Here are a few of the best copywriting and marketing articles I’ve read in the past seven days:

SEOmoz – Lessons Learned from 21 Case Studies in Conversion Rate Optimization
“When you receive an email it’s the name of the sender and the subject line of email that influences your decision to open it right way or to post pone it to future. Similarly, when a visitor arrives on your website, it’s the design/brand name AND the headline of the page that influences his decision to engage with your page. Visitors’ attention is the costliest commodity on the Internet and your page’s headline is where it goes right after arriving on it.”

Seth Godin – Accept All Substitutes
“The internet has dramatically widened the number of available substitutes. You don’t have to like it, but it’s true. That means you have to work far harder to create work that can’t easily be replaced.”

James Chartrand – Five Ways to Turn No into Yes
“No is a very powerful word. It’s one too easily spoken, as any parent of a small four-year-old will tell you. It’s also detrimental to effective copywriting and sales, because it’s an absolute brick wall of resistance.

Here are practical tips on how to turn a potential customer’s no into yes, where you’ll learn specific resistance you’ll face and how to magically turn it into sales.”

Bob Bly – The 7 Key Differences Between B2B and Consumer Marketing
“When asked if he could write an effective direct mail package on a complex electronic control system, a well-known direct response copywriter replied, ‘No problem. It doesn’t matter what the product is. You are selling to people. And people are pretty much the same.’

He’s wrong…”

James Chartrand – How to Write Great Copy using Storytelling Techniques
“You can pen the most gripping tale that hooks readers, tosses them about in a tempest of emotion and makes them live all their feelings until they’re left breathless, panting and desperate for more by the time they reach the end.

But if you haven’t used storytelling properly, readers won’t do what you want them to do. They got a good story. You got a captivated audience. And there are no new clients calling you. No emails. No sales. Just people saying, “Wow, what a great story.”

Your storytelling strategy fell flat.

Using storytelling to influence readers isn’t as easy as it looks. When you’re trying to influence people and get them to take action, you need a few powerful tactics to get the technique right.”

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What interesting articles have you come across this week? Feel free to share them – and your thoughts on the articles above – in the comments section below.