Five Ways to Capture E-mail Addresses of Landing Page Visitors

Most Internet marketers I know who use landing pages to make direct sales online focus on conversion: getting the maximum number of visitors to the landing page to place an order for the product being advertised.

Other Internet marketers, when writing landing page copy, focus not only on conversion, but also on search engine optimization: keyword selection and meta tag creation that can increase traffic by raising the site’s search engine rankings.


But in addition to conversions and unique visits, savvy Internet marketers are also concerned with a third performance metric: e-mail address capture.

If you have a two percent conversion rate, then for every 100 visitors to the landing page, only two buy—and of course, during these transactions, you capture the e-mail addresses of those buyers.

What happens to the other 98 visitors—those who do not buy? You will not be able to add their e-mail address to your list unless you incorporate a deliberate methodology into your landing page to capture it.

How to Write Subject Lines That Get Your E-Mail Opened and Read

When prospects get your e-mail marketing message, they make a quick decision, usually in a couple of
seconds, to open or delete it based largely on the subject line. But given the glut of promotional e-mail
today, how can you convince a busy prospect—in just a few words—that your message is worthy of attention?

The “4 U’s” copywriting formula—which stands for urgent, unique, ultra-specific, and useful—can help. Originally developed by my colleague Michael Masterson for writing more powerful headlines, the 4 U’s formula works especially well with e-mail subject lines. I’ll share it with you now.

According to this formula, strong subject lines are:

Urgent

Urgency gives the reader a reason to act now instead of later. You can create a sense of urgency in your subject line by incorporating a time element. For instance, “Make $100,000 working from home this year” has a greater sense of urgency than “Make $100,000 working from home.” A sense of urgency can also be created with a time-limited special offer, such as a discount or premium if you order by a certain date.

Tips for Writing More Effective Industrial Copy

Below are 10 time-tested tips for writing industrial copy that sells. Apply them to your next ad, mailer, or catalog, and watch the reply cards come pouring in.

Be technically accurate.
Industrial marketers sell systems to solve specific problems. Copy must accurately describe what the product can and cannot do.

Being accurate means being truthful. Industrial buyers are among the most sophisticated of audiences. Technical know-how is their forte, and they'll be likely to spot any exaggerations, omissions, or “white lies" you make.

Being accurate also means being specific. Writing that a piece of equipment "can handle your toughest injection molding jobs" is vague and meaningless to a technician; but saying that the machine "can handle pressures of up to 12,000 pounds" is honest, concrete, and useful.

Tips for Writing Better Technical Product Brochures

Given these conditions, how can you—as an engineer or manager who either writes brochure copy, edits copy, approves copy, or provides input for ad agencies or freelance industrial copywriters—do your job better so the finished brochure is the best one possible?

Here are some simple guidelines to follow:

Define the topic.

Is your brochure about a solution? A system? A product line? A product? A specific model of that product? A specific industry use or application of that product? The support services you offer for that product? The accessories?

Define what the piece is about.

The narrower the topic, the more focused, specific, and effective your brochure can be within the
limited space available.

Tip: Your brochure doesn’t have to cover everything. You can always decide to have other pieces of sales literature that go into more depth on certain aspects of the product.

A 5-Part Formula for Making a Content-Rich Speech

If you want to get and keep your audience’s attention, then follow the PARTS formula as outlined below. There is nothing worse than a speech or presentation that is disjointed, disconnected and unmemorable. There has to be a theme. Then there must be points that connect to that theme and help build a solid foundation.

P = Phrase
Always start with a theme phrase…a foundational phrase that sets the tone for the rest of the speech. All points made during the speech will be tied in some manner with this theme phrase. Keep that phrase short and direct, ten words or less.

A – Anchor
Anchors are illustrations, short stories of a sort that tie to the foundational phrase. Four anchors you can use are:

1. Anecdote (a story)
2. Activity
3. Analogy
4. Acronym