In The Death of The Saleslet­ter, I talked about hid­ing con­tent so it could open up based on a user’s actions and thereby per­son­al­iz­ing the saleslet­ter, dynam­i­cally, on the fly.

You can hide con­tent on the same sales page, mak­ing the page look shorter and less intim­i­dat­ing. And only desired con­tent appears depend­ing on a user’s choices.

What does using this tac­tic help to do?

In some cases, peo­ple break saleslet­ters down into var­i­ous pages, and add links to them in the let­ter. I don’t rec­om­mend this with long-​​copy saleslet­ters. Tra­di­tion­ally, I rec­om­mend that the extra con­tent opens up in a pop-​​up win­dow instead, as to not distract.

But with this tac­tic, and other than the poten­tial for per­son­al­iza­tion, which is its biggest ben­e­fit, it means that peo­ple read­ing a saleslet­ter don’t have to be both­ered by…

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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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Since the new year is right around the cor­ner, blog­gers and mar­keters alike are post­ing their pre­dic­tions as if a psy­chics con­ven­tion has come to town.

So in keep­ing with that tra­di­tion, I’d like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their pre­dic­tions in point form, I won’t make a spe­cific list but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, how­ever, this post will cul­mi­nate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some seri­ous money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But some­thing is def­i­nitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evi­dent, and you’ve prob­a­bly seen some of these yourself.

What I’m talk­ing about is…

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Some mar­keters “get it.”

When I wrote my free white paper, “The Death of The Saleslet­ter,” I men­tioned that the web is chang­ing, whether we agree with it or not. Long-​​copy, text-​​only, sta­tic saleslet­ters are slowly being replaced by more dynamic, cleaner, pithier, multimedia-​​based, content-​​driven sales messages.

One case in point is my friend Jack Humphey and his Author­ity Site Cen­ter. His lat­est prod­uct, launched today, is a mem­ber­ship site that teaches peo­ple how to cre­ate “author­ity sites” that drive traf­fic and sell prod­ucts through con­tent, in par­tic­u­lar with the help of Web 2.0 web­sites, com­mu­ni­ties, and applications.

Jack actu­ally offers a free report him­self on this lat­est trend. You can down­load it for free — there’s a mini-​​video intro­duc­tion that leads to an opt-​​in page, where Jack offers his free report, the “Author­ity Site Black­book,” after you sign up.

But let me bring your atten­tion to the saleslet­ter for his new prod­uct, which is what I really want to focus on and what’s pretty amazing…

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The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

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Long, scrolling saleslet­ters are dying. It’s a fact. There are two main rea­sons for this. Remem­ber, I said an evo­lu­tion and a rev­o­lu­tion are cur­rently tak­ing place. And both of these are con­tribut­ing to the death of the salesletter.

The evo­lu­tion is this: users are demand­ing for bet­ter qual­ity, more con­tent, more proof, less has­sles and greater inter­ac­tiv­ity. New tech­nolo­gies there­fore help to enable that expe­ri­ence. And really, that’s what it’s all about:

It’s about the expe­ri­ence.

As more and more peo­ple enter the web, get broad­band, and gain access to groups of peo­ple who they can con­nect and inter­act with, as well as with the pre­pon­der­ance of appli­ca­tions that fight for that person’s atten­tion and inter­ac­tion, the long-​​scrolling saleslet­ter no longer works as effec­tively as it used to.

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Video is said to be Web 2.0’s killer app. But is it video itself? Not really. It’s inter­ac­tiv­ity. Video engages all the senses. Ample split-​​tests show that the more you engage the user’s senses, the greater the response.

When I used to teach pro­fes­sional sell­ing in col­lege, we used a text­book called “Per­sonal Sell­ing: An Inter­ac­tive Approach,” by Ronald Marks, Ph.D.

In it, Dr. Marks makes the case that using audio­vi­sual aids in face-​​to-​​face sales pre­sen­ta­tions can increase a person’s sales effec­tive­ness. (And remem­ber, this book was writ­ten in the 80s, before lap­tops became popular.)

That’s not break­ing news, I admit. But here’s what I’ve found fas­ci­nat­ing. The author states that multimedia-​​generated sales pre­sen­ta­tions — with a mix of text, graph­ics, pho­tos, ani­ma­tion and sound — cap­ture atten­tion and arouse inter­est more effec­tively since they appeal to all the senses.

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