to market to their customers. With a single click your offer or news item can be distributed to thousands of in boxes anywhere in the world. We have already looked at the structure and content of a great email campaign – now it’s time to take it to another level.

I came across this great post on eMarketer which gives you a further trick you can try to boost your email open rate. This is an excellent piece of advice for all business owners and definitley worth a try because Coupons Boost E-Mail Open Rate ( eMarketer).

This is such a simple idea and so easy to implement. So why not give it a go?

Next time you send out an email campaign or newsletter, try adding a coupon and see what effect it has on your open rate.

Associated posts:

Is Email Marketing Right For You?

Email Marketing – It’s All In The Subject Line

Work Your Way Towards The Perfect Email Body

Most emails sent today are HTML which carries an extra benefit – the hyperlink. This little fella allows you to direct your reader to a website for further information or an opportunity to immediately buy or sign up to an offer.

But if your email is to be interesting you will need to make sure it is appealing to your reader.

1. Be friendly

Write as you would a letter – use a salutation, if you can, personalise it with the recipient’s name. This adds a personal touch and begins to build a relationship. Always remember to close it in a professional way too.

1. Communicate in a glance

A solid wall of text isn’t going to be very appealing. Use headings and subheadings to allow the reader to see at a glance what information the email holds.

1. Don’t make them wait to the end

You will want to include within your email a link to your offer, but don’t leave it until the end. Buy incorporating it within the email several times you are allowing your reader to click through to it as soon as they have made their buying decision.

1. Short and sweet

There are times when you’ll want to communicate a lot of information to your reader, but sending an incredibly long email is a no no. Give them a taster of what you want them to know and then ask them to click for more information. That link can them take them through to your website or blog where the full article is shown.

1. Benefits and features

As in your website copy and sales letters, make sure you add in your features and benefits. You don’t have to include everything, just the most important ones in relation to what you are writing about.

1. Don’t forget the opt-out

Always, always, always include your opt-out link in all your email communications.

Don’t forget, your emails don’t always have to sell. To enhance your relationship with your customers use them to also share information that might be useful to them. By giving away free hints and tips you’ll help build trust and credibility and strengthen your relationship.

Read also:

Is EMail Marketing Right For You?

Email Marketing – It’s All In The Subject Line

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

The inbox is a harsh and unforgiving environment. For an email to survive it has to be strong, clear and concise otherwise it could end up in the pit of doom – also knows as the deleted items folder (or worse still, the junk mail).

Subject lines that won’t get ‘junked’

The subject line of your message is its ‘do or die’. If it doesn’t catch the recipient’s eye the email will go straight to the delete box.

So how do you make sure your email survives this particular hurdle?

• Keep it short – no more than 60 characters (including spaces)
• Personalise it – if possible add the recipient’s name
• Identify your company – get your company name in there
• Tell them what your e-mail’s about (e.g. new ideas for home makeovers)
• State a benefit – this will act as an enticement

Don’t go too salesy

If you have a hard salesy subject line your email will probably be deleted. Your recipient will know in an instant you just want to sell them something and the barriers will go up.

You also have to be careful about what words you use. Tripping a spam filter can be all too easy so you have to choose your words very cautiously. Therefore words you would normally use in headlines should be avoided in subject lines, such as:

• You – almost always shows the email is coming from a stranger
• Exclamation marks – I’m not a fan of these little fella’s anyway and they certainly are not welcome in subject lines.
• Buzz words such as – free, sale, only, urgent, information, limited-time, opportunity… By all means use these in your email body, but not the subject line.

By following this advice your email marketing should run a bit smoother. Your subject line should come across as unthreatening and hopefully, interesting enough for the recipient to open and read on…

Further reading:

Is Email Marketing Right For You?

Work Your Way Towards The Perfect Email Body

Sally Ormond – Freelance copywriting services

Email marketing provides businesses with a quick and inexpensive way to reach hundreds of customers instantly. It has revolutionised marketing – but its impact has also been lessened by the spammers out there.

Spammers are email marketers who fill millions of inboxes with unsolicited messages. The problem is their abuse of the system has made in increasingly difficult for genuine businesses to use this method.

You used to only have to worry about having a strong message to make sure your email got read. Now you have to prove it’s not spam.

What is a spam email?

Spam is unwanted email that is delivered to thousands of recipient simultaneously. Obviously you could argue what constitutes ‘unwanted’ email until the cows come home but as a general rule if the email comes from someone you don’t know it is perceived as spam.

When you should use email…

• To tell your customers about new offers
• When sending advice, useful information to enhance your customer service
• Keeping leads warm by staying in touch
• Following up contacts in a sales campaign (e.g. to encourage sign-ups etc).

All of these have one thing in common – they are concerned with building relationships with your customers and keeping them up to date.

…and when you shouldn’t

• Prospecting – this can be seen as an annoying and impersonal method of initial contact
• Generating leads  – again this is impersonal and your email will be deleted
• Using rented lists – you have no relationship with these contacts so you’ll be seen as a spammer

If you want to market through email your best bet would be to develop your own opt-in list – if you have the recipient’s agreement for you to send information to them they are more likely to buy from you at some point.

Build your own list

Building your own opt-in list is fairly straightforward but it can take time. Therefore you should start immediately rather than wait until you have a campaign in mind.

You can attract opt-ins through your website (give away a free report in exchange for their details), your reply devices and your order forms.

Your request doesn’t have to be complicated, simply:

• Ask for their email address
• Ask for permission to send emails to them
• Tell them exactly what kind of emails you will send them
• Assure them you won’t share their contact details with anyone else

Of course, one thing to remember is that you must create an opt-out. This should consist of a reminder of why they are receiving the emails (i.e. they requested updates) and an opt-out link which will take them through to a webpage which automatically removes them from your mailing list.

Before you know it, you’ll have an in-house marketing list.

Further reading:

Email Marketing – It’s All In The Subject Line

Work You Way Towards The Perfect Email Body

Sally Ormond – Freelance Copywriter

Your website could be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, but if it isn’t getting traffic it may as well have been written in invisible code.

If your website has been written with the search engines in mind and your copy is SEO friendly you will stand a good chance of getting good organic listings. However there is another element that needs to be taken into consideration – back links.

Google loves back links; they are a way of showing your sites’ authority – the more external links that point to your site the better. A great way of producing these links is to start a blog and by using other social media tools such as Squidoo or Hub pages.

Blogging really works

This really does work as I have used this method to achieve great organic listings for my chosen keywords.

I began this blog last year for 2 reasons – to drive traffic to my website and to give away copywriting tips. It took only a matter of months before I was seeing great results and my main website began climbing the Google rankings.

I know what you’re thinking “It’s alright for you, you’re a freelance copywriter so you know how to write stuff that works – I don’t even know where to start.”

OK, yes I write for a living but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve the same results as I have. As for not knowing what to write about, here are some tips:

• Think keywords – write a post around your main keywords. Remember to use these words as your anchor text for when linking back to your main website.

• Think products and services – if you make cards, don’t write about how to make them (you probably don’t want to give your secrets away) instead blog about the type of cards you are making. So if you are selling a range depicting poppies, blog about poppies.

• Think about venues – if you provide a service such as wedding photography, blog about some of the venues you work at.

• Think relevance – if something interesting has happened in your field recently, blog about it again linking through your keywords.

• Read around – if you follow other blogs in your industry and read something interesting, blog about that post and link back to it and to your site (again through relevant keywords).

Blog regularly

To reap the rewards of your blogging you should also blog regularly. Spread the word about what you’re doing through other applications such as Twitter or social networking sites such as BTTradespace. This will help you increase your web ‘footprint’ and generate more interest and traffic.

Once you get the ball rolling you’ll begin to see the benefits. But remember don’t just write about the same things all the time – variety keeps your writing fresh.