Whitepaper Copywriter

Today I got a fun email from a company that normally sends me a fairly dry email newsletter. The timing was perfect. Even though I’m primarily a copywriter, it’s my job to know about many aspects of marketing, especially up and coming trends. I’d been thinking on all the case studies and whitepapers I read about social networking that apply to B2C marketing, but was wondering how well the approach will work for B2B.

Then I get the “Can Water Cut It?” email from Flow International with a link to a video featuring Flow Man and asking the question “Can Water Cut a Titanium Golf Club?” Flow makes industrial strength water jets that can cut anything. See the video at http://www.canwatercutit.com. You can also watch them cut a cell phone and a blender.

The videos are tongue in cheek and deliberately amateurish and the approach works. I just watched them with my 10-year-old and her friend and they were impressed. But more importantly, the manufacturer with extreme cutting needs is going to be blown away watching these! And watch them he or she will because they are fun, not “work.” Compare cutting up a coworker’s annoying cell phone to watching a dry online demo!

As soon as I got the email, I contacted Doug at Flow. Doug said they started the videos after attending the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle (where I ran into Doug!). And the videos are working. Flow is starting slow with a gradual introduction but they’ve already gotten leads from the videos!

On the site they let people like us submit ideas for things to cut. And people are! Doug says, “We've already received a bundle of interesting ideas on what people would like to see cut (for example, plasma TVs to laptops to boulders to bread).”

Just this morning I read an article about integrating email and social media. Flow’s “Can Water Cut It?” videos are a perfect example of doing just that.

Kudos to Flow for figuring out how to harness social networking and video for marketing an industrial product in a B2B marketplace!

OK, back to copywriting on a rainy Seattle afternoon… 

If you’re in email marketing, you’re using a welcome email (aka welcome letter), I hope! It can be one of the most powerful tools in your email marketing toolbox, because it’s the most often read email a business can send to a prospect or customer. (If you’re new to email marketing, or getting into small business email marketing, or just wondering what a welcome email is, it’s the email automatically generated and sent to a new subscriber to your in-house email list, someone who signs up on your Web site.)

Sadly most businesses don’t use one or use a crappy one. Yet the welcome email should be required in email marketing. Not only is it highly likely that your customer will open and read it, it gives you a chance to make a deeper connection with them, further your relationship along, and even up sell them or get them back to your web site.

Earlier this week I started on whitepaper project for a new client and we were talking about how people would get the whitepaper (because this Seattle copywriter believes how you deliver a marketing message is almost as important as the message itself). I mentioned about using a welcome email and did he want me to do the copywriting for it, and I found myself explaining the welcome letter…which led to a great new term (I think) and this blog post.

I told him to think of it as a reinforcement email, and then had my “ah ha” moment: Maybe if marketers thought of this welcome letter as a reinforcement email, they’d both be more likely to use one and they’d make sure to have better copywriting too.

By “reinforcement,” I mean this piece of email marketing reinforces to your customer that signing up for your email newsletter or email promotions was a smart decision. It’s like a buy for the customer: She is giving you her contact information. In return you will provide her content of value. It’s an exchange of “goods” and you can confirm for her that yes, that was a good idea. It also reinforces your message regarding frequency and what type of information she’ll receive from you via email, ensuring that she’ll be more likely to look for messages from you in her inbox. It can reinforce your brand in tone and voice (which is why I keep mentioning copywriting). And it can reinforce the beginning of your relationship with this person. She raised her hand and said yes to hearing from you. You can take the next step in the relationship with this email.

I hope calling it a reinforcement email instead of a welcome email makes it make sense to marketers, because—like I said already—it is so important, it should be required in all email marketing, especially small business email marketing. If you have a small business, this is one easy way to stand out and differentiate yourself from the big guys…wait, that’s the start of another blog post.

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 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!