In the rest of this chapter, I’m going to explain how to write simple sales material that gets results. I’ll do that by concentrating on the two most important parts of any sales material: the headline and the call to action. Get those two right, and any piece of marketing
material you produce — online or off — will get the results you want.

Writing Headlines That Grab Your Customers and Sell Your Goods!
Headlines are absolutely vital for all your marketing efforts. Whether you plan to use them on your website, your emails, your newsletters or anywhere else, they’re the hook that grabs your readers, reels them in and turns them into customers. There are dozens E - books of different kinds of headlines that you can use and some of them are better than others. Below are the type of headlines that I use, and that I’ve found to be the most effective.

The No-Nonsense Headline
The first type of headline you can use is the simplest. No frills, no tricks, no hooks, just a straightforward description of the contents of your message. Your headline could be something like:
Tips to Save Money on Your Weekly Shopping The Best Way to Choose Your Next Car

Real Estate Agents That Sell Properties Fast
Notice that you can still use explanations and powerful adjectives to get your point across, but these headlines do little more than tell the reader what to expect. The advantages of these headlines is that they’re easy to write and easy to read. You don’t have to try to come up with some hard hitting sales message and customers aren’t put off by a document that looks like a piece of promotional material. On the other hand, they are a bit weak and that makes them hard to turn into cash.
You can use no-nonsense headlines when you don’t need to work hard to make the sale. If you’re sending information that you know your customer will read, either because it’s free or they’ve specifically requested it, these are the kind of headlines to use.

The Question Headline
Question headlines work by asking customers a question that plays on their worries and promises a solution. These are great when you really want to grab a customer and drive your message home.
Want To Save Thousands On Your Home Insurance Bills?
Learn How To Cut Your Costs In Half!
Where Do You Look For Love? Discover The Best Places To
Meet Your Match!
Suffering From Termites? Drive Them Out With The
Extermite-Ator!
To write these headlines, think first of what problem your product is actually going to solve. (If it’s not going to solve a problem, then you’re going to have a problem selling it!) In the first half of the headline, you ask your customers if they’re suffering from the problem. Just by asking, you’re suggesting that they do. In the second half of the headline, you tell them that you have the solution. It’s very easy and extremely effective.
This is a really simple formula to follow: all you have to do is state the question and promise the answer. And it sells too; you’ve put the problem in the reader’s mind, now you’re offering the solution.
Of course, these kinds of headlines depend on the reader empathizing with the problem. If they don’t, or if they decide that the headlines look too long to read, they’re not likely to buy.
Question headlines are most effective when your product is going to clearly solve someone’s problem and when you know your customers are going to empathize with that problem. If they don’t say yes to the question, they’re going to say no to the sale.

The How Headline
This is pretty similar to the question headline, but only offers the solution. It makes for a shorter read than question headlines so you get your point across faster, but you lose the empathy.
How To Fix Up Your Home Without Breaking The Bank!
How I Made $3,000,000 With One Phone Call!
How I Lost 33 Pounds On A High Fiber Diet And A
Revolutionary New Exercise Plan!
These kinds of headlines cut straight to the problem-solving aspect of your product. They’re short and to the point and can be easily absorbed with just a glance. How Headlines are great when the rest of the document is going to reveal information. That information might just be details about your product, but the focus should always be on telling customers how they can solve a problem. These work best when you’re selling information products like books or newsletters.

The Numbered Headline
There’s a good reason that magazines like Cosmopolitan use headlines like “6 Ways To Drive Your Man Wild!” They work. Most people are put off by the sight of a giant slab of text. They want their information in bite-sized chunks. When you put a number in your headline, you let your reader know that the information you’re offering them is going to be easy to read:
7 Ways To Make Your Computer Run Faster
15 Proven Ways To Make Money From Home
23 Sales Tools That Guarantee Success
The advantage of these headlines is that they promise easy reading, increasing the chances that your text will actually be read. It’s also easy to slip a call-to-action sales message into these kind of documents: one of the promised solutions can be: “buy my product”!
On the other hand, easy reading isn’t the same as interesting reading. The headline still has to grab your readers to make them want to read it.
Numbered Headlines are most effective when you’re confident your readers will find your message interesting and you don’t have to fight to make them read on. They’re best used when you’re competing against other articles or sales letters. I use them a lot in newsletters,
especially when I know it’s going to be published in a joint venture partner’s newsletter.

The Testimonial Headline
These are some of the toughest headlines to write. You take a chunk of text from a letter written by a satisfied customer and use that as the headline for a sales letter:

“Last Year, I Was Working 12 Hours A Day And Making Just $36,000. Last Month, I Made $32,000 And Worked Three Days — All Due To The Amazing Techniques Revealed Below!”
“I’d Tried Every Weight Loss Program Ever. I’d Tried Dieting, Exercise, High-Fiber, Low Fat, High-Carbs... You Name
It, I’d Done It And Nothing Worked. Then I Tried The Lose Fat
Fast Program. I Lost 33 Pounds In The First Two Months And I’ve Never Felt Better!”
“Within A Week Of Sending Out My Resume, I’d Got Three Interviews And A Fantastic Job Offer. I Couldn’t Have Done It Without You!”

These headlines put your reliability right at the top, increasing the customers’ confidence to buy. They explain in detail precisely what you’re offering and what you can do for the reader. They also create massively long headlines that are difficult to absorb at a glance and
can put a reader off.
Testimonial headlines are best used in industries where reliability is a bit of a problem. If you’re selling weight loss products for example, or any other life-changing service, then a headline like this goes some way towards proving to the buyer that you’re trustworthy.
Those are just five kinds of headlines that I use in my businesses every day. There are doAfqam E - books more, but these are the ones that I’ve found the most effective. There’s certainly enough here for you to get started. Play around with them, figure out which ones would work best for your business and try them out.
But even the best headline will only grab a reader’s eye and get him reading. They won’t close the sale. After the headline you’ll need to describe all the wonderful benefits of your product in order to get the reader to actually take the action you want.

Tips for Building Your Email Lists
A popular Internet battle cry states that “the money is in your list”. It’s true that you can make a lot of money by building a list of opt-in subscribers, establishing trust with those subscribers and sending those subscribers special offers promoting your products.
But you must do it correctly. Here’s a few tips that will help you get the most bang for your buck out of your list-building activities:

Collect Only Relevant Information
While requesting a visitor to sign up, collect information that is relevant to your business. A recent study lamented that most of the corporate probing was unnecessary, given that most companies never act on the information they extract from their customers. It is crucial that you know exactly what you intend to do with the information you’re going to collect.Moreover, you should also be able to prove to your visitors that information you would be collecting from them is actually vital for your business.

Don’t Make Your Customers Repeat Information
Most customers don’t mind telling their banks the ages of their children if they think the bank will use the information to help them sort through the myriad of college savings plans or make them aware of estate planning issues. But nothing irritates customers more than having to repeat the same information to each channel as if it’s the first time they've ever heard the information. This is especially true in the case of email lists on websites.

Focus Your List
We’ve discussed the importance of focusing or targeting customers earlier as well. Current customers are the most important email addresses to collect, much more so than prospects. They’ll be more receptive to your communications and likely to respond, since they’re familiar with your company and its products. Don’t waste your time running campaigns that attract a high number of visitors who have no interest in your products or services.

Special Offers and Discounts
Special offers like coupons and discounts are classic direct marketing techniques that  translate extremely well to email. In order for an offer to be effective, it must provide something of real value to the recipient. Minimal discounts are not enough to get the reader’s
attention; you have to offer something of substance. Of course, don’t discount lower than your profit on the transaction. Having a time limit on discounted offers is also very important in order for the call to action to work effectively. Apart from using the Internet, there are also ways you can use your marketing efforts in the real world to help build your email lists.

Networking Meetings
From your local chamber of commerce, to specialized industry groups, the meetings of many organizations are great opportunities to make contact with new people. You are exchanging business cards with interested prospects or possible referral sources, so make sure that you send appropriate email communications to these people. Start with a personal email recapping your conversation with them, and ask them if they would like to be added to your monthly email list. Don't just start sending a barrage of email to every person that you come in contact with. Make sure that the person indicated their interest in what you have to offer first, or your contact will become quickly unwanted.

Trade Shows
Whether you have a booth, are one of the presenters, or are simply attending a trade show, you have an excellent potential opportunity similar to networking events, but on a much greater scale. Organizing the follow-ups to people you actually spoke to yourself then adding the person to your personal contact list is a given.
The general information requests gathered by associates at your booth can be handled in a similar way. Lastly, you may have organized a giveaway or contest to gather more leads at the show. These people are frequently less interested in what you have to say, and more
interested in whatever they might be getting or winning. As a result, it may require secondary contact to obtain the permission to add them to your regular communications. In general, hitting contest winners with a "hard sell" is not usually effective.

Seminars
Organizing informational seminars is a great way to build a healthy relationship with prospects and potential referrers. One effective technique is to have advance registration and to ask
permission to send regular emails at that time. This way, even if the person is not able to attend the seminar, you still have an opportunity to stay in touch with them. After all, they were interested enough to register for the seminar.

Events
Concerts, parties, art openings, or any other occasion that gathers people together provide an opportunity to build your email address lists. Having a registration or check-in location, or associates with clipboards working the room are just two ways to make contact. In the
case of events, it is a good idea to offer some kind of incentive to boost signups. However, make sure that the person can only receive the incentive via email. This way, you will improve the quality and accuracy of the lists you are collecting.

Post Cards/Direct Mail
When a company has an existing database of postal addresses, direct mail may be the best way to get the email addresses of your existing customers and prospects. Again, offering an incentive always helps stimulate a greater response and is particularly effective when there is a pre-existing relationship. This helps increase the typical response rate of converting postal address recipients to email recipients. Publish a specific website address on your mailing to direct people to a landing page with the list signup form on your site.

Email Content – Text vs. HTML
This is every email marketer’s dilemma. More so, due to the fact that there is no clear majority of people preferring one format over the other. Some people will always prefer text to graphics, and some email
readers only support basic text. A prominent Internet marketing website recently carried out a survey asking not only which format was preferred but why one format was preferred over another. Over 600 people, mostly marketers and small business operators, responded. 55% favored HTML and 45% preferred text. Given that well over 90% of email readers can view HTML, it is surprising that almost half the people would prefer to receive text. To investigate this point further, the survey gave those who chose text a list of possible reasons to explain why. On average, people listed about two and a half reasons each. They said:

Can't read HTML 6%
Just want the meat without the distractions 32%
Like to read offline 15%
Ads are more intrusive in HTML 22%
Slow to download 14%
Other 11%

The most popular reason for choosing plain text over HTML was an interesting one. People were clearly expressing a desire for email layouts that focused on the message, and they often saw HTML emails as containing elements that distract from the content — the content
being the reason they signed up for the email in the first place.
11% of the people who selected “Other” as their reason gave their own reasons as:
Text takes up less storage space 28%

Security — fear of viruses 22%
Easier/faster to read/scan 13%
Text is easier to read on a PDA 9%
Text is more reliable, formatting/forwarding etc. 7%
Easier to save/file/copy text 6%
Like to read email in preview pane 4%
Text is more personal 4%
Fear of tracking/being spied on with HTML 4%
Text is more easily searched offline 1%