Email Advertising - How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer Ad
© Copyright 2005 Charlie Cory
I recently undertook an email advertising promotion,
using a number of advertising media. The exercise
involved a program of mine called the Magical Marketing
system.
As an email advertising Internet marketing exercise, I
decided that I wanted to approach the members of some
of the affiliate programs that are featured in Magical
Marketing, and offer their members the chance to join
this system, and reap the benefit of the multiple
promotion methods that it employs.
And, as an email advertising marketing exercise, this has
worked very well, and whilst an interesting exercise in
Joint Venture Marketing in itself, it has produced a result
so remarkable in my eyes, that I felt it worthy of a report.
With one particular featured program, I did a multiple ad
test, to see what the comparison between three ads. It
was the results of this that struck me, and prompted me
to put this article together.
The three ads, which were very similar. This is good of
course, because it means that any variance in the results
can be explained in relatively few ways. So there are two
points that need to be made about these ads, which may
affect your thinking about how you write your own ads.
1. Use Of Variables in Headlines
I don't know about you, but I am always hearing that
using someone's name in an advert can make a
significant difference to the effect of that advert. Not all
programs have this kind of facility though. It just happens
the program that I ran the adverts with does, so I made
use of it in the headlines for 2 of the 3 adverts, but not
for one of them. I have used the variable in the body of
all three ads, so some personalisation took place in all
cases.
2. Bulleted Benefits
Again, all the books and articles that I have ever read tell
you to spell out the benefits, and a lot of them tell you to
bullet them to add emphasis. So, I have done this with all
three adverts, but with a difference between ads 1,and 2
and 3. In the first advert, I just made single word
references to the benefits, in the other two, I elaborated
in order to explain the benefit better.
3. Conclusions
The results are so striking, that they are worthy of
comment.
The ads were placed from 12th December 2004 to 18h
January 2005. So, the time span is about a month, but, I
use the program in question to send other ads out too.
About every 3rd day, I will send one of these three ads,
in rotation. So, each of the ads would have been sent
about every 6 days or so.
Advert 1 pulled in 70 unique hits, with 19 action hits. The
latter is where prospects followed through to the sign up
page.
Advert 2 pulled 5 unique hits and 1 action hit.
Advert 3 pulled 4 unique hits and no action hits.
Headlines
I have always advocated trying to keep headlines short,
especially where email adverts are concerned. You only
have the width of the email pane to enter your message,
so you must tell your story within a few words.
I don't consider any of the Headlines that I have used to
be excessively long. However, the first advert is very
short, and perhaps that accounts in part for the huge
number of additional clicks for the first advert?
In part, I believe that this is true.
However, I am now thinking that perhaps email
prospects have become wary of seeing their name in
emails from people that they don't really know. Think
about how you react when you see such an email?
Do you open it immediately, or do you become
suspicious?
Trust your gut feeling.
I have used the personalised approach in the body of the
email, and maybe the psychology here is that once
someone has opened an email, they have 'let you in' and
are more amenable to your being personal.
Headline conclusion
I am more convinced than ever that email headlines
should be short - as short as possible. I also recommend
that if you personalise the Headline, you stop, and test
your ads without it.
Bulleted Benefits
You can see that advert 1 has produced a massive
amount of additional click thru's over the other two ads.
Bearing in mind that each ad went out, probably every six
days, the first two ads are not far removed from the norm
with the program that I used. This makes the results
achieved by Advert 1 even more staggering.
The change in headline may go some way to explain this,
but the huge number of clicks tells me that something
much more significant has occurred.
Thankfully, the body of the three ads are very similar in
all aspects, except one; the bulleted benefits. In the first
ad, I have given one word answers. In the other two, I
have elaborated.
Bulleted benefits conclusion
One cannot escape the fact that keeping the benefits so
short has had an impact. And not only in click thru's
either. If you look at the graphic under 'Actions' column,
you will see that I have tracked the prospect through to
the signup page. You might expect that the 20%
conversion rate be the same, but it isn't, it has increased
to around 28%. So the shorter bullet points have also
pre-sold more effectively, so the prospects likelihood of
signing up has increased as well.
As a final note, please remember that all of this is
courtesy of tracking my ads. If you don't do it, then you
will struggle to make an impact in the marketing world.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Charlie Cory
|
