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Email Marketing
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.
That said though, there are certainly some ‘best practices’ to keep in mind when you are coming up with your emails and that can help you to get a better response.
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.
So instead of writing about how X technique is highly effective generally, instead frame this discussion as your own personal account.
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.
Emails are inherently more personal and less formal than other forms of marketing because they’re being read in a personal inbox.
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!
As well as providing value though, you should also seek to make sure you are providing value in the shortest space of 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.
The job of the spam filter on most email providers is to prevent unwanted messages from getting in – especially those that might contain viruses, phishing scams or other harmful types of content.
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.
This is similar to the way that Google looks for keywords, except this time the keywords are a bad thing. Examples of words to avoid include things like ‘buy’, ‘free’, ‘discount’, ‘hurry’ and ‘Viagra’.
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,’.
Plus, you also need to avoid including elements that a client will associate with a promotional image or that will make you look less like a genuine correspondence.
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.
Your reputation isn’t just your own, but also the email autoresponder service you use, and this is why it is probably best to stay away from most self-hosted solutions.
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 😊
Building Customer Relationships That Last
One of the ways a business builds its brand is to tug at the emotions of their audience.
The way a customer and client work together and communicate can build long-lasting, meaningful relationships that turn clients into fans, and fans into clients.
You can actually set out to build these relationships by using emotional marketing techniques.
Show Them That You Know Them
The more research you do into the needs and desires of your target audience, the more your audience will be able to tell that you’re interested in them.
When you show interest in them, it will make them interested in your business and you.
When you discover something about your audience, let them know through your content and your actions.
Treat Them Right
So many times business owners have sales and special events to get new clients.
What about the clients you already have? Keeping them is far more important than getting a new client, and less costly too.
Do something special for your existing client base or fan base that shows them that you care about them. Give them a discount, or a special freebie, or something else that attaches them to you in a special way.
Be Transparent And Honest
One way to endear yourself to your audience is to always be transparent and honest.
If you make a mistake, own up to it. If you change your views on something, it’s okay to admit it.
Doing so will endear you to your audience and make you appear so much more trustworthy to them.
Put People Before Numbers
While you do things to help promote your business, it’s important to keep your morals and remember that people are more important than numbers.
If you put people first in your business, including yourself, you’ll find that you naturally improve your bottom line.
The more people trust you, the more they’ll buy from you.
Be Fun When Appropriate
No one wants to feel as if they’re communicating with a robot or someone who is not real.
Be funny when it’s appropriate so that you can show your humanity.
Your humanness will shine through when you add some humor and fun to posts, emails, and even sales pages.
Be Responsive
Your customers expect to get an answer when they have a problem, and they expect it to be quickly.
Provide many different ways for your audience to contact you.
Explain to your audience at each method how long they can expect to wait for a response. Then follow up and do what you said you’d do.
Engage With Your Audience
Find ways to engage with your audience. Ask for their advice or ideas when it comes to a new product or service you’re going to launch.
They can help name it, help define what should be in it, and even how much you should charge for it.
Your audience can also be your best source of word-of-mouth marketing.
Consider The Communication Format
Also, it’s important to try to get an understanding of how people communicate within their environment.
Communication online in chat, instant message, Twitter, or a blog, is far different from communicating on the telephone or in person.
Even email is different from other methods of communication. It’s imperative that you determine what is different and then make up for that with the type of communication they’re using.
Building customer relationships that last is part of the goal of emotional marketing. When you’ve formed an attachment with the consumer, they will stick with you for years – through price increases, trials and tribulations, and more. You can’t go wrong with building relationships.
And talking of relationships, do you network with other marketers to try to grow your influence and reach?
If you do, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this and if you get it wrong it can seriously hamper your growth so, just like your customer relationships, it’s important to build a network that lasts, so let’s look at the most common networking mistakes and how to avoid them.
Common Networking Mistakes To Avoid
When it comes to networking, you always want to make sure you do it right so you can grow your business. However, knowing what to do is one thing; knowing what not to do is something else entirely.
You might think you’re doing everything right, but if you find you’re not making the connections you expected, then perhaps you have fallen into some of the network traps out there and didn’t even realize you had.
Here are some common networking mistakes and how you can avoid making them in the future.
Not Getting Help
Many people have a hard time asking other for help. Networking is all about making connections, though. People don’t know what you need unless you ask them.
Use whatever personal or professional network you have and ask them to help you. You need to be connected to the right people.
The more people you have getting the word out about you, the better, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Not Maintaining Your Relationships
It’s very easy to fall out of touch with people. Maintaining contact with your current network and all of the people in it is going to help you grow.
Follow up with people – your mentors, colleagues, and other contacts – on a regular basis to see how they’re doing.
Keep them up to date on you as well. Remember, don’t make it all about you; you will want them to know what you’re up to while also finding out what they’ve been up to.
Not Taking Advantage Of Social Media
We live in a day and time where networking is really everything we do every single day.
Social media has made it so easy to be connected to so many different people throughout the world, and if you’re not using this then you’re missing out on a great opportunity.
Start using LinkedIn to make professional connections. This isn’t the only social media platform you should be using, but it’s a great place to start and a way to get your name out there.
Not Making In-Person Connections
Yes, we are in a day and time where social media is super-important to networking, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop meeting people in person.
You should never do that. You can’t do everything over the internet.
If your online connection is not local to you, then use a multitude of different technologies like Skype which are at your fingertips, to make the world a much smaller place and meet up with people on the other side of it.
Not Being Grateful
Gratitude goes a long way. When someone helps you in whatever way, being grateful will go a long way.
After having a conversation with someone in person or online, send them a quick thank you note for their time.
It’s a small thing, but letting people know they are appreciated will go a long way and encourage them to want to speak with you again.
Not Making Sure It’s A Two-Way Street
When someone helps you out and makes a positive connection for you, then you have to be sure that you give back in some way.
You especially can’t keep going back and asking for help without giving back in return.
If you can avoid making these common mistakes, then you should be able to create a large and successful network for your business.
All this networking and customer relationship building can leave you exhausted and you need to ensure you have enough energy. Click on the featured resource below to help you with that and grab a free report, How To Energize Your Life; download, read it and take action 🙂
How To Write Effective Emails That Make Money
Email marketing has been a part of business since the early days of the internet. Many businesses fail to implement its effectiveness in making sales.
Creating an effective and impactful copy for your emails is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan.
If you’re trying to decide if you should spend time creating all those emails, consider this:
- The number of people using email is set to grow to 319.6 billion by the end of 2021, according to The Eradicate Group.
- HubSpot reports that people with active email accounts had grown to 5.6 billion by the end of 2019.
- 9 out of 10 marketing professions say email is important or very important to their own business, according to a study by the Direct Marketing Association.
- Forbes reports that emails produce 50% more sales as compared to other marketing practices.
As these figures clearly show, email is essential and to be expected in your marketing plan. But with the abundance of businesses sending emails, your content needs to be of the best quality and impactful to get conversions.
Of course, the first step is to create a compelling and irresistible free offer to get people on your list. Then you need to create emails that will be effective in bringing in the money from your offers.
There are different types of emails for different situations. There are welcome emails, promotional emails, new customer emails, client or lead engagement, cold list re-engagement, emotional trigger emails, special offer emails, new product or launch emails and many other types.
How do you know where to begin or what type of email to send?
In this post, we’ll show you where to begin with the basics of creating high converting emails.
Let’s get started.
Setting The Email Goal
Now that you know the importance of marketing with email, you might be at a loss as to where to begin. Like almost everything in business, it begins with a goal of what you want to achieve.
First, we’re going to assume you’ve created your lead generation materials and have started gaining a targeted list of subscribers. If not that’s the first step. Here’s a quick list of the steps you need to take.
Create a freebie for people to receive when they sign up. Have a way for subscribers to sign up. This can be an exit popup on your website, a static landing page or any number of ways to for subscribers to sign up. You also need some sort of email service such as Active Campaign or Aweber.
Now let’s begin creating our goal for the emails.
Before you send out just any old email, first determine what the end result is you want the email to achieve. Is it to get someone to purchase something or to open the email and connect with you? Is the goal of your email to create better click-through rates?
Typical goals for an email might include:
- Getting freebie seekers to become first-time buyers your service or products.
- Increase conversions by a certain amount in a specific amount of time.
- Getting cross-sells and upsells from current purchases.
- Increase click-through rates.
- Building more engagement from current clients or customers.
- Build more relationships for your community.
- Getting feedback about your business to make improvements.
For each email, understand who’s going to receive your emails and what they want to get out of it from you.
Ask yourself these questions to define your email goals:
- Where are you right now? Check your open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, conversion rates or your spam rates.
- What action do you want the reader to take? This helps you tailor your content to get them to take the action you want. If it’s to read an article, for example, then let them know why the article will help them.
- Who will be receiving the email? Know which segment of your list will be receiving the email, so that your copy, images and everything in the email speaks directly to that potential group.
- How will you get them to say “yes”? Decide what you are going to promise the readers so that your email helps them be the best version of themselves with your service, product, or information.
Think about why your reader initially signed up. Ask yourself these questions:
- How can you over deliver on that?
- What do they want from you? From your business?
- What questions do they have about your niche?
- When do they need to hear from you?
- What emotions can you evoke in them?
- What are the next steps for them as your subscriber?
Now create a plan around the answers. Include the topics you’ll regularly write emails about, schedule email blasts in your calendar, and what areas people need support, guidance or encouragement.
When you know what you want to achieve with the email you can determine what type of email you want to send out and when it needs to go out. Spend the time setting your marketing and conversion goals before you begin the writing process.
When And Why Use Email
It’s a good idea to know when and why you are sending out an email. Most people who sign up for your list do so for a specific reason. And those who have been on your list for a while fall into different stages of interaction with you.
Some subscribers are loyal and open all your emails. Others have gone cold and need persuasion to begin engaging with your emails again. Some have joined you for a specific product or service you offer and only want to know about those.
You can tell what type of emails your subscriber wants by who they are and what they do when they come to your site. This can also help you understand when to send specific emails.
Maybe they:
- Browse around, add some things to their cart, then leave: The Abandoned Cart email is triggered.
- Enthusiastically subscribed to your list: Perfect time for the Welcome email.
- Are a long-time loyal customer: Reward them with an anniversary email. These can be Milestone emails or Special offer emails.
- Post Purchase emails to new buyers who have purchased something form you. These Confirmation emails are the first ones your new subscriber gets from you. It tells them about your business and your values, helping you begin building a relationship with them. It’s also a great time to give them options to see your other products.
- Emails to boost engagement with your business and content. These can be Promotional emails that try to make an initial sale or promotes your new webinar.
- Re-engaging cold subscribers. This email tries to get subscribers who haven’t been active to take some sort of action. These can be Review Request emails or Persuasion emails.
- Nurturing your existing subscribers. These emails are the relationship builders. They provide value to the subscriber. Use Nurture emails to keep in contact and build communication with your loyal subscribers. These can be Newsletters or Curated content emails.
- They are interested in a specific subject or product you offer. Here you would be segmenting your subscribers with targeted emails. Segmenting allows you to send emails that specifically target a group of subscribers. These can be New Product Announcement emails, Nurturing or Promotional emails.
Sending emails at the right time and for the right reason keeps your list engaged and converting.
For example, if you’re promoting a sale or affiliate product that ends soon, send out an initial email a day or two before the sale starts, then one every day or two and finally send one in the morning and one in the evening the day the sale ends.
This keeps you in front of them and helps remind them to take action.
If you want to know more about building and nurturing your email 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 😊
Develop A Content Publishing Calendar For Your Blog
Creating a content calendar that includes matching promos, helps ensure that you meet business goals, such as list building. When you plan your written content, match it to an existing or new opt-in freebie.
This will help grow your list and create multiple points of entry. You can also match written content to other types of promos, according to your goals.
Write it all on your content calendar so you can remember what purpose each item serves.
By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.
OK, let’s look at how you can flesh out your content marketing calendar.
Set Your Goals
A few goals you might set are to expand brand awareness, promote thought leadership, increase word of mouth, get more leads, or make sales.
Determine what tactics work best for your audience. For example, sharing an informative article you published on “Huffington Post” can help spread thought leadership.
A funny meme can help you get more likes, shares, retweets, and spread brand awareness.
Product & Freebie Benefits
The best way to ensure that your content works with your products and freebies is to get familiar with them.
Whether it’s your product, an affiliate product, or an opt-in, you must know how it will benefit your people.
In other words, you must know “what’s in it for them” and what problem it solves.
Plan Publishing Frequency
Always publish to your website first and foremost. It will serve as the hub of your business and support content will lead visitors back to the site.
Begin by planning to add three to five new pieces of website content per week. Then, decide where you want to publish related content that drives traffic back to your “new” website content.
If you add “supporting content” on social sites, you can safely plan on adding something several times per day. Make sure each addition is “fresh”; otherwise, you will lose followers, instead of gaining opt-in subscribers.
Create, Curate, Or Contract
You’ll want to create some of the content yourself, but content can also be easily be curated or contracted out.
There are a lot of places where you can buy private label rights (PLR) content. You can also hire a writer through a company like All Custom Content.
Another option is to collect related bits of information from multiple places to create something new.
Write it Down
Once you have created your plan, write it down.
You can use a spreadsheet or even a Google Calendar. The WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin can also help you pre-schedule and keep track of your website’s content.
Begin planning your content at least three months before you intend to use it. This includes your written content (website posts, articles, reports, tweets, etc.) and any items that support or promote it, such as opt-in freebies, memes, info graphics, videos, etc.
All of this is content, so it makes sense to plan a week or more at the same time. Planning this way helps to ensure that you have every piece of content needed to meet your goals. In this case, the main goal focuses on growing your mailing list.
Post Content Regularly
Posting content on a regular basis is important. When you post unique content in a variety of places, it gives your audience more opportunities to see what you’re publishing and promoting.
Doing it once or inconsistently won’t get you the exposure you want. Forgetting to update your blog is not going to encourage more traffic to your opt-ins and build your list.
Therefore, stick to your plan and ensure that you add new, relevant content on a regular basis.
Website/Blog
Content comes in many forms. Add a variety to keep readers’ interest and meet their needs. Inform and educate your audience with relevant audio, video, memes, infographics, charts, interviews, how-tos, statistics, and more.
You can curate, create, or contract the content you need that matches with the information that is important to your audience.
What’s important is that you post something regularly, at least three times a week, to drive traffic to the content and the related opt-in offer.
Social Media
Each social media platform has a different “personality” so it’s important to post regularly. It’s also important to look at your analytics so you can identify when your audience is most active and reading.
On most platforms, posting three times a day is a good rule of thumb.
However, check the rules and “best practices” at each platform to get recommendations specific to that site.
Don’t neglect to email your subscribers regularly about new content on the website or provide them with exclusive info related to that content.
Ask subscribers to “share” the website content with their friends, associates, and even customers/clients, when appropriate.
The bottom line is that if you want to make profits regularly, you need to write content regularly, and regularly ask for it to be shared.
Enlist the help of your subscribers and reward them for that assistance with a special offer just for them.
Guest Posting
To get more traffic and opt-in subscribers from your guest posts, link to an opt-in that is relevant to the audience in your author profile or byline.
This gives you a huge incentive to guest post exceptional content frequently.
Guest posting provides multiple benefits to all parties. So, consider accepting guest blog posts from trusted, experts and associates in your niche. It’s an effective way to get more content on your site.
This is a win-win-win opportunity when you post on a regular basis.
Providing content for a variety of locations helps to increase targeted traffic and targeted traffic increases opt-in rates. The more you publish, the more people read your quality content and see your opt-in offer…unless your headlines aren’t persuading viewers to click to read more.
And remember, if you want to know the best way to get started with blogging you can check out Rapid Blogging Blueprint, a premium training on creating and monetising a blog the right way.
Or you can simply click on the featured resource below for a free Blogging Fundamentals report; download, read it and take action 😊
7 Ways To Write Great Email Copy
Email marketing has overcome dozens of challenges and competition over the years and still remains one of the most effective solutions for businesses when there’s need to reach the customers directly.
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, being able to reach your customers through email makes it easier to create interest and generate more leads, not to mention revenue.
A well-written plain email can yield better results than a complex, highly decorated email with dozens of bells and whistles.
When managing email marketing, keep in mind that creating fancy emails won’t get you leads: if the emails are devoid of well-written content, subscribers will lose interest and unsubscribe from your list.
So how exactly do you write engaging and compelling marketing email? It’s actually not that complicated: you only need to observe a few copywriting practices and use them when drafting the email.
Next time you sit down to draft a message, consider these 7 tips and ask yourself whether your email meets these requirements.
Write Short, Clear And Compelling Subject Lines
Half the job of drafting good email copy is nailing the subject line.
This is important because the subject line is the first thing your subscribers see before they open the email and they wouldn’t bother reading the email if the subject line doesn’t pique their interest.
Keep the following in mind when crafting subject lines:
- Actionable language generates the desired effect. Actionable language doesn’t necessarily describe verbs -though they help. Actionable words tell the recipient what they can do with the information provided. For instance a subject line that reads “Take Mom To Brunch” is bound to pique interest.
- Personalize if possible. Highly segmented emails always have better open rates. This would explain why the best email copy is the one you write to ONE person. Find a way to personalize the subject line and then work on providing relevant content to the recipient.
- The subject line needs to be clear first, then you can worry about making it catchy. If after drafting the subject line, you find that you can make it funny, cute, catchy, whimsical or whatever, then by all means, go for it. But never sacrifice clarity in order to add some entertainment value.
Ask Questions And Try To Convey A Sense Of Urgency
When you ask questions in the subject line you effectively pique your subscribers’ interest and get them to read the email.
One way to do this is to include time-sensitive promotions or some deadline they could miss.
Even when working with a limited number of words you can still convey urgency by making it sound as is everyone is attending the event so the readers feel as if they’ll get left out.
Appeal to The Subscribers’ Self Interest
At the end of the day, the customers only care about services and products in the context of their specific needs. As a way to address this, your copy should go beyond explaining the features of what you’re selling, and explicitly describe all the benefits of the product or service.
Remember features tell, but benefits sell.
Imagine you’re selling an onion on your sales copy, and so you start out describing what an onion is, its special features and so on.
This information will have answered the “what”, instead of “how” and “why” the subscriber should purchase the onion. If however you explained the benefits thereof, such as how the onion could spice up a recipe, or how it lowers calorie content, the reader will be interested.
Use Design Effectively
Most sales emails contain some form of design and that can enhance the message but try to support the message in the email- not detract from it.
Effective design makes it easy and fun for readers to engage with the content. It may contain neat and visible social media icons and use clear prompts and simple buttons to guide the reader through the text.
Use design sparingly if you don’t have enough experience with it.
Several elements can make the purpose of design backfire on you: for instance, all capitalized or bolded text, white typing done over a over light background- which makes it difficult to read text, or a tiny call to action.
Support your message with a captivating photo, good color contrast and clear call to action.
Deliver What Your Subject Line promises
It is absolutely crucial for your email message to deliver what the subject line promises.
If your readers don’t get what they’re promised, click-through rates will tumble and over time you won’t have any open rates to speak of.
Make sure the message body doesn’t disappoint and you should have significantly high open and click-through rates.
Draft A Compelling Message
So now that you have that catchy subject line and you’ve grabbed the reader’s attention, how do craft copy that will keep them engaged, informed and ready to click?
Several issues have to be considered here:
- Establish relevancy. It takes more than a catchy name tag for your email to yield results: you have to start by establishing relevancy, so they have a reason to read the material.
- Write in the second person. This ensures you orient the copy towards the recipient, as opposed to yourself. A typical sales copy contains numerous instances where the words “you” and “yours’” are used.
- Be brief. In cases where you know plenty about the topic, you might be tempted to shove in an entire life story into the copy, but don’t. Few people read marketing emails word for word; so find a way to summarize whatever information you have to offer and allow the reader to quickly scan the document and still get the most important information.
Pump Up Your CTA With Actionable Language
Yes even emails have calls-to-action! Or at least the good ones do; and its up to you to make sure to include a button-effective call to action.
This means using language that is clear and succinct, and that is action-oriented. Keep in mind though, not all email clients will render you fancy HTML copy, and not all recipients will choose to display them.
You may rely on plain text with a clear, perhaps hyper-linked call to action so your readers do something about the information offered.
Ultimately you want the reader to click on your call to action so it might not matter how many images or bolded words you have, if they don’t lead to clicks, they’re not being used properly.
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 😊
