Today’s article is a mini-guide for email advertisers looking to improve the results of their solo advertising campaigns. For an easier reading and understanding, the essential principles I will talk about today are shown in a Q & A (Questions & Answers) format.

Q: Paid vs. Free Solo Ads. Why should I pay for a solo advert if there are so many places (safelists, text ad exchanges) where I can get them for free?

A: Why do you think that so many online businesses fail? No offence, but where there is a crowd there are also a lot of losers. Choose your model carefully and don’t lose contact with the real world. When was the last time when a stranger gave you something valuable for free? … No one gives away something really valuable. No one. Most of the online freebies value exactly what you pay for them (nothing, to be more specific). If you have something of value, what do you do with it? Do you keep it for yourself or your family, do you sell it, or do you give it away to a stranger?

Q: Where shall I buy solo ads from? Can you recommend a responsive newsletter or a good email marketing service? Shall I type “solo ads” in my favored search engine and buy from the places listed on the first page?

A: All such approaches are wrong.

First you need to understand the difference between targeted and untargeted advertising. Let’s say that you want to promote the latest SF book you wrote. If you promote it in a newsletter distributed to the members of the association “We hate books”, then you will fail. That’s not targeted advertising, neither untargeted advertising, but dumb advertising. If you promote it in a health newsletter, then you shoot in the dark. The people have subscribed to that newsletter because they want to get health info. Some of them may like to read a book from time to time, others may hate books. You don’t have a clue. What you know for sure about them is that they want something you do NOT offer (health info). That’s untargeted
advertising. Finally, if you promote your book to the newsletter distributed to the members of the association “We love SF” … then it’s obvious that you have serious chances to sell your book. That’s targeted advertising.

Now let’s come back to the original questions…

I don’t know what you will promote tomorrow, neither what you will promote next week. If I recommend you a very good health newsletter and you’re gonna promote your SF book, will this help you in any way? Nope …

If you type that keyword in your search engine, what results will you get? The best newsletters in the niche you’re interested in? No way. You’ll get a list of sites arranged by that search engine using a formula that does NOT involve factors like the quality or the topic of the newsletter.

Then … What to do? Be specific, refine your research and always look for ezines that have the same topic like the product or service you plan to promote.

Q: I’m not interested in reading the newsletter I plan to publish my ad in. Shall I waste my time and subscribe to it?

A: That’s a must. You’re not wasting your time, you’re avoiding a potential failure. What if that newsletter doesn’t exist? Or what if only poor quality content is published there? What if the subscribers are bombarded with ads? What if … You’ll never find the answers to these questions and many others unless you subscribe and read the newsletter. Then decide whether you place the order or not.

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

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Related posts:

1. Ezine Solo Ads vs. Safelist Solo Ads
2. Solo Ads: Agony, Ecstasy, or Nothing?
3. Solo Ads – How to Test the Subject Lines

Tip # 1 – Always remember the truth I just mentioned: the most important part of an email marketing message is the subject line. That piece of text is decisive. If all it says is something like “Delete this junk!”, then the rest is in vain. Your work and your money are wasted. Unfortunately so many advertisers think that buying a solo ad slot in an opt-in mailing list guarantees some kind of readership for their advertisement or otherwise it means that the publisher is some sort of scammer. That’s completely wrong! In order to get a good result, the first thing your ad needs (out of many others) is a good subject line.

Tip # 2 – Write an attention grabbing subject line. Common pieces of text like “It’s Ken here” (as if the reader knows who Ken is – she/he doesn’t!) don’t work. People don’t read all the emails they receive, but only the emails they have some of sort of interest in or the emails that arouse their curiosity.

Tip # 3 – Don’t grab the reader’s attention in a wrong way. Swearing, for example, for sure grabs the reader’s attention, but it makes her or him delete your ad instead of reading it.

“What kind of tip is this? No one will swear anyway.”

Well, claiming something even the advertiser doesn’t believe is common and is actually like swearing. Insulting reader’s intelligence is the no-no method I’m actually advising you to avoid.

Tip # 4 – Keep the subject line short. In some email clients, long subject lines are not readable without opening the email. Since many emails are opened only if the subject line is interesting, in case the subject line is not fully readable, you know what happens, right? How short should it be? If you make it very short (30-35 characters) it will be good for almost all email clients, but you may not be able to write an interesting subject line using so few characters. My recommendation is maximum 60 characters.

Tip # 5 – Write the subject line so that you can have the keywords very close to its beginning. If the subject line is not fully readable without opening the email and the keyword is at the end of the line … you know the outcome.

Tip # 6 – Ask the publisher not to personalize the subject line. Reader’s first name will “eat” characters from the visible part of the subject line. The longer the first name, the shorter the visible subject line. On the other hand, spammers already use first names too, and as a consequence more and more people are no longer naive. Their first name in the subject line doesn’t make them automatically open the email anymore.

Tip # 7 – Refrain from claiming big earnings. Within seconds the reader may say … “I don’t believe her/him”. It doesn’t matter if she or he is wrong. The result is that your advert is deleted.

Tip # 8 – Write more subject lines and test them in order to see which one works better. It’s hard to write the best headline from the very beginning. Be your first critic and then ask your friends what subject line they like.

Tip # 9 – Test the sujbect line (together with the whole ad copy) in order to be sure that it doesn’t trigger the spam filters. If these filters block your ad or send it to readers’ spam folders, all your work is ruined. Don’t let this work on publisher’s shoulders. Most of them don’t have a clue on how to deal with spam filters even if some of them are very good publishers. Don’t take this risk!

To Your Success!
Adrian Jock

P.S. For more such interesting ezine advertising tips, you can subscribe free to Ezine Advertising Info newsletter.

P.P.S. Recommended reading: Ultimate Guide to Solo Ads

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Related posts:

1. Solo Ads – How to Test the Subject Lines
2. Solo Ads: Agony, Ecstasy, or Nothing?
3. Three Writing Tactics To Improve Your Solo Ad Response Rate

Cut out the fluff

People are pressed for time. They don’t want to read a long email. In solo ads, people tend to go on and on and on. Making it incredibly difficult to the reader to stay focused on it because they have other things on their mind.

A lot of the ads floating around these days are full of what I call fluff. Non-essential information that doesn’t need to be there. You have to think first what an ad is supposed to do.

Deliver traffic with a desire to know more.

The reader doesn’t have to know everything from your ad. Leave a little bit for them to discover on their own. Get to the point of your and and let the sales copy, or landing page copy do the rest.

In some recent experiments with some willing clients, I have been testing out long vs. short ads. The shorter ads are receiving much more response than the long ads. Simply for the fact that they deliver a lot of emotion very quickly.

Write like you mean it

Some solo ads just make me sad.

I can tell that the person on the other side of the email could care less about anything else but to get me to buy something so they make money. Sure, that’s the ultimate goal but don’t be so blatant about it.

When writing a solo ad your very heart must be in it. You must be thinking about one person at a time. Not the thousands you want to reach. Create your ad so that when people read it they know that you are very involved with the product, opportunity, ebook, or whatever.

In an ad that was for a very saturated opportunity I tried this technique out. I wrote it in a voice that could be interpreted no other way but heartfelt. I wanted to get into the heart of the person reading it. I didn’t want their mind, I was after their heart.

People have been buried under so many ads that they are immune to the ones that are lifeless. These ads don’t even get a cursory look over. Delete.

What they are looking for, searching for, is someone to bring them something that is full of life, and excitement. Write your ad with that in it. Mean what you write and write what you mean.

Be link happy

If there is one place that you don’t want to be too conservative with you links it’s in a solo ad. Put them in every three to four lines. Just make sure they apply to what’s above them.

Don’t just stick them in there for the sake of it. Lead the reader into wanting to click on the link.

Remember, what is the sole purpose of a solo ad. It’s not to sell anything. But, to prime the reader into wanting more information. Trying to sell them in the ad takes too much time, too much fluff and too much hype.

By putting in your links every three to four lines you’re building up the anticipation of the reader. Each time you build into the link they are more apt to click on it.

Put a little more life into your ads with these three writing techniques and watch your response rates climb.

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1. Solo Ads: 9 Tips for Writing Better Subject Lines
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3. 10 More Secrets and Tips for Writing Better Solo Ads