The 9 Word Email – The Highest Coverting Email of All Time

It’s true.

If you have an email list you haven’t contacted in a while or are stubbornly refusing to respond, a nine word email is all it may take to turn silence into sales.

What are those nine magical words?

You simply say – “Are you still looking for [insert product]?”.

That’s it. Not a syllable more.

Countless folks have been astounded at how such a tiny message can generate such a huge response.

Its power comes from its brevity and directness. No one could imagine something so brutally abrupt being sent to an entire list. Surely it’s been sent to them only. Ignoring it would be rude.

Try it out and let me know if it works.

Disclaimer – I’m not a marketing genius that comes up with these ideas off the top of my head. This dynamite copywriting tip comes from Joe Polish and Dean Jackson via their I Love Marketing Podcast. If you’re not yet a subscriber, what’s keeping you?

The post The 9 Word Email – The Highest Coverting Email of All Time appeared first on The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose.

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My Morning Routine

Morning routines are a hot topic among ‘growth hackers’ these days. And many of them get competitive over who can set their alarm clock at the most insanely early hour and pack in the most soul enriching stuff before the milkman arrives.

My routine is pretty lightweight, so Tim Ferris and The Rock can rest easy.

I’m not a morning person. My routine’s only aim is to force my brain into a gear slightly above sluggish, rather than redefining my place in the mulitverse.

7.30am – Alarm clock goes off. My brain wakes up long enough to switch on CNN or RT at high volume before I slip back into a coma.

8.00am – Headline news on what Donald Trump said wakes me up long enough to sit upright. I check my email, browse the news and see what Skype chats I missed.

8.15am – Grab my headphones from a drawer next to my bed and listen to a 15 minute guided meditation on YouTube (I recommend the Honest Guys channel).

8.30am – Now a full hour after my alarm clock first went off, I slide (rather than leap) out of bed to put on a pair of shorts before heading to the gym.

8.45am – Exercise for 30 mins, alternating between weights. running and yoga on different days to get the blood and brain cells flowing.

9.15am – Shower and breakfast.

9.30am – Grab a notepad and pen and fire up the latest assignment on Copyhour. This is a course I’ve been doing for the last year where they email you a successful direct response ad to dissect and copy by hand. If you’ve done all your homework on copywriting theory, I recommend taking Copyhour to start hardwiring smart sales writing into your brain.*

10.30am – I’m ready to tackle the day’s projects with gusto. Just for good measure, I’ll take a tablet of L-Theanine with my morning coffee (L-Theanine is a key active ingredient in most nootropics supplements) to get a caffeine buzz that seems to last the whole day..

My two ‘hours of power’ help me to banish the lethargy that plagued my mornings. I now feel more mentally alert and focused, and not wasting hours shopping for moleskine notebooks.

How about you? Any morning routine hacks you’d love to share?

* Affiliate links!

 

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How a Dog Helped De Beers to Sell More Diamonds

Did you know that a dog invented branding?

Tis true.

It wasn’t devised by an ancient sect of theologians, psychologists and savvy Greek business owners of luxury spas.

Branding was invented by a dog.

Allow me to explain…

If you’ve read Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion (and if not, add it to your list to Santa), you may know this story already.

In 1904 Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize.

Not for finding a cure to indigestion or for negotiating a peace settlement to end the Chile-Bolivian war, but for discovering that you could get a dog to salivate by rubbing meat paste on its nose and ringing a bell.

What Pavlov discovered was that it’s possible to implant an associative memory into the brain (a bit like Inception, I guess) that can be triggered with a recall cue.

In the dog’s case, the memory was the smell of meat paste linked to the bell, and the memory became so hardwired that just ringing the bell was enough to get the dog to salivate.

What’s this got to do with branding?

It turns out, people are as susceptible to mental cues as dogs.

It’s how advertising is supposed to work – bombard your audience with enough noise and messages and they’ll subconsciously reach for your brand on the supermarket shelf.

But mentally bullying your audience into submission, like it’s a war of attrition, isn’t the best way of selling.

Branding is at it’s most effective when the implanted memory is ‘salient’. This is a neurological term for important or relevant. When the message is salient you don’t have to repeat it so many times for it to be embedded into their chemical long-term memory (rather than short-term electric memory).

So how can you create a salient memory?

There are three keys:

Consistency – Focus on one core message.
Frequency – Contact prospects multiple times with your core message.
Anchoring – Implant a recall cue that triggers the memory of your message.

De Beers doesn’t sell diamonds

I can imagine you were nodding in sage agreement with the first two and then the mental brakes came on when you reached the third, correct?

So now you’re wondering why I’ve opened another question loop and how do you anchor a memory?’

The answer, dear Crucible reader, is to give the dog what it wants.

Pavlov’s dog salivated because it loved the smell of meat paste. You need to do the same with your audience.

Don’t sell them the drill, sell them the hole.

To give you a less rolled out example, De Beers doesn’t sell diamonds.

People could care less about the cut, clarity and Karat weight. They care about the reaction they get from giving them to the person they love.

Give your customers what they want

Do the same in your copy – offer the customer what they want.

Don’t write about ‘exceeding expectations’, ‘blue sky thinking’ or about your widget’s speed settings.

Talk about what they care about – their motivations, problems and dreams – to implant a salient memory.

Then when they actually need your client’s product or service, it will be their brand that pops to the forefront of their thinking.

It may have seemed an odd choice, but awarding Mr Pavlov a Nobel Prize is something us copywriters have a lot to be thankful for.

Disclaimer – I’d love for you to believe that I wrote this post off the top of my head, but all the information came from Dan Lok’s ‘Advertising Titans Volume 1’. As the name suggests, it’s packed with interviews with some of the biggest names in direct response copywriting, such as Joe ‘BluBlocker’ Sugarman and Bob ‘B2B’ Bly. So if, like me, you’re looking to up your direct response game next year why not buy it on Kindle, and save Santa the back strain.

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The 5 Step ‘Sideways Sales Letter’ Method

Yesterday when I was working from a coffee shop when I overheard a conversation between a marketing consultant and a client.

Let me tell you, it was painful listening.

The consultant was trying to convince a rightly cynical client that social media was the ‘new way’ of marketing. That nobody read emails or visited corporate websites anymore and the client needed a flow of Facebook updates, Tweets and hashtags to shift his wares. I think the consultant may even have called it ‘content marketing’.

After spitting coffee all over my laptop, I was forced to change seats. Partly because my battery was running low and I needed a wall socket. But mainly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit in silence much longer without sharing some poignant facts:

• Email generates $44 for every $1 invested
• Only 34% of marketers think Facebook marketing is effective
• Even if you have 500k Facebook fans, less than 2% will see your updates
• With email, you’re guaranteed they will at least see the subject line (as long as you’re not spamming)
• Open rates for email are typically 20-30%
• Readership of email is increasing year on year, with people checking messages at spare moments on their smartphones

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Never build your farm on rented land

As I’ve mentioned multiple times at the Crucible: ‘never build your farm on rented land’. In other words, building up Fans and followers puts you at the mercy of whatever changes the owner of that platform wants to make.

When Facebook tweaked their algorithm to limit the number of times people viewed ‘promotional’ posts it made a lot of social media marketers look sheepish. And best not to mention Google+ around anyone who does marketing for Starbucks.

With, an email list you keep control over how and when you can contact subscribers for as long as they stay subscribed, enabling you to keeping selling and promoting your services whatever disruption happens in the social media world.

So we’re agreed: a large social media following is nice to have, and it can be effective when numbers run into the tens of thousands (on Twitter, anyway). But it’s dirt poor engagement rate make it a questionable sales channel compared to email’s massive (and quantifiable) ROI.

Using Email as a Sideways Sales Letter

Now, I’m not just writing to you to vent. I also wanted to share a strategy for maximizing your email marketing success. After all, it’s easy to quote studies and stats on email, but the best way to guarantee success is to have a clear strategy.

Clients often ask me to write just one email, but I always tell them that five is better. Not to inflate my fee (you cynical types), but because any salesman worth his salt will tell you that the majority of sales come after the fifth contact.

So you should also structure campaigns so that prospects are contacted multiple times, whether it’s by email, letter, postcard or biting the bullet and using for phone for something other than Whatsapp (or is it Telegram, these days?) and Words with Friends.

Anyway, let’s say we’re focusing on email and we’ve built a list after running a lead generation campaign with a lead magnet. So we’ve given away something valuable to get people registered but haven’t done anything yet to sell to them.

A smart approach would be to structure your emails so they follow the awareness scale, and take people from clueless about what you do to interested then convinced then whipping out their credit card before your stocks run dry. Jeff Walker coined this as using email like a ‘sideways sales letter’.

You could structure your emails like this:

Email 1 – Unaware – Introduce yourself, tell them what you do and what’s coming up in future emails (a.k.a. an ‘onboarding’ email).

Email 2 – Problem Aware – Rub salt in their wound by addressing the problem discussed in your lead magnet. Remind them how this problem is holding them back from the good life.

Email 3 – Solution Aware – Discuss their options for solving their problem. More importantly, mention why the existing solutions aren’t working and they need something better.

Email 4 – Product Aware – Introduce your product or service as the optimum solution that can answer all their worries and their fears. The future looks brighter with it in their life.

Email 5 – Most Aware – Make an offer. Remind them of the problems they face if they do nothing and what they have to look forward to if they decide to buy (the crossroads method).

Following this email structure enables you to deliver a long sales pitch in delicious fun size portions that are easier for today’s attention shy consumer to digest and respond to.

So if you ever find yourself within earshot of a social media consultant, consider politely tapping them on the shoulder and showing them this post. Hopefully, it may persuade them that they need a copywriter and digital sales warhorse, like yourself, sat alongside them the next time they pitch.

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Sales Funnel Masterclass – Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writers Relaunch

The best copywriters are also the best marketers.

With a dash of marketing nous, there’s no reason to be scrambling for short change on freelance bidding sites or mailbombing marketing managers to get work. You can create it yourself.

After all, when you’re a machine at pumping out emails, sales page and VSLs for clients, all you need to do is switch the output tray to your own.

Allow me to explain…

Recently, I got approached to help promote the relaunch of Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writers. Normally, I’d  post a review. But instead I’m switching the lens to focus on how you can adopt Jeff’s launch strategy to grow your brand and sell your own products (and maybe even sign-up for Jeff’s free book while you’re at it).

Who’s Jeff Goins?

Jeff’s one of those overnight ten year sensations we all envy.

He built an audience of 100,000 in a mere 18 months, my guess would be as a result of his storytelling teaching style, smart outreach strategy and penning a towering pile of guest posts that lifted him above the crowd.

Jeff has endorsements from big guns including Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Michael Hyatt. He’s also got a bestselling novel under his belt. So yes, I’m jealous.

He even appears above yours truly in this cartoonified list!

What’s Jeff’s Tribe Writers?

Jeff has achieved the metamorphosis we all aspire for – going from struggling writer to an online writing teacher, consultant and public speaker (and, dare I say it, creative writing celebrity).

In his soon to relaunch Tribe Writers program, he shows you exactly how to replicate his success. Along with modules on how to improve your writing and finding your voice, he lays out the steps for finding an audience, promoting your work, getting published and, with any luck, getting paid.

Sounds great, right?

But, as mentioned, I’m not here to pitch his course (well..maybe a little bit). But what I really want to focus on is how he’s promoting it and how you can adapt (and adopt) his strategy for yourself.

So just for you, I’m lifting the lid to reveal how his launch strategy works. Step closer and let’s take a look…

Jeff’s Product Launch Formula Dissected

To get students through his digital doors, Jeff’s not just posting about it on his blog and social media accounts. Oh, no siree. He’s got an entire affiliate network doing it for him. Better yet, he’s able to grow a massive following and generate sales without spending a dime (or penny) on advertising.

Here’s how to do it…

1. Upload your product to Clickbank, JVZoo or another digital products site

After uploading your product to Clickbank or JVZoo, you can create a link to share with affiliates to help promote your stuff. Typically, you can expect to shell out 25-50% in commissions. But with enough affiliates, you won’t have to spend on advertising and will only lose a portion of what you gain. It’s like paying affiliates with free money.

2. Create a launch sequence

Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula explains this in more detail. But in summary, you need to create a series of promotional assets that build excitement in your offer and get people registered for the next stage. ‘A sideways sales page’, as Jeff likes to call it. In the other Jeff’s case (Jeff Goins, that is), he’s created a free 100 page book on growing your following and put together some video tutorials:

Click here to get your free book- Every Writer Needs a Tribe

Click here to get the free video training

3. Reach out to affiliates

You can hire an affiliate manager or do this yourself. Create a hitlist of the brightest and best bloggers with big lists and followings. Then drop them an email asking whether they’d be interested in promoting your product in exchange for some moolah.

People with uber lists may want some stats on conversions before deigning to send traffic your way. Popular bloggers are also busy people. So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to promote your offer. So create some emails, blog posts and banners which they can simply copy, paste and hit publish to start earning commissions.

4. Keep emailing your affiliates in the runup to launching

The runup to a successful launch often starts weeks, or months, in advance. So continue nudging your affiliates to promote all the steps in the product launch sequence.

A great way of getting them to buy in is to send them leaderboards on the affiliates with the highest number of signups. This will give dawdlers that little kick once they see how much cash they could be making once you launch.

5. Rinse and repeat

Whether you sell a course, eBook or one-to-one training, you can continually keep updating your product and relaunching it with the same formula.

Each time you’ll continue to grow your list of people who registered but weren’t quite ready, whom you can give some extra coaxing. You’ll also have a list of affiliates all signed up and ready to promote your relaunch for you.

See Jeff’s product launch machine in action

If you’d like to see  Jeff’s promotional machine in action, simply register for his free eBook or video training course. Then analyze how the email sequence coaxes and prods you towards signing up for his Tribe Writers course at the end.

Remember, you can use this entire strategy to grow your own brand and to make money from your own products. You don’t have to be reliant on clients to make money.

And if you need an affiliate to help promote your products for you, you know who to call.

Disclaimer – Being a switched on Copywriter’s Crucible reader, I know that you know that the links on this page are affiliate links. But just so we’re on the level, if you buy Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writer’s course I earn commission. Jeff’s an ethical guy though, and didn’t get 100,000 followers from doing things on the sly. So please feel assured that his course is a quality product.

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The Ray Edwards ‘Copywriting Academy’ Review – Should You Believe the Hype?

 

Freelance copywriting is the ultimate lifestyle business. You get to set your own hours, be the boss of you and spend all day writing about interesting topics in coffee shops (well, I do anyway).

But getting started is one tough road.

When I quit the corporate world, I faced years of toil and strife before I had any confidence in my copywriting skills.

It was only then that a steady flow of clients, happy to pay a fair rate for my work, started to arrive through my digital doorway.

Suffice to say, if I could turn back the clock I’d have done things differently.

Instead of trying to piece together all the advice on writing headlines, structuring sales letters and harnessing psychology on my own, I’d have taken direction from an expert.

In the best of all possible worlds, this would have been in the format of one to one tuition from a copywriting master.

But unless you’ve got a money tree in your garden, shelling out five figures to benefit from their sage advice isn’t an option.

However, thanks to the delights of the interwebs, you can do the next best thing. And that’s to study a video course put together by one of today’s most renowned copywriters. In this case, none other than Mr Ray Edwards.

Who’s Ray Edwards?

Ray Edwards is a multi-decade veteran with some major names in his roller desk. This includes self improvement guru Tony Robbins, direct response copywriter (and friend of the Crucible) Michel Fortin and product launch formula mastermind Jeff Walker.

All of these people entrusted Ray to generate million dollar for them with the power of text and smart marketing. So when Ray speaks, it’s wise to listen.

What’s The Copywriting Academy?

If you subscribe to a lot of copywriting blogs, you may know already that Ray has just launched The Copywriting Academy – a video training course in the art, the science and the literary application of salesmanship in print.

The Copywriting Academy has eight modules which guide you from the basics to advanced topics towards the end. Each module is divided into multiple steps, each with a training video, course material downloads and assignments for putting your pages of scribbled notes into practice.

Topics include:

• Irresistible offers and 9 kinds
• 6 essential steps to writing an offer
• The P.A.S.T.O.R. framework
• Sales copy templates
• Writing headlines and subheads, with templates
• Fascination factors and persuasion points
• Resistance removal
• Closing the deal
• Inbox magic and emails that sell

The Secret Ingredient – Copywriting Templates

All of the modules on their own can train you to write winning websites and sales letters harnessing Ray’s time proven techniques.

But what really gives Ray’s course an added topping of special sauce, and sets it apart from other courses, is that you also get copywriting templates for writing headlines, leads, offers and every other element of a sales promotion.

These templates make the creation of sales letters as simple as filling in the gaps. All you need to do is choose from a selection of copy options for each element and update them with your product’s key information.

With everything done for you, you can write firecracking promotions without spending the hours of head scratching and pouring through books trying to cobble together all the elements youself. Perhaps keep this to yourself though, when it’s time to send the invoice for yet another high converting sales letter.

What I wish I could have told myself 10 years ago

When you combine all the videos, assignments and templates together, you get the complete package for fast tracking your successful evolution from novice to expert.

So if you’re just getting started as a freelance copywriter, take my advice – don’t try to teach everything to yourself. Get one-to-one tuition from a top dollar copywriter.

But if you don’t want to remortgage your house, Ray Edwards’ Copywriting Academy is the next best thing.

4 Reasons to join Ray’s Copywriting Academy

1. Gain tuition from a copywriter who’s written million dollar promotions for Jeff Walker, Michel Fortin and Tony Robbins.
2. Get fast-track templates that make crafting sales letters as simple as filling in the blanks
3. Gain a vice like grip on all the essential copywriting concepts without spending days or weeks piecing it all together yourself
4. Go from struggling newbie to earning a fulltime income in accelerated time

Disclaimer – Hands up, I’m an affiliate of Ray Edwards’ Copywriting Academy. But if you’ve spent any time in the copywriting world, you’ll know that Ray is one of the most respected names in the game today (and does a great podcast too). Membership of the Copywriting Academy also comes with a 30 day money back guarantee as standard. So if it doesn’t live up to the hype, your money will be returned, no questions asked.

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Guest Post – 6 Secrets to Landing High-paying Clients (Without a Portfolio)

Finding clients is one of the toughest challenges we face as freelancers. You can try scratching out a living on freelance bidding sites. But if you’re serious about growing your income and career, client outreach must be one of your daily tasks.

But what’s the best way of doing it, so you don’t waste hours sending unread emails or leaving endless voice messages?

In this guest post Nick Daniel, whose written for Dr. Sears, Agora Publishing and the Healthy Back Institute, shares his strategies for signing up lucrative clients who’ll pay royalties on top of your five (or maybe even six) figure fee.

Better yet, throughout his post you’ll find links to his new book, The Wealthy Health Copywriter – How to Earn $13,000 for Every Sales Letter You Write, which you can [amazingly] download for free. I’ve read it from cover to cover, and I can vouch that you’d be crazy not to get your copy. If you’ve any dreams of joining the top table of million dollar copywriters and writing for the highest paying markets, Nick’s book provides a blueprint on how to do it.

Just imagine earning $13k per sales letter! You’ll never find projects like that on a freelance bidding site. Outreach to premium grade clients is the only way to get them.

Take it away Nick..

By Nick Daniel, Author of The Wealthy Health Copywriter

Imagine…

You’ve sent dozens of emails to prospective clients. A week has gone by. Your inbox hasn’t budged...

Or you’ve cold-called twenty creative directors…and they’ve all asked the same question…can you send me a couple of examples of your work…?

Problem is, you’re a rookie, and you don’t have any real, market-tested examples of your work…

All you have is that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach… a sense of failure and frustration…

You know in your bones you’re a great writer – but how do you make people sit up and notice?

I’ve been there. It’s the same Catch-22 mind-warp every rookie faces…

How the heck do you get clients…if you don’t have any clients…?!

In my first few months of freelance copywriting, I was caught in the same nail-biting dilemma…

…until I hit on a strategy that actually worked…and landed me my first big client…

Today, I’m working for top clients in the health industry, including Agora Publishing, Dr. Sears (Primal Force) and the Healthy Back Institute.

(You can get a free copy of Nick’s book, The Wealthy Health Copywriter here)

Here’s how it worked for me…

1. Get the “Lucky to Have Me” Mindset

First of, it’s about shifting from the please-choose-me mindset to the you’d-be-lucky-to-have-me mindset.. 

Not only is this smarter (as I’ll explain in a moment) – but as a rookie copywriter, it boosts your psychological power.

It gives you the strength to go out and grab what you deserve…what’s rightfully yours… instead of waiting for the call that may never come…

It’s an attitude that should fill your emails, cold-calls and every other communication with prospective clients.

2. Pick a niche, and become an expert…

The second step is to pick a niche, and become really great at it.

Prospective clients are much more likely to take interest if you’re exclusive to a niche. Why? Because it means you take their business more seriously. It means you’re an expert, not a generalist.

It means you love the business they’re in, and you care.

I chose the alternative health industry. Within that industry, I chose to write long-form sales letters. Nothing else. No print ads, brochures or landing pages.

I chose long-form sales letters. For alternative health companies. Period.

And I made myself an expert. I read every book, watched every documentary, interviewed every big name. I built a copywriting website and filled it with related articles about sales letters and alternative health.

It was a start. It helped establish me as an expert. It helped define my niche in the eyes of prospects.

But it only really came into play when I implemented the next two steps…

3. Choose Your Prospects – Don’t Let Them Choose You

Early on, I made a common rookie mistake. I spread the net too wide…

Meaning, I sent hundreds of emails, and made hundreds of cold-calls, to hundreds of prospective clients.

I thought that by increasing the number of prospects, and marketing to all of them, this would somehow increase the response rate.

But I was dead wrong. As any savvy marketer will tell you – the exact opposite is true.

I quickly learned that 80% of the companies I was writing to (or cold-calling) were mis-fits. Some of them were too small, and had too few products. Others weren’t ready for a new freelancer.

There were a ton of reasons why we weren’t a good fit.

What a waste of time! I’d spend a whole week finding these companies, and sending over 150 emails. And I’d get absolutely nothing back…

So what did I do? I reversed my strategy.

First, I sat down and wrote an ‘ideal client profile’ – a description, in fine detail, of the kind of client I would love to work with.

It looked something like this:

My ideal client is a supplement-maker relying mainly on direct mail sales letters to sell product. They should be marketing at least 20 products. They should have a slightly anti-establishment approach to the alternative health market, and their products should be backed by a panel of experts (doctors and nutritionists). They should have anywhere between 250 and 1,000 employees.

Next, I made a list of the top 10 companies who fit this exact description. And I started marketing exclusively to them.

The first time I did this, I got a 60% response rate. Compared to a 4% response rate when I sent out those 150 emails.

I share much more about these strategies in my book, The Wealthy Health Copywriter...

What’s crazy about this is that, in the last 5 years, I’ve only marketed my copywriting services to 15 companies. Ten of those companies are now repeat clients. (I’m still working on the other 5…).

But to get this response rate, first I had to find ways to make these prospects sit up and listen…

4. Sneaky Stealth Marketing

The first step was to engage in some sneaky stealth marketing.

To do this, I found my prospects on LinkedIn or Facebook – or even got their email address by searching online. I connected with them.  And then I sent them a trickle of information – articles, industry updates, links to my website, tips about hiring freelancers…

The aim was to get them to notice me – nothing more. I wanted them to see my name, and get a sense of what I was all about. Everything I sent them was strictly related to my niche.

5. Communicate Personally with the Prospect…

But to get that 60% response rate, I needed to go further.

I needed to communicate with each prospect on a personal level. I wasn’t going to simply ask for work. I was going to share something I knew about them…something they needed…a problem they faced, that only I could solve.

Put simply, my marketing strategy was to communicate in a personal way with each prospective client…and offer them something they sorely needed…over and over again.

To achieve this, I found out everything I could about the company. I analyzed their marketing materials. I examined – and in some cases used – their products. I found out about personnel changes in the company. I learned about new products coming onto the market.

And then I used this information as bait.

For example, if a recent promotion hadn’t done well (or looked like it needed improvement), I offered to improve it…

If a new product was about to come out, I offered to write a headline and lead on spec…

If there was a new creative director, and he needed to get up and running quickly, I offered to make his life easier by sending him a new headline and lead in record time…

This is what I mean about the you’d-be-lucky-to-have-me mindset. It’s all about offering value to the client, and making yourself indispensable…

I made sure to mention these insights in my email messages. I made sure to follow the rules of great subject lines. I made sure to follow the rules of great sales letters, like providing an urgent call to action and a P.S.

And sure enough, out of that 60% response rate – from just 10 emails – I had two clients asking me to write a headline and lead on spec.

When I turned them in, they were both accepted. I completed both promotions, and they both beat the control.

6. All it takes is ONE.

There’s no doubt about it – getting my first big client was tough. It took all these strategies – repeated many times – to make it happen.

But here’s the thing: all it takes is ONE…

All it takes is one big client. If your copy does well, you can leverage that client into getting you all the work you need, for the rest of your life.

If you’re working in the direct mail industry, it’s all about results – and using those results to persuade your next big client to hire you.

So when I did my second big marketing push – back to those same 10 prospects (actually it was 9, because by now I was already working for one of them) – I was able to say:

“My latest project beat the control by 15% and generated $300,000 in the first three months…”

Bang! That was all I needed…to have three more big clients asking for my services.

In other words, once you’ve landed your first client, things can start happening very fast...

Nick Daniel works for top clients including Dr. Sears, Agora Publishing and the Healthy Back Institute. You can get a FREE copy of his latest book, The Wealthy Health Copywriter, here: http://ift.tt/1FUDUr3

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Frustrated Fiction Writer? Unleash Your Creative Talents with ‘Mash Stories’

 

Like many of us in the copywriting trade, my journey towards this profession began in creative writing classes at school. Crafting stories every week was a rare opportunity to cut loose on something I actually enjoyed.

If, like me, you still have a fiction itch to scratch, I recommend checking out Mash Stories.

They run a free to enter 500 word short story competition with the prize of having your story turned into a podcast and your brief epic shared with all the other ‘Mashers’.

The beauty of Mash Stories is that you have to include three keywords in your story, thus cutting back on the hours otherwise spent devising a story within limitless boundaries.

In the current competition, the keywords you have to include are: carpenter, taxes and vinegar. So if you can think of a clever way of welding (or mashing) them together, why not give Mash Stories a try?

Want to be a fiction writer? Start growing your audience and write 6 books first

I’ve been in Berlin this summer on a working holiday, of sorts. Along with ticking off all the history walks, I’ve been attending workshops (run by the founder of Mash Stories) on how to become a fiction writer.

What I learned was that the days of handing a manuscript to a publisher and waiting for the cash to roll in are truly over. You now have to do all the promotion yourself. This means growing your following, building an email list, managing multiple social media channels, reaching out to influencers etc.

In fact , everything on the ‘to do’ list of today’s content marketer.

So if you ever want to make the jump into fiction, start working on your content marketing skills and growing your following first.

You should also write at least six books before you even think about publishing. The first two will probably be rubbish and you need a back catalogue to upsell if you want to make any money.

Think I’ll stick to copywriting for now.

from The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose http://ift.tt/1FhZ427
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47 Elite Email Marketing Tips – Strategies to Earn $44 for Every $1 Spent

Forget the mobile and social media hype. Email is the sales powerhouse to focus your efforts on.

For every $1 spent $44.25 is the average return. With such a massive ROI, email marketing is the best way to convert leads and increase profits. It’s no wonder, 67% of marketers say that email is key for attracting and engaging prospects, and the best path to increasing marketing ROI.

But if you want to succeed, you can’t just blast out emails and expect results. You need a strategy.

Too many businesses use email in a haphazard fashion, with no clear idea on what to write, who to and how to get people responding. Even worse, most don’t collect email addresses at all. For this reason, they are losing money every single day from not having a smart, automated way of following up on leads, engaging with previous customers and promoting the benefits of their product.

The lack of an email marketing strategy means that, according to Adestra, only an elite 25% of marketers get ‘excellent’ results from email. With the right tactics, you can join them.

The 47 email marketing strategies in this report will help you to:

• Grow your list intelligently
• Enhance deliverability
• Write magnetic subject lines that draw in readers
• Create motivating email series that inform, seduce and convince
• Harness classic copywriting techniques to eliminate objections and trigger action
• Best practices for selling with lead magnets, trip wires and profit maximizers
• E-commerce tricks to increase the lifetime value of every customer

This is just for starters.

In fact, my report gives you all the parts you need to build your own email marketing powerhouse and to make bigger profits from the simple act of regularly contacting your customers.

I’ve given you the blueprint. Now use it to make money for your business.

Click on the image to download your copy:

from The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose http://ift.tt/1TZr9wg
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Homer Simpson, Donald Trump and Marketers Rattling Cages

To the uninformed, The Simpsons is a kids’ cartoon.

To those that know better, it’s been one of the best satirical programmes for decades, shining a mirthy light on what’s ridiculous or plain wrong with modern society.

In one episode Homer successfully runs for Sanitation Manager. He do so while ‘rattling cages’, bucking the trend and bringing straight talk to the cosy world of sanitation politics.

He wasn’t afraid to break some eggs or to prickle some egos. Nor was he about to apologize for doing so.

Oh, how the Simpsons’ writing team must chuckle watching Donald Trump’s megalomaniac like march in the polls.

While the wheels seem close to falling off (only to be abrasively hammered back in again), his refusal to tow the line has struck a cord with disenfranchised voters. It’s clear there are millions of people fed up of hearing political sound bites with no substance (not that I’m advocating any of his views).

What cages can you rattle?

Perhaps there is something marketers can learn from Homer and Mr Trump’s success?

With more content being posted and Tweeted about than ever before, audiences are overloaded with stuff to read. They have no time for mediocre.

If you’re not getting much traction or any bounce in the metrics, perhaps it’s time to consider what topics you can stamp your feet about and unleash some brimstone.

What topics can you take a stand on? What forth wall can you smash through, where others fear to knock?

Take a stand. Don’t just be a voice in the crowd

Like politics, people are tired of reading blog posts, articles and white papers which are just a rehash of other opinions and wishy washy in offering actionable conclusions.

Give them something to get excited about.

Take a leaf from Homer (if not Donald’s) book, and think what cages you can rattle that will get your audience’s attention and rushing to pledge their support.

from The Copywriter's Crucible - A Melting Pot of Punchy, Persuasive Copywriting by Freelance Copywriter Matt Ambrose http://ift.tt/1MkieVj
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