Writing Effective Emails

Writing effective emails can make a significant difference in the results you get.  A well written email can easily outperform an “average” email by 500% or more.  If you want to maximize sales, you really want to spend a few extra minutes to create an effective email.

There are several key steps you need to take into account when you sit down to create an effective email marketing campaign.

The first is to be clear on your prospects “hot button” concerns.  Not only do you need to understand what your prospect wants, you also need to deeply understand why they want it.

For example, say you are marketing a hot new stereo system for automobiles.  You need to understand if your prospect is interested in your product because they are an audiophile and appreciate excellent sound quality.  Or, perhaps your prospect is primarily motivated by getting the coolest neat equipment to impress his friends or prospective girlfriends.

The approach would clearly vary.

Once you have settled on just who you are trying to reach with your email and why you can begin to write.

Your initial objective is the get your prospect to actually open the email.  If you have been doing a lot of mailing to your list, the first obstacle may be your own past emails.  Were they all hype and sales? If so, the odds are that your prospective reader will be less likely to open your next one.  So the takeaway here is that as part of any ongoing email campaign, you want to be sure to offer a good amount of good content, information etc, so the recipients are more likely to be willing to open your email.

That said, the key to getting your email opened is a strong and interesting title or subject line that grabs their attention and arouses their curiosity.

Generally these titles should be short. Ten words or less. They should not telegraph that you are selling something, but instead should be focused on the motivation behind the “hot button” as described above.

If your selling gold clubs to people who want to improve their golf score, a subject line like, “These Golf Clubs Will Shave 5 Strokes Off Your Score!”

A subject like that speaks directly to their hot button and their motivation.  What is your prospect trying to accomplish?  If you identified that as we suggested above, the writing of a compelling subject will come easily.

Once you get them to open the email, you need to make your case.  But you case is not to get them to buy your Golf clubs, or stereo or what ever. The objective of the email is to get them to go to your sales page.  That’s where you will do your actual sales.

People are busy. They do not want to read a ton of stuff. Most have more email than they can shake a stick at and pretty much just browse to see what appeals to them.

Thus you want to keep the body of your email short. Generally between 3-5 paragraphs.

In doing so, you first want to connect with them on a personal level. You know their hot button, and used it in your title, now you need to build on that.  “When I was first getting started in golf, I was using an inherited set of clubs that weren’t right for me…”

Another key aspect of email marketing to a list is to always talk to individuals and not to your list. While people may understand that they are on a list, they really want to be addressed personally. So talk in terms of me to you, like you would in an email to your brother. Subconsciously, they will respond better.

Finally, tell them what you want them to do.  Close with a call to action to click your link to take them to your sales page. Remember the goal of your email is not to sell them anything, other than to move to the page that will do the selling.

Follow these simple tips for writing effective emails and you will get significantly improved results.

For more tips effective email marketing grab a free copy of Profitable Email Copywriting, and for other internet marketing advice bookmark my blog: http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com

Feel Free to Reprint this blog post on your blog or to link to it. Just be sure to leave in the link to the free ebook and to my blog.

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Over the years I have used a number of different paid keyword tools. The most effective and best value I've found is Market Samurai. I highly recommend it.

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