Ok.. shouldn’t there be a way to buy gift certificates online that generate a one-time bar code (to be printed or emailed or whatever’d)?

For example, “Here’s a coffee for you, here’s a beer for you.” Just like when you offer your ticket to the NHL/NFL/MLB/NBA game turnstile guy, and your ticket is good for one entry?

We need this. Techies get on it.

Retailers need this bigtime (think massage, cappuccino, 5-hour energy drink from AM/PM, flowers, sake, medical marijuana (kidding hippies – good name for a band, btw), root beer float, yoga lesson, helicopter ride, pack of gum, etc..).

Am I missing something? Does it already exist? I’ve got a freakin barcode scanner on my phone for chrissakes.

A lot of people talk about email inbox distress, “inbox zero” and other related phenomena. Yes, too much email blows, and there’s no end in sight. You can filter conversations and contacts via Facebook, Twitter, IM, Gist and the like, but business people still rely heavily on email to track projects and keep in touch.

But.. I’ve got another problem that I’m sure you’re familiar with.

I call it Tabbed Browsing Hell for lack of a better name. This is the scenario where you’re so engrossed in research or just plain media consumption that you open tons of tabs. Eventually, you become burdened by them. They have psychic energy that can drain and distract you.

So what’s a boy (or girl) to do?

I found a nifty way to clear things up (at least for a while). It’s akin to stuffing papers into file folders in order to get a clean desk.

But it’s pretty slick to boot.

First, check out this nifty little service: Read Later

Read Later allows you to click a bookmark/script and save articles for later on your Instapaper.com account.

But wait, there’s more! (not steak knives or a slotted spoon)

When you want to back and read the articles you’ve gathered in Read Later, you can use another bookmark/script to force them into a clean, standardized format for consumption (you choose the font size and format). It’s called Readability. The buttons on the side allow you to easily and quickly get back to the original article (for Tweeting, sharing or Facebooking purposes, for example).

I think it’s pretty cool. And it helps me “get clear” and get back to work.

Have you tried it? What do you think? Please share your thoughts below.

P.S. The two solutions go great with RSS feed readers, too. Good way to filter articles and read later in a clean, consistent format.

I can help

Now’s the time to finish last minute writing projects in preparation for the show.

Why not hire a professional writer to deliver compelling copy on deadline?

I can successfully address that critical intersection where business challenges and technical solutions come together.

I come pre-loaded with technical chops and marketing experience.

Please call (949) 244-9440 or email service@qualitywriter.com for a rapid project quote.

P.S. I’ve been at it since 1995 (customers include HP, Oracle, Hyperion, Microsoft, Kapow, D-Link, Global Crossing, Software AG and more).

P.P.S. If you need editing help, I can offer some tips gratis, and you can get a feel for how I work.

by Bob Bly

This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly Direct Response Letter - www.bly.com

Most of us tend to pick a domain name that is a variation of our name or company (e.g., www.bly.com, www.ibm.com) or area of expertise (www.coachville.com).

My friend, Internet marketing guru Fred Gleeck, says a better strategy is to pick a domain that is easy for people to remember without writing it down.

Example: to promote an engine additive that improves gas mileage, Gleeck reserved www.savegaslikecrazy.com.

Financial guru Doug Roberts promotes himself through speeches, but audience members had difficulty remembering the URL for his company www.channelcapitalresearch.com.

Since his investment method is based on following the Federal Reserve, he reserved the domain name www.followthefed.com, and that’s the one he gives during his talks. It is so much easier to remember!

by Bob Bly

This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly Direct Response Letter - www.bly.com

According to a recent study of online buyers, 43% of online buyers abandoned their orders at checkout. The most common reason, cited by 48% of those surveyed, was that shipping was too expensive.

Two solutions suggested by the study:

1. Offer free shipping.

2. Give buyers a choice of delivery options (12% of consumers said they will not buy from online companies that do not offer multiple delivery options).

Source: “Increase Sales With Online Buyers,” United States Postal Service.

by Bob Bly

This article appears courtesy of Bob Bly Direct Response Letter - www.bly.com

According to the U.S. Postal Service, 52% of consumers purchase
products advertised in the mail.

Unfortunately, that also means that a whopping 48% of consumers –
nearly half the U.S. population – never buy through the mail!

So if you compile a list of prospects, as so many marketers do,
the statistical probability is that half of the people on the
list never buy through the mail – and therefore won’t respond to
direct mail packages which ask for an order.

The solution: When doing mail order selling, ask your broker to
recommend only “response lists” reaching your target market.

A “response list” is a list of mail order customers … people who
have purchased products through direct response.

Just using a response list means you have eliminated the half of
Americans who do not purchase through the mail from your mailing
list, which should effectively – at a minimum – double your
response vs. compiled lists.

Thanks Bob!

I do.

If you do – then please take a moment to hear about my company and see if I’m a good fit for your particular needs.

I’m a freelance copywriter that’s been writing for technology companies since 1995.

Confession: I’ve been involved with “gobbledygook” in the past, but I’d like to get past that.

What I’d like to do is to connect with your customers and users where they live and breathe functionally, practically . . emotionally.

I’m interested in “moving the needle,” of course, and testing for the best conversion and sales results. But I really want to find out what’s unique and authentic about your products, your people and your customers. Then I’d like to move you into that zone beyond profit focus – the area where you’re accumulating evangelists first, laying the ground work for the money gusher that follows (something you can be proud of on multiple levels).

In short, I’d like to help you make a difference in the world – Steve Jobs style – with simple, clear, compelling messages that resonate with users.

Do you have a small project I could help with right now (as a test run)? If so, please call at your earliest convenience (949) 244-9440, or email service@qualitywriter.com.

Customer success stories are gold. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Case studies show how specific problems are solved. This is important. Web copy and brochures are often product- and service-focused. They make your solutions sound too techie and inaccessible. Most people are tired of reading overt product pitches with distant, corporate prose and 2nd person formality.
2. Lead generation. If you can get your vertical-specific stories into the hands of the right list, you have a much greater chance of developing quality leads.
3. Re-affirm your value in the mind of existing customers. When your customs get on a conference call with your writer/journalist and the solution team, they relive the positive experience. As they pace through all those good feelings again, you increase your chances for referrals and repeat business. The value of the initial engagement seeps in deeper when you revisit the experience with them.
4. Testimonials. You can use the customer “sound bites” you collect in the case study interview as tight testimonial quotes. Sprinkle them throughout your site, and you’ve just added another layer of gold.
5. Storytelling rules! People love stories about adversity and triumph (Hollywood knows this, Horatio Alger knows this, your mom knows this, you know it – it’s etched in the cultural gene code).
6. Demonstrate your company’s expertise without looking arrogant. Sometimes standard brochure and Web copy sounds egotistical with all that “look what we can do” bravado. Success stories allow the corporate entity to get out of its own way.
7. Connect with specific verticals. When customers understand how their specific industry benefits from your solutions, everyone wins.
8. Reposition your product to a different audience. You can base an entire marketing campaign on one case study. Simply capture the story of how a specific vertical used your solution and then mail to this target list (or Google AdWords, banner advertise, etc.).
9. Quickly, clearly communicate the ROI of your solution/product/service. Money and productivity savings are critical components in the “results” section of any good case study. When you gather these metrics from customers, you can bowl over new prospects with the info.
10. Your competition might beat you to it!

There are plenty more reasons to get your success story pipeline filled up. So, why aren’t you jumping at the chance? I understand, you’re busy for one thing. Here are some other reasons why I see companies avoiding this critical exercise.

5 Reasons You Won’t

1. Existing creative staff and agency resources are busy with other stuff
2. You don’t have a quickly executable process in place
3. You don’t know where to start, who to call or what interview questions to ask them
4. You don’t have time to do the background research
5. You’re afraid you’ll get stuck, miss your deadlines, or get distracted by some other project

So why not ask for some outside assistance? I can help you identify your best case study candidates and schedule customer interviews in a matter of days.

Get started right now – call (949) 244-9440 or email me at dunn@qualitywriter.com.

Remember, case studies open the door to meetings, demonstrate your company’s expertise and allow your customers to speak to your strengths.

This article originally appeared in John Forde’s excellent email newsletter The Copywriter’s Roundtable (some call him Jack Forde). The newsletter offers priceless insights for all kinds of professional creatives, including the folks mentioned in the article below. I highly encourage you to sign up and enjoy the weekly value feast that is uniquely Forde.

In Part I of this coupling we talked about the “deconstruction” trend where pieces of creative projects are being farmed out. This installment goes a little deeper into the technology trends that are disrupting ad agencies, marketing professionals and creative leaders.

The upside? Where there is disruption, there is opportunity.

Let’s dive in. First, let’s state the obvious. The Internet is disrupting everything from traditional communication channels to consumer purchasing behaviors. TV stations, radio personalities and content publishers of every stripe have been freaking out and adjusting for some time now.

A lot of that evolution has been gradual. Today, however, there’s an extension of the communication disruption trend that’s rapidly changing the way companies decide how to market their products and services.

If you’re in the content publishing business or if you have any big-brand clients, you’ve probably noticed it.

The shift relates to a handful of concepts:

1. Real-time analytics from real-time search like Twitter, Facebook and Google results
2. Web scraping (real-time and sophisticated, in-depth, behind-the-Flash, behind-the-login-page scraping)
3. #1 and #2 combined with contextual analysis
4. Multivariate testing (Google Analytics, Optimizer)
5. Twitter testing and AdWords testing of titles, subheads and concepts

WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, PHIL?

What am I talking about, and what does this mean to marketers, copywriters and other creative professionals?

Here’s the gist — you need to realize that subjective, off-the-cuff analysis of markets is a vanishing practice. Creative, “gee I like this, let’s run with it” moments are gone. David Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins did their best to kill it off, but it’s still the fall back position for lazy marketing departments. Some of these departments and agencies could be naked soon.

The five techie developments above show us what sells, what gets clicked, what’s working and what the crowds think. Testing (Claude Hopkins, Ogilvy- style) is more relevant than ever! It’s a science and it’s here now. If you’re interested in more, just surf around Wikipedia via the keyword phrases “text analytics,” “web scraping,” and “web data services.”

Analytics beats any whim or subjective position you have. Yes – I know – if you’re creating art, then you can be content with your own subjective analysis. But, it’s rare that those of us in the business world can produce art without being accountable for results. At some point, you have to sell something (even artists need to fill galleries).

WHY FACEBOOK KEEPS GRABBING HEADLINES

You may have noticed one of the latest marketing buzz phrases – contextual sentiment. This is what Facebook is up to with their “Like” buttons all over the Web.

There’s dough to be made by gauging and organizing the sentiment of people who are perusing the Web for products, ideas, services and entertainment. Facebook knows it… and journalists are obsessed with the story and the implications.

If you’re not Facebook, this can be done with sophisticated software. Big brands have been experimenting with it for years now. Some call it Web scraping or Web analytics.

Here’s a simple example. If you run scraped keyword streams from Twitter or Facebook through a sentiment analysis tool, you can see all kinds of actionable information. Let’s say you launch a new soda flavor. You can quickly understand consumer sentiment by monitoring channels like Twitter and Facebook.

At the root, it’s the transformation of unstructured data into actionable information. It can be used for all kinds of scenarios – public relations troubleshooting, customer service, R&D, polling/sampling opinion (without the focus group), product development and more.

Big brands are already integrating this “social media” sampling technique into their Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. One of the big benefits is that they get a clear indication of sentiment and the “reality on the street.” In the past, they had to rely on focus groups with preconceptions and gamed reporting from their own internal departments (sales, finance, product development, etc.).

Even economists and academics, who used to rely on gamed government reports that took months to assemble and arrived stale as a crouton, are getting into the game. They now look at diesel fuel sales today on specific shipping corridors, real-time turnstile data from specific train stops, and  It’s all harvested from Flash, AJAX programs, secure pages, images, Javascript and the like.

It’s mind boggling, really. Think about it. If you had this power, what data would you monitor? Interest rates? Gold prices? Credit score reports?  Salesforce data?  Apartment listings?  A competitor’s pricing?  Product buzz?  Customer complaints?  Financial transactions?  Bank balances?  Twitter?  Facebook?  Google Trends?  LinkedIn profiles?  Partner inventory?  Shipment dates?

BACK TO YOU – THE CREATIVE

Creatives in every line of work – Web development, art, writing, publishing, etc. – need to consider these trends carefully. From my perspective this trend looks like a boon to creatives.

Yet, to many organizations, it could mean that some of their services will go away. You can’t consult, for example, if your consulting guidance is based on premises that are counter to factual Web analytics. You may have to integrate these new technologies into your offerings, in fact.

How is it a boon? Creative matters even more today than ever before. People need you to test out ideas, push them out of their comfort zones and try new things. Companies need to round up whatever data and research exists then hand off projects to creatives that get it. Then you test… then you commit to what works. That’s a good recipe.

What’s become a commodity is the big agency’s powerful research and testing groups. They’ll be moving to new technologies and techniques. But these new methods should be fairly low cost. You may not need an army of people to pull it off. And as information becomes more available at a lower cost, you’ll see small agile creative firms making moves.

SOME EXTENDED THOUGHTS

Everyone has access to this now. This new world is here. Soooooo….

• Real-time analytics are showing companies who are willing to put in the sweat and the money exactly what’s going on with their products, services, brands, competitors, customer service, market perception… everything.
• In the information marketing realm – tips, info and tools are commodities unless they’re strikingly original.
• Pricing for boilerplate, templated or paraphrased/hi-jacked content and design is being ground down to zero. It’s a race to the bottom. That work is going overseas, or it’s going to the lowest common denominator companies. And Web analytics will bury the poor performers.

The information you have at your fingertips – your information tool box – is becoming less important. There’s plenty of free information out there that describes what you know, best practices, tips, tools, strategies and so forth.

That stuff is being commoditized.

Dan Pink goes into this in detail in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

He writes: “McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30% of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70% comes from heuristic work,” writes Pink. (That algorithmic work is the non-creative stuff – the process work that can be duplicated in far flung locations.) “A key reason routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, non-routine, work generally cannot.”

If you think about it, there’s a perfect storm brewing. Globalism and outsourcing have flattened the earth. And now analytics are accelerating performance measurement and business intelligence capabilities.

So I circle back to the impassioned messages: Experience matters. Value matters. A creative, original filter matters.

WHAT TO DO? GET BACK TO BASICS!

How do you win in this wild new world of shifting marketing and production trends?

You focus on the key differentiators. Seth Godin talks about this a lot in Linchpin.

You’ve got to continue to develop strong relationships.

Stellar customer service, a sparkling attitude, personality, and your underlying creativity and uniqueness are the keys.

Execution wins business as well – think about speed of execution, shipping on time/on deadline, and delivering a consistent, quality product.

Of course you need to deliver value – quality, differentiation and uniqueness, and ’something extra.’

In short, you need to become more remarkable now. New technology trends are conspiring to make YOU a star.

A Valuable Connection for $0.00

Welcome Jack Forde readers, and thanks for slogging through my Copywriter’s Roundtable articles. I’ve been a Forde and CR reader for more than a decade and have learned a lot from him (and I’ve been thoroughly entertained). Here’s a permalink to the article Forde ran – in case you’d like to share it with friends – WARNING to Creatives Part I: Your Careers Are Under Attack. Please pass it around!

Part II now has a permalink, as well: WARNING to Creatives Part II: Your Careers Are Under Attack – New Technology Trends Will Strip You Naked. Please comment and pass around.

I don’t have any courses, downloads or Webinars to pitch here. I just want to connect with smart people like you that are thinking deeply about persuasion, psychology, Web marketing, copywriting, design, usability and the related dark arts.

Please comment below if you’d like to continue the conversation about the articles I wrote for CR. There’s a lot going on in the space where Web technology meets modern marketing. I’m learning as I go, and I’d like to learn more from you and figure out what your views are.

If you want to collaborate on projects or need help explaining something to a client, I’m happy to help out, too.

Passions, Posts and Social Media Connections

If you’d like to read more of my articles and insights, you can search via the field at the top of the page, click around the tag cloud over on the right or just go to the blog and poke through the posts. Topics cover everything from typography and design to copywriting to SMM (no, not sado-masochism methods!).

Oh, by the way, the column on the right has all my social and newsletter details. Sign up, click.. whatever if you have a connectivity preference.

I’m not a big blaster when it comes to posting and tweeting, but when I write something I usually update all the relevant channels.

Please Don’t Say Social Media Again (It’s about developing compelling content!)

Also, I’ve got a social media presentation for businesses that really rocks. I’ll be releasing it soon, so join the newsletter for the official announcement or keep an eye on my social media channels.

It’s a good intro for the uninitiated, but then it goes deep into the implications and best practices involved with sustained social media campaigns and the content development that supports them.

As you might guess, my focus is on *content development and delivering value*… not communication channel trends. I always come back to this when I get into SMM conversations with clients (it’s no use getting all excited about Twitter and the like if you don’t have a solid content development system in place).

Here are some more of my articles on SMM and what it all means (best practices, tips and tricks included)… you can scroll through several  articles via this one link.

Lastly – Thanks

Big thanks for dropping in. I look forward to learning more from you and helping you navigate complicated technology and marketing issues.

Cheers,

Phil

P.S. If you find value in my thoughts, tips, posts, insights, etc. please share with your people, fans, followers and friends. You can click below to do that conveniently or just forward links. Thanks.

dunn@qualitywriter.com

(949) 891-2569