Building and Writing Email Messages

An effective email marketing campaign is a great way to build your business, and taking the time to develop the content of your emails will go a long way towards achieving your marketing goals. Building and writing emails that speak directly to customers is a great way to ensure that your email marketing efforts help you build relationships, sell more products and services, and drive traffic to your web site. Following these simple guidelines for how best to use each element of an email message will help you create emails that are opened, read, and responded to.

Use the Subject Line to Get Attention
The subject line is the first thing people read when scanning a list of received emails. The text in that field heavily influences their decision to open a message. Subject lines should:

• Always be included with your message — never send an email without a subject line.
• Be brief, featuring the most important words first.
• Entice users to open the email, and include a call to action. Focus on using benefit-oriented subject lines, and use words like “exclusive” and “limited-time” to motivate immediate action.
• Don't sound like ad copy — words such as “free” should not appear in subject lines. Avoid using all-caps since that is common among advertisers and spammers as well.

Provide a Recognizable “From” Line
The “From” field is also important when it comes to getting your messages read. Use your company’s real name to let customers know the message is from you. Because they opted to receive email from you, they will probably recognize your name and will be more likely to open the message than they would if it came from an unknown or unrecognizable email address.

Use Text to Inspire Action
Keep all of your sentences and paragraphs short; each paragraph should be no more than seven lines of text. To create a successful introductory paragraph in an email, acknowledge your relationship to the recipient and cater to their needs and interests. A good example would be:

“Dear Michael,
Thank you for purchasing running shoes from http://www.runningshoes.com. We’re having a sale on running shoes this week, and I thought you might be interested in saving on these products as well.”

This short sentence provides the reader with the most important information, is personalized, demonstrates your knowledge of Michael’s interests, and informs him of a sale. Such details make the customer feel like you’re paying attention to him as an individual and should encourage him to visit your site. Notice that the link to the web site includes http://www – this makes it easier for users to click directly to the site.

Research shows that including a call to action greatly increases the chances that someone will follow through by responding to your message or clicking on a link. In the above example, “Shop by tomorrow night at 6:00 p.m. and receive an extra 10 percent off your entire purchase,” would be an appropriate call to action. Offer your customers multiple ways to respond — via email, on your web site, and by phone.

Text Tips
Spell-check and proofread all of your messages — mistakes will make you look less professional. Consider crafting your message in a word processing program, checking it for grammar and spelling and then pasting back into the email program.

Including an “Unsubscribe” statement at the end of your email is a necessity these days — the CAN-SPAM Act instituted in January 2004 mandates that you update your database within 10 days, deleting the email address of customers who have opted-out of your list.

Use Design to Add Interest
The great content you created won’t be effective if your customers can’t open or properly view your message. There are two ways to send emails, as HTML files or text files. Here’s how to decide which format will work best for you.

• HTML messages allow you to send a web page via email. These messages can include color, your logo, and pictures of the products you’re advertising. Studies show that HTML emails generate a higher click-through rate (the number of people who visit your site from links in your message) than text emails.
• Text emails don’t feature graphic elements. You need to pay extra attention to spacing, the use of capital letters, and text treatments to help readers find the information they’re looking for.

Feedback
Be prepared — if you’ve created great emails you’re going to get responses. Have response emails crafted to cover the topics people are most likely to ask about, including, order status, company information, etc., and be prepared to personalize those templates for each customer.

Reply to all inquiries within 24 hours. If customers' questions will take longer than that to answer, drop them notes to let them know you got their messages and say when you will have answers.

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business online, and taking the time to build and write relevant, personalized, and well-designed emails will increase your response rate and help you reach your goals. Following these guidelines and thinking about how you feel when you open your own full inbox will help keep your emails on track.

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