How To Get Your Prospects To Take Action
The single most important aspect of any email promotion is to get someone to do something. Buy your product… subscribe to your newsletter… etc.
There can be many distractions when you are an email marketer. When you are writing an important marketing email you can get distracted by the necessity of using the right form or keeping your sentences short or a dozen other things. The ‘ball’ or the ‘prize’ that you need to keep your eye on is that the objective of your marketing email is to entice the recipients to act on your recommendations and, in fact, drag out those credit cards and buy what you are selling or even to visit your website and take advantage of a free gift that you are giving away.
Sometimes the problem can be the form that is used in your email. It is important that the message be clear and that the main points are in bulleted form so that the email can be scanned easily by the recipients. Remember to use, short sentences and short paragraphs. Don’t use all capital sentences and curb your enthusiastic use of exclamation points.
Sometimes the whole problem can be summed up in just one word: procrastination. We seem to be a nation of procrastinators. We never do today what can be put off until tomorrow or, even better, indefinately. Can you imagine what would happen to the tax system if April 15th were only a suggestion and not an absolute deadline? Let’s see a showing of hands of all those who would meet a suggested tax filing deadline!
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some sort of tried and true formula for getting the recipients to take action and buy what you are selling or download what you are giving them immediately? Maybe you should not suggest that they buy what you are selling when they get around to it or downloading what you are offering at their convenience. Perhaps you should be a bit more emphatic and a bit more specific, set limits and set deadlines.
By telling you to be more emphatic, I am in no way suggesting that you use a lot of exclamation points or a lot of big capital letter sentences. No. I’m suggesting that when you write your marketing email that you use bullet points that will cause the recipients of your marketing email to take action and to take it immediately.
A bullet point that says:
# For a limited time only!
Isn’t going to be all that effective.
A bullet point that says:
# This offer expires at midnight on November 10th!
This will be much more effective because it gives a specific deadline.
A bullet point that says:
# This is a limited offer!
Isn’t going to be very effective either.
One that says:
# This offer is limited to the first 200 applicants!
Might just get some action. Everybody wants to be first…even though they also will procrastinate given the opportunity.
The point is to provide the members of your opt-in list with an very good reason to take action and to take that action immediately.
It could be that you goofed and word-wrapped the links in your marketing message. Many email programs do not deliver word wrapped links. All the recipient will see is the words…there will be no link to click on. Remember to include full URL’s.
Keep your eye on the ball! Remember that the main objective is to get the members of your opt-in list to click on the links you provide in your marketing email message.