I once won a Monopoly tournament against five type-A men. While trading deeds I persuaded them they didn’t need the purples and railroads. Then I proceeded to crush them.

Starting tomorrow, March 1, I will write a daily pithy copywriting tip during the month of March.

Each tip will be exactly 29 words long.

The exception will be on Saturdays, where I will continue my Subject Line Saturday posts.

Studies show that online readers only read 20% of the content on a web page.

So I thought I’d try writing pithy tips for a month as an exercise in pithiness. Pithiness is a skill every copywriter should develop.

After March, I will continue to write a pithy copywriting tip once a week or so.

I’ve also started a Fun Fridays feature, to give copywriters a mental health break and post something fun, rather than a how-to. In March I’ll try to make my Fun Fridays posts a pithy 29 words too.

Thanks for reading! Please subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already so that you don’t miss any posts.

I haven’t written about email subject lines in a while but now I want to make it a regular Saturday feature on this blog.

I subscribe to very few email lists in my regular email inboxes because receiving too much email is distracting for me as an email copywriter.

But I have a dormant Yahoo mail account that I don’t use anymore because a lot of crud piles up there.

So I thought I’d go through some if it each Saturday and find the five subject lines that manage to get my attention in all that mess.

Here goes:

1. Cool Hues in Ocean Blues. The Sundance catalog sent this email. The subject line appealed to me because it rhymes and evokes a nice image.

2. Last Chance For Free Shipping, Hurry Ends Tonight. This is another Sundance subject line. It’s a good reminder that a straight-to-the-point subject line always works. Especially if the word “free” is in it.

3. Tips For Getting a Good Flight’s Sleep. This subject line is by Magellan’s travel catalog. I thought it was catchy and stood out from the crowd in my inbox.

4. Why You’re Unique, Special and Great. This subject line is by Mike Litman. Yeah, it’s kind of gimmicky. But it managed to catch my eye in the sea of crud in my inbox. Using the word “you” in a subject line is effective.

5. Capture brilliant ideas with our notebooks and journals. This is by one of my favorite catalogs – Levenger. First, I like that the only use a capital letter at the beginning of the subject line. This looks more natural, less sales-y.

Also, I like that they assume that my ideas are brilliant. And I’ve always had a fondness for notebooks.

See you next Saturday with more subject lines.

This book, The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952, is worth owning for the cover alone.

I keep the book propped upright on a table and I smile every time I walk past it.

These comics are the first Peanuts comics and the simplicity of the storytelling and artwork in these early comics is so refreshing.

If you use storytelling in your copywriting (and I hope you do), making the occasional foray into the world of Peanuts would be well worth your while.

Emotions and feelings are two different things.

A sales page is usually about emotion. The copywriter focuses on a dominant emotion people in that market have, such as fear, greed, anger and writes the copy around that emotion.

Email copywriters focus more on feelings.

For every emotion there are usually many different feelings beneath the surface.

Sometimes these feelings seem very different from the outer emotion.

For example, if someone is angry on the outside, it could mean that they are angry because they feel hurt and rejected.

Feelings are deeper than emotion.

When you send emails, you can address all these many feelings.

As you send emails to your list, make sure that, over time, you tap into many different feelings.

Sometimes a person that lands on your sales page will leave, because the emotion there seems like static on a radio.

But your emails will help them to dial in to the right frequency and make the static go away.

You already know how important it is that people open your email and click on the link(s) inside of it.

I’ve written before about the importance of writing emails that people will want to reply to.

Today let’s talk about how to write emails that people will want to forward to their friends.

A couple of years ago I wrote an email for a small niche site.

The only link in the email was below my name, I did no selling in this email. It was a story about a recent snowstorm adventure and I simply thanked them for being on my list.

Over the next couple of weeks dozens of people signed up to my list after I sent this email. All the hits were coming from email.

At first I was confused. The people who received that email were already on my list, so how was it that I was getting so many sign ups?

Then it occurred to me that someone (or several someones) forwarded that email to their friends. These friends enjoyed my story and signed up for my list.

Don’t forget the power of the forward when writing email copy.

Are you hooked on the TV show Shark Tank yet? I hope so.

In each episode, entrepreneurs approach five investors and make a pitch for investing in their business.

If you run a business then I encourage you to start watching it. You can get caught up on all the episodes at the above link.

For a quick look at what the show is like, check out this two minute video of a woman who makes a two minute pitch for her home-based shoe business.

One of the lessons this show teaches over and over again is that likeability is very important in marketing.

In other words, “branding begins with the person,” as Daymond said after a woman gave her pitch for her Turbo Baster kitchen gadget.

This woman only had a product idea and didn’t even have a working prototype.

She didn’t know her numbers, didn’t know what it would cost to manufacture her Turbo Baster.

Normally the sharks would rip into an entrepreneur like this but she was so likeable that she ended up getting an offer.

You’re not ultimately selling a product…you’re selling them on you.

Because a sales page is static, it’s hard to show how likeable you are on a sales page, unless you include a video.

This is where emails (and blogs) play an important role.

Emails aren’t static. They are a two-way conversation between you and your customer.

It’s in interactions like these where people will begin to like you and trust you, not from a one-time reading of your sales page.

You are sending emails like this, aren’t you?

I hope you haven’t fallen into the trap of writing emails that are mini sales letters?

If so, feel free to contact me. I’d be happy to help,

When my daughter was 7 years old she went through a knitting phase.

A friend taught her to knit and she would curl up on the couch every evening and knit for a little while.

Her first project was a wash cloth. It was made with a mixture of purple and blue yarn.

After she finished it she came up to me at my desk and told me.

I was busy writing some copy and my mind was in another place. I did not hear her at all and she walked away.

A little while later I went to the kitchen and she said to me, with tears, “I showed you my wash cloth and you didn’t even care!”

I felt bad, of course, and gushed about her wash cloth as if it was a masterpiece.

Then we had a little chat about how sometimes my listening ears don’t work properly when I’m working at the computer.

Now…how about you?

Are your listening ears on after you send an email to your customers?

This doesn’t get discussed very often but sending an email is one of the best ways to listen to your customers.

Rather than just focusing on getting them to click on your website, you should also try to write emails that they will want to reply to.

Step back from your balance sheet and statistics once in a while and listen to your customers.

It’s not just good for business. It’s good for you.

After all, the whole point in growing yourself professionally is to become a better person, isn’t it?

In an interview on 60 Minutes, and in his book Open: An Autobiography
, retired tennis star Andre Agassi admitted that he hated tennis.

His father forced him to play tennis as a child even though he longed to play a team sport.

During the first ten years of his career he had many ups and downs.

He went from being the #1 player to sinking so low he had to spend several months playing in the equivalent of the minor leagues in tennis.

He was finally able to rise again and play at a consistent level after he had an epiphany…

He realized he did have a team – his new prep school for disadvantaged children in Las Vegas.

From the point on, he knew that every swing of the tennis racket was a swing for his school.

Every victory was a victory for his school.

This motivated him like nothing before ever did.

Andre’s goal wasn’t to be the #1 player (that was always his father’s goal for him) but to win all four Grand Slam tournaments.

The French Open was the one that alluded him. Finally, in 1999, 13 years after turning pro, he won this title.

Here’s what you can learn from this:

* Find a “team” to play for. It can be your family, a charity, your church, etc.

Your achievements as a copywriter/marketer will have more meaning and it will be easier to stick to your goals if you have such a team.

* Set your own goals – don’t become trapped by the expectations of others.

* It’s never too late. In Andre’s case, many players aren’t still playing 13 years into their career. If they are, they often aren’t in peak condition and winning Grand Slams.

If a particular goal has alluded you, you don’t have to give up. Even if you sink into the “minor leagues” for a while, you can come roaring back.

In addition to having a team to play for, you also need a team of people to help you.

A mentor/coach and a few close friends and colleagues who will guide and advise you along the way.

Books and workshops are useful tools too.

Focusing on persuasion skills, profits, conversion rates, opt-in rates, etc. all the livelong day can get tedious. There has to be more to copywriting than that otherwise copywriting quickly becomes just another job.

So get yourself a team if you don’t have one already.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a copywriter say something like,”For copywriters, sales skills are WAY more important than writing skills.”

Sorry, but I’m here to say that the writing skills are very important too.

Obviously being a good writer doesn’t automatically mean you’ll know how to write copy. But even if you have a lot of knowledge about persuasion, being a poor writer will cost you sales.

For example, when I see the phrase “loose weight” (the most common typo on the internet) in an article or sales page about weight loss, I stop taking that person seriously.

And let’s not discuss all the glaring apostrophe errors I see in sales copy.

Above all, let’s not discuss how often I see “could of” instead of “could have.” Aaarrrgh!

When your sales page has sloppy grammar and typos, it’s like showing up for a job interview in flip flops and distressed jeans. You disrespect your reader.

Here are 3 ways to put the writing back into your copywriting:

1. Regularly read a grammar blog, such as the Grammarphobia blog and FWJ’s Grammar Guide.

2. If you can’t afford a proofreader, ask a friend or relative to proofread your copy for typos and basic grammar mistakes.

A friend once spent an hour on the phone with me going over a sales letter draft and I was amazed at all the great suggestions she had for improving the wording of certain sentences.

3. Read  The Elements of Style by William Strunk & E.B. White once a year. It’s a very slim book but packed with suggestions about how to write clearly and also outlines the basic grammar rules. If you have a different favorite book about writing and grammar, read that one once a year.

Saying that the writing portion of copywriting isn’t important is like a carpenter saying nails aren’t important. I like for my carpenters to care about little things like the proper use of nails. So you should care about little things like typos and grammar.

Also, part of the fun of writing is occasionally breaking the rules. But you have to know what the rules are first before you can break them. So go to it!