Last Friday, after publishing the post about Google's quality raters handbook (which I'd found through a post on "Pot Pie Girl's" blog), I spent a little time looking over her older posts and found an interesting one showing the results of an email subject line test she ran back in March.

I thought I'd share...
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Copywriting experts will tell you that your sales letters need to focus on benefits, rather than product features. What they won't always tell you is that there are three kinds of benefits. And that you need to talk about all three.

Direct Benefits

Direct benefits are the things your product gives the user. For example,...
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You've heard it before: people make purchase decisions emotionally and justify them logically. So, the logic goes that your sales materials should appeal to their emotions, and then back your offer up with logic.

Right?

The other day, Roger Dooley posted some research that suggests a slightly different approach:

... Emsense has created a four-quadrant...
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The other day over at BoostCTR, Ryan Healy wrote about a change to Google's search results format that's been bugging me:

If you look closely, you'll notice that the URL is now appearing under the title instead of underneath the body copy.

...

Is the title even more important than before "” because the URL...
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What is it about an expert that makes them so successful, while an amateur who copies them as faithfully as they can gets no results at all?

I read a comic the other day that got me thinking about that. So today, let's try a Riff on a comic strip. First, to quote an excerpt:...
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I had one of those "marketing lessons from everyday life" moments this morning as I made cinnamon sugar toast for my daughter.

If you've never made cinnamon sugar toast, the process goes something like this: toast bread, spread butter onto it, and sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar on it. Pretty simple, but there...
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Walmart's customers don't seem to be getting the message.

And Walmart isn't about to complain.

Last month, Roger Dooley at Neuromarketing wrote about some research that suggests that Walmart's slogan "Save money. Live better." may inspire customers to spend more:

The experiment divided subjects into two groups. Half were exposed to brand names associated with...
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If you sit down with your child and watch SpongeBob SquarePants, you'll both laugh. But not always at the same time.

Why not?

Because some of the humor is too infantile for you. And some of it flies right over your kid's head. This isn't just true of SpongeBob. Lots of kids shows contain humor...
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SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has decoded the first message received from outer space, and it contained a big surprise -- something internet marketers here on earth can learn a thing or two from.

The message came from an area of the Andromeda Galaxy referred to as the "Dorsal Fin".

SETI director John Aubrey...
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Every once in a while, I see a list of "power words" -- words you can use to add more punch to your headlines and sales copy. These lists are useful for finding better alternatives for the sorts of boring words we often use in our day-to-day writing, or even just to get you in...
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