It wasn’t for lack of effort or sales success. In fact, as far as sales were concerned, it was a whopping success…

Shooting Fish In A Barrel

A couple of weeks after placing a few want ads, I had a dedicated and enthusiastic outside sales force- meeting and closing deals with business owners in the San Francisco bay area. I went out on appointments to close deals with restaurants, bakeries, martial arts schools, and other businesses.

It helped that we had a powerful selling point: the most emails in our database of any coupon marketing service, including Groupon.

My sales team and I were already talking about hiring more telemarketing agents to find leads and help us expand in to additional territories.

Despite the market being saturated by coupon marketing services, there seemed to be plenty of opportunities for everyone. Groupon was turning down clients they did not think would be very profitable… customers that had just run a campaign with them were barred from running another one too soon… and then there always those that felt manhandled by Groupon.

We even stole a few campaigns that Groupon was actively trying to close.

Of course, there were a few oddball customers like the chiropractor that insisted I “sample” his service- I ended up with a burning sensation in my spine that lasted two weeks. To add insult to injury (literally), he canceled the campaign for nebulous reasons. When I asked for a referral, he gave me the name of a “friend” who turned out to be a lawyer who’s trying to carve out a niche for himself by specializing in suing coupon marketing companies that promote health-related services.

Trouble In Coupon Marketing Paradise

The troubles started when the launch dates for our first campaigns kept getting pushed back for one small technical issue or another. It was always something related to sending the emails…

Imagine Daily Deals ended up investing tens of thousands of dollars in additional server hardware and software. Then they spent tens of thousands of dollars on email marketing advisory and technical services. But, no matter which way they turned or how much more money they invested, actually sending the emails remained an elusive goal.

One by one, my telemarketers and then my sales people stopped their sales efforts. Actually, once I sensed that something serious was happening in the “back office,” I let the team know and gave them the option of waiting for favourable news before investing more time in IDD. A few did continue to make sales for a couple of additional months before giving up.

A Slow, Lingering Death

IDD continued to try to resolve their email sending issues for another 6 to 8 months. Every now and then I would get a promise of “in just a few more weeks, we can send.”

It never happened.

Eventually, IDD acknowledged its final demise via a Skype message.

Final Thoughts

So, what caused IDD’s death?

Not being privy to the behind the scenes machinations, it’s hard to say. From what I could glean, and technical issues aside, it seems that there’s something of an old-boys network operating in the big leagues as far as email marketing is concerned.

It’s a jealously-guarded domain with many fiefdoms… Google, AOL, MSN, and many more- demanding their slices of the pie and placing as many barriers to entry as possible.

The Internet was once supposed to be a leveling ground where the small entrepreneur could compete on near-equal footing with the behemoths of industry. Today, it’s the behemoths that run things on the Internet… and they don’t like newcomers.

Find out how to master email marketing Without Getting In To Trouble With Your
Internet Service Provider, Your Customers, Or The SPAM Cops!

AdWords is a tricky beast to get right… from selecting the right keywords to properly structuring your account to setting up tracking and much more, there’s plenty for even an AdWords expert to get wrong.

Adwords Express promises to vastly simplify creating and running an AdWords campaign.

Getting started just takes 3 steps (I can just imagine the Google project leader saying “Make this so simple even a 4-year old could set it up… No more than 3 easy steps!”)

1. Choose an industry
2. Write an ad
3. Set your budget

Done!

No website? No problem! We’ll host a simple site for you.

Should You Try AdWords Express?

Sure, why not. Especially if you can take advantage of their free $100 free getting started incentive.

However, keep in mind that Google’s business model depends on getting you to spend as much as possible on ad clicks. Ads that get the most clicks aren’t necessarily the most profitable for you.

The only way to optimize your AdWords campaign so you only spend money on profitable clicks is to carefully manage your keywords, manually select ad placement, split-test your ads and landing pages, and vary your offer… not to mention monitoring for click fraud.

AdWords Express is not going to do all of that for you.

However, if you try it and it’s profitable for you or you break even, then take the next step and hire an AdWords expert to help you optimize your campaign.

Allow me to ask you a few simple questions about the golf market in your area.

• Has competition for players and members in your area become increasinglytougher in recent seasons?
• Are you SICK and TIRED of DISCOUNTS and FALLING membership FEES?
• Are you frustrated with your club’s LACK of marketing success?
• Do you find it difficult to hire, train and motivate key employees to perform above and beyond the call of duty?
• Are you secretly wondering how you’re going to drive more play, sell more memberships or book more outings this year?

Make no mistake about it… the golf industry is in for a tough time this year and probably for a year or more to come.

Now, I have just one more question…

What are you planning to do differently this season to turn your golf operation around 180 degrees and out-market, out-sell and out-manage every single competitor in your area?

If any of these questions hit home for you, then how would you like to:

• Out Market Everyone! Attract New Members and Players in Droves with Proven Marketing Strategies
• Out Sell Everyone! Boost Membership, Outing & Event Sales Instantly with Proven Sales Techniques
• Out Manage Everyone! Maximize Operational Efficiencies and Profits with Proven Management Ideas

To learn how you can accomplish all of this, check out Cunningly Clever Golf Operator.

Plus…

• Discussion Forums with other forward thinking operators moderated by our all-star panel of industry experts.
• Audio Interviews with recognized industry experts.
• Tele-Seminars on special topics.
• Industry Surveys reveal insights and practices of other operators.
• Downloadable Employee Training Manuals, professionally designed,
• position-specific Operations Manuals for every job, in every club or resort operation plus much, much more..

Click here: Cunningly Clever Golf Operator for more details.

Masterful headline writing is a highly prized skill in the copywriting world. Can it really be reduced to a formula?

While MarketingExperiments doesn’t reveal their formulas in detail (except in their paid training), I think we can figure it out from what they do disclose:

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/copywriting-research-topics/methodology-to-effective-headlines.html

In essence, the idea is to take the noun phrases and assign them low/medium/high scores for appeal, credibility, exclusivity, and clarity.

Not sure what a noun phrase is? Definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/noun+phrase

If we equate low with 1 point, medium with 2 points, and high with 3 points, we get the following:

• Appeal: 0-3 points
• Credibility: 0-3 points
• Exclusivity: 0-3 points
• Clarity: 0-3 points

If the sentence contains multiple noun phrases, take the averages.

The Formula

Putting this in to a formula we get:

Headline Effectiveness % = (Appeal + Credibility + Exclusivity + Clarity)/12)*100

or

HE = ((AP + CR + EX + CL)/12)*100

Applying this to this post’s headline, “Simple B2B Headline Writing System” – I only see one noun phrase (the whole headline).

• Appeal: 3 – Anyone that’s struggled with writing headlines will want to check this out.
• Credibility: 1 – There’s not much in terms of credibility building going on in this headline. It will have to lean on other factors for credibility.
• Exclusivity: 3 – While a Google search for “b2b headlline writing system” yielded over 1 million results, none of the search results in the first 3 pages offered a system- just tips.
• Clarity: 3 – No confusing jargon or terms used. Value proposition is clearly stated.

HE% = ((3 + 1 + 3 + 3)/12))*100 = 83%

The headline earns a B rating… not bad, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

One Of The All-Time Most Successful Headlines

How does this formula rate one of the most successful headlines ever created: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?”

Noun phrases: ..You..Mistakes..English – I’m not sure if “You” qualifies as a noun phrase, but I’ll include it anyway.

You:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

Mistakes:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

English:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

HE% = ((3 + 1 + 1 + 3)/12))*100 = 67%

A C- score.

What this tells me is that Appeal and Clarity should be weighted more heavily than Credibility and Exclusivity. If something’s exciting and clear, why not act on it now? We can always give the benefit of the doubt for Credibility and Exclusivity- these can be evaluated later.

A revised weighting might look like:

• Appeal: 0-6 points
• Credibility: 0-3 points
• Exclusivity: 0-3 points
• Clarity: 0-6 points

If we give the above headline full points for Appeal and Clarity we get:

HE% = ((6 + 1 + 1 +6)/18))*100 = 77%

A C+ score. Still not high enough for such a successful headline.

However, I think the process for determining the proper weights is clear: adjust the weightings until you can get most of the top performing 50 or so headlines to average at a score of at least 85%… not something I have time for right now. I’ll wait to see what MarketingExperiments has to say in their follow-up article.

Not only do marketers use more sophisticated and cutthroat tactics these days, but increasingly Google itself is abandoning its “neutrality” as a provider of relevant URLs in search engine results pages.

So, while we fight each other for SEO traffic, Google eats our lunch.

Infographic by SEO Book

I used to limit myself to just a few article directories and video sites for my content syndication- it was just too time-consuming and tedious. Not only did this limit the range of sites I submitted to, but also how often I would submit articles.

Eventually, I found several article submission services that I used regularly on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, with the advent of web 2.0, the number and types of sites you needed to contribute content to for effective article marketing and link building grew exponentially and these submission services were no longer adequate.

When SENuke arrived on the scene, it was supposed to address this problem; but, it’s learning curve is fairly steep and with a monthly subscription cost of over $120, out of reach for most Internet marketers.

Consequently, a crop of competing products sprung up- mostly inferior and poorly-supported.

Magic Submitter, however, is a true alternative to SENuke- and at nearly 50% less monthly cost than SENuke, much more affordable.

Alexandr Kruilik

Magic Submitter is the brainchild of Alexandr Kruilik, a respected Internet marketer. He also sells two other related products- Magic Article ReWriter and Magic Article Submitter. He has an active account on Twitter where you can keep up to date on his latest efforts: Alexandr Kruilik Twitter The last time I checked, he had over 6,000 posts. He isn’t one of those Internet marketers that hides from his customers.

My Experience With Magic Submitter

I’ve been using Magic Submitter for automated article and video submission for about 4 months now and am generally pleased with its performance- you can expect about a 90% success rate for articles and about a 80% success rate for videos.

Why not 100%?

Because that’s just not realistic. There’s a dance, or should I say- battle, going on between article submission software vendors and article sites (and video sites, etc.).

The article directories keep changing the names of submission fields, adding new ones or removing existing ones, moving them to new screens- all in an effort to thwart the article submission tools.

Submission protocols to various article directories can change almost weekly.

They’re doing this to combat article spammers who make extensive use of software too carry out their nefarious deeds. Unfortunately, us white-hat article marketers have to suffer the consequences.

Update Frequency

In any case, when it comes to keeping Magic Submitter up to date, Alexandr really shines. The frequent updates are automated and you’re prompted to save a backup of your database each time.

You can see some screen shots as well as a full list of over 30 updates since mid 2010 here.

Magic Submitter Update History

Their email support has always been responsive and the support forum is well maintained and active with current users.

Alexandr continues to add new services and features. You can now use Magic Submitter for:

• Video Marketing: Submit your videos to most popular video sharing sites like Youtube, Spike, Yahoo, and 121+ sites in all.
• Social Media Marketing: Submit content to Twitter and dozens of other social media sites and microblogs.
• Article Marketing: 53+ article directories and growing.
• Blog Marketing: Contribute content and get backlinks from over 70 WordPress blogs.
• Press Release Marketing: Announce company updates and newsworthy events to over twenty press release sites.
• Bookmarking: Get hundreds of backlinks with automated submission to all major bookmarking services.
• PDF Sharing: Get your whitepapers, reports, eBooks distributed using PDF sharing sites.
• Search Engine Pinging: It can take, days, weeks, or even months for a search engine to find your articles. Pinging immediately updates Google, Yahoo, and all major search engines for you.
• And more…

In addition to automatically creating user accounts for you and submitting your content for you, Magic Submitter also has some very advanced features for the power users out there. For instance, you can add your own submission sites and record their custom submission protocols for automation.

One feature that I use extensively is its ability to submit spun articles- articles modified with codes so that a new version is submitted to each article directory. This helps keep as many of your submitted articles indexed by search engines as possible.

So, if you’re interested in getting as many readers for your articles as possible, as many visits to your landing pages as possible, and you’re convinced content marketing is the way to go, then you owe it to yourself to check out Magic Submitter.

Visit Magic Submitter’s sales page for screenshots, videos, and a more in-depth explanation of features: Magic Submitter

The book contains about 290 pages. It is nicely laid out and the paper quality is top-notch.

Chris introduces Important concepts in simple, digestible terms supported by judiciously selected quotes and ample references to source materials for further study. Mind maps at the end of each chapter give a concise review of the chapter contents.

Chris’s writing style is personable and entertaining. He re-emphasizes important points throughout the book with different examples and turns of phrase. This facilitates skim reading and makes for a more relaxed read.

So, What Is New About GRASP The Solution?

Chris does not claim to have invented new problem solving techniques, but to have provided an efficient and easy-to-follow framework for using them.

The framework includes Generating, Reacting to, Analyzing, and Selecting ideas. The entire process is Proactive. Hence, “G.R.A.S.P.”

Chris explains the psychology behind the framework and why the selected techniques work best when used in the order prescribed- empowering the reader to drop, replace, or add new techniques.

In other words, the system is as organic and evolving as the problems that go in to it and the solutions that come out if it. This is as it should be. After all, you’re learning how to think, not just how to follow a system.

My favorite technique from the book is “Reverse The Challenge” where you brainstorm how to accomplish the opposite of your real goal (e.g., “how can I get more customers” becomes “how can I lose more customers?”), then reverse the solutions.

As a bonus, Chris discusses at length how to adapt brainstorming to group sessions in a way that sidesteps many common pitfalls such as “social loafing” and “evaluation apprehension.” Team leaders will find this section invaluable.

GRASP For Project Management

I like the way Chris closes the loop by bridging the gap between problem solving and solution implementation- also known as project management.

The approach he illustrates serves more as a set of guidelines than a full-fledged project management system; nevertheless, it’s better than what most people do, which is either wing it or over complicate it.

The key takeaway from this part of the book is that you don’t stop creative thinking just because the problem solving phase is complete- you can still use the techniques you learned to manage, refine, and sometimes radically change the solutions you found.

Summary

While you won’t be transformed in to a creative genius overnight after reading the book, it is comforting to know that creative problem solving is a SKILL that can be learned through study and practice.

You will realize GRASP’s full potential when you put it to consistent use like a painter’s favorite brush, a runner’s favorite shoes, or a chess expert’s favorite opening gambit.

If you’ve ever wanted to improve your creative problem solving skills or felt that your group brainstorming sessions could be more productive, GRASP The Solution is the book for you.

Dave Navarro

Apparently, he’s retiring from Internet Marketing (at least for now), and is giving all his products away for free (or whatever you choose to donate). At $197 per program, that’s nearly $2k in free training…

Get it while you can.

What’s on offer:

• Creating Products That Sell
• Building A Responsive List
• High-Conversion Sales Pages
• Mastering Your Sales Funnel
• Optimizing Your Blog For Sales
• Becoming Incredibly Productive
• Becoming A Big Player In Your Niche
• Getting Affiliates To Sell For You

You can find everything here:

http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/

Yours in success,
Gene Gerwin

This week, I spoke to four vendors of B2B and B2C opt-in email lists to get a better understanding of this growing market.

As you probably know, building your in-house list is a slow and tedious process. This is true for most B2B companies.

Traffic to your site is low to begin with and the chances of any of your marketing campaigns going viral is a million to one. You’re just not getting enough traffic to your opt-in landing page to make a big impact right away.

So, what about those email lists for sale?

You can find B2B email lists numbering in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands for less than $1,000. Some of them are nicely profiled too… specific titles, company demographics…

Some even claim to have phone-verified the data.

Are you already on Google, credit card in hand, looking for those vendors? Well, not so fast…

First of all, remember- just because they opted in to someone’s list, doesn’t mean they opted in to yours.

It’s critical you understand how and why they opted in to the list. If your offer or service is bone-jarringly different from what they expressed an interest in, expect spam complaints.

Second, speaking of spam…

Depending your email service provider, it may against their TOS to import purchased email lists. Better look in to that…

And, even if they do allow importing purchased lists, they may require opt-in confirmations before you can start sending. There goes at least 50% to 95% of your purchased list out the window…

Ah, but you have your own corporate mail server you say…

That mail server important to your business? Like being able to reach your clients? Other departments using that mail server at all?

How would you feel if your sender reputation got trashed? …if your mail server’s IP address ended up on blacklists? …if your delivery rate suddenly plummeted?

Would you know what to do?

Have you ever tried to get off a blacklist?

In other words, DON’T USE YOUR CORPORATE SERVER FOR PURCHASED LISTS…

You see how it’s getting tricky already?

OK. So, assuming you’ve got the server thing sorted out, did you really get that great a deal? Was your cost really $0.1 or $0.01 per email?

If I paid $100 for all the ice cream I could eat in one sitting, did I pay $0.1 for a thousand servings of ice cream, or $100 for 4 or 5 servings (my max before I pass out)?

What I’m saying is, you do not get to keep all those emails! Absolutely not!

If you keep sending to an unresponsive list, your sender score is going to be in the toilet pronto. Believe it or not, ISPs actually track this sort of thing.

This means, break out those garden shears because you’re going to be pruning big time… and FAST…

I could go on an on about the various pitfalls of using bought email lists, but I think my main point should be clear: you had better know what you’re doing…

If you know what you’re doing, well, then you’re probably laughing all the way to the bank.