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How To Write Emails That Get Read
How To Write Emails That Get Read

Want to write the perfect email for your list?
There is no such thing of course, and the ideal message is going to vary from person to person and brand to brand.
Let’s take a look at some of them…
Write A Story
I once heard the expression that ‘storytelling is SEO for the human mind’. This is incredibly true, and the fact is that the human psyche loves stories.
We have evolved over thousands of years with a culture of storytelling, and we find it very engaging and very persuasive.
How has it helped you? Or how has it helped someone you know? How did you feel during that process?
Set the scene and get people engaged – this is far less dry than simply talking in facts and figures.
Be Personal
It’s important that the tone of your messages match the tone and the nature of your business. However, it should also match the medium – which in this case is the email of course.
At the same time, by writing a more personal message (using the recipient’s name, making sure to use a regular letter structure), you’ll be more likely to reach the primary inbox and therefore to actually get read!
Try not to put any distance between yourself and your audience; make them feel as though you are speaking with them directly.
Provide Value
The objective of any good email should be to provide value. That might be in the form of a tip, or it might mean that you are providing entertainment.
Either way, you need to make sure that your audience feel glad that they took the time to open your message and read it.
That way, they’ll be more likely to do the same again next time!
In other words, your messages should be efficient and to the point – you don’t want to take up your audience’s time!
If you want to learn more about writing emails that make money, check out this post here.
OK, now you’ve crafted an email that people will want to read. The next hurdle is to actually to get your email into the Inbox and specifically their Primary Inbox. Let’s look at some ways to help you to do that…
How To Avoid The Spam Filter And Get Into The Primary Inbox

One of the biggest challenges for email marketers over the years has always been beating the spam filter.
Today this has become even harder though. Now we not only have spam boxes but also ‘social’ and ‘promotional’ boxes that further segregate our messages and make it hard for any of our messages to gain attention.
The good news is that there are strategies you can use to combat both these issues. Read on…
Language
One of the first and most important tips for avoiding the spam box is to make sure you avoid using the kinds of words and phrases that computers associate with spam.
Hopefully that last one isn’t something you would be writing about anyway!
Many email autoresponders will have a built-in check and will give your email a spam score before you add it to your automation or broadcast list so make use of it. I use Active Campaign and know this definitely has this useful feature.
Structure
If you want to get into the main inbox, then it is not enough to ‘not look like spam’ – you now need to also ‘look like a personal message’.
To do this, you should take advantage of the feature in your autoresponder that allows you to use the recipient’s name in the message.
Likewise, try to structure your message more like a conventional email. That means saying ‘Dear [Name],’ and ending with ‘Best regards,’.
That means avoiding using too many hyperlinks – keep it to just one – and it means avoiding using big images.
Sender Reputation
The most important thing to do though, is to make sure that you are focussing on delivering great value over time. If you do this, then people will open your messages and they will actually read them.
This will help to improve your ‘sender reputation’, which in turn will mean you don’t get blacklisted.
And while you’re at it, why not ask your readers to ‘whitelist’ your messages and add them to the main inbox? Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones! You should ask them this in the very beginning of your first email to them and hopefully they will do this.
By using a reliable email autoresponder, you are much more likely to hit the Inbox. Yes, you have to abide by their rules and many platforms frown on affiliate marketing, but as long as you are primarily focused on providing value to your readers, you should be fine.
Don’t be pushy and try to hard sell in every email or you could find yourself in hot water with your provider.
But there is nothing wrong with providing good value and then recommending something that can help them to implement what you have taught them.
I find this soft sell much more compelling in the long run and it shows that you are trying to provide something that genuinely helps your readers and that is the key to any good business. If you want to know more about writing good email copy, check out this post.
And, if you want to know more about nurturing your list, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
10 Daily Habits Of Successful People
10 Daily Habits Of Successful People

Having big goals for your life is exhilarating, exciting… but it can also be utterly terrifying, even paralyzing. If you create daily habits to optimize certain aspects of your life, however, you’ll create a sturdy foundation to take risks from. They add a sense of reliability to your day so no matter how many risks you take, your habits will always be there to depend on and will help you to stay grounded and focused.
It may be tempting to try to develop multiple habits at once, but that could be a recipe for failure; a bit like multitasking, the idea appears to be sound but in reality, it simply doesn’t work!
Take a look at the list and if you like the look of a particular habit, try to incorporate it into your daily life. But you need to focus on one habit at a time.
Focus on creating and building one habit for at least a month before trying to incorporate another one. This should give you enough time to make the habit become ingrained, so you don’t have to work on it so much. Only then should you consider adding another. Just remember that creating good daily habits takes time.
If it takes longer than a month, that’s fine. Some habits will take longer to build than others. Just stick with it until it becomes a habit. You need to be committed to this or it won’t work.
OK, let’s look at the ten habits now to give you some ideas on what you can use to start experiencing life at the next level.

Sleep
The body needs proper sleep to function, and it should be around 7 to 8 hours a night. Healthy daily habits are a solid foundation to build your life around to give you energy to perform and to enjoy life.
This can be accomplished by telling yourself what time you want to wake up in the morning and constantly getting up at the same time.
Repetition
Sidney Crosby is considered to be one of the top hockey players in the world. He attributes his ability to do repetitive drills consistently as one of the reasons for his success.
When you have a new habit you want to install, you can succeed by doing the habit repeatedly day in and day out until it is entirely natural.
Reading
Reading and learning new skills go together.
Major investor Warren Buffett credits his consistent habit of reading financial newspapers daily with much of his success.
Reflection
Apple founder Steve Jobs used morning reflection to build his computer company into a powerhouse.
Steve Jobs found that if he answered negatively for a few days in a row, that meant he needed to change something. Make morning reflection a habit to start your day with.
Self-care
Self-care is a habit we all need. When we take care of ourselves, we can put our best foot forward and take care of our families.
It is also a time to practice gratitude sayings since you are getting ready to excel in your world.
Meditation
Oprah Winfrey is another very successful person who does not use an alarm clock because they jar her awake.
This is part of her daily routine. When you do morning meditation, you begin your workday focused and with clarity.
Observe
Walmart is everywhere, at least it seems that way. Sam Walton started the Walmart stores, and he had a success habit that served him well.
Sam was known to carry a recorder with him to keep a record of everything he observed in a day.
You will see many things throughout the day that you could put into your creative work.
Gratitude
Richard Branson is a famous entrepreneur, and his main company is called Virgin. Richard believes in the daily habit of gratitude for all that he has.
You can even write these things down in a gratitude journal so you can read them whenever you want to give you a boost and to put things into perspective.
Lists
Benjamin Franklin was notorious for making lists.
Lists can be great for many things. One good habit is to make a short to-do list before you go to bed, simply stating what your top 3 priorities will be upon waking up.
Visualization
Tony Robbins has been motivating people for many years. He has a very specific habit of starting his day. Each tiny habit is connected, and you will see major success if you follow this habit:
- He practices breathing for one minute
- He expresses gratitude for three minutes
- He experiences connection for three minutes
- He visualizes for three minutes
As you can appreciate, a lot of this is dependent on the way you think and if you want to know more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
What To Look At When Conducting Market Research
What To Look At When Conducting Market Research

Market research is a critical part of your business and is often overlooked because it can be tedious. But you are seriously hampering your business growth if you don’t do this in the beginning.
The more you’re ready in advance before you start your research, the more likely it is that your research will be accurate.
Define Your Problem
When you start conducting market research, you need to first define the problem and identify the objective of the research that you’re trying to accomplish.
Knowing these things in advance will be helpful.
You need to know what your market wants, not what they need.
Use Google for quick niche keyword research to see what problems people are searching for and how your product or service can provide the solution.
Design The Project First
Think about all the questions you may have and how you’ll get the answers. Some you’ll be able to get via primary research, others via secondary research.
Having a vision of where you want to end up is a big part of planning your research. Are you researching potential customers or potential competition, or the market in general?
Know What Question You’re Trying To Answer
When you start researching, you need to have a list prepared of the questions you want to answer before you even start.
This is going to help direct the research that you do.
Look For Official Sources
The best thing to do is to look for government data, trade publication data, and industry data from reputable sources.
Your sources are the most important aspect of your information because they will determine whether or not your research is accurate.
Start With Secondary Market Research
It seems strange, but the best research to start with is secondary research which is research that’s already been conducted.
Find out what answers you can get from other people’s work first. Then you can use those results to inform your primary research.
End With Primary Market Research
After you’ve done your secondary research, it’s easier to design your primary research in a way that will get the best results.
The results you need will depend on the questions you have so far.
There are 2 types of information that you can collect: either exploratory or specific.
Exploratory information is rather general and open-ended, whereas specific information is more targeted and used to solve the problems highlighted from your exploratory research.
Collect And Combine The Information
Once you’ve collected all the information you need in the methods you’ve chosen, you need to put it all together and combine it.
A lot of market research is both creative and scientific, and it’s best to use both.
You don’t want the research to be stifled.
Analyze And Present
As you conduct your research, always remember and keep in mind what you are looking for as the end result.
How you plan to use the information matters a great deal. Is it going to be used internally or externally?
You know what questions the research will answer and how you’ll use it.
Now let’s move onto some of the tools you can use for market research.
Tools To Help You With Your Market Research

When you start conducting market research, you’ll need to collect a few tools of the trade. Thankfully, today there are so many automated tools to help you conduct market research like a pro at very little cost, and in some cases even free.
- Typeform.com – This is a beautiful form creator that you can use to collect information from your audience in an easy way and post them right on your social media accounts. There is a free and paid version. It shows only one question at a time, which can help encourage your audience to finish. You can even accept payments via your forms if you want them to sign up for something after finishing your survey.
- Survey Monkey – This can be used free, or you can upgrade it to get more features. But, you can do a good survey with the free version for up to ten questions and 100 respondents. So, if your audience is small you can get a good enough sample with the free version. There are wonderful analytic features with this software.
- HeatMap Tracker – If you want to know what your audience is doing and looking at when they use your website, this is a great type of software to help you know how to improve your online real-estate and get the best engagement from your visitors.
- Facebook Insights – Included with your Facebook business page, you can use their Insights tool for free. It will tell you the demographics of your viewers, the breakdown of your audience by interest, and much more.
- Active Campaign – Your good old autoresponder service can be used to deliver any survey, questionnaire, or request for interviews to your audience. If you don’t yet have an email list, take some time to build one, because having an active email list will help you with your market research exponentially.
- Google Trends – You can use Google Trends to help you explore what is going on in your market over time. Use that info to create custom infographics, which can help you understand the information that you’ve researched.
- US Census Bureau – Using the information you can find via the US Census Bureau is the best way to find secondary data which can help you figure out where to find the audience to collect primary data.
- Personapp – You’ve heard that you should create personas that represent your target audience, and this app will help you do it even better, using real life stats. Being able to visualize your audience can help immensely.
If you’re not sure who they are, you can’t be sure about what they want. Doing market research will answer all of those questions for you. Using the right tools will make it easy to do.
If you want to know more about increasing conversions in your business, check out the featured resource below to grab a free report which will teach you how to boost your conversion rate. Download, read it, and take action 🙂
3 Quick Tips To Boost Creativity And Focus
3 Quick Tips To Boost Creativity And Focus

Creativity is sometimes a difficult process to capture, and you can’t force it.
When you are trying to get into the creative flow, it can sometimes be difficult to get ‘into the zone’ and get the creative juices flowing.
That being said, there is always a way to dial in your focus and get the best creative work out of you, from devising the optimal workspace to choosing the right tools and even whether it is a good idea to collaborate with others on a particular project and we are going to look into these options right now. Use them to boost your creative thinking to get things done.
Create A Workspace That Helps You With Creativity And Focus

The environment that you choose to work in can have a significant impact on your performance. The way your workspace looks and feels and how it’s set up can completely change your ability to work well, both creatively and normally.
It’s a copy-paste design that’s easily manufactured and highly efficient to build, but is absolutely awful to work in. Plain, bland, neutral colors in an area that looks nearly identical to everyone else’s, with very little in terms of customization.
This type of space will stifle your creativity for sure, and may not even be the best place to focus for some people. The first thing you’ll want to do when creating your own workspace is think about the aesthetics and décor you select.
It may seem unimportant, but if you’re going to be spending hours upon hours in this same place each day, you’re going to want it to look nice. Get comfortable furniture for you to use.
So many office chairs are uncomfortable, so get yourself a nice, ergonomic chair that you can stand to sit in for hours at a time. Additionally, get yourself a top-quality desk that fits your space well and has everything you need, from drawer space to the right height to fit your personal build and preferences.
Don’t shy away from putting up decorations. Don’t just go for the typical office motivational posters but put up stuff that you actually like the look of. Some people might put up some floral designs, while others might prefer a more old-style wood design.
Get your computer and monitor set up, and maybe even a phone charging station. For creative designers, have a drawing tablet set up that you can work with. You can even include amenities like a mini fridge that might not be directly related to work, but still make the place nice (and convenient) to work in.
The idea is for you to create an atmosphere that you really don’t mind spending time in, because if you hate your office space, you’re definitely going to lose your focus and stifle your creativity.
Choose Tools Wisely So Focus Doesn’t Interrupt Creativity

Technology and the tools we use to boost our productivity are usually discussed in tandem, and for good reason. Technological advancements have made productivity go through the roof, allowing people to communicate and work faster than ever before.
Choose your tools wisely in order to better focus while you’re working. For example, if you’re a graphic designer, and you use a tablet to do your work, such as an iPad, you’ll know that it’s not just a device for drawing and designing.
Rather, it can instantly access movies, TV shows, social media, and more. If you’re easily distracted, then you’re left with a tool that can instantly allow you to distract yourself, if you so choose.
If you can instead do your design work with the simple pencil and paper, and later on transfer it to your photo editing program of choice by scanning it, then you won’t be distracted during the creative design process.
The final touches of it can be done using technology, but all of the meat of it can be made without distractions with the bare essentials. Another example would be a writer using a laptop.
Sure, it has things like Word on it that you can use to work, but it of course has the internet, which can quickly suck you in if you’re not careful to avoid distractions.
In this case, writing out something long like a book or something would be a bit much to ask using paper and pen, but you could possibly have a separate work laptop, one that’s disconnected from the internet so that you don’t run the risk of getting distracted.
For example, someone who is new to Photoshop might be quite intimidated when they open it up and are presented with so many different options. You could spend hours upon hours going through all of the different options, settings, and tools in that program, but instead you need to focus on your work and be productive.
If a program of that calibre is intimidating and distracting, try using a more basic one that you can use to focus.
Collaboration Is Distracting Compared To Solo Creativity Sessions

Having people to work with on creative projects can be both a blessing and a curse. While it’s true that others can provide you with additional insight and more inspiration than you originally had, it can also harm your creativity in two main ways.
If you’re no longer used to working on your own, you can become overly reliant on others to bring their ideas to the table so that you can adapt and mould them into your own.
Without your own sense of raw creativity, when you start to work on your own, you’re going to feel a little bit lost. What tends to be more common though, is other people’s ideas intruding on your own, and muddling your vision of your work.
It might seem a bit pretentious to claim that you work best on your own, because you don’t want other people’s ideas interfering, but sometimes it’s very true. If your vision isn’t complete when other people start to comment on it, it can veer you off from your original completed concept that would’ve been better than what they steered it towards.
Commentary and suggestions are welcome after the fact in order to adapt your idea to better suit your needs, but that should come after the initial draft, so to speak. It’d be like if you were writing something, and someone behind your back started throwing out words while you were mid-sentence.
One very common one is through social media. Posting work-in-progress items online opens up a floodgate to the masses, allowing them to throw in whatever off hand comments and critiques they might have, which can really get in your head and make you second guess yourself.
Another common way this happens is in person. While you’re working, people might walk by and make suggestions or criticisms, and while they may or may not mean well, it can still be very distracting and very frustrating to deal with.
As you can appreciate, a lot of this is dependent on the way you think and if you want to know more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
6 Proven Copywriting Techniques That Work
6 Proven Copywriting Techniques That Work

If you’re wondering why your landing pages aren’t making you as much money as you had hoped for, you might be using common landing page copywriting techniques the wrong way.
If that’s you, read on to find out how to increase your marketing conversion rate simply and effectively.
This is not just a ‘copywriting for beginners’ post, and you aren’t going to learn how to become a world class digital copywriter in the space of a few minutes!
While the six copywriting techniques we’re about to cover have been proven to work, too many marketers use them in a way that cancels out their otherwise potent conversion power.
This is a real shame because your landing page could be raking in larger profits if you only paid closer attention to how you implement these proven techniques.
The good news is that once you become aware of how badly you may be implementing these techniques, you can quickly fix them.
The key is to become aware that you’re using them the wrong way in the first place.
1: Tell A Story To Personalize Your Landing Page’s Value

Storytelling is one of the most powerful landing page copywriting techniques you can use. Not only do you pull your reader into the scenario your offer addresses, but you also create emotional urgency with your offer.
Once emotionally engaged, chances are much higher that your viewer would enter his or her email address or make a purchase.
Awesome, right?
Well, sadly, too many marketers tell stories that are simply worthless.
They are duds.
They seem too good to be true. They show extreme conditions. They simply fail to convert.
What went wrong?
Instead, these low converting landing pages tend to present almost ‘too good to be true’ situations.
If you want your landing page stories to convert, take the most probable circumstances faced by your target audience members and base your stories on these.
These realistic stories are more believable because more of your audience members can relate to them.
2: Use A Question As A Header Title For Your Landing Page

Questions are very powerful ‘centering’ devices because they draw your prospects attention to one central concept or a small set of concepts. Questions help narrow and define the problems and situations your offer addresses.
If a question is well-defined, it is easier to present your solution and it is easier for the prospect to see the value in your solution.
To fix this problem, figure out the primary concern of your target audience members and pose relevant header questions.
3: Change Your Font To Emphasize Key Points Of Your Pitch

When you’re talking to somebody, you normally change your tone of voice when you are trying to emphasize certain things. By the same token, text in bold or italics or larger, ‘special’ fonts tend to be noticed more.
To maximize the impact of special fonts when emphasizing key points in your landing page text, make sure you use them SPARINGLY.
Keep special fonts to a minimum so when you do emphasize certain words, they truly STAND OUT.
4: Use Testimonials From Happy Customers

One of the most powerful selling tools you can use is social proof. People are more likely to buy whatever you are offering if they see that other people have had positive experiences with what you’re selling.
Pretty simple, right?
In fact, this is so simple that you’d think this would be hard to screw up.
Wrong. Marketers actually blow this all the time.
The key problem is RESTRAINT.
Make sure you only use REAL testimonials on your landing page.
Real testimonials are grounded in reality. This means there’s a mix of both positive and not-so-positive elements in the testimonials.
Above all else, use testimonials from happy customers who got results that are not outliers.
Otherwise, your testimonials might seem too good to be true and won’t carry much weight with people you’re trying to convince.
5: List Out The Benefits Of What You’re Promoting

One of the most common, yet powerful, copywriting tips you’ll ever come across is to write out benefits of your product, not features.
People buy based on benefits, not features. Benefits solve their problems. Benefits are easier to understand. Features, on the other hand, tend to degenerate into so much sales talk and technical jargon.
Sadly, too many marketers list SO MANY BENEFITS, they flood their prospects with information. This data overflow leads to, you guessed it, lower conversions.
Of course, you need to cross reference this information with the landing pages of your competitors to make sure you’re operating in the right ballpark.
6: Link Your Call To Action With The End Result Your Target Customers Want

One of the most useful copywriting conversion tricks you could ever learn involves pairing a call to action to a specific benefit the reader wants.
For example, instead of relying on the tired and weak “Click Here” try using “To finally get rid of the high costs and headaches of random outsourcing, enter your email here to take your labor sourcing results to the next level!” See the difference?
Well, marketers tend to blow this technique when they end up listing a ton of benefits with the call to action. Not only does this result in horrible run on sentences, this dilutes the conversion power of your call to action.
The reader is simply too confused to take any action at this point.
The solution?
Focus on one central benefit and pair that with the conversion action.
This is quite risky because your target audience might be looking for a number of benefits instead of just one.
This is where split testing comes in. Test different landing pages with different action-tied benefits and see which pages produce the best results with your traffic.
Don’t Be A Victim Of ‘Proven’ Landing Copywriting Techniques
Make no mistake about it, the landing page copywriting techniques we’ve just covered can turn your landing pages into quick winners.
If you want to know more about avoiding these and other copywriting mistakes, take a look at the featured resource below where you can download a copy of a free report, Copywriting Blunders, so you will be further forewarned. Download, read it and take action 😊




