excess voice: nick usborne's blog

Writing White Papers

During all my years as a freelance writer, I never once wrote a white paper.

It seems I missed out on an interesting niche.

While writing a review for the 2005 White Paper Writer Industry Survey, by Michael A. Stelzner, I realized just how quickly this market is growing.

And maybe that’s no real surprise when you think of all the B2B sites that offer white papers as a free download.

If you’d like to know more about white papers, and the opportunity their growth presents to freelance writers, read my review.

Monday Copywriting Tip #75: Write Emails with a Conversational Opening

Whatever the purpose of your email, whether it’s promotional, customer service or just an automated email response – try to include a salutation followed by a few lines of personal, conversational text.

Why?

Because there is tremendous power in connecting with your reader on a personal level. Opening with a personal voice signals that the email comes not just from a corporation, but from an individual person.

When you do this well, each email you send slowly builds and reinforces a one-to-one relationship with the reader.

That personal relationship, however slight, will help get your emails opened each time you send one. And if your voice becomes associated with a sense of trust, it will also help in raising your response rates.

I hear endless excuses as to why it just “wouldn’t work” for such and such a company or situation. Well, I don’t buy that. I think you can insert a genuine, personal voice into any kind of communication, and any kind of email.

If you choose not to, you are ignoring one of the greatest strengths of email as a communications medium.

You have only to look through your emails from friends, family and even colleagues to see how personal and conversational email can be.

Ignore that opportunity, and you can be sure that your readers will quickly associate your emails with all the other corporate, impersonal and consequently less interesting email they receive.

More copywriting tips for the web and email...

Monday Copywriting Tip #74: Test Your Email Subject Lines

Over the years I have worked on email and newsletters with a number of large companies.

When the lists have been big enough I have always recommended that we test subject lines before sending to the complete list.

Why? Because identifying the best subject line out of a group is perhaps the hardest of all calls.

In fact, over the years, I have never been able to consistently guess which subject line will get the best open rate.

There are a couple of principles to follow with every email subject line

1. Don’t get on the bad side of the spam filters. So watch for “bad” words, too much capitalization, exclamation marks etc.
2. Identify yourself. Get your company, product or newsletter name in the subject line. So when people scan their new emails, they will recognize you as being welcome.

Beyond that, you just have to test.

Here’s how I have done it...

A couple of days before the main send, I test four or five different subject lines against 500-1,000 names each, depending on the size of the list.

Twenty four hours later I check to see which line achieved the highest open rate. If you can, also check the click-through rates. Sometimes the line with the highest open rate won’t be the one that ultimately brings you the highest revenues.

Once you have picked your winner, use that line with the main send of your email or newsletter.

Is it worth the trouble?

Absolutely. I have tested newsletter subject lines where two of them appear to be very similar, but one has achieved an open rate almost twice that of the other.

If you don’t test, you’re just guessing.

More email and newsletter copywriting tips...

Monday Copywriting Tip #73: Make Up Your Mind What it is You Want to Say

Presenting the various facets of your business on your home page is often difficult.

• Perhaps you serve both a consumer and a business audience.
• Perhaps you have long-tern plans and want to start repositioning your company right away.
• Perhaps you have both a service and product aspect to your business.
• Perhaps you have several divisions, all of which demand exposure on the home page.

These are all legitimate “complications”. They all make it harder to come up with a single, unified message for the first screen of your home page.

What many companies do is arrive at a message that is very general. They compromise. They make sure that their message doesn’t exclude anything or anyone.

The trouble is, they then fall between two or more stools and end up saying nothing of any real interest.

The outcome? A boring homepage that fails to engage the interest of anyone.

You need to try a little harder, and push any internal politics to one side. You need to find a message that communicates your core value proposition clearly and immediately.

How do you do that?

Decide on a crystal clear purpose for your site. Then figure out which audience is the best match for that purpose. Then write your primary headline to that audience alone. And make it a great, engaging, compelling line, full of promise for the reader.

As for the other fragments of your audience and business, give them some space...but less space.

The point here is that if you write to please everyone, you’ll end up saying nothing of real interest to anyone.

So make some tough choices. Choose a primary audience and make them your main focus as you write.

You'll find more Internet copywriting tips here...

Cool Tools for Freelance Writers

As writers we spend almost every day sitting in front of our computers. So why not make our workspace a little more enjoyable and comfortable?

Goodness knows, setting up a freelance writing business carries almost no start-up costs and minimum operating costs.

So I think we can forgive ourselves for indulging in a few extras to add a little pleasure to our working hours.

How about some music? Or some noise reduction headphones to block out household noise? Or a more comfortable chair?

I have started a page with a few "cool tool" suggestions... further suggestions are always welcome.

My cool tools for writers page...

Monday Copywriting Tip #72: Answer Your Site Visitors’ Unspoken Questions – Immediately

One of the best openings to a site I know of is the one at Cancer.org.

It’s home to the American Cancer Society, and the first words you read on their first screen are, “No Matter Who You Are, We Can Help”.

What have they done with this line? They have answered silent questions which will be on the minds of many people when they first arrive:

“Someone I know has cancer. I wonder if I can find help at the American Cancer Society web site?”

Or, “I want to find out about breast cancer. I wonder if I can find help at the American Cancer Society web site?”

Maybe you sell web site design services to small businesses. So you might think about a line like, “We have been designing successful sites for small business since 1998.”

I know, it breaks the “rules” of good copywriting by starting with the word “we”. But it does answer two important questions.

1. Do these guys design sites for small business?

2. Can I trust them to know what they’re doing?

Or maybe you sell copywriting services, and specialize in catalog writing.

How about, “Why over 45 catalog companies have asked us to write their copy”.

Again, it answers an important question, “Are these guys specialists in catalog writing?”

Take a few minutes to think about the key questions someone might have on his mind in the moments before finding your site for the first time. What is most important to them? What is their greatest concern? What questions are floating around in his head?

Identify the top one or two questions, and then answer them immediately on the first screen of your site.

More web and email copywriting tips...

Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006

I have recently finished reading through MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide for 2006. It’s quite the document, running to over 150 pages.

It made me think.  All too often we work in isolation. We collect data from within our own company or organization. That’s where we find our benchmarks.

So we continue working on our email campaigns without any real understanding of broader trends and developments within the email marketing industry. Nor do we really understand the kinds of results we should be expecting.

As a result, I think we often aim too low, and expect too little of ourselves and our colleagues when it comes to email.

I talk more about this in my review of MarketingSherpa's email marketing benchmark guide...