Posted on September 23rd, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
You don’t need an opt-in to email B2B
There’s a lot of confusion about the permissions needed for email marketing. Let’s put the matter to bed.
The rules about email marketing to businesses and consumers are as follows:
Email marketing - business to consumer
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Unless you’re comfortable being a despised purveyor of spam, you need to get individual consumers’ permission - or opt in - before you can legitimately email them.
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This remains the case even when you’ve got an existing or previous relationship with the consumer, for example if they’ve bought from you before.
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Even if you’ve got their permission, you must give consumers the opportunity to opt out of future emails every time you contact them.
Email marketing - business to business
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If you’re emailing B2B you don’t need to get permission first. It is perfectly OK for your business to email offers to other businesses on a ’cold’ basis.
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But it is good manners - and best marketing practice - to always offer an opt out.
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A grey area can come into play when businesses email Sole Traders, because a sole trader’s business email address might also be their personal email address. If in doubt, strip them out of your mailing list.
Whether you’re emailing consumers or businesses, you need to abide by two simple rules:
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You must clearly identify commercial communications as such
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You must give details of the steps someone needs to take to make a contract with you. If your copywriter’s doing their stuff properly, they’ll cover this in the call to action.
For full details see the Goverment’s Distance Selling Regulations and the EU’s Electronic Commerce Regulations.
Posted on September 22nd, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
‘Breakfasts served here’ announces the chalkboard outside the Downs Hotel, somewhat grimly. Hm. Not exactly inspiring.
Even when you’ve only got space for three words, it is worth taking care over them.
‘Breakfasts’ is a useful word. But ’served’ is superfluous; it goes without saying that they’ll serve it to you. And the word ‘here’ is pretty pointless too. Where else would they serve your breakfast… on the moon?
Here’s a few examples of how to inspire people to buy a gut buster, using just three words:
I’d wager that any of the above would out-perform ‘breakfasts served here’ and increase the hotel’s breakfast revenue.
The lesson: waste not, want not. Squeeze every scrap of value out of limited advertising and marketing space and your business will feel the benefit.
Posted on September 17th, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
Help your readers get exactly what they want out of your blog posts using simple design principles.
Why bother?
A well laid out blog post delivers your message powerfully and logically, and readers get the most out of it.
Here’s a few sensible blog post layout tips
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Use a bold header to make it 100% clear where the post starts and what it is about. Think newspaper headlines
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Use bold subheads to separate your story into bite-sized, logical chunks. This makes it easy for readers to gauge whether they want to read the post in detail
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Use short paragraphs. Long, dense paragraphs look daunting and can put people off as well as being hard to read on screen
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Use a relevant image to give your post immediate visual appeal
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Use bullet points and lists for extra clarity and reader convenience
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Don’t be scared of space. Leaving plenty of space arond headers and paragraphs makes posts easier to read
Posted on September 16th, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
If you’re an alumnus, exchange SEM Karma with your Alumni organisation!
For reasons I won’t go into here, university and college websites are often awarded a very high ‘page rank’ by search engines. This means they’re considered authoritative and credible.
On a scale of 1-10, one is a poor page rank while ten is superb. Many education establishments have a page rank of 6 or 7 which - in the scheme of things - is pretty nifty.
If you can get a link back to your website from a university or college site, it’ll give your site’s visibility a valuable boost. Put simply, you’ll bask in their reflected glory!
Many colleges, universities and further education establishments offer discounted products and services to alumni. If you’re prepared to give your fellow ex-students a discount, join your alumni organisation and submit a link for their approval.
Everyone wins. Ex-students get a useful discount, the Alumni organisation thrives and your business gets some truly excellent online exposure… good karma all round!
Posted on September 9th, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
Save website visitors a few microseconds and reap the rewards
The easier and faster you can make the process of finding information, the more likely website visitors are to stay longer and convert to customers. Which is why it’s a good idea to include a call to action on every web page.
But what is a call to action? Simple. It’s an instruction. Strong, timely calls to action tell your website visitors what to do next, so they don’t have to figure it out for themselves. Here are some examples.
Get in touch
Interested? Then let’s talk. Call on 01273 XXXXXX or email me for a friendly, intelligent discussion about how freelance copywriting will support your business’s growth.
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Getting the most out of calls to action
A handful of tips to ensure calls to action earn their keep:
- Make them easy to spot - give calls to action their own headers
- Make them short and snappy
- Include one prominently on every page of your website
- Tailor calls to action to the contents of each page
- If your page is long, place your call to action towards the top so it is visible in the upper half of your site
- Make sure it sits comfortably within the copy
- If your page is two or more full screens long, add another call to action at the bottom (and think about shortening your copy… but that’s another story!)
Posted on September 8th, 2008 in copywriting and marketing with Comments Off
…Or they’ll get bored and go away!
Online, everyone’s short of time. They expect to find key information instantly.
Copywriting for online projects is about getting your message across clearly, quickly, simply and elegantly. It isn’t about being mysterious and enigmatic.
Make it clear what you do in the main header of your website’s index page. Then repeat yourself in the first sentence to make sure your message is driven home.
Here’s an example.
Freelance copywriting
I’m Kate Naylor. I’m a freelance copywriter and editor with twenty years’ experience in direct marketing. My work is commercially powerful as well as entertaining and informative. And I have a keen appreciation of writing for SEO.
There’s a second advantage to structuring your index page copy like this. It means you give search engines lots of good, relevant words and terms to grab onto early in your page. Which will help them classify and rank your site accurately.
