In my cri­tique con­sult­ing ser­vices, I’ve found the most com­mon mis­take clients make is the igno­rance of, or indif­fer­ence to, split-​​testing. Lit­tle do they know this under­uti­lized mar­ket­ing prac­tice can be one of the most profitable.

Split-​​testing is the sim­ple process of split­ting your audi­ence into read­ing two or more ver­sions of your copy — whether it’s your web­site, saleslet­ter, email, etc — to deter­mine which ver­sion pulls the best.

I’m a big fan of test­ing. And I teach it as much as I can, and if my cri­tiques are any indi­ca­tion, I also believe 99% of mar­keters out there do not test at all. It’s a shame, because they’re leav­ing so much money on the table.

I applaud those peo­ple who do test. The prob­lem, how­ever, is that some of them reveal their test results, share their insights, and make claims, which can be a bad thing.

Sure, test results are cool. Per­haps even insight­ful. But some may be mis­in­ter­preted, and doing so also feeds into this lack­adaisi­cal mind­set of those non-​​testers, think­ing that such test results are uni­ver­sally applic­a­ble and there­fore test­ing is unnecessary.

Tak­ing any test result as gospel, with­out val­i­da­tion, can be an expen­sive proposition…

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After the last, big, “mega-​​product launch,” and a bar­rage of me-​​too mar­ket­ing emails from the usual sus­pects, I’ve decided enough is enough. And it’s about time.

I’ve done some­thing I should have done a long time ago.

And I feel liberated.

I rec­om­mend you do the same.

That is, I unsub­scribed from 90% of the newslet­ters I was receiv­ing. I deleted fear­lessly. Unsub­scribed relent­lessly. Purged ruth­lessly. With­out blink­ing or look­ing back.

If you think it’s not a lot, let me give you a back­story. When I was the edi­tor of The Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Chron­i­cles newslet­ter over a decade ago (which has since been acquired by the late Corey Rudl), I sub­scribed to a lot of email newsletters.

Yes, lots. Like over-​​a-​​thousand lots.

I’m a speed-​​reader, so get­ting that many emails was never a big chal­lenge. And before you con­clude I was an email junkie, let me give you a few rea­sons in my defense.

For one, I wanted to be up on things. I wanted to stay abreast of new changes, new mar­ket­ing strate­gies, new soft­ware tools, and so on. (I still do.)

Sec­ond, it gave me a lot of fod­der while writ­ing edi­to­ri­als for the then pop­u­lar newslet­ter. I’m proud to have been instru­men­tal in help­ing them grow their list from 45,000 to 160,000 sub­scribers, and remem­ber that 160,000 back in ’98 was quite a feat!

And third, these emails served me well as they were also used for research pur­poses. As an up-​​and-​​coming copy­writer writ­ing a lot for the Inter­net mar­ket­ing crowd at the time, I wanted to see what oth­ers were say­ing, pro­mot­ing, doing, email­ing, and writing.

But this week­end, after last week’s ubiq­ui­tous mega-​​launch pro­mo­tional emails started clut­ter­ing up my inbox, it became the prover­bial straw that broke this camel’s back.

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As an online mar­keter, it’s impor­tant that you should take every oppor­tu­nity to elim­i­nate bar­ri­ers and chal­lenges to the deliv­ery of your mes­sage to your tar­get audience.

While RSS feeds, blogs, and social media are all the rage right now, noth­ing beats that long-​​reigning monarch of the message-​​to-​​market medium online. Good ol’ email.

As one Twit­ter user, Michael Kern, once remarked while com­ment­ing on one of my arti­cles, “Email is still king.”

For instance, at the time of writ­ing this blog post, this blog has close to 50,000 sub­scribers — grow­ing by about 100 new sub­scribers every day. How­ever, just 15% of that num­ber are sub­scribed to my RSS feed, while the remain­der are email subscribers.

My num­bers are far from being unique. They are the same with a large per­cent­age of blog­gers and social media mar­keters, let alone Inter­net mar­keters with blogs.

With the vari­ety of ways avail­able to deliver an opt-​​in email newslet­ter, such as plain text, text with images, embed­ded HTML, and attach­ments, which one is the best?

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As with sta­tic web­sites, the suc­cess of a blog depends on attract­ing a steady stream of new and return traf­fic. The dif­fer­ence is, blog pro­mo­tion tools are slightly dif­fer­ent, a bit more diverse, and largely much more effective.

Why? Because blogs are designed with inter­ac­tiv­ity and social net­work­ing abil­ity built in. They are ideal both for devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships and for mar­ket­ing your brand.

How­ever, don’t neglect stan­dard pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties in favor of blog-​​only traf­fic gen­er­a­tion meth­ods. You can and should use both.

In fact, tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.

For exam­ple, and most impor­tant, you will still want to uti­lize your email list, and use your blog to grow it, too. Ask read­ers to sub­scribe, and let them know when you post a new arti­cle just as you would with a new fea­ture or prod­uct on a sta­tic website.

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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Recently, a coach­ing client asked me about deal­ing with prospec­tive clients over the phone.

This copy­writer under­stood the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospects and answer­ing their pre-​​sale ques­tions. How­ever, like me, he pre­ferred to avoid the tele­phone and asked me if his strat­egy was sound.

Free con­sul­ta­tions are often a nec­es­sary step in secur­ing clients in your early days as a copy­writer before you’ve estab­lished your exper­tise and devel­oped a reputation.

It’s nat­ural that poten­tial clients want to get a feel for your style and stan­dards with a “get­ting to know you ses­sion.” Quite often, they will want to do this via a phone con­sul­ta­tion with you.

I’m a big believer in open­ing the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and I also like to pick up the phone to speak with a client when writ­ing copy.

But before a client hires me, I pre­fer to remain off the phone. Why? Because the tele­phone can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and even hurt your business.

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Just a quick lit­tle note that we added a “prelaunch” blog, where we will be adding pre­views, news, sam­ples, and posts about the offi­cial launch of Suc­cess Chef.

While you’re there, sub­scribe to the RSS feed or join the email list, and view the spe­cial 70-​​minute prelaunch video tuto­r­ial. But if you want a sam­ple, here’s the first 15 min­utes or so of that hour-​​long video tutorial…

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