If you are interested in driving traffic to your website, or are into list building or affiliate marketing, then you probably know the importance of a great headline.

It’s often been said that the ability to write great headlines is the most important skill in all of copywriting. That might be true.

After all, unless you have a great headline your selling message won’t get read.

This applies to solo ads, classified ads, sales letters, blog posts, social media marketing … basically anytime you communicate with the public.

In the email marketing and solo advertising business we often talk about the “hierarchy” of a great email ad. That’s just a fancy way to say that any email ad, especially a solo ad, must have three key elements in order to be effective. And by effective, I mean profitable.

1. A subject line (or headline) that causes the email to get opened
2. An offer the reader wants
3. A call to action that gets the reader to click now

If your ad has those three things you will likely do very well indeed. If you get one of them wrong you risk losing profits.

But here’s the problem for most people … how do you write a highly effective headline or email subject line? [Read more...]