A. James Editing, Inc.

As a consumer of cat videos, I’m not entirely convinced that this idea would never work.


On a more serious note though, I think this video speaks to the dangers of following the trends of the moment that may not have much staying power.


It’s certainly a hilarious video though.


Trombone cat! Hah! Priceless. Enjoy.

(Thank you, Peter Bowerman, for sharing this!)

I do a bit of writing for email marketing campaigns and thusly, I follow the musings of Ben Settle, email marketing rockstar.


He sends a daily email to his list with information about all things marketing, but specifically as they relate to email. Some email subject lines from the past: “Who wins the fist fight: copywriters or marketers?,” “Best emotion to sell to in emails,” and “Shy bladder at the keyboard” to name a very few.


Today’s email was entitled: “How to profit from typos.”


Perfect timing considering yesterday’s post.


With Ben’s permission, I’ve copied his email below:

Amber,

A new reader slaps the spelling cuffs on me:

“Your site looks great, but you have put there, instead of their in
your first paragraph and it creates a poor impression. Just thought
you’d like to know “

I must be losing my touch if you only saw one.

You see, not all typos are bad.

In some cases, they serve a valuable purpose.

Here’s what I mean:

First, if someone decided not to buy something from me or hire me
(actually, I’m not for hire, but still…) because of a misspelling
or whatever then I’m delighted — that person would almost certainly
be a big pain in the gluteus assimus to deal with.

(If I sold proof-reading services, that’d be the exception…)

Secondly:

I rarely care about spelling or grammar.

At least, in emails.

In fact, I often purposely leave misspelled words intact.

Why?

Because as Dan Kennedy and email Grand Puba Matt Furey say: “Money
is attracted to speed” — and spending time fixing little
grammer/spelling erros (hehe I misspelled those words on purpose)
is a waste of time when 99.9% of people simply won’t care or notice
anyway.

More:

This’ll REALLY freak ye olde spelling police out.

But in another market (weight loss) I send first drafts.

By that I mean…

I crank the email out (usually in about 4-5 minutes) and then let
‘er rip. No editing (unless the URL is wrong) or even thinking
about it.

Just sit, pound, send.

And it doesn’t hurt sales at all.

I’ve noticed it even HELPS sales sometimes.

That’s probably why old school copywriters used to purposely
misspell things in their ads

It made their letters look genuine.

Like personal letters.

And not “sales pitches.”

OK, enough.

For more contrarian email training, go to:

http://www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Ben Settle
Marketing Specialist
Settle, LLC
www.BenSettle.com

Copyrighted & published by Settle, LLC.

All rights reserved.

Settle, LLC | P.O. Box 866 | Long Beach, WA 98631

A few posters to my previous post agree that spending too much time correcting errors is wasteful and unnecessary; keeping up with the speed of business being more important.


Really?


Typos actually helping sales?! (Gasp! Grammar Guardians, cover your eyes!)


I never thought so, but then again, maybe I’m missing out on millions when I refer to Grammar Girl and The Elements of Style for some of my copy.


Well, Ben Settle hath spoken.


What dost thou sayeth to that?

Part of being a business professional is belonging.


Belonging to groups and organizations that will help you grow your business by providing you with exposure to heavyweights in your field, networking opportunities with potential business partners, educational/industry groundbreaking information, and exposure to prospective customers.


The killer question to consider though, is which groups should you join?


There could be dozens, even hundreds, of membership options for you. Most of these groups (and probably the better ones) will require something of you. If not your physical presence (a weekly networking group, for example) then certainly a monetary contribution.


How much money do you have in your yearly marketing budget for group/publication memberships?


If your answer is “A lot”, then you could probably join groups with wild, bacchanalian abandon.


If you’re like the rest of us though, you’re probably on a tight budget in this regard, and you have to be very selective in your choices.


Personal Story


Once upon a time I joined a networking group called LeTip. It’s a great organization, cool people, I made some good money the first year, and projected a significant net loss going into the second.


Right around the time when I was considering leaving the group, I stumbled onto an organization that I foresaw being even more in-line with my business direction: the American Marketing Association (AMA).


Short story shorter, I quit LeTip, signed-up with the AMA, and have no regrets whatsoever.


Membership with the AMA is hundreds of dollars cheaper per year than my membership with LeTip was, and the networking and business growth opportunities are exponentially higher.


It could easily be one of the best decisions of my professional career.


You’ll have to decide for yourself what group memberships work best for you and your business. Very likely you’ll spend some extra time and money exploring all your options before you get it “right”, but that’s all to the good.


What’s your group membership (or not) story?

I sent an email to my list of contacts about two weeks ago and got a very mixed response. Some responded with “OMG, that’s a great idea! Why have I never thought of that?” while others were like, “Yeah right, I bet you over-did it.”


(I’ll try not to take the latter personally.)


I’m referring to this email about how to get your “boring” business documents to stand out and get you the results you want.


The email was specifically about an RFP (Request For Proposal) I helped a financial advisor create.


He was bidding on a five million dollar 401(k) plan and, knowing he’d be up against some bigger, badder companies, he called me in to help him dress-up his RFP.


He wanted something that would set him apart and above all his competitors. His ideas were extremely innovative and he knew it.


He kept saying, “They’re not gonna see me coming.”


Now, this dressing-up doesn’t involve a lot of flashy crap that’s more distracting than eye-catching.


It involves simple, clean, value-added formatting and copy writing.


In my email, I originally offered to share a copy of the content I created with anyone who wanted to see it.


My client emailed me afterwards and told me he’d prefer if I didn’t do that because he didn’t want to be competing against his own RFP model.


Fair enough, I said.


So instead, I’ve created an outline for creating a successful, dressed-up RFP.


(Please note that I had nothing to do with the technical stuff about the actual 401(k) plan. All that information came from the 401(k) insurance providers. I just worked on the intro and the conclusion.)


Here is the RFP Outline as a PDF.


I would love to guarantee that all your previously boring documents will meet with wild success after implementing this strategy, but I cannot. Getting a good copywriter onboard will only be to the good though.


All I can guarantee is that you’ll be a peacock among geese.




(Note: I have nothing against geese. They’re just not as pretty as peacocks, okay? We may not be able to agree on how to spend taxpayer dollars, but I think we can all agree on that.)