What You Need To Know Before Writing Your First Email Promotion
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’.