Ezine Advertising

Solo ads are an effective marketing vehicle but for many advertisers is just another unintentional way of throwing away some money. Most of the people don’t like ads and no one is waiting for your ad. That’s a general advertising truth. If you want your ad to be read and more than this – some kind of action to be taken after reading it – then you have two choices: pay a copywriter or take this activity seriously and spend more time on it. Today’s article deals with the most important part of a solo advert: the subject line.

Tip # 1 – Always remember the truth I just mentioned: the most important part of an email marketing message is the subject line. That piece of text is decisive. If all it says is something like “Delete this junk!”, then the rest is in vain. Your work and your money are wasted. Unfortunately so many advertisers think that buying a solo ad slot in an opt-in mailing list guarantees some kind of readership for their advertisement or otherwise it means that the publisher is some sort of scammer. That’s completely wrong! In order to get a good result, the first thing your ad needs (out of many others) is a good subject line.

Tip # 2 – Write an attention grabbing subject line. Common pieces of text like “It’s Ken here” (as if the reader knows who Ken is – she/he doesn’t!) don’t work. People don’t read all the emails they receive, but only the emails they have some of sort of interest in or the emails that arouse their curiosity.

Tip # 3 – Don’t grab the reader’s attention in a wrong way. Swearing, for example, for sure grabs the reader’s attention, but it makes her or him delete your ad instead of reading it.

“What kind of tip is this? No one will swear anyway.”

Well, claiming something even the advertiser doesn’t believe is common and is actually like swearing. Insulting reader’s intelligence is the no-no method I’m actually advising you to avoid.

Tip # 4 – Keep the subject line short. In some email clients, long subject lines are not readable without opening the email. Since many emails are opened only if the subject line is interesting, in case the subject line is not fully readable, you know what happens, right? How short should it be? If you make it very short (30-35 characters) it will be good for almost all email clients, but you may not be able to write an interesting subject line using so few characters. My recommendation is maximum 60 characters.

Tip # 5 – Write the subject line so that you can have the keywords very close to its beginning. If the subject line is not fully readable without opening the email and the keyword is at the end of the line … you know the outcome.

Tip # 6 – Ask the publisher not to personalize the subject line. Reader’s first name will “eat” characters from the visible part of the subject line. The longer the first name, the shorter the visible subject line. On the other hand, spammers already use first names too, and as a consequence more and more people are no longer naive. Their first name in the subject line doesn’t make them automatically open the email anymore.

Tip # 7 – Refrain from claiming big earnings. Within seconds the reader may say … “I don’t believe her/him”. It doesn’t matter if she or he is wrong. The result is that your advert is deleted.

Tip # 8 – Write more subject lines and test them in order to see which one works better. It’s hard to write the best headline from the very beginning. Be your first critic and then ask your friends what subject line they like.

Tip # 9 – Test the sujbect line (together with the whole ad copy) in order to be sure that it doesn’t trigger the spam filters. If these filters block your ad or send it to readers’ spam folders, all your work is ruined. Don’t let this work on publisher’s shoulders. Most of them don’t have a clue on how to deal with spam filters even if some of them are very good publishers. Don’t take this risk!

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more such interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info Newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

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Almost anyone knows that the solo ads are the best form of ezine advertising. However, many marketers have only some vague ideas on how to properly use them. Part of them understand that something is wrong in what they did only after they fail. Others never understand the reality (it’s easier to blame all the other people but not themselves!)

Today’s article is a mini-guide for email advertisers looking to improve the results of their solo advertising campaigns. For an easier reading and understanding, the essential principles I will talk about today are shown in a Q & A (Questions & Answers) format.

Q: Paid vs. Free Solo Ads. Why should I pay for a solo advert if there are so many places (safelists, text ad exchanges) where I can get them for free?

A: Why do you think that so many online businesses fail? No offence, but where there is a crowd there are also a lot of losers. Choose your model carefully and don’t lose the contact with the real world. When was the last time when a stranger gave you something valuable for free? … No one gives away something really valuable. No one. Most of the online freebies value exactly what you pay for them (nothing, to be more specific). If you have something of value, what do you do with it? Do you keep it for yourself or your family, do you sell it, or do you give it away to a stranger?

Q: Where shall I buy solo ads from? Can you recommend a responsive newsletter or a good email marketing service? Shall I type “solo ads” in my favored search engine and buy from the places listed on the first page?

A: All such approaches are wrong.

First you need to understand the difference between targeted and untargeted advertising. Let’s say that you want to promote the latest SF book you wrote. If you promote it in a newsletter distributed to the members of the association “We hate books”, then you will fail. That’s not targeted advertising, neither untargeted advertising, but dumb advertising. If you promote it in a health newsletter, then you shoot in the dark. The people have subscribed to that newsletter because they want to get health info. Some of them may like to read a book from time to time, others may hate the books. You don’t have a clue. What you know for sure about them is that they want something you do NOT offer (health info). That’s untargeted advertising. Finally, if you promote your book to the newsletter distributed to the members of the association “We love SF” … then it’s obvious that you have serious chances to sell your book. That’s targeted advertising.

Now let’s come back to the original questions…

I don’t know what you will promote tomorrow, neither what you will promote next week. If I recommend you a very good health newsletter and you’re gonna promote your SF book, will this help you in any way? Nope …

If you type that keyword in your search engine, what results will you get? The best newsletters in the niche you’re interested in? No way. You’ll get a list of sites arranged by that search engine using a formula that does NOT involve factors like the quality or the topic of the newsletter.

Then … What to do? Be specific, refine your research and always look for ezines that have the same topic like the product or service you plan to promote.

Q: I’m not interested in reading the newsletter I plan to publish my ad in. Do I have to waste my time and subscribe to it?

A: That’s a must. You’re not wasting your time, you’re avoiding a potential failure. What if that newsletter doesn’t exist? Or what if there is published only poor content? What if the subscribers are bombarded with ads? What if … You’ll never find the answers to these questions and many others unless you subscribe and read the newsletter. Then decide whether you place the order or not.

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S.

Last Question: What’s that NOISE?

Answer: Ughh, hmm, sorry, it was me. I was happy that you read this article and you’ll improve your results if you follow the essential principles I described above. Then my smile disappeared and it was replaced by that noise … I have so many other important things to teach you and the space for this article is so limited … If you want to discover more, why don’t you subscribe to my Ezine Advertising Info Newsletter? Or get my ebook The Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

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Ezine advertising seems to be a simple way of promoting online your products or services. However, the truth is that reality has shown that most of the advertisers actually don’t know what they are doing. Frequently advertisers can be seen spending only a few minutes for complex activities like writing an ad, finding an ezine for placing the order with and then assessing the result. Today’s article deals with an aspect regarding the assessment of the results of an ezine advertising campaign.

The biggest mistake usually made in assessing the results is that many advertisers don’t even think to perform such activity. Their judgment is simple: if they get enough sales (or signups), great. However, if the number of sales is not satisfactory, the conclusion comes within seconds: the ezine is not good, the publisher is a scammer or simply ezine advertising doesn’t work. Usually there is no other alternative in their minds. The failure is always due to other people or other things. Really?

It’s true that some ezines are not good and it’s also true that some publishers are scammers (or only amateurs – it’s a difference though). Discover them before placing an order with them, otherwise your failure will be due to you too.

It’s true that advertising in ezines doesn’t always work (that’s a complex topic and I won’t develop it here).

However, it is very much true that the outcome depends a lot on … the advertiser. Yes, many things depend on the advertiser and this means that the result itself depends very much on advertiser’s actions or inactions. That’s why looking only for the number of sales won’t help advertiser understand what was wrong, who is at fault and what to do next in order to avoid another failure.

First thing you have to know is that the number of sales depends also on the landing page, on the price (affordable or not), on the product itself (good or not, or simply not competitive), and on other factors, all of them having absolutely no connection with the ezine, its publisher or the ezine advertising itself. That’s why when you asses the result of an advertising campaign in a certain ezine (or groups of ezines), never ever look again for the number of sales. It’s not relevant even if selling is your final target.

Then … what to look at? The clicks! That’s the magic answer: the number of unique clicks on the link from your ad. For example if there will be a lot of clicks on your link and no sale, then you know for sure who is not at fault. The ezine, the publisher and your ad copy are OK. Check what’s wrong with the other factors (landing page, price, etc).

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more ezine advertising tips, subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter. Then discover the free resource that will soon become the No. 1 exclusive collection of ezine advertising articles in the world.

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