• How do you infuse your marketing copy with emotion? Free WordStream guide
• If you’d like to join us on an open copywriting course, get in touch
• Book marketing comes close to home, read the story of Park Lane Stables
• Tip of the week: To use the ellipsis, or not to use the ellipsis ...

We all know how hard it is to write really compelling copy, and we’ve all rejected words and phrases we associate with ‘marketing’ as not striking the right tone for our customers. Yet as human beings, all of us tend to respond to similar triggers, assuming the way they’re expressed feels appropriate.

Wordstream’s ‘120 of the Best Words and Phrases for Marketing with Emotion’ is free and definitely worth a look, especially if you’re feeling bored with your own current copy. The lists of words and phrases for different occasions are a mixed bag. Some you’ll reject, some you’ll be using (nice to have this validated), and others you’ll think ‘why not?’

This has to be worth a few minutes of reading time, doesn’t it? Read Wordstream’s free guide.

After a break from running open courses due to demand for in-company training, we have people wanting to do our half day online Copywriting Workshop. Would you or a member of your team like to join them?

This is a three hour small group session run on Zoom, date to be agreed between participants but provisionally June or July. Suitable for both editorial and marketing and all publishing sectors. Sessions usually run 2pm till 5pm UK time to enable attendees in North America to join.

Reply to this email or use the contact us button on the website to register your interest, and we’ll get back to you.

Read more about our Copywriting Workshop

Some of you will recall that I volunteered to do the PR/marketing for Park Lane Stables after they launched an insurmountable Crowdfunder campaign in January 2021. Six weeks later and after the campaign to save the stables captured the imagination of the country, we’d raised £1.3million.

The story of Park Lane Stables, that campaign, and manager Natalie O’Rourke, is published on Thursday 26 May. Only Heroes and Horses is available to pre-order from Hachette in hardback, eBook and audiobook.

Of course I’m biased, but this is one of those feelgood uplifting stories that will make you cry but which you know from the outset has a happy ending. And every copy sold includes a donation towards the ongoing work of the Stables.

Find out more about Only Heroes and Horses on the Hachette website.

What’s your view? Do you find the use of those suspenseful (in theory) three dots annoying, or irresistible?

Last week I was running an Email Marketing Workshop with the marketing team from ProQuest in North America. They frequently use ellipses in email subject lines and I questioned it. Turns out they’d already done so, and had sensibly tested its use. And found that it made a consistent and BIG positive difference to open rates.

Now we’re all asking ourselves … is this specific to the US market, which is where they were testing? Could they (and you!) see the same uplift by using it in the UK or other markets? And as their tests were a while ago now, would doing them again produce the same result, or has the fickle email market moved away from this tactic now?

The tip of the week, incidentally, is ALWAYS to test key ingredients of your email campaigns. The results are usually illuminating, often surprising, and always fascinating.