Mellisa hates her fax machine. She is a slave to it . Every time her boss sets up a training seminar, the faxes starts coming in and she can't read the hand written registrations. She enters each data hoping that they are correct into an excel spreadsheet.

Bob hates the excel spreadheet because his job is to make sure all payment for the seminars is logged correctly as the cheques comes in. And that darn Melissa keeps sending him a new spread sheet every 2 hours!

The Boss hates the mail man becuase he never seems to deliver the checks soon enough.

The Boss's Spouse hates The Boss, because s/he has to call everyone if the details of the seminar has changed.

If you are Melissa, Bob, The Boss or The Boss's Spouse please click here to see how PeopleLogic can solve this problem super easy.

Let's spread some love around.

Everyone needs a good ironing cactus right?

Write a new tagline, a new sales pitch and replace the cheesy blonde with your great ideas. Tell the world why they simply can't live without one of these snazzy domestic pick me ups.

Just submit your contribution and you could win win your very own Casaleonti Italian-made state-of-the-art ironing board.

Your entries will be judged by Eureka's editorial team as well as Casaleonti distributor in Australia. 3 finalists will be published in December issue of Eureka. Eureka readers will get to vote for the winning entries. One vote per subscriber. Show us your creative genius and you can be ironing over a hot cactus this christmas.

To enter the competition go here.

Not entering becuase you are not the creative type? Forward this opportunity to a friend.

You design your e-newsletter, you tie in your brand, and it’s all fancy and super sophisticated using the latest technology. What can go wrong?

Your brand can be hijacked!

Even the big players fall into this trap including one of NSW’s biggest member-based organisations, AMNR (name encrypted to keep you guessing).


Your carefully compiled newsletter is sent to someone’s inbox. Because all email is now permission based, the only reason you are allowed to send your newsletter is because your client trusts you.

But what happens once people start using your newsletter and start to follow it out of their inbox and on out to the web?

Your hope is that your brand and look and feel is carried on through the rest of their interaction with your e-newsletter.
But hope alone is not a strategy.

Go now to your newsletter or someone else’s.
Click on the unsubscribe link.

Look at the next page carefully. Does it still carry your branding, your URL, your domain name?
Click on subscribe, click on email forwarding…

A recent survey conducted by yours truly found that 65% of email newsletters (yup an astounding number) lose their branding at this point and present instead the brand of their technology provider.

It such a shame! Not only do you lose your branding (when you are paying good money) but you are confusing your customers right at the moment they are wanting to trust you the most, just at the moment they are subscribing to your newsletter or referring you to friends.

As a newsletter reader it looks like you are providing details not to you anymore but a third party.

Shock! Horror!

Perception is everything. I would do a double take and worry about submitting my personal information under these conditions. Wouldn’t you do the same?

What’s more, if you’re like most people you’d be happy to improve those conversions a few percentage points on each e-newsletter. Well what if there was a way to double or triple the number of conversions you receive?

Impossible!

But there is way and the secret is to vastly improve your ability to test e-newsletter elements efficiently and effectively. The way to do that is Taghuchi design.

As a case study let’s consider putting a sales panel in your next e-newsletter to promote a new product or service. In trying to maximise conversions you have lots of options that you could test. For example, you could test different subject lines, panel on left or right, top or bottom of newsletter, different panel headline, different panel images and different features promoted.

The testing that direct marketers would traditionally have performed would be based on split mailings. That is, they would create a different test panel for each version of each option. Then send each different test panel to a different test cell before finally comparing results and selecting the best for the final mail-out.

The trouble with this approach is that the number of different test panels needed rapidly gets out of hand. Even for this simple case, if we assume two versions of each option, we need to create 64 (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2) test panels and have 64 test group cells. Even if you have enough test groups available, the time and effort to coordinate the process is very high.

Enter a new, old, approach. For many years engineers have had similar issues when trying to optimize manufacturing processes. For instance, what is the best combination of speed, pressure and temperature to achieve a specific thickness of metal coming out of a rolling machine? Rather than testing all of the possible combinations, engineers often use an approach called Taguchi design were you only test a few, carefully selected, versions and combinations. Using the results from these tests you can determine the best combination of all the versions of all the factors.

In our example that means rather than needing 64 test groups and test panels you could get away with as few as eight. Where’s the catch I hear you ask – well it has to do with the interaction of options. With just a few test cells you don’t get very much information on how headlines interact with locating the box on the left or the right. In many marketing cases the interactions between options is minimal so it is often not an issue.

On the upside, using Taguchi designs means you can substantially reduce the cost and complexity in testing a variety of marketing initiatives. Suddenly a test that appeared impossible (we just don’t have enough recipients to test 64 groups) becomes quite possible.

The other advantage of using this approach is that in the process of determining the optimal mix you also collect information on which options impact have the largest impact on the conversion process. In the next campaign you can then focus your time and effort on getting the few important options correct and not worry about those that have minimal impact on the conversion rate.

Because of the speed and ease with which promotional elements can be changed this approach has many applications the e-marketing world. Taghuchi can effectively be applied to web site conversion optimization, banner advertisements, email campaigns, pay per click (PPC – e.g. Google Adwords campaigns) advertising and e-newsletters, as discussed here.

When used effectively the results from this approach can be enormous. For instance one campaign for a major technology vendor resulted in 5.3 times the number of e-newsletter openings and 7.1 times the number of sales as the non-optimized newsletter. Used in a customer survey environment for a consumer product the best combination of options garnered 3.5 times as many responses as the worst combination.

So ask yourself: what would doubling the response rate for your next sales focused e-newsletter mean and think about whether you too should be using Taguchi designs.

Long sales letters DO work and it's statistically proven by many direct mail marketers and many Internet Marketers. A huge debate rages on about what really works.

The truth of the matter is that both long and short copy work, but you have to keep these three things in mind:

1. The audience
2. The platform
3. The product

In direct mail sales letters, the long copy works, because the company only has one chance to grab your attention. You're either interested in the subject, which is why you WILL read the whole letter, or you’re not, which is why you WON’T read the letter. The audience, the platform and the product matters here.

Example: Did any of you receive the Michael Masterson letter about AWAI in the mail? AWAI targeted writers from major databases and generated such a flood of responses that they are experiencing growth pains. The letter was over 12+ pages long and I read it from beginning to end. Why? Because I was interested. This is a case where the product matched the audience and they used a platform (snail mail) to contact me, which means I didn't have to go looking for them. As a result, I now work for AWAI.

On the Internet, again, long sales copy works. Most people claim they hate long sales copy on the Internet, but what they fail to recognize is that they read it all the time. Most of the cons against long sales copy online refer to the “hype” of it. The truth is, you read long sales copy online every day. And yes, you even read short sales copy online and it works too. Again, the audience, the platform and the product makes a huge difference. Let’s look at the long and short of it.

The adult and the "how-to-make-money-on-the-Internet" industries are the top two industries making money via the Internet. They have been for years.

Successful Short Copy Example: The adult industry. They don't use long sales copy. Why? Because the audience wants visuals and graphics. The platform doesn't matter. Ever seen Playboy/girl magazines? More pictures and graphics. Here, the PRODUCT and the AUDIENCE matters.

Successful Long Copy Example: Making-Money-on-the-Internet industry. They do use long sales copy, very, very successfully. Why? The AUDIENCE. People who purchase from the "get-rich-quick" marketers on the Internet typically "like" they hype and sales pitch. They emotionally "like" being "sold to." Does this fit every single person on the Internet looking to make money? Absolutely not. Does this model fit a huge percentage? I'd say at least 50%.

The only reason you see this type of "hypey" sales letter on the Internet so often is because you are looking to make money on the Internet. If you had never been looking to make money on the Internet, you never would have seen these types of “hyped-up” letters. So, these marketers were hoping you were one of the 50%. Hey, 50/50 odds are good, aren't they? They must be.

But, to shift the focus to some other innocuous industry... let's say you want to buy some software.

Another Successful Long Copy Example: Let’s say you find software A in your local computer store and it costs $299. You've seen commercials about it, you've talked to people about it - and you've probably done an Internet search for it and read everything you could about it.

Now, let's say you've been "hearing" about software B, but you can only purchase it online. It does everything software A does, but it has more features, prevents crashes and it comes with other free software AND it's cheaper. Of course, you may want to talk to some people about it. Get their opinions. Right?

Guess what? If you visit the online page for software B, they have this big long sales letter. And you know what? Because you're INTERESTED in it, and you're considering pulling out your WALLET to purchase it, you're going to read everything on that page and dig deeper. You'll read the reviews, you'll read the FAQ's, you'll read the features, you'll read the pitch, you'll read the privacy and terms page sometimes! Why? Because you want to know every single detail about that piece of software you can.

Was the sales copy long or hypey? No, probably not. But, did you read a lot? Absolutely!

Either way, if you went with Software A or Software B, the commercials, the personal reviews, the online reviews, the FAQ's, the magazine ads - all of it - conspired to "get you to buy it." All in all, you probably read a lot before you reached the point where you were willing to part with $299 or perhaps less.

So, is there one true answer to whether or not short copy or long copy works? Of course not. It all depends on the audience, the platform and the product.

For those interested, our last eureka poll shows an overwhelming 83% favoring short copy.