Just about all practitioners of direct response marketing know: When a piece is mailed twice, it’s most likely profitable.

Well, the same thing is true for email. When you see the same email — with the same subject line — sent out twice, it’s probably a winner.

What’s interesting is that almost NOBODY does this. The thinking is, “I’ve already sent this email once. Surely I can’t send it a second time because my subscribers will notice.”

True, some may notice. But chances are most of them won’t notice… because… they ignored the first email anyway.

Perfect example.

I wrote an email for a client with the following subject line:

    “What If…”

We’ve now sent it out five times, with similar results every time. It is the best-performing email we’ve ever used for this particular market and product.

Here’s another example:

The Oxford Club sent me an email on June 16. They sent the same email with the same subject line again on June 21. (The only change was a short intro paragraph at the top of the 2nd email.) Here’s the subject line they used:

    “Why August 12 Starts Phase Two of the Euro’s Meltdown”

Pretty compelling, wouldn’t you say? When I saw this, I literally HAD to open it.

Sometimes you can find great email subject lines just by “farming” your email inbox. Here are four recent examples (and one older example) that caught my attention:

    The best advice I never received…
        -AWAI

    The Info-Marketer’s Most Precious Business Asset…
        -Daniel Levis for The Makepeace Total Package

    uh-oh. he’s naming names.
        -Ray Edwards

    Your copy bombed – now what?
        -Carline Anglade-Cole

    How to Break Into Financial Copywriting
        -Doug D’Anna

Notice that most of these have to do with copywriting or direct response advertising. That’s because these subjects are major interests of mine.

Looking through my own inbox can be fun, but tedious. It takes time to find the gold.

But just imagine how easy it would be to come up with great subject lines if you had 527 of the best ones all compiled into an easy-to-use PDF?

That’s exactly what Lawrence Bernstein has done with “Made You Look: 527 Subject Lines that Dare You to Look Away.”

He and his partner, Art Crowley, reviewed 18,000 subject lines mailed over a three-year period to come up with the 527 that stood head and shoulders above the rest.

They then broke these down even further into 12 separate categories for easy reference.

This little gem normally sells for $97, but Lawrence is giving it away free when you join The Ultimate Online Swipe File through this link:

http://clickora.com/swipefile

Not to mention, I’ll also give you a free membership to Copywriting Code — my private web site where I share some of my best how-to copywriting info.

But please act quickly.

This offer expires on Friday evening, June 25. Please sign up now to claim your free gifts…

http://clickora.com/swipefile

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

• How to Use a Swipe File
• 7 Ways to Get Your Email Opened
• Mastering Adwords
• Gmail Priority Inbox – Solving Email Clutter
• Five on Friday, Issue #8

There is a huge dichotomy in advertising.

• On the one hand you’ve got the pressure to perform: to make your advertising as profitable as you possibly can.

• On the other hand you’ve got the pressure to be ethical: to be as honest as possible in your advertising.

Last week I raised the issue of using fake scarcity to drive more sales. Many people said they disagreed with such a deceptive tactic and would fire any client who did such a thing.

Not to muddy the waters too much here, but the issue of honesty in advertising is very complex. In fact, it seems dishonesty in advertising is accepted as a matter of course!

So, since I already brought up the issue of fake scarcity, let’s turn the lens of scrutiny toward…

Fake Stories

When I asked my mastermind group how they would handle dishonest clients, the responses were very interesting. Not one of them was the same. And yet each person seemed passionate about his position.

Daniel Levis mentioned how John Caples’ most famous ad was an imaginary story. You know, the ad that begins, They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano But When I Started to Play!~

The story in this ad is completely fictitious. Some may say it is dishonest. Is this okay? And how is it any different than the fake weight loss stories and fake body building stories published on “flogs” these days?

Maybe the difference is in class, style, and sophistication. If you tell an imaginary story framed as a real story… and you tell it believably enough… does that make it okay?

Fake Endorsements

Or how about TV commercials with paid actors and actresses giving fake endorsements of products? This is extremely common.

The “perfect” house wife comes on screen, kids in the background: “Ever since I started using Product X, cleaning up even the messiest spills has been a breeze. After all, I need all the help I can get!”

Everybody knows these “TV testimonials” are fake, the stories completely made up, the “families” patched together from the most attractive people on the set. It’s quite possible the actors and actresses in these commercials have never even used the products they’re promoting!

And yet I don’t see anybody complaining about this particular genre of dishonest advertising.

Real Ad, Fake Story

Here’s another example. I’m a subscriber of World Net Daily’s Whistleblower magazine. On the back cover of the November 2009 issue there is a full-page ad put out by Swiss America to advertise gold.

The headline reads: “Our retirement account has tripled in the last 5 years…”

Underneath the headline there is a picture of a happy couple in their 50s. It is obviously a stock photograph to support the headline.

Now, the headline is dishonest on two levels. By saying “Our retirement account has tripled,” they’re implying that this really happened to a certain couple. I’m fairly confident that this is not the case.

What’s more, the price of gold has tripled from 2004 to 2009. Which means that for the headline to be true, this couple would have had to have had 100% of their retirement account invested in gold. Again, not likely.

But I don’t look at the ad and get angry. I actually get kind of interested. Hey! Maybe I should be investing in gold! I start to think. On that level, the ad works.

But How Far Is Too Far?

My point is this: We see LOTS of dishonest advertising every day. But we don’t think of it as being dishonest. We accept it. We may even approve of it.

So what then makes one dishonest ad okay but another one not okay? Are we going to label John Caples a liar for telling a story that wasn’t true, but could have been? Where do we draw the line?

In other words, just how far is too far in advertising? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

-Ryan M. Healy

Similar Posts:

• ‘Tis the Season to Tell Lies?
• Five on Friday, Issue #4
• How Should You Respond to Dishonest Clients?
• Basic Sales Appeals Go on Forever
• When Selling on Price Backfires