Email Advertising - How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer
Ad
by Charlie Cory
Published on this site: July 26th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Charlie Cory, Whether you are new to email advertising
or not, you cannot ignore this statistically proven information.
http://www.magical-marketing.biz/email_advert_example.html
|
