Rant warning: what follows may offend some people. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced continuity,” which seems to be the subject of a lot of debate these days.

Several well-known marketers have made offers of late with forced continuity. What it means is, the intended product you want to buy can only be purchased when you buy another (often, a continuous subscription) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.

Forced continuity is nothing new. (In direct marketing, they call these “Til Forbid” offers.) It’s another type of offer, pure and simple. It’s marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is not the way the offer is made.

The real problem is its lack of transparency.

But that’s not what I want to rant about today.

What a lot of people seem to be missing here (and something my brilliant wife brought to my attention, which makes perfect sense to me), is that there is a deeper, much darker side to this whole thing.

Something all marketers need to be aware of…

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With spam incessantly inundating our inboxes and people’s attention spans constantly shrinking, some have claimed that email marketing is on the way out.

I say “nonsense.”

In fact, it’s because of those very reasons that email marketing is now stronger than ever before. I personally know of some marketers who have made literally millions of dollars with email marketing alone in recent weeks.

I’m talking about legitimate, law-compliant, optin email.

Remember, the most common use of the Internet is still email — not instant messenging, social networking, or browsing websites. It’s often the very first thing people do when they log onto the web.

Granted, the biggest stumbling block is to increase your “open rate” (i.e., the percentage of people who actually open your emails). And to do so you first need to get your emails delivered and overcome overzealous spam filters.

But once they do reach your readers’ inboxes, the most important step in getting your messages through to your audience is with good copy. And like a good headline in sales copy, it all starts with the subject line.

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What is it with people lately?

Browbeating, bashing, and bullyragging. Flames, stains, and blames. Put downs, let downs and showdowns. On forums, blogs, and social networking sites.

Sure, I understand people are fed up with scam artists and snake oil salesmen. And sure, I also believe we need firebrands and rebels. Each one helps to keep the other side in line.

I love good debates. They’re not only intellectually stimulating, but also they help instigate change, or give others the impetus on how to deal with it. I always love a good argument, when that argument is based on fact and substance.

But lately, some of them are really getting out of hand.

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If you played video arcade games in the late 80’s, even early 90’s, you might remember Zero Wing — a game in which a battle takes place in the year 2101, where you must defend the planet Earth from an alien invasion led by the dreaded warrior Cats.

Zero Wing may have been a favorite among teenagers, but like the Cabbage Patch doll the fad faded… Until Sega Genesis came out with their version of the popular arcade game in ‘98, giving Zero Wing new breath. But this time, one is offered an animated introduction in preparation for the space battle…

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I just recorded a tidbit on copyspeaking (copywriting for Podcasting) and the whole MP3 controversy. It’s produced by my friend Paul Colligan, a podcast expert and fellow marketer.

Check it out. Big Seminar Live Cast: Copyspeaking, the Legality of MP3s and One-Heck-Of-An Offer.

There’s a new threat (well, seeming threat) spreading on the Internet these days, mostly perpetuated by a recent press release. This is currently being discussed on many forums, too, and some point to the MP3 licensing website.

In a nutshell, the creator of the MP3 encoding process is attempting to collect royalties from creators of MP3s. And this, apparently, is threatening Internet marketers who generate and distribute MP3s with some hefty lawsuits.

I personally don’t buy the argument, and here’s why…

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After the launch of our new automated split-testing software, controversy soon followed.

Most of it was caused by the math behind it (which is complex and understandably hard to grasp for most people), or by competitors spreading misinformation.

So people were either confused by it or misunderstood it.

For example, some people posted in popular forums that my copy for MutiTrackGenerator.com is misleading because it’s not pure Taguchi.

(Well, technically, they’re right.)

Here’s why.

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