Your Direct Source Newsletter: Copywriting and Direct Response Tips and Techniques

How to use online videos to increase sales

Online videos offer many benefits to both B2B and consumer marketers, and have become a popular marketing tool.

A well written and produced video will entertain and engage visitors to your website. This enhances the user's experience, and by doing so increases your chance of a conversion.

You can also use online videos to:

• Optimize online press release coverage: Add your video to a Multimedia News Release. The release gets indexed in image search engines to create even more visibility for both the press release and your video.


• Increase quality leads to your website. Post videos on websites like YouTube and Vidler.


• Make your website sticky. Entertaining and educational videos keep visitors coming back to your website.


• Educate prospects. Videos can move your prospect closer to the buying decision when the sale is a complex one.


• Increase Search Engine Optimization. Search engines incorporate videos into their search results.

Like any other marketing promotion, the key to a successful video campaign is compelling content with a call to action.

B2B companies increase Social Media Spending

BtoB magazine's Outlook survey reports that 62.6% of marketers plan to increase spending on social media.

Six layout tips that boost email deliverability

1. Use a maximum width of 600 pixels. This allows recipients to see them in their preview pains.


2. Keep the most important part of the message in the top 300 pixels.


3. For fast downloads be sure to keep email size down to 40 kilobytes.


4. Provide links for alternative viewing options, such as a web page.


5. Do not use Java, JavaScript, frames, ActiveX, ASP, PHP, cache busters or Dynamic HTML; most email clients (a computer program used to manage email, such as Microsoft Outlook) do not support them.


6. Use subject lines that are fewer than 45 characters.

Source: Target Marketing, January 2011

Why you should NEVER send out a sales letter WITHOUT a P.S.

Approximately 30% of the people who scan your letter will read the P.S. first. That's reason enough to always use one, (and a P.P.S. when you have a lot to say). In the P.S. mention your guarantee, key product benefits, your response deadline, and any special bonuses.

What you should know before you buy an email list

Price: Email lists are sold on a cost per-thousand (CPM) basis. For business lists the average CPM is $279; for consumer lists it's $112.

Competitive Research: Ask for a list of other companies that are using the email list.

CAN–SPAM Compliance: List users are required to provide all opt–outs they receive. If the list owner or manager does not ask for the renter's opt–outs there's a compliance issue.

From "The three keys to successful email prospecting and lead generation," by Regina Brady

How clean is your email database?

You may be collecting a lot of bad email addresses without knowing it. These emails don't bounce because they're from disposable domains, closed domains, and spamtraps. As a result, your email database looks cleaner than it actually is.

"Somewhere between 254 and 5,000 is the number that represents just how many commercial messages an average consumer gets each day"

– Matthew Creamer, Editor-at-Large, AdAge.com

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