I taught a blogging mini-course at the University of Wisconsin this month and one of the things I told the students was, “the more you bleed, the more they’ll read.”

An email list or blog becomes one-dimensional so quickly when there are no stories.

Here’s an example of someone who gets it right, in a niche you might not expect:

Cellist Zoe Keating has prospered online selling 35,000 of her self-produced albums through her website and iTunes.

She says telling stories and divulging personal information is a key to her success. ““They want to buy my records five times just to support me because of that.”

“It’s important for me to always be authentic. It’s me on those websites. If I were to use my Twitter account just to publicize things, it wouldn’t be authentic.”

By the way, she has 1.3 million followers on Twitter.  She didn’t build those followers by giving cello tips (unlike the many marketers who think they have to tweet endless marketing tips – ZZZZZ) but simply by being real. The world doesn’t need another tip, but it can always use another story.

So when you write an email or blog post, ask yourself if there’s a detail you could add to make it more real, more personal…more bloody, if you will.

As sportswriter Red Smith once said, “Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.”

“A good ad should be like a good sermon. It must not only comfort the afflicted, it must also afflict the comfortable.”

If you rely on an autoresponder to send thank you emails to customers after a purchase, why not liven it up and make it fun and interesting?

Check out the email CD Baby sends customers:

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, October 11, 2010.

We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh…

We miss you already. We’ll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
–
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.
http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000

Perhaps no email as mundane as the standard thank you email to customers, yet nothing is more important than thanking them. So why not show that you enjoy saying thanks?

My new copywriting hero is Bernice Fitz-Gibbon (1894-1982), who was a famous retail copywriter and ad manager from the 1920s – 1960s. Her ads routinely appeared in the New York Times during that time period and she’s on Ad Age’s list of Top 100 people of the century.

Another reason I’m fond of her is because she grew up on a farm just 10 miles from me near Madison, WI and attended my alma mater, UW-Madison.

I recently read her delightful book Macy’s, Gimbels, and me; how to earn $90,000 a year in retail advertising, which she wrote in 1967 (and I suspect many copywriters today, 43 years later, would be happy with a $90K income).

In this book she includes a copy of a test of mythology, grammar and literature she gave to prospective copywriters when she ran their advertising department in the 1940s.

Before you read this test, keep in mind there wasn’t the slightest thing boring or stuffy about her copy (as you’ll see in my upcoming posts about her copy).

Rather, she believed knowledge like this was important because “it’s much easier to write with that what-the-hell abandon when you know and observe all the ground rules.” She also said “nothing else will give you the same surge of self-confidence that knowing the English language will give you.”

Here goes:

Who was sulking in his tent and why?

What was the Buddhists’ law of karma?

What is the Plimsoll mark?

Who was Lucullus?

What was the name of Don Quixote’s horse?

Why did Alfred let the cakes burn?

What was Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption?

Who was Caligula?

Why did Diogenes carry a lamp?

Explain Scylla and Charybdis.

What is a Judas goat?

Locate the Flea Market, Rotten Row, Epsom Downs.

Why did Thales fall into the well?

What is a Pythagorean theorem?

She also gave synonym tests. If the person couldn’t rattle off a sufficient number of synonyms, she didn’t hire them. If they told her that there’s no such thing as a synonym because each word has a different meaning, no two words are alike, she hired them.

In my next post I’ll feature some of her headlines and copywriting tips.

In the meantime, check out the book The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958 on Google Books. It’s only a preview, but you can see some cool vintage ads there. Enjoy!

The other day I went to the library and picked out three magazines I would normally never read, even if I was trapped in a waiting room for several hours with nothing else to read.

I did this to stretch myself and as practice for those times I have to research topics I’m not enthralled about (I highly recommend this exercise).

One of the magazines was Deer and Deer Hunting.

I know. Snooze city.

But I resolved to read it until I found something interesting.

I ended up reading the first article all the way through because the writer talked about how he used to think all expert Western bow hunters were crack shots at long distances.

He used to dutifully practice the long shots because he assumed it was a necessary skill.

It was only after several years of observing these expert hunters that he finally noticed that what made them great hunters is that they knew how to get close to deer. The average bow-kill distance is just 14 yards. Huh.

Of course I started thinking about how all this applies to email copywriting and business. There are several lessons but I’ll focus on this one:

Keeping your distance from your customers doesn’t work, ultimately.

You can run PPC campaigns, crank out articles, etc., but eventually you have to move in closer. One of the best ways to do that is through email.

Prospect emails, consumption emails sent after the sale, broadcast emails sent on a regular basis, emails for your affiliates to use… you should use all of these.

That’s a lot of email and it’s hard to keep it fresh.

So if you would like to outsource some of your email copy, here’s the deal: if you order a series of at least 5 emails from me, I’ll write one email for free. This applies to past customers too, not just new ones. Just mention this post.

I know that’s kind of a strange thing for an email copywriter to say.

But I just came across this cool quote by the late copywriter Howard Luck Gossage.

He used the word “advertising” but I’m going to substitute the word “email” because it applies perfectly to email as well.

Here goes:

“Nobody reads email. People read what interests them; and sometimes it’s an email.”

And here’s the part I wish every marketer would take to heart:

“Advertising is not a right, it’s a privilege.

Our first responsibility is not to the product, but to the public.

I don’t know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.”

I recently came across a forum post where someone posted an email for critique.

It was a lousy email because it read like a mini sales letter. Not surprisingly, he later said he got a complaint rate of 0.8% As a result, his autoresponder service cancelled his account and he lost his list of 500 subscribers.

The bottom line:

Just because someone is on your list doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.

And if you write to somebody instead of to everybody, you won’t have to worry about complaint rates.

When I was a kid I LOVED playing Monopoly.

There was a strategy I would use that would completely demoralize my opponents – usually my brother and neighborhood boys – but always resulted in my win.

And the occasional overturned table (my wins didn’t always go over well).

Throughout the game, when nobody was looking, I would stash some of my money in my socks (fortunately tube socks were “in” back then).

Then, late in the game, when I would have to pay rent on a high end property, and my opponent started rubbing his hands together with excitement because it looked like I was too low in funds to pay, I would nonchalantly whip out a stash of $500s and $100s.

This was very satisfying to me, of course.

I didn’t use this strategy every game because I wanted the boys to be on their toes.

Besides, I had other Monopoly strategies I used as well (maybe I’ll share those in upcoming posts, as they are applicable to business too).

What are the “money in your socks” aspects of your business?

I’m not necessarily talking about literal money (although that helps too)… or things that make competitors overturn their tables (although that could be fun too)… but things like:

* Colleagues you know you can call on at a moment’s notice to get help with a problem.

* Authors, speakers, bloggers who, when you take a break and spend some time with their material, leave you inspired and energized.

* A key piece of software or a never-fail strategy that will help your website rise in the rankings past your competitors.

* An email copywriter on hand who can quick write up some awesome emails for you.

If you have anything to add to that list, let me know.

Wishing you many “money in the socks” moments in your business and the satisfied feelings that come with them.

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” –Andy Warhol

As an email copywriter there is much I appreciate about Andy Warhol.

He made the above statement during the latter part of his career, when his goal was to cement his legacy as a “business artist.” Unlike many artists, he was a meticulous businessman and made a lot of money.

In that way he was adept in both left and right brain activities, much like us copywriters who have to be both creative and able to do research and know about things like split testing.

Warhol started out as a commercial artist in the 1950s. He had success on that front but, as a result, he wasn’t taken seriously when he would having showings of his paintings.

It wasn’t until the 1960s, when he showed his series of Campbell soup paintings to the public, that he finally gained acceptance as an artist.

Warhol was able to see the beauty in everyday things like soup cans, Pepsi bottle caps, and Brillo pad boxes.

As an email copywriter, I’ve learned to do the same. I can look at a story in Google news about, say, the metabolism of orangutans, and find an analogy that works for an email in almost any niche.

Or look at an artist like Warhol and find the inspiration for my own life and work.

My pre-written email pack for Panic Away has been our bestselling pack the past few months, even outselling the weight loss packs.

So I was pondering today why that is.

What’s with all the anxiety?

Well, money is part of it, if these blog posts titles I came across today are any
indication:

“The crisis of middle-class America.”

“As rich get richer, everybody else stagnates, and middle-class dreams die.”

“22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America.”

I typed “anxiety” into Google News and these were the most recent stories on
the front page:

*There’s a “persistent and overwhelming” level of anxiety among families living near the Gulf coast.

*The National Institute of Mental Health reports that anxiety disorders affect
about 40 million adults every year.

*Last month’s retail sales reflects “new anxiety.”

*Anxiety about undergoing anesthesia leads 1 in 4 to postpone surgeries.

Anxiety is everywhere. 40 million people.

I think all of us know someone who struggles with it or has experienced it ourselves.

So what does this have to do with your business?

No matter what type of list you have, the chances are great that many of the people suffer from anxiety and would benefit from a product like Panic Away.

Panic Away has been a bestselling product for 6 years, so it’s not a flash in the pan.

So if you haven’t checked out my Panic Away email pack yet – or any of the other pre-written email packs I have for sale there, now would be a great time.

And as you read the emails, who knows…maybe you’ll even pick up a tip or two about how to minimize your own anxiety, if you struggle with that.

Have you heard of voice actor Billy West? I hadn’t either until I read an article that said he’s considered the “new Mel Blanc.”

I sometimes call myself the Mel Blanc of Copywriting because an email copywriter has to be good at writing in many different voices. Mel Blanc was famous for being “the man of 1000 voices,” including the voices of many Looney Tunes characters, such as Bugs Bunny.

I know copywriters mostly talk about persuasion and marketing but the ability to write in someone else’s voice is also a necessary skill.

What Billy West says about voice acting also applies to email copywriting:

“You have to have some kind of power of observation, almost like a trained observer,” he explains. “You watch people and study them the way an alien would. … It’s also kind of an ear a voice performer has, where they’re able to hear things in real life, and they’re able to grab hold of it and then amplify it through another character or a direct impression.

An email copywriter needs to be able to write conversationally and should develop an ear for the cadence and words used in everyday conversation.

When writing for a client, I always try to listen to audios, watch videos of them or talk on the phone with a client so I can hear their actual voice. If that’s not possible I make a point to read their blogs, articles, tweets, etc. so I can become familiar with their voice.

Being able to master voices is the key to helping clients develop a rapport and trust with their prospects and customers.