Lights! Camera! Call to action!

I reviewed a lot of recruitment letters during the past week, and I saw evidence of some great work. The writers provided a lot of compelling reasons why a prospective affiliate would want to join our programs. What was sometimes lacking, however, was a strong call to action. After providing all of the great details of a program, we sometimes fail to entice the recipient of our recruiting e-mail to take action now! Let me provide a few examples:

One letter ended with "Let us know if you would like to discuss a possible partnership or if you have any questions." This is a passive statement. It doesn't guide the recipient to do anything except to decide whether or not they want to contact us. Is that really the message you want to send? The rough translation of this is "You can contact us if you want to. Whatever. Either way." We need to close these letters strongly with clear direction as to the action we want these prospects to take.

How about this? "Contact us today so we can help you join this great new program!" or "Join this program at [ web site address here ] and start earning great commissions!"

Here's another example. One recruitment e-mail ended with "Please get in touch with us at your convenience." It's better. The recipient knows what we want them to do - contact us. But it's still a bit up in the air, isn't it? "At your convenience" doesn't exactly instill urgency, does it? To be honest - we could care less about their convenience. We want them to drop everything and ACT NOW! How about "Please contact us at your earliest convenience so that you can start earning money by promoting this program." Now we've given them an incentive - money!

Some of the opening lines of our recruiting letters also showed signs of passivity when we want ACTIVE VOICE. For example, "I wanted to contact you regarding the XXX program." Drop the "I wanted." You crossed that bridge when you sent the e-mail. Understand? How about "I am contacting you with regard to the XXX program."

Another opening line was "We'd love to speak with someone about a partnership with our client and your site." Someone? Some random person? We are making it sound like we are just flinging these e-mails randomly into the ether, hoping someone gets the message. No! Always assume you've reached the decision maker and try to convince that person to take action now. Try "We'd love to speak with you about a partnership between you and XXX." This makes the message more immediate and, if you can convince this person that the message is worth acting on, they will either act or pass it on to the real decision maker.

Our recruitment letters are full of strong reasons to join our programs. We just need to stand behind those reasons by providing strong calls to action so that prospects become affiliates. If you are ever in doubt, send your e-mails to me and I'll help you through it. Good luck!

One last note this week. Some of you may already be aware of this, but I wanted to point out that no matter how big the company, mistakes will be made. Google learned that lesson this week when its Valentines Day holiday logo mispelled the company name. As you know, Google is known for holiday logos. This week's Valentine's Day featured the latest example, but the giant search engine was definitely not feeling the love. That's because Google was misspelled "Googe" this time around. Huge Googe mistake! Just goes to show you're never too big to ignore the importance of proofreading!