Tim Bossie.com

Email ads, or solo ads, are quickly being overlooked as a viable advertising tool. With the climbing use of RSS feeds and social marketing websites email marketing is being pushed to the rear of the internet marketing world. I believe that’s a mistake.

Email newsletters are still a major component of a healthy and successful online marketing campaign. But, you have to do it right. Great content, for instance, is what will make your email marketing campaign successful. For ezine publishers that means quality articles and tips. For email marketers (these are the people who are buying ad space in the ezines) that means quality ads that aren’t really ads.

Huh?

That probably sounded a little off. So I’ll try to explain it a little bit. One of the reasons so many people are frustrated with email marketing is because once the spammers and overzealous marketers flooded people’s email boxes with junk they got fed up. Why? Most of the time their email was just deleted along with the trash.

The key to email ad/solo ad success is to not sound, or even look, like an ad. This happens when you make the ad more personal and relevant than full of hype and "you’ll make thousands everyday!" type junk.

How do you do that? How do you write and ad that doesn’t sound like an ad? Here’s some of the steps I use every day in writing ads for internet marketers.

1. Keep in mind what you want to achieve and focus on it. One of the biggest mistakes I see in ads today is that they are all over the place. Listed in the ad is about six different calls to action. Streamlining your ad (I like to call them letters) to focus on one thing gives you more opportunity to turn that reader into a visitor.

2. Be personal in your tone. People love to receive letters. And to get one from someone they know is even better. Even if you don’t know who you’re sending your ad to, which you probably won’t, you should make it sound personal.

3. Use subject lines that are less ad sounding . Instead of "More money in 24 hours guaranteed!" try something like, "Hey (first name of person), are you still looking for extra income?"

Two things about the second subject line. First, there is little reason for the person reading it to automatically put up their defenses. Second, it asks a question. Questions, for some reason, catch people’s eyes more than exclamations. Why? Because it’s not so over the top and, at times, forces the reader to stop and answer it for themselves.

4. Be relevant to the current culture and situations going on at the time of the ad. One of the things I’ve been doing for some time is to use current cultures, terminology, and news in the body of the ad (letter) to make it more personal. This way it’s no longer an ad but something worth reading.

5. Stay friendly. We get into the frame of mind that we must always be pushing someone to buy something. In essence that’s true. What I’m talking about here is to not be overly blatant about it but to keep the ad (remember ‘letter’) on a friendly note. Think of it this way. Do you check something out because a friend recommended it? Or do you just click anything? Most of the time it’s because a friend told you about it.

6. Drop links to your website in body of ad. But, do it within the context of what you’re writing. Don’t just say “Visit this site http://www.iwantyourmoney.com now!” Instead, while you’re writing about a site you just came across blend the link into the sentence. Kind of like, “I can’t believe what my friend told me the other day about http://insertwhateverurlhere.com .

See the difference? One is in your face. The other is natural.

7. Write in small paragraphs. One to two sentences should be the extent of your paragraphs. This helps the reader “skim” through and not have to spend any length of time trying to focus on a long, drawn out paragraph. It also gives the ad (letter) a feel of a conversation between you and the reader instead of a boring monologue.

8. Close it with a very poignant question. In the trick bag of advertising specialists one the things they love to pull out is the rather jarring question. It needs to be one that will make the reader really think. And almost feel like they have to click the link in order to find out the question.

If you’ve built up a relationship with the reader through the ad by being personal and using current events your question will have a deeper impact.

Then list your link as the answer to that question.

When you think about it only good friends will ask the tough questions. Once you enter into the good friend realm you have taken big steps into securing a favorable response to your ad.

Email advertising is still very powerful. Use it as it should be. As email. Not as advertising.