Email marketing articles talk a lot about subject lines, email frequency, and auto responder programs. One critical element that is often overlooked, however, is the actual content of emails sent to your recipients. After all, you can have all the above locked down and still send out junk that nobody wants to read.
Here are a few tips to make sure your email copy lives up to the rest of your marketing campaign:
1. Determine the message – Before you begin email marketing to unlimited addresses, ask yourself what you hope to accomplish with these emails. Do you want to strike a funny, casual tone with your readers? Do you want to give them a hard sell on why your current sale is something on which they shouldn’t miss out? Or do you simply want to be informative and help your readers gain valuable information? These questions will save you a lot of rewriting if you answer them up front.
2. Brand it – You can either write a lot of words about your brand, or you can have a designer make your emails feel familiar with certain branding elements. Familiar images, fonts, and structures will help readers feel comfortable with your brand and save you from having to write too many words.
3. Get to the point – Most consumers are busy and don’t want to spend all day reading your emails. Put the “call to action” as early in the email as possible. Even having it the subject line would be great, although be careful not to come across as too pushy with your sales pitch.
4. Check your grammar...then check it again – Sending out even one prominent error can sour the reception of that email and many more after it. Mistakes just aren’t professional, and although most high volume email clients have a spell check feature, they won’t catch everything. Read the email at least 3 times yourself, then have someone else look at it. If you can hire a copyeditor, do it. It’s a sound investment to have a professional look over all outgoing content.