The Conversion Scientist™

Science by Email

Relate to Four, Connect with Thousands

December 9, 2008 on 8:43 am | In Developing Personas, Effective Copy, Humanist | 1 Comment

You can connect with thousands of visitors to your site by understanding only four of them.

Communicating is connecting. If you’re communicating successfully, each of your readers will feel that you are writing directly to them.

I’m going to introduce you to a method of writing that will forge strong connections with your readers.

You will understand your readers when you understand the four “Modes of Persuasion.” Every visitor fits into one of four modes, and, as will see, each mode describes a different way of connecting. If you can master each of these modes, you can effectively draw anyone closer with your words.

 
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The Four Modes of Persuasion

Each of your visitors will come in one of four modes: Competitive, Methodical, Humanist, or Spontaneous.

COMPETITIVE visitors are looking for information that will make them better, smarter or more cutting-edge. Use benefit statements and payoffs in your headings to draw then into your content.

METHODICALS like data and details. Include specifics and proof in your writing to connect with them.

HUMANISTS want information that supports their relationships. They will relate to your writing if you share the human element in your topic.

SPONTANEOUS visitors are the least patient. They need to know what’s in it for them and may not read your entire story. Provide short headings for them to scan so that they can get to the points that ore important to them.

When you understand that every visitor consumes information differently, you can build empathy with more of your readers. In time, your content will appeal to a wider audience making your Web site more enjoyable and accessible.

We’ll be talking more about the four Modes of Persuasion and how this knowledge can be applied to your Web site at The Conversion Scientist. Don’t miss a post.

You can learn more about these four Modes of Persuasion in the book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? by Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

Photo courtesy konr4d via stock.xchng.

Science by Email

Zero Steps to Copy That Will Make Visitors Stick

December 3, 2008 on 4:13 pm | In Audio Available, Competitive, Effective Copy | 1 Comment

A good writer can create images better than a graphic designer.

Whenever we design a Web site, we inevitably ask our graphic designers to give us three comps. Then we, the completely unqualified non-graphic-designers decide which one we “like” best. We might even ask a number of our equally unqualified colleagues to tell us what they think.

Then we pay a copywriter a fraction of what the designers get, and ask them to write the copy for the site, knowing full-well that when we get it, we’ll revise it until every ounce of color, every animating metaphor, and every shred of a story is squeezed out onto the ground in a pool of red ink.

A good writer can create images and convey meaning better than a graphic artist because the writer has the richer toolset. Put down your red pen. Trust your copywriter.

 
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Be Bold and Your Visitors Will See You That Way

If you’re designing a new site or refreshing an old one, it’s time to be a little daring.

Tell the designers to hold on until you’ve completed the copy. They’ll look at you like you have an arm growing out of your head.

THEN, start interviewing copywriters. Tell them that you’ll pay them to develop three different versions of your Copy Body, the document that contains the text from which you will take your copy when writing headings, text, offers, emails and any other Web-based communications.

The interviews will be short. You’re looking for a certain reaction.

When you present this proposal to the right writer, their eyes will flash. A smile may creep across their face of its own will. Be careful, though. If they say “You’ll pay me?” you’ve gotten a false positive. You want to choose the writer who feels that you’ve just opened the door their a cage of mediocrity.

If you let them out, they’ll take you with them.

Be very clear about what you’re trying to accomplish as a business and what your visitors are trying to accomplish. Give them a set of personas if you can.

Take No Steps

Once you have your three copy “comps,” do not allocate time to have the writing revised by a committee. Do not attempt to combine the best from each. Do not seek to insert superlatives that declare you the “leader,” to be “unique” or “innovative.” If you have to say it, it ain’t true.

If you have the right writer, one of your choices will be far out, one will be written in business speak, and one will be somewhere in between. Throw away the one written in business speak and consider the remaining two very carefully.

Select the copy body that best illustrates your value proposition, the one that captures the essence of your company without stating it. Look for metaphors that can be applied to a variety of your benefits. Seek a story that can stitch every page together into a coherent theme.

Then fix the inaccuracies, and leave everything else alone.

Does this sound scary? Wait till you see what’s next.

You Can Let the Designers Into the Room Now

If you’ve selected an engaging copy body, it’ll be really clear to the designers what their designs should express. They can create real images from the ones your writer paints with words. They can guide your visitor through the story with navigation. They can throw away stock photos of pretty people and choose images informed by metaphor and analogy.

Give them the copy body, the corporate style guide and tell them to create a design. One design. Sure, you’ll make decisions along the way and maybe even significantly change the first comp, but try to let them do what they do well.

Steps You Could Add

If you realize the immense advantage that powerfully written copy gives you, consider investing in some testing. Implement two of the three copy bodies on your home page and on key landing pages. Use analytics to see which makes visitors stick and which generates more leads or sales.

• Which has the lower bounce rate?
• Which home page generates more page views and more time on site?
• Which has the higher conversion rate?

There is no better way to know if you’ve made the right decision than to test. And you may need some proof when your colleagues tell you that your copy isn’t “corporate” — and they mean that as a criticism, not a badge of honor.

Do you know a great copy writer? Do you have a success story or test results that demonstrate the power of effective writing? Let us know in your comments and I’ll feature you in an future post.

UPDATE

I’ve challenged copywriters to put together the very process that I’ve described here over on my Customer Chaos Blog. Would you like to work with one of these guys?

Photo courtesy andrewcs via stock.xchng.

Science by Email

Six E-mail Mistakes that Bassett Furniture Used to Piss Me Off

December 2, 2008 on 9:55 am | In Email Marketing | 4 Comments

Are Bassett’s products as bad as their e-mail?

I’ve gotten three e-mails from Bassett Furniture this week. I did not opt-in for this communication. And, to top it off, the e-mail address they sent to is used in one place: my kids’ elementary school. It’s the address I expect to get information from my kids’ school. This sort of thing disgusts me enough to blog about it.

Will you vote for this on Digg and Sphinn? They need to get the message. You can do so at the bottom of this post by clicking on “Share.”

We Know How this Happened

This is probably more common in the tough market that retailers are currently facing. Some executive says, “We’ve got to get more sales. Use e-mail.” The underlings say, “But, we don’t have a database of e-mails because you didn’t approve that program last year.”

The execs don’t want to hear it. They’ve got a bonus to worry about. So, the underlings go out and buy a list from a list broker. This list was probably presented to them as a list of opt-in email addresses. List providers lie knowing that they can always hide behind the “we were told it was opt-in” excuse.

Bassett, this is not an opt-in list. It was scrapped from an elementary school Web site in Round Rock, Texas. You may get away with infringing on my privacy, but stay away from my kids.

Dear Bassett, in a down market, take market share away from your competitors, don’t give it away.

Poorly Executed to Boot

Once they’d found the list, the Bassett underlings asked, “what do we send?” Well, they didn’t spend much time on that question. They essentially scanned a print flyer and sent it on as one big image.

No introductory text

On my smart phone and in my email client, all you see is an email from Bassett Furniture and a URL.

This is what the email looks like in my e-mail preview pane.

With images turned off in my client, I got a big blank page. That’s their value proposition. “Big blank desperate spammer.”

There is no setup text to tell me why I would open it. Of course, I opened it because the address was scraped from the Web site of the school my elementary age kids attend.

No Value Proposition

Actually, “We’re Desperate” wouldn’t have been a bad value proposition. I would have responded to:

“We’re overstocked on the kind of furniture you’ve been wanting for your home, and we’re discounting to move it.”

No compelling call to action

If you allow your e-mail client to download the big stupid image, it says “Buy Online” at the top and bottom, and tells you when their sale ends. Most of the center is taken up with nine images of beds, tables and sofas with discounted prices. The never ask me to “Learn more” or “See more pictures.”

Not written in English

At the bottom of the page, below the big blank space you’ll find this lame — so lame — call to action: “Contact You Local Store for Details and other Special Offers. [sic]”

It makes you wonder what language this was translated from. “All your base are belong to us.”

The store finder is a nice feature and other retailers should steal this one shining feature of the site. Of course, Bassett fumbled the most important aspect of this effort: getting people to buy what they advertise.

Bad landing page

Given my horrid impression of Bassett from their e-mail, could they save themselves with an online experience that rocks? Nope.

The big graphic is a big link. No surprise. The page it takes me to has non of the products advertised in the email. In fact, it picks something at random  from their “CLEARANCE” tab. The featured item changes with each click.

So, the trail to a discounted item is lost within the first click, and I’m outta there.

The lawyers were consulted

To their credit, they did consult the lawyers. Their spam-mail is CAN SPAM compliant, with opt-out and mailing address.

What you should learn from this

1. Don’t buy lists. It’s too easy to generate your own, pure, powerful opt-in house list from your own Web site. You just have to be willing to put in the time.

2. Before you send an e-mail with a big image, consider plain text. It works better on phones and in e-mail clients where images are turned off (>50% by most accounts).

3. Give me a reason to open and read. Each email has a value proposition that is part of your business’s value proposition. State it. Clearly.

4. Take me to a page that has what you offer in your email. Whether it’s information or products, I have to see the same picture or the same text on the landing page. Never take me to your home page. Please.

5. Have someone review your copy, someone who knows English.

6. Follow the CAN SPAM rules. It’s the only reason I can’t report these idiots.

I’m not going to go into their subject line and From: address. It’s amazing that they even thought to include these.

I suspect Bassett’s marketing underlings will be fired for poor performance this Holiday Season. Maybe this post will save them.

For more rants and helpful tips on e-mail marketing, subscribe to The Conversion Scientist blog.