The Chameleon Copywriter

My favorite subject line from last week was Ed Dale’s “Why is Ed SO HOT and FASHIONABLE?”
Of course I knew it was a tactic to get me to open the email and figured the email was probably about Ryan Deiss’ Continuity Blueprint or John Carlton’s Simple Writing System and not about fashion. Alas. But I [...]

In recent weeks some email subject lines hit my inbox that I found disconcerting. These emails were from marketers.
“Sorry, we’ve got to let you go.” That’s a panic-inducing subject line and even though I don’t have a job (I’m self-employed) it was still panic-inducing rather that curiosity-arousing.
“URGENT DEADLINE” was another panic-inducing subject line because [...]

I’ve had these subject lines ready to go for a while but I guess last week I was too busy complaining about the cold to write a post.
Speaking of the cold, last week I spent inordinate amounts of time reading free PDFs about European luxury barge cruises from R. Crusoe & Son. I discovered that [...]

There’s an interesting article in Catalog Success about emails that various catalogs sent that contained mistakes.
These catalogs then had to send out apology emails and almost all of them used HTML emails.
My favorite subject line of the bunch was this one from Urban Outfitters: “Take a Extra 25% off. This time, we mean it.” The [...]

My favorite catalog, J. Peterman, is famous for their catalog copy and justifiably so. It’s lifestyle copy at its finest. Whenever an issue arrives I block out time that same day to sit on the couch and read it cover to cover.
Today I’m going to focus on their email copy instead. Their “Up to 63% [...]

I’m getting way too many emails these days that have “Re:” at the beginning of the subject line, even though the person isn’t replying to an email.
I’m sure they do it because it increases open rates. But I delete those emails instantly.
Even worse is when they add a message like this at the beginning of [...]

My pick for the best subject line of the week (using my own delightfully subjective criteria, of course, and limited to those that surfaced in my inbox) is Ryan Healy’s “Can’t sell your house? Stop making payments.” Not the most cheerful of topics, of course, but I opened that one right away out of curiosity [...]

A major email marketing firm posted their 10 worst and 10 best subject lines of the year.
Bruce Wedding posted these as a test at the Copywriting Board. I thought it would be fun to do the same here.
Each question has a best and worst subject line. In the comments I’ll list the right answers and [...]

My favorite subject line of this past week was Clayton Makepeace’s “The Spanking of a Lifetime.”
Plus I liked the content that went with it. Copywriters should read his post about how he lost a recent split test.
I was also very interested to note that he usually only has one day to write a sales letter! [...]

Pickings were slim this past week, probably because Thanksgiving is coming up and people aren’t sending out as much email.
My favorite subject line of the bunch was Doug D’Anna’s “What Joe Montana Can Teach You About Copywriting.” I’m not a 49ers fan (if I have to root for anyone it’s the Packers) but anyone who [...]