It's difficult to quantify the impact your email message will have on your total email marketing efforts. But, it's safe to say,that impact will be significant.if your email is poorly structured, few will read it.
If your message is effectively written,
however, the results can be considerable. In fact, many direct-response offers delivered by email out-pull conventional mail by a wide margin.Like the best sales letters, email is personal, one-to-one communications. But delivering an effective marketing message through this media can be tricky business.Perhaps the biggest mistake writers make is relying too heavily on the lessons learned from decades of "paper" direct mail.True, certain principles still apply - such as a strong offer,
powerful lead-in, and an appeal to buyer self-interest. but other writing rules, successful in print marketing, fail miserably in email. As a marketing medium email, it seems, is setting its own rules.
Tips need to know before you write as below:
Write to target:Develop a thorough understanding of the needs and sensibilities of your target market before you write. This will help you select a style and tone appropriate to the audience -
be it business professionals, college students, or homemakers.
Focus on building the relationship: Email marketing is not a hit and run medium. It works best when you use it to build sustainable relationships with prospects and customers. So, each time you write an email
marketing message, remember that you're building a relationship in addition to trying to generate a lead, hit, or sale.Building a solid relationship with your email marketing list will lead to higher response rates in future campaigns.
Use a standard letter format: Standard letter format is best for practically all email marketing audiences. This means starting with a salutation and ending with a signature. Remember, email is personal communication
- even more personal these days than mail delivered by post. If you don't use a standard letter format, you risk sending an email message that looks impersonal and promotional.
Watch the margins: If your email program has this option, set the margins for outgoing email to 20 and 80. This will make the text easier to read. If you don't have this option, consider manually returning
each line at about 55 characters. This will present your text attractively without displaying any weird line breaks.
About fonts: Readership studies indicate that the best fonts for email communications are Arial 10pt and Verdana 10pt. Never go smaller than 10pt under any circumstance. If you decide to
send your email message in 12pt, use Arial.
No icons, cartoons, or emoticons: If you're writing an email in plain text, avoid using the ASCII characters on your keyboard to create icons (smiles, winks).Even cartoons (dancing letters, flashing fonts) available to you
with HTML email can have a negative effect. I suspect this is because these are cutesy symbols shared between friends - and much too familiar to use in marketing communications.
Words don't speak down; tone does: In direct marketing, we often say to write at a grade five level.I think this is an oversimplification. The axiom here is to write in a clear, conversational manner, using everyday words and
phrases your target audience are familiar with.
