How to Communicate via E-mail

The Perils of Landing Page Limbo

November 2006 By Denny Hatch

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E-mail, on the other hand, costs virtually nothing, which means that e-mailers don’t need to know any rules. They can be very sloppy, mail billions, achieve minuscule results and still make a little money.

At last count by Postini.com, 87.3 percent of all e-mail is Spam—even with the CAN SPAM law. Legitimate e-marketers have an avalanche of competition.

Putting Direct Mail Rules to Work in E-mail—the Subject Line
The subject line, “A personal letter from the CEO …” piqued my interest. It was the equivalent of the envelope in direct mail. “The only purpose of the carrier envelope, other than keeping its contents from spilling out onto the street, is to get itself opened,” said legendary copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis.

If the envelope isn’t opened, the entire mailing is wasted. The great freelance wordsmith, Mel Martin, whose stunningly brilliant direct mail copy turned Boardroom into a $100 million business, would spend a week or more on envelope teaser copy. Hard-wired into Martin’s psyche was Lea Pierce’s dictum, “All direct mail gets opened over the trash can.”

Same thing with the e-mail subject line. It must be a powerhouse, because it’s a mouse click away from oblivion.

A Meaningful Subject Line Is Also Essential for Personal E-mail
When I hit the computer in the morning and go to Yahoo or AOL, I click on the box that marks all e-mails and I scan the subject lines quickly. If a subject line looks interesting, I check the sender. If the sender and the subject line look reasonable, they are unmarked. Then I hit “DELETE” and everything else is cleared out. In less than a minute, I’ve reduced the list of messages in my in-box by 90 percent—turning 50 e-mails into a manageable four or five. Do I miss some stuff that I should see? Yes. But if it’s important, the person will re-send or call me on the phone to alert me that an important e-mail is coming and to be on the lookout for it.

Direct Mail Once the Envelope Is Opened—What You See First
Top direct mail professionals pay attention to every facet of a mailing, including the order in which the individual elements are inserted into the envelope. If using a window envelope, the prospect’s address on the order card must show through the window.

Since envelopes are almost always turned over and opened from the flap side, a standard rule of thumb is to make sure that the letter is inserted with the letterhead and salutation facing out, causing it to be the first element that the prospect sees. That’s why the late guru, Dick Benson, said, “A letter should look and feel like a letter.” If it’s on glossy paper and printed in the same typeface as the circular—and contains boxes, big headlines, pictures and charts, it will not be immediately obvious which piece is which.

The other pieces are inserted between the letter in the back and the order card in the front circular, lift note(s), freemium, business reply envelope, etc.

For all the care taken with folding and inserting, the mailer still has no control over which element the prospect will read first. A right-brain person, who processes information emotionally and irrationally, will want to read the letter first to make a personal connection with the writer and to see the benefit-oriented “you” copy—what this product or service will do for you.

A left-brain person with an analytical, rational mind, will go for the circular or demonstrator for its illustrations, charts, photographs and “it” copy that shows and describes “it”, the product or service being offered.

I always look at the order card first so I can see what the deal is right away before wasting time on an offer that doesn’t interest me.

Each of these elements is written and designed to tell the story in a different way and appeal to a different emotion.

E-mail—the Landing Page
Unlike direct mail, the e-mailer can control what the prospect sees and in what order.

For example, on the subject line from Titan Holdings, I was promised a “personal letter from the CEO.” That is what I was expecting—something personal and emotional from the CEO and the company.

Instead, I received a complex press release—a PR- and lawyer-driven page that was a cross between an annual report and a stock tout sheet called “Business to Leisure Monthly.” In two dense columns were the “Top 5 Reasons to Watch the Stock of Titan Global Holdings, Inc.,” a press release about higher profit margins, and an offer to send information “to interested readers only.”

After searching, I finally found the “letter” buried in the left-hand column in the same type as everything else. Sandwiched in between “Dear Investor” and a signature block of CEO Brian Chance (but no signature) was a bunch of PR-written hype about the company that had been clearly flyspecked by lawyers. It looked and sounded like everything else on the page.

Elsewhere were 225 words on “Forward Looking Statements,” 124 words “About Business to Leisure Monthly (BTL.com),” and the piece closed with a 370-word “DISCLAIMER” in mousetype.

Along the way, I was invited to click on any of the 13 hyperlinks in blue.

The Legacy of the Dot-Com Whiz Kids—Landing Page Limbo
Web designers are proud of their Web sites and like to show off all the neat stuff they have created. Landing pages are frequently loaded with superfluous information and hyperlinks that can send a visitor off on wild goose chases: FAQs, Press Room, About Us, Privacy Statement, Contact, Press, News Stories, Investor Information, Webmaster and other cockamamie places that serve as distractions.

Suddenly, visitors find themselves in Landing Page Limbo and forget why they’re there.

The beauty of e-commerce is that the marketer can control what the prospect sees every step of the way. Not only that, but it’s possible to track where the prospects go and see precisely what’s working and what’s not.

Where direct mail tests require six or eight weeks to get information like this, it can be obtained practically in real time on the Web and then changed and tweaked instantly at virtually no cost.

What’s more, if you have two or three satellite sites and automatically alternate the visitors, you can have A-B-C split tests, make changes and read winners and losers in minutes.

Once you have found a right combination of offers, messages and designs that keep the highest percentage of visitors enthralled up to the point of ordering, these elements can be converted into direct mail and space ads. Nothing like this has ever before been possible for marketers.

Using Web tracking software, you can amass a wealth of test information in three hours that would normally take two years to collect using snail mail—and at 1/100,000th of the cost.

And yet, the legacy of the failed dot-commers of 1998-2000 persists. Instead of making a personal connection with me—as promised in the subject line—I was fed emotionless corporate palaver all in the same typeface, tone and terminology, followed by a cover-your-a** disclaimer in case it was all a lie.

This is emphatically not the way to communicate.