Why Long-Form Sales Letters Work - By Joel Comm

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Jobseekers are often presented with a challenge: imagine you’ve just stepped into an elevator with the CEO of a company you really want to work for, they’re told. You’ve got thirty seconds before the elevator reaches the executive’s floor to explain why he should employ you. What would you say?
It’s a tough question but fortunately, a restricted pitch isn’t one that Internet marketers usually have to struggle with. There’s no limit to the number of pages you can put on a website and no checks on the size of the pages.

The result is that for years now the standard sales tool for Internet marketers has been the long-form sales letter. These can go on for thousands of words, offer testimonial after testimonial, sub-heading after sub-heading and postscript after postscript.

They’re enormous, often repetitive and it’s unlikely that anybody has ever read one all the way through to the end. So why do marketers still use them?

The answer is simple: they work.

In one test conducted by the Marketing Experiments Journal in 2004, long-form sales letters consistently outperformed short copy, sometimes by as much as 400 percent.

In my own experience, I’ve seen up-sells and one-time offers produce conversion rates as high as 70 percent. That doesn’t happen often – but I’ve never had it happen with any other sales technique.
The reason they work is that a well-written, long-form sales letter will do two things.

First, it will push every sales point and answer every objection from every member of the audience. That’s something that’s always going to take up a great deal of space. But it’s also why marketers don’t expect the audience to read all of the copy.

The sub-headings are meant to provide easy entry and exit points for readers. Different readers will have different objections and they’ll be persuaded to buy because of different benefits. As readers scan a sales letter, the format of the page will naturally help them to notice the points and arguments that are most likely to persuade them.

Of course, they’ll also miss a lot but that’s important too. The Internet is the ultimate comparison shopping tool. More information about a product and more products that do the same thing are never more than a click or two away.

By providing readers with an overdose of information, marketers keep truly interested buyers on the page. If they can’t even finish reading the information in front of them, they’re less likely to feel a need to look for more information elsewhere.

It’s why a common reaction to a long-form sales letter is “Okay, I get it. How much is it already?”
When you can make a lead ask that question, you really should be able to turn them into a buyer.
Long-form sales letters need top quality copy. They need careful testing and tweaking. But when the information and the words are right, they’re also surprisingly effective.

Joel Comm has been building profitable sites since 1995. Visit his blog at www.JoelComm.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 3 here - http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue3.pdf
FeedFront issue 3 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-3/

Capture Revenue from In-Store Sales - By Seth Sarelson and Jonathan Treiber

As another inspiring Affiliate Summit drew to a close, I thought about the conversations that I had over the course of 3 days with some incredible affiliates. These businesses live and die by financing the marketing efforts of thousands of multi-channel advertisers, which begs the question: How much money are affiliates losing to in-store sales?

Untapped Opportunity in Affiliate Marketing
It’s a fairly typical story; a consumer clicks on an affiliate link to an online retailer, browses the website, and decides to go into the store to make the purchase.

In fact, the story is far more typical than most affiliates may know. Recent research suggests that 89% of consumers browse online before making a purchase (BIG Research 2007), but < 7% of retail sales actually take place online (Forrester, “The State of Retailing Online” 2007).

Another important data point is that online advertising drives $6 of in-store revenue for every $1 online (Yahoo! & comScore, “Research Online, Buy Offline” 2007). Commissions have traditionally only been earned on online revenue. Imagine what kinds of commissions could be earned by promoting in-store purchases.

What Does This Mean for Affiliates?
For most affiliates, this means that valuable time and money spent promoting a multi-channel merchant can often lead to under-compensation for affiliate marketing efforts that result in an in-store purchase.

This also means that there is a broader opportunity for affiliates to promote new categories of advertisers with in-store purchases, such as manufacturers and restaurants.

In-Store Affiliate Marketing
The inability to track online advertisements to in-store purchases has also impacted merchants, who have a need to understand the impact of online advertising on in-store sales.

Having an affiliate marketing solution would provide the transparency and tracking solution desired by most large advertisers to bridge the gap between online and in-store.

Affiliate Marketing 2.0
As online affiliate marketing continues to grow and merchants begin to break down silos between in-store and online marketing teams, we are entering Version 2.0 of affiliate marketing.

Version 2.0 means expanding from e-commerce to the 93% of retail sales that take place in-store. Version 2.0 also means expanding the affiliate community to include mobile and print affiliates.
The next generation of affiliate marketers will be developing new technology to connect online ads to in-store purchases. We should all be incredibly excited for the possibilities that this will provide for both affiliates and advertisers.

The authors are co-founders at RevTrax, a leading in-store affiliate network, and can be reached at Seth@RevTrax.com or Jonathan@RevTrax.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 3 here - http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue3.pdf
FeedFront issue 3 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-3/

Contribute to Issue 4 of FeedFront Magazine

The third issue of FeedFront Magazine is out and landing in mail boxes right now, so we’re on to issue 4.

The next issue of FeedFront will be coming out in January 2009 to coincide with the Affiliate Summit West 2009 conference.

The deadline for articles for issue 4 of FeedFront is November 7, 2008.

If you are interested in writing an article, go to the FeedFront contact form to submit a one sentence summary on what you’d like to cover.

Articles are a maximum of 500 words - no exceptions. Anything longer will not be considered.

Do not send a complete article - just a one sentence summary.

LinkShare’s Golden Link Awards and Symposium, Stayin’ classy… - By Missy Ward

The 5th annual LinkShare Golden Link Awards and Symposium took place June 23-24, 2008 in New York City. In keeping with tradition, this year’s gala was as swanky as ever.

The Golden Link Awards Ceremony which celebrates extraordinary achievements in performance marketing, made by LinkShare merchants and affiliates was held at the Plaza Hotel.

There was no shortage of glitterati (myself included), tuxedos and happy faces taking in the fabulous faire and networking opportunities. The crowd was all abuzz with their predictions as to who was going to go home with the coveted Golden Link Awards.

The information delay between the evening’s attendees and the folks that wished they could have been there was limited to mere seconds, when I Twittered each of the winners as they were announced.

Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners listed below.

(Winners are indicated in bold)
Innovative Publisher of the Year
Buzzillions.com
Delivery Agent, Inc. – SeenON.com
ToldYa

Innovative Advertiser of the Year
Beatport
Office Depot
Walmart.com

Best New Publisher
Clever Parties, Inc.
RedPlum.com
StylePointer

Best New Advertiser
Estee Lauder Companies
Petite Sophisticate
Webroot

Advertiser’s Choice Award
FabulousSavings.com
Shopping-Bargains.com
SurfMyAds.com – Coupon Winner

Publisher’s Choice Award
GSI Commerce
ICE.com
Park Seed Company

International Advertiser of the Year
Avon
Blue Nile
NET-A-PORTER UK

Best Performance-Based Search Strategy
Frederick’s of Hollywood
McAfee*
Vertive, Inc.*
*Tie

Best Integrated Lead Generation Campaign
Chase
Insurance.com
TigerDirect.com

MVP – Most Valuable Publisher for Lead Generation
1ShopMall
Belcaro Group
TuitionChart.com

Best Integrated Multi-Channel Marketing
Allegiance Marketing Resources
American Express
Dell Canada / Airmilesshops.ca

Technology Genius Award
Factor LLC
SpashAds
StyleFeeder

Best Overall Online Distribution Strategy
Bare Necessities
Eastbay
ZIRH

Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate
InternetGeekGirl
Revenue Magazine
Scott Jangro

The LinkShare Symposium was held the next morning at Chelsea Piers. The day was packed with three terrific speakers including James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Patti Freeman Evans, Research Director for Jupiter Research and E. Kinney Zalense, co-author of Microtrends.

I especially liked the “Dealmaker” event, which was filled with incredible networking opportunities and lots of great giveaways.

Kudos to LinkShare for pulling off another great event.

Missy Ward is the Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, the premier conference for the Affiliate Marketing Industry and Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine. She is also an active affiliate.

Download issue 2 of FeedFront at http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue2.pdf
Articles from issue 2 of FeedFront will also be posted at http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-2/