The Basics To Writing Promotional Email Copy
This section will cover some basic techniques on writing email copy to help get you started, but if you want more detailed instructions, you should check out one of the many books written on writing promotional email.
There are some similarities between writing email copy and writing sales copy, however the two should not be treated the same.
Your goal in the email is not to try and sell the reader, but instead persuade them to take the next step and click a link within the email that will take them to the actual sales page. As it is with Affiliate Marketing, your job should be to pre-sell the reader on the product to get them to click the link, and let the sales page do the selling.
Even if you're promoting your own product, your goal should be to get the reader to visit your website that has the sales page. Most sales letters can be quite lengthy; you should not try including all that information in your email or you're begging the spam filters to flag the email.
The key difference between email copy and sales copy is that the email copy should be more personable. Always write the email as if you were talking to a single person. This type of personal touch is effective in delivering your message to your readers without sounding like you're trying to sell them something. If someone feels they are being sold to, they are more reluctant to click any links you present them.
Always include the subscriber's first name when writing the email copy. This can easily be done with an autoresponder and adds a nice personal touch to the email, which is more appealing to the reader. It is also effective to include the subscriber's name in the subject line of the email to increase your open-rate - readers will often respond more to emails that have their name in the subject.
Avoid using hype when writing about a product. It may be hard sometimes because you might be excited about the product, but too much hype will lower your clickthrough rate. Any enthusiasm you display should be sincere and not sound artificial just to get your wording to sound more energized. This doesn't mean your emails should be boring. You should still keep it interesting, just be careful that you do not make it sound too good to be true.
It's a good idea to use a P.S. at the end of the email to summarize the message or to include anything else you want to mention; and don't be afraid to include more than one (P.P.S., P.P.P.S.).
Finally, one of the best things you can do is follow a strategy that works. Pay attention to the emails you receive from the mailing lists you're subscribed to and see what those writers are doing. If a known guru in your niche writes the email, you're pretty safe in assuming he or she knows what they're doing. You can save the emails you think are well-written, or effective at making a sales pitch, then when the time comes for you to write your email, you can pull the best methods and techniques from your cache of marketing emails.
Be sure to format your email carefully
You do not want your email to be deleted because it did not look good. Each type of email client (the software used to view emails) will display your text a little bit differently, so what looks good on your computer may not look good on someone else's.
A common problem in emails involves line wrapping. If your reader's email client does not automatically line wrap, they may see paragraphs that are one long line, and will end up having to scroll their screen to read your message. You may want to include some hard carriage returns when you're writing your emails. You can simply hit the 'Enter' key after a certain number of characters to accomplish this. 60-65 is usually pretty good.
Do not use any special fonts or characters, as these will likely be removed if the user's computer doesn't support them; and you will lose any emphasis or aesthetics you were hoping for if this happens.
Always check your spelling and grammar before sending an email to your list. There's nothing worse than reading an email that is full of spelling and grammatical errors. It damages your reputation and can easily be avoided. An easy way to avoid these types of mistakes is to write the body of the email in a word processor ahead of time. Any word processor that has a spellchecker and supports some sort of grammar checking will do.
