Email Marketing is a great way to reach your customers and improve your business. Everyone has an email account and most people are willing to give it out without much resistance. But if your emails aren’t effective, you’re wasting your time and resources.
Tip 1: Write a Purpose Statement before you start.
What is the purpose of this email?
What do you want when you write to your email list? Do you want to sell a product? Do you want people to visit your store? Do you want to them to go to your website?
Whittle it down to three words. This is your “purpose statement.” If you can’t say it in three words, you probably want too much.
Using the examples above, your purpose statements would be:
- Sell product X
- Visit my store
- Go to mysite.com.
This statement of purpose is critically important for actually getting what you want. If you aren’t perfectly clear on what you want your readers to do the reader won’t be either.
Tip 2: Don’t write an essay or a memo.
Writing to an email list has nothing to do with what you learned in high school. It’s not like writing a fill-in-the-blank memo. Forget what your teachers and bosses told you. Write like you talk.
The purpose of an email is to engage your readers. If your email reads like a high school essay or a corporate memo, it’s not engaging.
But if you write like your sitting in a bar talking to your friends, you’re being interesting. Then you’re talking in a way that encourages a response.
Tip 3: Be entertaining.
You don’t have to be a stand-up comedian to be entertaining. You just have to be yourself. Tell a dramatic story that proves your point. Share an amusing anecdote.
Again, you’re back in the bar talking to your friends. What would you say to them if you wanted them to take the action in your purpose statement?
You might just tell them to try it. But if you just say, “Try this,” they’re going to ask why. And if they don’t even ask why, you’ve completely lost them.
More likely, and much more effectively, if you want your friends to try a product you’ll tell them a story about how well it worked for you or someone you know.
Stories are entertaining, that’s why we love them so much. They’re also the most effective tool in any email marketers work belt.
Entertaining conversation makes people want to pay attention. They feel like they’ve gotten something already which makes them want to get more.
Tip 4: Be transparent. Tell people what to do.
People hate to be manipulated because they like to feel like they’re in control. When someone signs up for your email list, he knows, more or less, that it’s your intention to market to him. He’s given you permission to do it.
If you try to disguise what you’re doing, they’re going to know it and you’re going to lose their trust.
Be clear about what you want. People understand that you’re in business and you have to sell yourself and your services. Give them the power to choose.
Don’t say, “There’s a great book that I know will change your life.” Say, “I wrote a book that can change your life. You can buy it here.”
The first statement is manipulative. You’re pretending to be objective and when they see you wrote it (or made it or are selling it), they’re going to feel tricked. The easiest way for them to prove that they’re still in control is to not buy your product and unsubscribe from your list.
But if you tell them that you wrote the book and you’d like them to buy it, it empowers them to choose. That feeling of power will dramatically increase the likelihood that they buy from you. They haven’t been tricked into a sale, they decided to buy something.
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