Friday morning I was in Denver conducting a copywriting workshop with the copywriters, creative directors, Web site managers and content editors for a national company. I was brought in by the director of marketing to address the messaging in their email marketing specifically, but after reviewing their email examples, it seemed a broader approach was needed.

So the workshop consisted of reviewing what it means to talk to your customer, not at them, to write customer-centric copy that’s about the customer, not about you. The original plan was to critique one email promotion as a group, then have everyone rewrite four more on their own and compare notes. We ran short on time, so instead I put up a few of their emails on the screen and ripped them apart, nicely. I didn’t say anything that surprised or offended.

It seems the copywriters and creative’s hands are tied. They’re up against corporate, up against legal, up against people who don’t understand marketing or copywriting or—most importantly—email marketing. These poor folks end up going the safe route, using clichés like “don’t miss” and vague words like “great pricing” or “exceptional pricing.” They end up with meaningless email subject lines. They have to work around the images they’re assigned rather choose an image that fits the message.

Yuck.

What breaks my heart is that this company is perfectly positioned for messaging that’s emotional and empathetic. Their copywriters and creatives could kick ass if allowed to craft email marketing copy appropriate to the audience, and not to corporate’s preferences and tastes. Lesson here? Let your marketing team do their job! Trust them to know their stuff. They don’t question how the CFO handles the financials or how the CEO handles the board of directors. Why are they hindered?

But this company isn’t stuck, they see where they can improve. In the future, they’ll be segmenting their email marketing into targeted demographics, and they’ll be able to do more specific and therefore effective messaging, talking directly to the pain points and concerns of a particular market. I got the sense that their copywriters are chomping at the bit for that day to come!! Then all we discussed that day will come to fruition and their email marketing will work that much harder for them.

Despite their challenges and frustrations, running that workshop was a blast. I’m lucky. I love what I do, I love talking about copywriting and messaging, and I love being with people hungry to learn more and improve. And they all loved what I had to say. It sparked much-needed dialog among them, it got them inspired to strive harder for more compelling copy and to stand up to the powers that be that want to water down their copy. What more could this Seattle copywriter ask for?

Okay, not really narrow minded. But narrow…

Yesterday at the PSAMA lunch in Seattle, Alan Brown from DNA talked about how you market as a challenger, as opposed to front runner. With great local examples from the MS Society, Boeing Employee Credit Union and Pemco Insurance, he again and again reiterated the importance in having a narrow focus. He didn’t call it that, “narrow” is my word. He pointed out the advantage of taking a position, even though positioning can mean sacrifice.

But positioning can get people to listen. If you narrow your marketing scope, your marketing message, your marketing method, you might be heard by fewer people, but you are more likely to be heard.

Then later on the phone, a mom friend wanted to talk about her husband’s business and the direction they want to take it. (Yes, I’m the queen of free marketing advice, I swear. The downside of being so nice: even your neighbors hit you up for advice!) So, great—no, brilliant—focus. I loved hearing about it. Then she went on to say “but we also want to offer this service and that service” and she talked about lumping it all under one umbrella with a generic term that no one would know the meaning of.

Ugh.

I did my best to persuade her otherwise, to go with the one targeted niche idea and market that one narrow business only. We’ll see if they listen. The idea of offering fewer services rather than more does seem to challenge people, whether they have a small business or a big one.

If you have a niche, put your resources there. If you can speak more narrowly to a smaller audience, do. Sure, you are sacrificing the “masses,” but guess what? The masses aren’t listening!

It’s often my job as copywriter to figure out what the benefits are; clients are too close to their products and services to see clearly.

This week I’ve been working on an email marketing campaign for a series of whitepapers. It’s much easier for me to play the role of customer and distill what the benefits of each whitepaper are. The existing messaging emphasizes the so-called features, what the whitepaper “is.” The outsider (i.e. copywriter or marketing writer) can much more easily figure out the benefits, what I call the “so you can” parts: “Read this whitepaper so you can…” What is the end result of downloading and reading a whitepaper? That’s what the customer wants to know, not the content of the whitepaper, but what she’ll be able to do if she reads it.

And it makes me laugh how often I walk into a situation where the marketing team is just scratching their heads, trying to come up with the real benefit, and I can sum it up right away. That’s because I have the outsider’s view.

Too many companies pay too little attention to their copy. They keep it in-house, they trust the marketing people to do the copywriting. They end up with me-too Web sites and ineffective marketing campaigns. Then they wonder why their marketing does such a poor job of generating leads! Hint: It’s probably talking at customers, not to them, because it’s too subjective.

Maybe that’s why I’m becoming such an advocate for blogging as a marketing tool? Blogging by its very nature is more focused (or should be) on information that’s useful to the customer. It can unintentionally sell just by being real and authentic and objective.

I really do love small businesses and small business owners, but they can make me crazy…

My best example right now is the small business owner who is pissed at me because they put up their new Web site and aren’t getting any hits. This is apparently my fault because my copywriting agency did the writing for the Web site. Never mind that their Web developer neglected to use the title tags and other meta tags we’d written. Never mind that it’s poorly coded and designed. Never mind that they chose not to do all of the pages we’d suggested for more content. Never mind that it only went up three weeks ago. Never mind that no sites link to it yet. Never mind that they have no content management strategy for updating the site. Never mind that I had explained all of this to him months ago when we first started on the project.

Just because someone is running and marketing a small business doesn’t excuse them from educating themselves about marketing. I’m not saying they should be an expert. (I joke that I don’t want to know about taxes, that’s why I have an accountant. But I still know what taxes get paid and when, I just don’t have to know the nitty gritty.) But they should know something.

Not all are like the client described above. I’ve worked with plenty of small business owners who took the initiative and learned enough to have a dialog about their marketing, whether it’s an email newsletter, web marketing, blogging or direct mail.

And thank goodness for those clients! Copywriters and marketers can’t do their jobs with clients who don’t know anything and aren’t willing to learn is the lesson I’m learning this week. Sadly, it’s usually the small business that falls into that category.

And for any small business owners who now feel compelled to know it bit more about web marketing and SEO based on this gripe, start here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769.

This morning as I put on my copywriter hat and started on a project for a new client, I first reviewed their brand guidelines…and have been itching to blog about it ever since. In my opinion, your brand is more than your logo. Your brand--your marketing--is everything you say, do, wear. It’s how your employees act, how well your product delivers on your marketing promise…everything.

And as a copywriter, I firmly believe that your words are part of your brand, in all your marketing communications: your email marketing, your web writing, your print collateral. Yet in all the brand guidelines I’ve reviewed in my eight years as a copywriter, only once was voice addressed.

This particular brand guideline even says in there “Our Brand, Our Voice” yet there’s no mention of voice. It offers up 9 pages on the logo, typeface and colors, showing exactly how to use, not to use, going into details of file formats and more. But no examples of messaging or voice other than describing the brand personality with words like “agile” and “synergy” but without any examples of how to do copywriting that fits the brand. Which is akin to telling someone how to bake a cake and telling them to use eggs, flour and sugar…with no more direction than that.

Your logo alone won’t tell your story. You need words that work.

Earlier this week, I attended a stellar WTIA event on Web 2.0. The panelists were entertaining and informative, and the whole dialog around monetizing Web 2.0 fascinating.

But the message that most resonated with me as a copywriter was that content still matters. I don’t mean the user generated content (UGC) that people typically think of when they think Web 2.0. I mean the content that your company and marketing team puts out into the world.

And that’s good news to me, because it means copywriters have a place in making Web 2.0 marketing work!

Done right, the content you generate as email marketing, email newsletters, and blogging can be viral, can start a dialog and engage your customers. So you still need great copywriters, relevant content, and even a strategy.

The best news is that small business marketing can involve Web 2.0 because all of these tools and mediums can be used by small businesses to engage their customers.

Yeah, rest easy, copywriters. Content is still queen. :-)

Maybe this is sacrilege coming from a copywriter, but it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what your customers say that matters.

From clean uniforms to a usable Web site, from friendly service to great product…what your marketing promises better be delivered in the actual experience, start to finish, or your marketing is lying.

Check out the “Trusted Sources of Information” table at http://www.bridgeratings.com/press_08.01.067.Influentials.htm. Note that family, friends and acquaintances are the most trusted but a close second is strangers with experience. This group rates second overall as a trusted source. Strangers are trusted over religious leaders and teachers even. That’s how important your customer’s experience is. All the marketing in the world won’t replace a bad experience because people will talk, or blog, or post a review online.

OK, then, why do you even need marketing? Why do you need a copywriter? Because marketing gets people in the door, to the Web site, or on the phone in the first place. Then the experience either seals the deal or kills it.

Speaking of the customer experience, I want to share a nice email I received recently about this blog:

“I definitely enjoy your blog. I can only assume that this type of thing comes naturally for you in your line of work, but yours is one of the few blogs I always look forward to reading.”

Tim Oten
Chukar Cherries

Thank you, Tim! If you find this blog helpful or not, speak up and let me know! I write it to share my opinions and musings, but want it to do some good in the marketing world too, hoping to change how marketers look at messaging!

I’m a big fan of small businesses. After all, I’m one! But I also prefer spending my money with a small business over a big one. I’d rather walk into the Kona Kai coffee shop in downtown Kent and get a hug from Michael the owner than go to a Starbucks any day, no matter how cheerful the baristas. Same for Pat’s Bar and Grill, and the Peridot Nail Salon, and City Frame, and the Balanced Athlete, and all my other favorite small businesses in downtown Kent.

Yet as much as I adore them all, I see them all making the same mistake: not enough (or zero) marketing. They tell me they don’t have the time or money for marketing, but really, like with exercising, it’s about choosing how and where you’re going to spend that time and money.

For example, one business is currently adding all kinds of services in the hopes that they’ll bring in more people…but they’re not marketing their old services or their new ones. They collect email addresses, but don’t know what to do with them. They buy ads in the local paper, but don’t know if those ads are doing any good. They talk about putting up a Web site, but still don’t have one.

Adding all these services took an investment of time and money that could have been spent on email marketing and blogging instead, two extremely cost-effective ways for small businesses to market. (Especially when a blog can take the place of a Web site for some businesses.) But I guess their mindset is just that marketing is hard, so they’ll stick with what they do know (getting a liquor license, for example) than find out what they don’t.

How do we shift that small business mindset? Let me know what you think... leave a comment or email sharon@weknowwords.com.

My corporate and personal taxes are finally done, yay! Thanks, Rick!! And I now have two bills to pay, one for each. Rick is a doll and keeps his costs down for me, but still his rate is $200/hour and he’s worth every penny because I know my taxes will be done right. I’m paying for his time and knowledge, but also his experience…which is hard to price at all!

As I work through my divorce, I am paying my lawyer $175/hour. (Don’t tell the lawyer what the accountant is charging or else his rate will go up to match it!) As my “ex” and I navigate the complications of a “dissolution of marriage” in the county we live in, where people with kids jump through lots of hoops to get divorced, I know my lawyer’s also worth his hourly rate. He knows the system, and he knows how to work with couples who have lots of difficult discussions to work through. Again, I’m paying for time and knowledge, but also 20+ years of experience as a family law attorney.

And that’s what copywriters sell: their time and their knowledge, but ultimately their experience. In a word, their expertise. And the more experienced and knowledgeable the copywriter, the higher the hourly rate should be, whether you’re paying her for email marketing or Web writing, a case study or an online press release.

About half the time we are asked for a copywriting estimate, we don’t get the job because the prospect doesn’t want to pay the price. (Note: We’d prefer to know the budget upfront so we can just tell the prospect what we can do within that budget, but somewhere it is written that budgets are to be guessed at, not disclosed! Silly people.) For me, it’s a filter. If someone doesn’t recognize the value in what we’re selling, I don’t want to do business with them anyway. Every freelance copywriter I’ve ever talked to agrees it’s the clients spending the least money who take up the most time!!

For those businesses who choose to scrimp on the copywriter, and plenty do, the results are typically less than stellar: email newsletters that don’t deliver, Web sites that don’t convert, direct mail goes directly into the recycle bin. That’s because you get what you pay for.

Just like my accountant, lawyer and saddle are all worth the money they cost, so is a great copywriter.

Earlier this week while in a Tully’s coffee shop, I saw a display for a drawing that is both clever in how it engages with customers and clever in helping to grow Tully’s in-house email marketing list.

The entry forms ask you to enter your “super-long” coffee order. You know, like the ones you overhear the pretentious people say while you’re waiting in line: “I’ll have a Venti skinny mocha with half soy, one packet of sweet ‘n low, at 170 degrees, with 2 tablespoons of whip.”

You make up a long order (and there’s plenty of room to go all out with it!), and Pemco Insurance donates a dollar to Children’s Hospital for each entry. That’s neat! That’s a feel good! You’re also entered into a weekly drawing for a Tully’s gift card. So it’s self-serving too. You get to help a charity and help yourself. Plus you have fun making up the absurd order.

Then at the bottom you enter your email and below that is a check box to sign up for Tully’s email club, to “receive the latest Tully’s news and coupons.”

By the time you get to the bottom of that form, you’re feeling pretty good about this whole deal. And besides, you’ve just given them your email address so you can be notified if you win. Why wouldn’t you just go ahead and check that little box to sign up?

Compare that to just a “sign up for specials” box on a Web site. I bet this converts much better. And I’m pretty sure growing their in-house email marketing list is the point of this contest! Although it’s so subtle, the customer doesn’t see that.

Very well done. I love it.

Thanks to my annoying friend Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, I finally saw the light about blogging back in July. He had been after me for two years to blog, but it wasn’t until I got the whole search engine optimization part of it that it made sense to me to do so. I stopped writing my email newsletter and started blogging instead. (Side note: I have recently decided to do both because they are different mediums and I like delivery my copywriting message both ways. Email me at sharon@weknowwords.com if you want to get the newsletter, I’m aiming for a June start.)

Once I started blogging though, I found myself going back and forth between blogging for SEO and blogging as a means of putting useful, relevant information out into the world. The latter is always my primary goal, to further my cause of convincing marketers to talk to customers not at them, but then I want people to find the blog too, so they get the message which leads me back to keywords and SEO and…can you see where I’m going with this?

It has been like a flip flop, until I finally realized that it was no different than writing Web copy for a client. When the copywriters at We Know Words take on a Web writing project, we first write the copy regardless of the keywords so we can master the tone, message, voice, length, etc. Then after the client and the copywriter are both happy, we go back and optimize the text using keywords. (We also get more natural sounding Web writing that way. I can usually tell when a Web page was written with keywords and SEO top of mind.

Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve definitely seen how it can help one win search wars. (See other blog posts on “soap is dumb.”) But to really create a win win for all, the blogger’s challenge is to find the balance between the search and the reader.

Newly single, I find myself the recipient of much dating advice. Imagine my surprise and delight last week as one of my clients turned friends turned my marketing advice back on me as dating advice! It’s such a great analogy, I’m using it here…to make the marketing point once again.

Over lunch I was lectured on casting too wide a net, and told to be more selective and targeted in my dating efforts. Just like I tell clients to be with their marketing efforts. If you market in a generic way to a general audience, you’re a lot less likely to connect with a perfect prospect because your message is watered down and doesn’t speak to anyone in particular. If you market to a narrowly defined, targeted group, your message can be very specific to their needs and pain points and you’re a lot more likely to make that connection.

Think of your marketing like dating: Do you want to do Match.com and hear from all kinds of potential suitors who don’t interest you at all? Or do you want to be strategic and meet people you have something in common with? (Not sure yet fulfills that means in the online dating world; I’ll keep you posted.)

Quality is better than quantity, in marketing and dating both.

A common problem I’ve seen ever since I started Web writing is people getting stuck on keywords. That’s because clients have a hard time thinking of the keywords in terms of the words their prospects use when searching online.

Clients want to use descriptive words, words drawn from their marketing collateral. They lean towards the words they use when thinking and talking about their product or service. Either that or they want to use really big, broad keywords that won’t get them anywhere in Google.

Here’s an easy way to change your frame of reference when beginning to brainstorm keywords: Think pain points and problem solving.

Consider your prospects’ mindset when they are searching. Your prospects are online using Google or Yahoo or some other search engine because they have a problem. It might be that they want Indian food for dinner. The pain is lack of knowledge because they want samosas and abu gobi, but they don’t know where to find a local Indian restaurant. They can solve the problem if they can find a restaurant close by. Your site will get found if you use keywords like Indian restaurant, Kent, WA 98032 or East Hill Indian food, etc. (the idea is to be geographical because that’s how they’re thinking).

It might be that they are troubleshooting their business intelligence (BI) software. The pain is the software isn’t working the way they want, and they are trying to solve the problem by looking for technical answers online. You can get found if you use keywords around troubleshooting, maybe mention specific problems…and when they land at your site, you can start selling them on YOUR BI software as better than the one they’re having problems with.

I have found lately that I spend so much time thinking about SEO and keywords and Web writing that I’m losing touch with how most marketers think about search engine optimization but I hope this brief blog helps!

My head is swimming with blog topics this week, all around email. First I went to the StrongMail email marketing conference Monday morning, then yesterday downloaded a fantastic report from MarketingSherpa on common email newsletter mistakes. So bear with me, but there are so many topics to take on…and so many seem like they’d be no brainers but I see our copywriting clients make email mistakes all the time.

Heavy on my mind right now is how many times marketers forget to make use of their non marketing emails. For example, I’ show the Welcome email can be the most often read email. So after someone subscribes to your email newsletter, for example, you’d send them a welcome email. But are you using it to reinforce your voice and brand? To remind them of all the benefits they’re going to get as a subscriber? To confirm for them that they made a smart choice when they handed over their email address? Or is your welcome email (if you’re using one, and you should be) generic and dry and dull?

Another missed opportunity is the transactional email. For example, yesterday I posted a press release (about our upcoming talk on online press releases) at PR Web, and received just a straightforward, boring confirmation that thanks me twice and has the order details in it:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for your recent order of $80.00 with PRWeb.

Order Summary

Invoice/Tracking Number: xxxxxxxxx

Date Paid: February 05, 2008

Payment type: Credit Card (Visa)

Paid to: PRWeb

Order Details:

- PRWeb Press Release - $80.00

Order Total: $80.00

Again, thank you for your order.

Sincerely,

PRWeb Staff

Excuse me, but that’s it? I just spent 80 bucks on this, and yeah, I want a receipt, but how about something more? Something like:

Dear Sharon,

Thank you for entrusting your news to one of the Internet’s most popular press release distribution sites. After the release date (noted below), be sure to keep an eye on the useful metrics so you can track how well your press release is doing. And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at ….

Then give me the order details. (And can we just outlaw the word "sincerely"? There are so many other wonderful ways to sign off!)

That’s not so hard, is it? To be a bit human and to reinforce their marketing message?

As copywriters, we try and push our clients to be real, to have a distinct voice and sound like real people rather than generic, corporate boringness. We don’t always succeed. It’s scary to be real, to be different. It’s much more comfortable to just sound like everyone else. We’ve even had clients flat out say they want their Web site written to sound like a competitor’s. I guess I get it. I mean, I have a teenage son who would hate to stand out from the crowd. I guess when it comes to copywriting and marketing communications, most businesses have a teenage mentality and prefer to blend in. Kind of hard to get noticed that way, in my humble copywriter opinion.

So what a treat I had last week when 37 Signals demonstrated how being real can make a real impression. They had a down day and they were perfectly honest about the problems. They didn’t hide behind any generic, corporate speak, their copywriting said exactly what was happening and expressed their apologies. Below are just a few snippets to give you a taste:

As they announce all systems were offline due to a problem, we users got an explanation and a simple “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

When they located the problem, they stated what it was and said “Again, we're terribly sorry for this disruption of service.”

As the day went along, they kept us users posted. This was my favorite when talking about the technicians working on the problem: “We're breathing down their neck as heavily as we can. And we profusely apologize for this unacceptable interruption of service.”

And finally:  “We should be in the home stretch now. Again, we're incredibly sorry for this disruption. This is not how Fridays are supposed to be.”

There were undoubtedly some customers annoyed that they couldn’t use 37 Signals service that day, but for me, seeing this personal language, this willingness to be honest and apologetic, well, it more than made up for any inconvenience. It made this copywriter’s day.

This Seattle copywriter’s life suddenly seems filled with clients turned copywriter. Not that we don’t regularly have clients rewriting our copy, typically high tech ones. (If you’re a copywriter with high tech clients, you know what I mean.) I’m used to having to go back and explain to the techie marketers why we do marketing writing the way we do.

But wow, we have lots of people turning into copywriters all of a sudden, both marketing folks and non marketing folks.

Problem is, we know what we’re doing. We know about writing for the Web, what type and how much information goes on the home page. We know how to speak to the customer, not at them. We know what makes a good headline, and what goes in a brochure vs. on a landing page. We don’t make this stuff up. At We Know Words, our copywriters are constantly reading email newsletters, case studies and more to keep up with the changing world of online marketing and new marketing techniques.

In my humble opinion, hiring a freelance copywriter and then rewriting her copy is akin to redoing your taxes when your accountant is done with them, or redoing the paperwork when your lawyer is done with your incorporation forms (or divorce paperwork!).

So if you know you need a copywriter—and obviously you do or you wouldn’t have hired one--how do you work with her? Listen! Let her do her job. She really is the expert, just like your accountant and your lawyer. It’s her job to make you stand out, not blend in, to get prospects to sit up and take notice of you.

If you want killer copy that’s going to help you market your business, find a great copywriter, answer all her questions about your goals, customers, products, etc. Then stand back and trust her. You know your business, she knows hers.

Now, how can I sneakily make sure this blog post gets in front of the clients who are working under the delusion that they can do my job…?

Although we’re often locked away expressing our brilliance with words behind closed doors, sometimes a copywriter gets a chance to go public. This copywriter gets another chance this spring.

In March, I’ll be part of an email marketing panel presenting for the Northern California Direct Marketing Association. We're calling it Extreme Email Makeover: Marketers will submit their email marketing campaigns to have them reviewed by the panel. We’ll be covering deliverability, content, design and mobile deployment, and giving attendees the chance to learn from the email marketing mistakes of others.

It's a great panel, and I’m delighted to be part of it as the copywriter and messaging guru:

• Michelle Eichner - COO and Vice President of Client Services, Pivotal Veracity
• Morgan Witt - Director of Marketing Strategy, Juice Media Worldwide
• Cameron Kane - President, Strategic Design Group
• Michael Kelly (moderator) - Director, Sales and Business Development, ClickMail Marketing
• and me as President of We Know Words and Past President of the SDMA

Read more about it at http://www.dmanc.org/calendar.html (scroll down to the March 19 event).

And if you’re in the area and you can make the event, please do!

I envy the freelance copywriter who can cite an exact response rate for a direct mail campaign. Much of the copywriting we do at We Know Words falls more into the category of what I call indirect marketing. Our copywriters are often busy with writing whitepapers, email newsletters, case studies, guides and writing for the Web. It’s a nice change of pace when we write email marketing or landing pages, where we can get definite feedback.

The truth is, as much as executives might like it to be otherwise, not all marketing is measurable. Yet it is still valuable. Just about everything a small business or large corporation does in some way is marketing that has nothing to do with metrics. Can you measure the positive yet subtle effects of clean uniforms, courteous customer service folks or brand appropriate content? What about a tagline, or a well-written how to guide? Convenient parking at your location? Free mints by the cash register? I could go on and on. Marketing is a promise you make to your potential customer that their experience will be a certain way. And it’s a promise we are making each and every day in business, whether we’re copywriters, graphic designers, marketing managers, or the “director of first impressions” who greets people as they walk into your office.

Just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

p.s. I apologize for the seemingly random font sizes in the blogs lately. It's getting fixed on the tech end, nothing I can do about it for now!

I used to be a strong advocate of email newsletters, probably because of my publishing background, but also because I believed in them enough to create a list of 25 reasons to publish an e-newsletter. I came across that list the other day rummaging through a file. I laughed to myself at how much my thinking has changed in the last 4 years. But then as I read through the list, I realized most of those reasons translate to blogging! So below are the 18—count them, 18!—of the 25 reasons I used to use to support enewsletters and now offer up as reasons to blog.

Blogging can:

1. Help your search engine rankings by putting useful, relevant content online
2. Give prospects an easy way to learn more about you, and for clients past and present to keep up with you
3. Strengthen your brand and market position
4. Lead to referrals
5. Drive traffic to your Web site
6. Market without coming across as marketing
7. Increase your credibility and that of your business
8. Evolve and change in a way printed material can’t
9. Offer cost effective testing and adapting
10. Communicate quickly and efficiently
11. Establish a dialog and enhance customer loyalty
12. Educate your customers in new ways to use your products and services
13. Generate leads
14. Reinforce other marketing efforts, offline and online
15. Cost the same, no matter how many people are reading it
16. Lower costs compared to printed marketing
17. Be tracked, showing you how many hits and where they come from
18. Build an ongoing relationship with your target market

I still believe in marketing with enewsletters, because what I’ve been preaching for years is still true: it’s not just what you say but how you say it. Delivering the right marketing message with the wrong marketing medium doesn’t work. So use blogs when they’re right, and create newsletters when they are.

Christmas cards have lost their meaning. In fact, I dread them because I have to figure out which ones can be recycled and which are all metallic and can’t. Oh, and I can’t recycle those photo cards either, nor do I keep them. It’s not that I’m Ebenezer, I love Christmas! But not the meaningless cards that add to the clutter of my life without adding to the spirit of the season. Really, how many cards did you receive this year from people you really wanted to hear from and otherwise wouldn’t? Here are my favorites useless cards from this past month:

• A photo card from a family I don’t know or even recognize in the photo (cute picture though!)
• A card from a former client who chose not to work with our copywriting agency any longer…and he didn’t sign the card, some assistant did
• A card from someone I have met briefly at a three chamber events and never said more than 10 words to
• The usual card from my cousin in Ohio who won’t respond to any emails asking what’s up, how’s life, but sends a card each year…without any note or anything

Let’s face it: Christmas cards have become obligatory and automatic. They are no longer the thoughtful communication of holidays past.

And you know where I’m going with this, right? Yep. Marketing. In many ways, marketing has lost its meaning too. It’s done on automatic pilot without much thought (sometimes without any thought at all).

Is your company marketing to people who don’t even want to hear from you? Are you assuming more of a relationship than really exists? Are you marketing AARP memberships to people in their 30s? In short, are you wasting money on pointless marketing?

This year, resolve to be relevant. Practice meaningful marketing.

• Send email newsletters only to people who’ve said “yes” and opted in
• Make sure your newsletter copywriter gives people useful information
• Target your marketing—Know thy audience
• Clean your lists
• Only market to prospects that make sense (Hint: the fact that someone is human does not automatically make them a prospect)
• Blog—If people like what you have to say, they’ll come back. Even small businesses can reap huge rewards from blogging (more on this in later marketing blogs)
• Make sure your Web writing meets your Web site visitors’ needs

Etc., etc., etc. Before your next direct mail project, before your freelance copywriter starts typing, before you lay out that email marketing campaign, ask yourself if you can make your marketing more meaningful.

Oh, and maybe do the same before sending out cards next Christmas too.