Email Advertising - How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer A

Email Advertising - How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer A

I recently undertook an email advertising promotion,
using a number of advertising media. The exercise
involved a program of mine called the Magical Marketing
system.

As an email advertising Internet marketing exercise, I
decided that I wanted to approach the members of some
of the affiliate programs that are featured in Magical
Marketing, and offer their members the chance to join
this system, and reap the benefit of the multiple promotion
methods that it employs.

And. as an email advertising marketing exercise, this has
worked very well, and whilst an interesting exercise in
Joint Venture Marketing in itself, it has produced a result
so remarkable in my eyes, that I felt it worthy of a report.

With one particular featured program, I did a multiple
ad test, to see what the comparison between three ads.
It was the results of this that struck me, and prompted
me to put this article together.

The three ads, which were very similar. This is good of
course, because it means that any variance in the results
can be explained in relatively few ways. So there are two
points that need to be made about these ads, which may
affect your thinking about how you write your own ads.

1. Use Of Variables in Headlines

I don't know about you, but I am always hearing that
using someone's name in an advert can make a significant
difference to the effect of that advert. Not all programs
have this kind of facility though. It just happens the
program that I ran the adverts with does, so I made use of
it in the headlines for 2 of the 3 adverts, but not for
one of them. I have used the variable in the body of all
three ads, so some personalisation took place in all cases.

2. Bulleted Benefits

Again, all the books and articles that I have ever read
tell you to spell out the benefits, and a lot of them tell
you to bullet them to add emphasis. So, I have done this
with all three adverts, but with a difference between ads 1,
and 2 and 3. In the first advert, I just made single word
references to the benefits, in the other two, I elaborated
in order to explain the benefit better.

3. Conclusions

The results are so striking, that they are worthy of comment.

The ads were placed from 12th December 2004 to 18h January
2005. So, the time span is about a month, but, I use the
program in question to send other ads out too. About every
3rd day, I will send one of these three ads, in rotation.
So, each of the ads would have been sent about every 6 days
or so.

Advert 1 pulled in 70 unique hits, with 19 action hits. The
latter is where prospects followed through to the sign up
page.

Advert 2 pulled 5 unique hits and 1 action hit.

Advert 3 pulled 4 unique hits and no action hits.

Headlines
I have always advocated trying to keep headlines short,
especially where email adverts are concerned. You only have
the width of the email pane to enter your message, so
you must tell your story within a few words.

I don't consider any of the Headlines that I have used to
be excessively long. However, the first advert is very short,
and perhaps that accounts in part for the huge number of
additional clicks for the first advert?

In part, I believe that this is true.

However, I am now thinking that perhaps email prospects have
become wary of seeing their name in emails from people that
they don't really know. Think about how you react when you
see such an email?

Do you open it immediately, or do you become suspicious?

Trust your gut feeling.

I have used the personalised approach in the body of the email,
and maybe the psychology here is that once someone has opened
an email, they have 'let you in' and are more amenable to your
being personal.

Headline conclusion
I am more convinced than ever that email headlines should be
short - as short as possible. I also recommend that if you
personalise the Headline, you stop, and test your ads without
it.

Bulleted Benefits
You can see that advert 1 has produced a massive amount of
additional click thru's over the other two ads. Bearing in
mind that each ad went out, probably every six days, the first
two ads are not far removed from the norm with the program that
I used. This makes the results achieved by Advert 1 even more
staggering.

The change in headline may go some way to explain this, but
the huge number of clicks tells me that something much more
significant has occurred.

Thankfully, the body of the three ads are very similar in all
aspects, except one; the bulleted benefits. In the first ad,
I have given one word answers. In the other two, I have
elaborated.

Bulleted benefits conclusion
One cannot escape the fact that keeping the benefits so short
has had an impact. And not only in click thru's either. If you
look at the graphic under 'Actions' column, you will see that
I have tracked the prospect through to the signup page. You
might expect that the 20% conversion rate be the same, but it
isn't, it has increased to around 28%. So the shorter bullet
points have also pre-sold more effectively, so the prospects
likelihood of signing up has increased as well.

As a final note, please remember that all of this is courtesy
of tracking my ads. If you don't do it, then you will struggle
to make an impact in the marketing world.

About the author:
Whether you are new to email advertising or not, you cannot ignore this statistically proven information.