The Golden Thread – Copywriting Insider
The Week in Review
May 6–12, 2007
Welcome to Copywriting Insider – an e-letter from AWAI and the editorial team at Inside Direct Mail that brings you insider information on the hottest markets in the direct-mail industry and techniques you can use right now to improve your skills and further grow your copywriting business.
In This Issue:
- How to Become What You Want to Be
Michael Masterson on how to make your life it what you want it to be. - Quick Tip: Make Sure "Remember" Works
A quick tip on how to write tighter copy by avoiding a common mistake. - Industry Spotlight: Financial Services
Find out about trends and statistics in the financial writing market. - Creative Insert Ideas
Advice from Hallie Mummert on how to create more compelling inserts for your financial packages. - Top Fourteen Financial Services Mailers
Discover the names and websites of fourteen top mailers in the financial services industry.
How to Become What You Want to Be
"If you want to be a writer, you have to write."
I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.
The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer, I was 11 or 12 years old. Back then, I had no idea that there was such a thing as copywriting – the kind of writing that would eventually make me a very rich man. I just wanted to be a writer. Any sort of writer.
I'd written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, "How Do I Know the World Is Real?"
I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry.
I'd seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.
My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing. I didn't feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn't. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. "You may have a talent for writing," he said.
I wrote a lot of things in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests – touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls – crowded themselves into my life.
Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.
To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were "life experience," and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be.
In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.
That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, "If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes."
So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can't find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do – travel the world or paint paintings or read the classics?
And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel? Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?
And what about you? How does this apply to your goal of becoming a successful copywriter?
I give aspiring copywriters the same advice my father gave me. "Copywriters write copy," I tell them. And by that, I'm saying two things:
- You lose the right to call yourself a copywriter when you stop writing copy.
- You can regain the title the moment you start writing copy again.
If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.
Back when I was 16 and deluding myself about becoming a writer, my father's advice was disturbing. I wanted him to say that the way to become a writer was to read books about writing and then take courses on writing and then perhaps become an apprentice to a writer and then begin writing little bits here and there. And that, finally, after 3 or 10 years of education, preparation, and qualification, I would somehow automatically be a writer.
But as long as I was studying writing or preparing myself to be a writer – and yet not actually writing – I wasn't a writer. It was as simple as that.
Lots of people feel that they can keep their dreams alive and derive some of the ego satisfaction they hope their dreams will give them simply by living in a state of becoming. "I am not yet the person I want to become, but so long as I continue to express a wish to become that person, I keep that possibility alive and deserve credit for doing so."
To become a copywriter, the first thing you have to do is refuse to accept any psychological credit for wanting to be one. After the initial disappointment of giving up the delusion that becoming is as good as being, you'll have no choice but to jump over the becoming stage and simply be.
You do that by writing copy. Every day.
The easiest way to become something special is also the fastest: Just start doing it. Don't wait for the "right" time. Don't worry about not being qualified. And don't worry about getting paid for it. Just start doing it.
You want to become a musician? Play that piano.
You want to become a basketball player? Shoot those hoops.
You want to become a copywriter? Write copy.
Don't spend another minute talking about what you will do … one day.
Quick Tip: Make Sure "Remember" Works
I was reviewing another copywriter's promotion the other day when I came upon this phrase: "And remember that …"
"Remember?" He had to be referring to something he'd said earlier in the promotion, but I didn't remember any such reference. So I went back, looking for what I thought I'd missed.
Nothing. I looked again. And I did a search for the phrase and for variations of the phrase. Again, nothing.
While this may seem like a minor deal, it isn't. If you do this, you're inviting the prospect to stop reading so he can try to find what you really hadn't told him previously.
This stops the momentum at a critical time. And if the prospect doesn't find the reference he's looking for, he might get annoyed and toss the letter.
So when you use words and phrases like "Don't forget …" or "Remember …" make sure what you're referring to is in the promotion.
If you're referring to something that's general knowledge, then label it as such: "Remember what you learned in high school biology?" Better yet, tell the prospect what you want him to remember from high school biology (or The Wall Street Journal, or whatever) in the letter.
Industry Spotlight: Financial Services
Consumers are hungry for financial products and services that can help them make or save money. And demand for these products is soaring!
- Amazon.com currently lists more than 2,400 financial magazines for sale.
- Books on investing and personal finance frequently reach the top of the bestseller list … and fill up lots of shelf space in major bookstores around the country.
- Over 160 different financial newsletters are published every month. They range in size and scope from small, independent firms that publish a company newsletter … to investment clubs like The Oxford Club … to organizations with a global reach like Agora, Inc., which publishes more than 300 books and 40 newsletters, reaching 1 million international readers.
- Other financial products and services sold by direct response include financial seminars, credit cards, newspapers (e.g., Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal), magazines, financial software, insurance, and more!
- Many publicly traded corporations, mutual funds, mortgage brokers, and rare-coin dealers now use direct marketing to attract investors, clients, and customers.
All of these companies need copywriters like you to sell their products and services … and there are many more financial sectors today than ever before.
Take a look at the size of the financial services sector:
Size of the Industry: $45 Billion
Number of Major Financial Services Mailers in the Who’s Mailing What! Archive: 559
Number of Financial Services Mailings Tracked by the Who’s Mailing What! Archive: 19,477
Creative Insert Ideas
If you open the next credit card statement you get in the mail, the direct-mail package will, without a doubt, contain a promotional insert.
With their limited real estate, inserts often prove to be one tough design challenge. But those who accept and master that challenge are rewarded with entree into a cost-effective channel that delivers strong ROI.
Alice Calista Cronin, creative director, core media, for agency Holsted Marketing, offered up some of her most successful creative test ideas for this miniature media:
- Include involvement devices, such as scratch-offs, stickers and lift windows – anything that invites the recipient to touch, open, move and interact with the insert.
- Emphasize the word “free” above everything else. In inserts – maybe even more than in other forms of direct mail – “free” is the most powerful statement you can make.
- Place secondary emphasis on your great price. Make it seem even greater by having a price, crossing it out and writing in a lower one.
- Highlight any endorsements or co-brandings. Inserts carry an implied endorsement from the mailer or cataloger they are riding with, but try playing this up even more by including your partner’s logo as often as it will allow.
- Develop a “choice” offer. It goes against conventional wisdom, but Cronin has had great success with choice offers, such as “get 20% off or select a second item free.”
- Create urgency with order deadlines. To give your insert a longer shelf-life, test vague deadlines, such as “order within the next 10 days” or “send no money now” or “order today,” against more specific ones.
- Play with size. Test going as big as the insert program will allow – which usually brings in higher response – against a smaller effort – which may have a better backend.
- Keep it clean and simple. The limited space of an insert doesn’t allow much room for complicated offers or graphics. Don’t confuse things by selling multiple items; just keep the emphasis on the price and one primary product image.
Top Fourteen Financial Services Mailers
- American Express
Credit card issuer and major marketer of gifts, merchandise, insurance, travel and financial services.
www.americanexpress.com - MBNA Corporation
Credit card services.
www.mbnainternational.com - Capital One
Issuer & marketer of Visa & MasterCard brand credit cards.
www.capitalone.com - Citibank
Financial services company issues & markets credit cards offers.
www.citibank.com - Chase Manhattan Bank
Financial services & credit card issuer.
www.chase.com - Discover Financial Services
Issuer & marketer of credit card & financial services.
www.discoverfinancial.com - Providian Financial
Credit card issuer.
www.providian.com - Fidelity Investments
Mutual fund company.
www.fidelity.com - Bank of America
Commercial bank.
www.bankofamerica.com - AT&T Universal Card Services Corporation
Credit card operations (Citicorp, Citibank Universal Card Services).
www.citicorp.com - USAA
Financial services including property casualty, life insurance, brokerage & investment management.
www.usaa.com - Wells Fargo
Financial services company.
www.wellsfargo.com - Advanta
Issuer/marketer of business credit cards.
www.advanta.com - Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.
Financial services.
www.ameriprise.com
[Editorial Note: Top mailers are determined by the number of mailing offers received by the Who’s Mailing What! Archive – the world’s largest swipe file with access to over 10,000 controls in nearly 200 categories. To learn more about the Archive, and exclusive AWAI member access, click here: http://www.awaionline.com/whosmailing/]
