You, a freelance creative, buy a plane ticket to go and see a client. You rebill the ticket at cost and your client pays you back. So, if you need to state a number when you’re applying for a credit line or some such, should you include the value of that ticket in your revenues?

Of course not. That pass through expense has nothing to do with your business; it’s just money that appears on your balance sheet on its way from one place to another. Or to quote the wonderful though wonky Grumpy Old Accountants website, “SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin 101 on Revenue Recognition, Question 10 specifically, is congruent with EITF 99-19.  The SEC stated that firms should report revenues on a net basis if they did not take title to the products, did not have the risk and rewards of ownership, and acted as an agent or broker.”

Groupon did not get the memo. They have been booking the full value of their coupon sales as revenue, not accounting for the fact that a large percentage of what they are collecting is going to go into the pockets of retailers and they are just a conduit. As a result, yesterday Groupon had to restate its revenues and reduce them by 50%, while incidentally announcing their recently hired CEO is on her way back to Google.

So much for that IPO. And perhaps much of that money that Groupon collected on the premise that its copywriters are worth $6 billion will have to be returned, since it was based on the misstated revenues. As I mentioned in that earlier post, retailers like the results that they get with Groupon but resent the charges which are higher than with other social couponing sites. It would be a lot of fun to be a LivingSocial or BlackBoardEats rep calling on your prospects next week, would it not?

I hope Groupon does not go down in flames because I think the quality of its creative expression (along with excellent, rock-solid marketing) has been the decider. You may have noticed that the Groupon “Voice” now extends no further than the opening sentence or two of most offers; after that it is straightforward, though good, marketing copy. But this is offset by the wonderful temporary insanity of the “Groupon Says” feature at the bottom of the offer page.

Google copywriters: if you guys get laid off, give otisregrets a call and let’s talk about some mutual opportunities.

Since I’m still a Netflix customer (at least until 9/24 when the new pricing kicks in per my billing date) I was a recipient of the soon-to-become-infamous email from Reed Hastings in my in-box this morning, which opens “I messed up. I owe you an explanation.”

I would have liked “apology” which would indicate a price rollback but “explanation” carries no such connotation and indeed regarding the pricing, Hastings informs us “we’re done with that!” The explanation is of the rationale behind splitting the streaming and DVD-delivery services; the mess-up was in not explaining it properly to consumers, which he now does in the email and more extensively in his own blog.

The streaming video service is now Netflix and the DVDs are about to become “Quikster”, a new orphan brand, suggesting that the “familiar red envelope” is about to become the equivalent of “AOL dial-up”, an analogy Hastings uses in his message though not exactly in that way.

I am fascinated by this turn of events. It’s like that story of the backpacker who cuts off his own arm to escape and save his life. It’s like watching Wil. E. Coyote standing his ground as the roadrunner approaches at full speed. And I am especially fascinated by evidence the decision was not made with full benefit of research and reflection by one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Do a web search for “quickster” and “quikster” (results will be roughly the same) and right now the top two hits are for an Amway-related scandal involving a like-sounding product, and a rather risqué definition on urbandictionary.com. Look up quikster.com on the internet registries and you’ll find the registration changed just a couple of weeks ago and as of this morning quikster.net and quikster.org were still available for purchase, suggesting haste and confusion in the name-changing.

I plan to stay tuned…. Though perhaps not as a Quikster customer.

UPDATE: just a few hours later, those web search results have changed quite a bit… I hope you will take my word as to what they looked like about 7 am Eastern this morning. Also with more reflection, I want to point out a huge failing of Quikster as a brand identity: it does nothing to say what this product or service actually does, other than the fact that it’s fast. I’m guessing that QuickFlix and QuikFlix were taken?

There is plenty of research to suggest that, after the opening, the P.S. is the most-read element of a direct mail letter. Similarly, MarketingSherpa did an analysis of links within emails and that found that the number of clicks goes down with each successive link after the first one in the message—until the link at the very end, which is the second most-clicked link of them all.

We marketers have only ourselves to thank for this phenomenon: we’ve trained our readers to know that the end of the letter will have a recap of the offer and a direct call to action. If they don’t feel like reading, they can cut to the chase by going to the P.S. That’s why you should use the P.S. appropriately to give people what they are looking for.

The classic use of the P.S. is to recap the entire marketing proposition in a paragraph. St. Jude Hospital did that by adding this P.S. which, according to Herschell Gordon Lewis, produced a 19% increase in response with absolutely no other changes in the letter:

P.S. I hope that your own family never suffers the tragedy of losing a child to an incurable disease. At St. Jude, we’re fighting to conquer these killers, and one day someone in your own family may live because we succeeded.

You can also use the P.S. to:

• Tease the reader back into the letter, with a phrase that harkens back to something you said previously that of course they didn’t read: “Remember that limited time offer I told you about earlier? Well, here’s one more reason you shouldn’t let this opportunity get away…” Works well if you have a very rich, multi-part offer that you want to reveal in stages.

• Bring in one fresh benefit which is so powerful that it deserves its own showcase. Richard Potter did this in a way I love for a letter for AAA. It says something like: “I almost forgot! Respond now and you’ll get a FREE United States Map Book in addition to the member savings I mentioned earlier.”

• Fire your twin guns of “act now before it’s too late” and “with our no-risk guarantee there’s no reason not to say yes”.  Putting these strong closing statements in the P.S. serves a double purpose: they seal the deal with somebody who has stayed with you throughout the letter, and they make a compelling argument to someone who has just started reading.

Are there letters that shouldn’t have a P.S.? Perhaps. “Real” business letters don’t have them, of course, and if verisimilitude is important then maybe you want to close with the signature. Also, a very short letter has less reason for a P.S. But the P.S. is powerful. Don’t give it up without serious consideration.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

What do you do when you get an assignment in an entirely new area, for a product you’ve never written about? Here are a few seat-of-the-pants research strategies to wrap your mind around the project.

1. Read what your audience reads. Is the campaign running on audience-specific websites? Or mailing to subscription lists? Reading the pubs can give you clues about what interests your prospects and what level of writing they’re used to seeing. One timesaving tip for magazines: look at the publisher’s column in the front of the book. These are usually fairly vapid puff pieces which appeal to what the publisher or editor thinks the audience wants to read. You can do better writing than this, and you will, but looking at the topics in the publisher’s column gives you quick insights.

2. Study the competition. The web offers a wealth of free competitive research for copywriters. Find out who your client considers major competitors and also do searches using their keywords to see who else comes up, then study the way those competitors are marketing themselves. As a bonus, you may find links to research and stats you can repurpose for your own client. (But be sure to follow the links to their source, rather than quoting a competitor directly. The stats may be erroneous or proprietary and besides, plagiarism is never okay.)

3. Read the product manual or documentation. Some manuals are overly technical or poorly written, but every now and then you’ll find that a good technical writer has done the groundwork of testing a product and finding the best way to assemble and use it for quick satisfaction. That’s a boon for you.

4. Talk to the product manager. In a technology company, the product manager is the link between engineering and sales. They know how the product works and they are able to explain it in a way that makes sense to a non-technical audience. They also know how the hot buttons that appeal to their target audience in demos and at trade shows.

5. Talk to the sales team… maybe. Some salespeople focus on “people skills” and pride themselves on being able to close on the strength of their personality, not product benefits. You’ll come away with a string of generalities that aren’t convincing when you set them down in writing. But if you ask them what are the most common concerns or objections they hear on a sales call and how they respond, even non-technical salespeople may reveal strategy points that the internal marketing people don’t know about.

6. Talk to customers. This is a tricky one. Somebody who actually uses the product can be a great source of insight as well as potential quotes or even copy platforms. However, your client may not be comfortable putting you in front of a customer directly. And the customer may expect that there’s something in it for them—they’ll get their name in print with a testimonial (perhaps a terrible one they have prewritten for you) or maybe some free samples. So be careful. Tell them at the outset that you’ll try not to take much of their time and thank them profusely, letting them know by implication that thanks are all they’re getting from you.

Excerpted from my new book, Copywriting that Gets RESULTS! Get your copy here.

If your company held a giveaway and said I could enter to win an iPad if I bought a product, that would be illegal. “Consideration” is one of the legal no-nos in a sweepstakes which is why the rules always say in big letters, NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.

Use of images from Apple's website is also prohibited.

If your company had a giveaway and said I could enter to win an iPad with no purchase required, that would be…. prohibited. Say what? By whom? By Apple, according to their new promotional guidelines.

Apple, which will soon be or already is the world’s most valuable company, has decided it has the right to tell people what to do with products they have already purchased. iPads may not be used in promotions of any kind, period. iPod touches are ok if you buy 250 units. And of course everything must follow guidelines provided by Apple and be submitted for Apple approval.

The use of third party trademarks in marketing is a grey area. It’s not the same as my writing about iPads in this blog (there I said it iPad iPad iPad) where the primary purpose is educational so I’m protected by something called “Fair Use”. But what is very clear is that Apple has a lot more money and a lot more lawyers than you do.

I can’t find evidence of any marketer who has actually been dinged by Apple for violating this policy, which was issued earlier this year but is only recently garnering attention. But I do know at least one of my agency clients will no longer use iPad promotions. They are going to instead give away, and give free publicity to, a competing product from HP.

Longtime readers may recall that I started my career as a writer, but not a seller, of screenplays. A special frustration of this status is that a screenplay is not a freestanding creative work. It’s not “done” until somebody makes it into a movie.

It used to be the same with the vast majority of book manuscripts which were lovingly and carefully written and then launched into an unappreciative world. If a publisher turned you down you could print it yourself at a vanity press but the distribution list was limited to friends and relations.

The phenomenon of epublishing has changed this scenario in a major way. Now anyone writing a book can indeed expect that it will be published and distributed if you’re willing to pay the modest sum to register it on Kindle, Nook and similar channels. The market may or may not love you, but you can now say to anyone who crosses your path, “I’ve got a book!”

I have now built out and edited much of the content in the “Copywriting 101” category to create an ebook called “Copywriting that Gets Results”.  Initially I planned to use Amazon’s Kindle platform but after reading some reviews I chose to go with FastPencil.com. They made it especially easy for me to import blog posts as a working manuscript and they offer a choice where I can publish on their site for $9.99, or get wide distribution (a number of ebook sites, including Kindle, Nook and others) as well as the setup for a physical book (to be printed on a per-copy basis as required) for an all-inclusive fee of $199.

I chose the latter, and the finished product is now available on FastPencil and will propagate to other epublishing sites over the next few weeks. I was originally going to sell it for $9.99 and then offer a $3 discount to Otisregrets readers, but FastPencil doesn’t allow couponing. So I am publishing the ebook at $6.99 and offering a preview for free; you can also order a hard copy for $14.95 plus shipping.

FastPencil is by no means perfect. Their free publishing format has limited flexibility because they would like you to pay extra for “Silver” or “Gold” level services which come with more design choices and some consultation. And there were some technical glitches along the way which were quickly handled by their support team. But I was determined to make the free tool work in the same way I was determined to make the Copyblogger WordPress style work when I stared my blog. Free is good.

So, I’ve got a book! Now go forth and buy the ebook or printed copy and while you’re at it, sign up for a free FastPencil membership which allows you to do your own publishing. (That’s an affiliate link so by using it you are helping to support this blog. )

Remember Borders? Several months ago they were a nationwide chain of bookstores where you could browse, cozy up with a cup of coffee, and discover a new author while listening to music or even a live reading.

My own Borders was one of the first scheduled for closing, and they’ve been gone for maybe four months. Like a zombie or a hand from the grave, my Borders Rewards membership kept reminding me of new offers which were no longer relevant until finally I clicked the CAN-SPAM link and killed it.

But today the corpse is risen anew. Some special set of rules allows the liquidators to send my email address a message that says:

Your WOWPoints will be honored. They will be moved to OO.com over the next 30 days. Once there, you can use them just as you do now.

Um, no. I had a relationship with Borders, but I am not interested in you new guys whoever you are. Why is it so difficult to take a national brand with huge loyalty and do something for the customers which is also profitable when things go bad?

Just askin….

Like many Netflix subscribers, I had a notice of a 60% subscription price increase slipped under my door last week in the form of an impersonal email that states the bare facts with zero attempt to placate me or to win me over if I am considering canceling after the increase. (The email concludes with “We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have questions, please feel free to call us at 1-888-357-1516.” Hardly the best choice for a closing or conversion message.)

This increase is not for traditional Netflix subscribers who get a disk in the mail; it’s for the potentially far greater universe of prospects who came in via streaming. I signed up for streaming Netflix after my family got a Roku last holiday season. We quickly discovered that the “20,000 streaming movies” was actually not that big a number when looking for a specific title so we added the option of getting a disk when we can’t get instant satisfaction for $2 more a month. Nothing about our behavior, therefore, suggests we will be good candidates for conversion to a standard $7.99 a month disk in the mail plan (that’s the basis of the cost increase) and we are indeed cancelling our non-streaming subscription.

But meanwhile, Netflix is paring its streaming offerings presumably so it can get more disk orders. I know this because my teenager wanted to watch Zombieland for the umpteenth time last night and it’s gone! Not fair, Netflix! This is the company that always contacts me to ask about the video quality of the streaming show I watched or the delivery date of my DVD and a back door change in our agreement definitely doesn’t cut it. It feels like Netflix has made a corporate decision to move away from streaming and toward DVD delivery when everything we read about broadband consumption patterns should point them in the opposite direction.

Maybe, with negotiations going on behind the scenes with entertainment content providers, the streaming model isn’t making sense financially with unlimited viewings for one price. I would be willing to pay a small upcharge (NOT the full cost of renting a single DVD in the mall) for streaming access to new releases. I would also consider a “premium” level (let’s say $12.99 a month which is $5 more than the current streaming plan) for unlimited access for many more titles. But please, Netflix, don’t ask me to change my viewing habits to accommodate your new business model… even if it’s the old business model for many of your customers. I don’t think I’m alone in this. When I want to see it, I want it now… waiting for a disk in the mail seems forever.

Most marketers I have met have a terror of giving away too much information in their lead generation contacts. As a result they are constantly trying to get me to write “info copy” which is really a thinly disguised sales pitch. They’re afraid that once the reader has their perspective on their business or industry, the marketer becomes irrelevant and the customer will just go out and do it themselves.

Not going to happen. Properly written information will overwhelm and impress the reader. Rather than taking the nuggets and running with them, they will think, “these people sure are smart. Why would I want to do this myself, when I can just hire them?”

Brockles... the secret sauce of my youth.

Think about how hard it is to get anybody to pay attention to anything these days. People poring over what is after all marketing copy is a very nice problem to have. In writing my BMA talk, as usual I went to the web and found all kinds of useful research and insight which people are giving away for free such as this great post on how to put on a webinar (something else I will be talking about). Maybe they don’t care about money, maybe they have some kind of hidden agenda. But they can’t all be going out of business because they are giving information away instead of selling it.

Nobody wants to give away their “secret sauce”…. or do they? Sure the recipe should remain a secret. But as far as free samples, the more the better.

$3.729 at Hess...

...$3.859 at Sunoco.

In an earlier post I talked about regional differences as demonstrated by the way people talk about food on social media. Here is another example. These two gas station price signs are directly opposite each other on Route 50 in Ballston Spa NY, just north of the Highway 67 intersection. Hess is selling regular for $3.729 a gallon and Sunoco for $3.859 a gallon. Down the road past the stoplight, an independent has regular for $3.709. Seven miles up the road in Saratoga, the going rate is $3.899.

You wouldn’t see this where I moved from in California, where gas stations in the same area are universally with in a penny or two of each other. If one station undercuts another by as much as 10 cents, cars would line up around the block. But in upstate New York, you get gas where you get gas, and a few cents a gallon isn’t going to change that.

The conventional wisdom is that urban areas, where most copywriters live, are more open to new experiences while exurban folks are more cautious and conservative. After two years in Saratoga I’m inclined to say this is true. Certainly it’s true that business is conducted more on the basis of whom you know than what you can do. In California we had lots of brilliant tech folks who were a disaster at social interaction. They wouldn’t do well here.

Regional differences are why, as copywriters, we often pull back from the edge a bit in the edginess of our copy and are sure to stress that even though our product or service is “new” it’s also “proven” with absolutely no negatives for trying it. When every customer counts, you can’t afford to ignore the conservatives in Saratoga County or the flyover states even though they may not be the coolest kids on the block.