Who Is Elmer Wheeler… and How Can He Boost Your Response Rate?
The year was 1937… The Great Depression was still taking a heavy toll. Prices and profits were low… international trade was down by two-thirds… millions stood in line for jobs that didn’t exist. But not everyone was suffering. A young man by the name of Elmer Wheeler was paid $5,000…
READ MOREShould You Write a Book?
To promote herself and her business, JL wants to write a book. But she isn’t quite sure how to get her book into print. “It feels like getting a book published is challenging,” she writes. “Would it not be easier to self-publish?” Others have asked me the same question over…
READ MORETT Fat Loss Success Story of the Month – September 2009
Each month I like to give out at least one Platinum TT membership to the TT user who provides the best fat loss success story…and this month, one of our winners is Darren Oldfield from the UK. Darren wins a 1-Year Platinum TT membership, but more importantly, he has some…
READ MOREConstant change
David Carradine. Ed McMahon. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson. Billy Mays. Karl Malden. Steve McNair. The Grim Reaper is on a roll. What might the deaths of these high-profile people have in common with the likes of Gary Hart, Gary Condit, Jim McGreevey, Mark Sanford, and John Edwards, among others? Or…
READ MORELearn direct marketing now or perish
The other day I saw an ad one of my clients had posted on the Internet. The copy was weak. It lacked an “Aha!” idea. It was balanced on two rather than four legs. Its lead was wrongheaded, it had insufficient substantiation, and no social proof. I mentioned this to…
READ MOREWhy testimonials work so well
What do you do if your prospect knows nothing about you, as is often the case? How can you sway or “nudge” their thinking about your business, products, or services? You do it by including plenty of testimonials in your marketing materials. Testimonials overcome a prospect’s skepticism (“Who the heck…
READ MOREWords About Words
In this column, I routinely use words that describe aspects of language. But these terms are often misunderstood and confused. Here’s a brief guide, followed by a few tips to improve your writing.
READ MOREThe literature of truth
According to Dr. Jon D. Miller, Director of the Center for Biomedical Communications, the number of scientifically literate adults in the U.S. has doubled over the past 20 years. The bad news? That only gets us up to 20 percent. Only 48 percent of Americans know that humans didn’t live…
READ MOREA Gaggle of Gaffes
Mistakes can be a good thing. They teach us what to avoid. The trick, though, is to learn by observing others make them. With that goal in mind, here’s another roundup of misspellings, misunderstandings, and other misuses — all found via Internet search, but equally frequent in print: “I just…
READ MOREPut your profits on autopilot
If you’re an Internet marketer and you’re not taking advantage of autoresponders to accelerate your profits, listen up. (And if you are, listen up anyway. Because I have a few tricks up my sleeve for you.)
Fact is, a well-written follow-up e-mail series delivered to your prospects via autoresponder can make a huge difference …
It can bring boatloads of potential buyers back to your sales pages faster and easier than just about anything else.
I’ve seen conversion rates double … triple …
READ MOREI reject your reality and choose to substitute my own
I was down at our new “getaway” digs over Labor Day. It’s a great place. Just outside of Atlanta and two hours from our North Carolina home. We bought it a few months ago so we could spend more time with my two older kids and three grandkids. They live…
READ MOREHeisting hall of fame headlines
Old-time copywriters like yours truly enjoy a walk down Memory Lane now and then. We do it for fun, but it can be profitable too. I’m talking about rereading the best-known direct-marketing ads of the past. Copy written by such luminaries as Gene Schwartz, Claude Hopkins, and John E. Kennedy.…
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