March 25, 2002
Blog Entry

What Online Sub Marketers Can Learn From Beer

SUMMARY: No summary available.
When I heard that BeerNet Online launched a new subscription site today, I couldn't help but look it over. This traditional B2B print subscription email publisher focuses on beer businesspeople and distributors. When you click on the links to learn about their regular product subscriptions, the copy is excellently written - powerful benefits, strong quotes -- you can't imagine how a beer exec would be able to say anything but "sign me up!"

This sales copy is also pretty obviously lifted from traditional direct mail packages that have worked for the publisher in print.
They look a little funny online, but work ok.

I expected to see similarly strongly-written sales copy when I clicked on story headline links on the site's home page, which I assumed lead to paid site members-only materials. Yup, up popped that grey box asking for user name and password, but then when I didn't have one, instead of sales copy, I got a nasty page that slapped me in the face with:

Authorization Required
This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials required. Apache/1.3.19 Server at www.beernet.com Port 80

http://www.bearnet.com
http://www.beernet.com/dpl.htm (example good DM copy)

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