Think a “perpetual care” contract on a loved one’s grave means they will be taken care of forever?

Think again.

My American Heritage Dictionary defines “perpetual” as “lasting for eternity.”

But the U.S. cemetery industry has a different definition: “until the money runs out.”

When I signed an agreement for perpetual care of my father’s grave, I thought it would be maintained — well, forever.

But according to the NY State Cemetery Board, the cemetery may ask you for more money — or refuse to continue upkeep on the grave.

They can do so when the yield on your original fee for the service (the money is deposited in a special fund) does not generate enough income to provide adequate care.

Is this merely a matter of contractual fine print?

Or is the term “perpetual care” false advertising?

P.S. I was once called by a cemetery who wanted me to write an ad for them.

This headline immediately popped into my mind:

“DEAD?”

Of course it was not the one we used….

Source: NY Daily News, 11/28/06, p. 45.

The worst thing about the catalog business is the cost of printing and mailing all those catalogs.

So you’d think that catalog companies would drive all their sales online, and cut back on or eliminate print catalogs altogether.

Not happening.

According to the Associated Press (11/26/06), L.L. Bean expects to mail a staggering quarter of a billion catalogs this year — up 50 million from the 200 million they mailed 2 years ago.

Reason: “It is the best way for us to get lasting impressions in front of our customers,” says Bean spokesman Rich Donaldson.

“Most customers hang onto catalogs for weeks, using them for reference, making them far more valuable than Web-based marketing,” concludes the AP report.

So are print catalogs here to stay?

Or is this only a temporary reprieve, until the generation being born today — who are growing up with computers and the Internet, not print, as their primary information source — comes of age?

The owner of the domain name www.hell.com recently offered it for sale with a minimum price of $1 million.

No takers.

Not surprising. After all, who wants to tell their prospects, “Go to hell”?

The owner of www.sex.com was a little more successful in selling his domain name.

Care to guess what such a domain is worth in today’s market … and what price he sold it for?

A. $100,000
B. $1 million
C. $10 million
D. More.
E. No takers.

SEO copywriting doesn’t work for many direct marketers who sell products on the Web.

Here’s why….

The most effective format for selling products directly on the Internet is not the traditional multi-page Web site, which is what SEO copywriting works best for.

Instead, online direct marketing works beset with a long-copy landing page, which is essentially a long sales letter posted as a one-page Web site.

“Most, if not all, one-page Web sites would NOT typically position in the engines,” says top SEO copywriter Heather Lloyd-Martin. “One-page sites are better for pay-per0slick, and not best for optimization.”

Heather suggested to me that we split our long-copy landing pages into multiple pages, each of which could be optimized for search engines.

But I told her that in direct marketing, one long page works much better than a series of linked, separate, shorter pages.

Reason: every time you force visitors to click to a new page, a significant percentage abandon the sales letter.

So let me ask: do YOU worry about SEO when writing Web copy? If so, what kind of Web copy do you write — traditional Web sites, content pages, product pages, landing pages, order forms, microsites?

Whenever I attend an Internet marketing conference or marketing boot camp, the speakers increasingly end their presentations with a 10-minute (or longer) sales pitch for their products.

These products are usually a combination of reports, e-books, CDs, DVDs, and coaching, ranging in price from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.

The speakers invariably hand out a one-page sheet with different product offers and pricing.

They then deliver a smoothly delivered sales pitch designed to convince you to buy the higher-priced options.

You are also given a special “discount price” which is good at the event only: if you take the order form home to “think about it” and order later, you will be charged more.

The problem is, they are making these offers during presentations at conferences where the attendees have already paid thousand of dollars to attend.

Many attendees at these events have reactions ranging from annoyance to outrage when they have to sit through these sales pitches.

“I registered at this program to have the guru teach me, and instead, his presentation is a commercial for another program!” one attendee complained to me recently.

So what do you think?

Is it perfectly OK for speakers to sell product from the platform?

Or should their talks be pure content, with selling relegated to a product table at the back of the room?

In the old Peanuts comic strip, Lucy had a lemonade stand.

But instead of selling lemonade, she offered psychotherapy.

The sign over the stand read “The Psychiatrist is In — 5 Cents Please.”

“Why do you charge five cents?” Charlie Brown asked her one day.

“It’s what the market will bear,” Lucy replied.

But is “what the market will bear” the right way to price professional, technical, trade, and creative services?

Should we charge as much as we can get, wringing every last dollar out of our customers?

Or should we be more empathetic, balancing our greed and hunger for money with the customer’s financial situation when setting our fees?

Which pricing strategy do you use? And why?

Is HTML e-mail on its way out?

Michael Della Penna, chief marketing officer of Epsilon Interactive, seems to think we may be headed that way.

In an interview with Direct magazine (10/15/06, p. 9), Penna said that retailers who still use all-HTML e-mail are in for a “horrendous” online holiday shopping season.

He cites a study by his firm showing that for 65% of Internet users, images are suppressed in the e-mail they receive, and so they can’t see the graphics.

As a marketer, what works best for you — text or HTML e-mails?

As a consumer, which would you rather receive … and why?

A few months ago, I was teaching a class in business writing to a group of managers and engineers at a large manufacturing company.

I was talking about how good business writing is conversational, and how you should avoid jargon, overly formal language, corporate-speak, and the like.

This angered a gray-haired fellow who I judged to be in his 60s.

“I was taught to write in a proper, formal style, and that’s how I’m going to keep on writing,” he said.

“But modern writing is conversational,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah?” he challenged me. “Prove it!”

What would you have done in this situation if you were the instructor?

I mean, I’ve been a professional writer for a quarter of a century, with hundreds of published articles and 70 published books.

But actually PROVE to a skeptic that good writing is conversational writing?

How?

Let me ask you….

Do you agree with me that good writing is conversational writing?

And if so, what proof is there that conversational writing is more effective than the old-school stiff, stilted, formal business writing that was popular half a century ago?