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Let’s face it, writing persuasive marketing emails take practice. I look back on the first promo emails I wrote and can’t help but laugh at how little I knew then.

We all have to start somewhere and keep in mind that no marketer has ever gotten things right without trial and error.

The first and most important thing to keep in mind when you are composing your marketing emails is that real, live people will be reading them…or at least you hope they will be reading them. You aren’t sending email to email addresses. You are sending email to people.

The real people behind the email addresses on your opt-in list may not have a lot in common with one another. A housewife in Toledo, a business executive in New York and a rancher in Texas might not choose to have lunch together but they do have at least two similarities.

They are all human beings and they all opted into your mailing list. If you direct your marketing message to any one of them, the message will go right over the heads of the other two. Concentrate on the two similarities of all of them and direct your message to those commonalities.

There is no doubt that you have heard this question many times and phrased many ways…”What’s in it for me?” That is precisely the question that the readers of your marketing email want answered….and they expect you to answer it quickely.

The members of your opt-in list want you to quickly answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question. They don’t want you to list reasons for them to buy what you are selling. They want to know how the product or service can help them achieve their goals, make them feel better, look better, answer pressing questions, solve their problems or answer their questions. They honestly don’t care why YOU think that they should buy the product or service that you are offering. They want to know what is in it for them.

A simple way to keep your marketing email focused on the ways that the product or service that you are offering is focused on the needs of the recipients of the email is this; there is no ‘I’ in ‘sales’.

Reread the marketing email that you have written. Every time you have said, “I” change it to ‘YOU’ and rearrage the sentence so that it makes sense. If the sentence can’t be changed…remove it. It’s counterproductive.

The third thing to remember when composing your marketing email is that you need to always use the right ‘tone’ when you are speaking to your perspective customers. For example: You would not speak to your boss in the same tone of voice or use the same words or phrasing that you would use if you were speaking to your child or your spouse or a stranger on the street. Each person that you speak to requires that you use a different ‘tone’ so that your words are effective and understood.

The most effective tone for a marketing email is friendly but business-like. You don’t want your emails to sound stilted and formal. On the other hand, you don’t want them to sound too familiar or too casual. Either extreme would be a turn-off for some of the members of your list. Choose words and phrasing to convey your message in a friendly but business like tone.

The fourth thing that you should keep in mind when you are composing your email messages is that spelling and grammar count. Misspelled words and poor grammar make you sound dumb and uneducated. You most likely have a spell check program on your computer. Most spell check programs are very good but they are not infallible. The grammar check on Microsoft word will not correct grammar gaffs like using ‘there’ when you should have used ‘their’ or ‘your’ when you should have used ‘you’re’.

As you probably know by now, your auto responder requires that your marketing messages be in a specific format. There is a very good reason for this formatting requirement. That reason is that not all email programs are created equally.

Some email programs will scramble lines of text that are longer than the prescribed 65 characters. What your members get is an email that is mostly just gibberish. Some email programs accept only plain text mail. That means that your message must be made up of only ASCII characters.

ASCII characters are those that you see on your keyboard. When email programs that only support ASCII script are presented with characters that they don’t recognize, they often do strange things. A quatation mark, for example, might be sent as the number ‘0’.

A program comes build right in on your computer when you buy it that will produce text in only ASCII characters. It’s your ‘NOTE PAD’ program.

Notepad is not to be confused with Word Pad. They are two different programs. In order to meet the ASCII character requirement of your auto responder, type your email messages in your note pad program.

You can type them in another program first, if you wish and then copy and paste them onto a note pad document. All formatting will be removed by the note pad program and all characters will be ASCII. You will then still have to shorten your lines to 65 characters.

There is a free program that you can download from the Internet at http://www.notetab.com/ called Note Tab.

This program will produce type in only ASCII characters and will also allow you to format your line length. There is a free basic program on the site. Additionally, you will find some programs that have added features that you might well find useful enough to merit spending a few bucks to get. Note Tab Light is under $5 and worth a lot more because of the formatting ease it provides.

Another point of correct formatting for auto responders is that full URL’s must be used rather than be word-wrapped. As we all know, some URL’s are monstrous…especially affiliate links. They require many lines. That turns into a problem but there is a solution. Long URL’s can be reduced to simple URL’s at http://tinyurl.com/.

In order to achieve the formatting requirements set forth by your auto responder you need to use the correct tools. The tools that you should use are:

1. Either the note pad program on your computer or the Note Tab software.
2. The URL reducing program that you can find at Tiny URL.

Here are just a few types of promotional email that you can write and send to your opt-in list members:

1. Promote your own product.

If you have a newsletter or a digital product that is your own, you can send an email to your list promoting your own product.

2. Promote a product for which you are an affiliate marketer.

You are, after all, an affiliate marketer. The more products or services that you can sell to your list, the higher your income will be and the more valuable you become as an affiliate marketer. Many times the percentages that you agreed to when you became an affiliate for a product or service will be increased according to the number of sales that you make.

3. Offer a free gift.

Sometimes you must get something in order to get something. Website traffic is the key to success for affiliate marketers. You can entice your list to visit your website by offering a free gift that can only be downloaded on your site.

4. Promote a webinar or temeseminar.

Webinars and teleseminars are big right now. People happily pay for the privilege of getting to participate in them.

5. Selling membership access to a membership website.

Membership websites that are dedicated to in depth information and the exchange of ideas about a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of the members of your list aren’t hard to sell.