Email Marketing 101

Written by Helen
October 5th, 2009

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Email Marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing solutions that can help you to gain new business and to retain your existing clients. An effective email marketing campaign that is…

How to create an effective email marketing campaign?

In my first post about email marketing I will go over the real basic stuff. I will write more in details in my future posts, so stay tuned.

Always, always, always think about the audience you are writing for.

I know, this sounds like an obvious statement, but I see so many poorly written emails nowadays, and it makes me wonder – “did this marketer even read the copy before sending it out?”

In my early days of writing for email, I remember, reading the copy out loud before even submitting it for HTML production. Yes, it took me longer to process all the newsletters and email blasts, but it was a great email-bootcamp for me. This little “trick” helped me to look at the copy from “outside.” It made me think WHY exactly my audience would possibly want to read this email up till the end, what the main messaging was, and if my call-to-action was strong enough to even make it clear for my reader what to do next.

During one of my last conferences I attended, someone pointed out that today’s marketers are so concentrated on being persuasive that they forget that it’s even more important to be CLEAR. I think this should be the number one goal for all marketers – to be clear.
One of the biggest challenges when writing for email is that you have as little as 6 seconds before your reader will either close your email, and forget about it, or keep reading, making notes for the future actions. Use these 6 seconds wisely!

In the ideal world we, as marketers, would include all frilly bluh bluhs about our business/services, and customers would read the copy and do what we want them to do. But, in reality – customers are like cats – they would do something for you (e.g. click that ‘visit our site’ button), ONLY if there is something in it for THEM. Keep this in mind.

Remember, as much as we all would love it to be an ideal email world out there, it’s not. We have to be short and sweet in our writing, so save the frilly stuff for your website, or a blog. Keep email clean and neat, so customers see your main point right away (remember? Only 6 seconds!).

To sum it up (in no particular order):

1) short but sweet (keep your copy short and straight to the point)
2) call-to-action (include your main call-to-action within the first paragraph)
3) customers = cats (if you are giving out a 50% bonus on a purchase of over $50 then write your sentence like this: Get your 50% bonus today, when you spend $50 in our e-store. NOT like this: Spend $50 in our e-store and get a 50% bonus. Feel the difference?).
4) drive traffic to your website (always include links to your website)
5) clean and neat (don’t worry about minor details, concentrate on a bigger picture, don’t spend too much time on that banner or a shiny little button at the end of email, remember – content is king)

In one of my next posts I will talk more about what exactly I mean by ‘clean and neat’, how to optimize your email template space, what the proper layout should be to keep the main stuff ‘above the fold’, subject lines etc. So, stay tuned for more!

Happy Marketing!

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