eye catching � Glowleaf

Nov 08

Amaze her with your hot rod

Can of SPAM, Cardinal Sin, Doodling, Fishbait, Internet Marketing, Milking horny guys, Mind over Pixels, Social abuse, Techniques, Virtual War, WebWriMo challenge 7 Comments �

That is the title from a spam email I got today.

See how intelligently it passes through spam filters, all the while remaining intelligible and eye catching? There are no spam words to raise red flags, and the word “Amaze” is a power word. So is “hot”, because it triggers an emotional reaction.

Power words are words like “Sex”, “Money”, “Rich”, “Happy”, “Buy”, “Bargain”, “Order now”, “Passion” and a bunch of others. Actually, if you write down the keyword cloud of a few telemarketing ads you will instantly have a list of power words that really work.

I have said it before, and I will say it again:

Study the porn biz. These guys are waaay ahead of the curve.

Another place where you can really learn a lot is from spammers. Spammers, like anyone running a ppc ad campaign, get one chance only to grab the reader’s attention. Win = profit, fail = loss.

The spammers also have the spam filters to consider on top of the marketing pitch. You may not care how to write catchy titles that grab attention AND pass spam inspection at the same time, but if you study those guys, you will learn how to think differently. Slightly shady said it very nicely.

You either fool the bot(or the person submitting the spam report) or you fool the person reviewing your site.

Simply put, PPCers have to fool the human. Spammers have to fool both machine and human. Conclusion: the latter have bigger balls.

So, what can we learn from this?

As always, zap your brain with so much data that it oveloads, and think on the stuff you read. Gather a bunch of spam mails, and write down the titles. Glance casually over them and see which ones grab your attention, and try to find out how they did it. It is usually a single power word that does the trick!

Disclaimer for idiots: Power words are bolded in the list below.

Girls mock at your size? (Very good)
Barak Obama shot in White House (Yes, power words can be names, and recent words, like terrorism)
Instantly boost your website’s traffic (As good as it gets)
How would you like to put your ad right to the screens of millions in minutes? (This one FAILS miserably. Why?)
Incredible News (This kind of power word as a marketing concept was invented at the time Marvel made their first comic. It is no wonder they used “The Fantastic Four”, “The Amazing Spiderman” etc. This is Seth Godin’s method of integrating marketing inside the product itself. Or in this case, in its name. Learn from this or fail.)
Post your ads where people read them! (No power, no naked showers. See how I made my point using a power word?)
Beating the high cost (Not powerful enough. Passive is for gays.)
Get all or nothing (Not that good, does not give any amount of info)
Great bargains here (Oldie but goodie)
Unbelievable sale (So is this one. Marvel.)
YOUR EMAIL ID HAVE WON (As stupid as it may seem, this one works)
Amazing increasing system (Medium, might work but has no info. Marvel.)
What Britney hides? (Pop means popular)
you’ll get 1000’s of Highly Targeted visitors to your web site or affiliate web site overnight (FAIL again)
Better ways to please her (Medium)
Never be soft again (Good one. Absoluteness is key. NEVAH!)
Male probs are dangerous (“You are in Danger!” doesn’t that work better? Fail.)
Big saving for your family (Emotional trigger word)
Fail too fast in bed? (It works, that is why I use it too )
Small size isnt a crime! (Mushy. Too passive. Could be better.)
Feed Blaster puts your ad right to the screens of millions in 15 minutes! (FAIL)
Quit Your Day Job Within 30 Days (Would rewrite it “within” to “in”. This is not a contract, you are trying to catch clicks here. As I said, be absolute. What the fuck spammer? Man up!)
How would you like unlimited hits to your website 15 minutes from now ? (FAIL…At this point, I hope you know why.)
Do you suck? (EPIC. Truly. Epic. Pure awesomeness.)

Some douchebag might ask me how I would write the ones I tagged as failed. So here it is:

“GET A GAZILLION HITS NOW!”

Gives no info at all, but it sure makes people click. I dare you not to click that link. Just try to resist the temptation. Is it a dick roll? Is it a java game? A sales pitch? A porn pic? Who knows…

I sincerely hope some people’s minds get a slight nudge in the right direction from this. For actual business mailing, go to Wickedfire’s mailing forum, and snoop around.