By Cindy Zuelsdorf, Kokoro Marketing
Does it take you a whole morning to write one marketing email? Use this checklist and write your next email in under 10 minutes.
Most of us write emails every day. But it can take way too long! And, it can be hard to know what the most important part of the email is, if there are words that should be avoided, and what to put in the first line… Read on to find out how to write a great email in just minutes.
1. What
There are three W’s I like to think of when working on a really great email. The first is what. What is the purpose of this email? Take 60 seconds and decide what do you want your customer to do after they read your email? What do we want them to do after this? There’s really going to be a call to action, something that you would like them to do Here are a few examples you can use: read more on my website, call to make an appointment, watch this video, click to download the brochure…
Download the Complete Email Checklist here for free. (Bonus video included.)
2. WIIFM
The second W is “What’s in it for me?” When someone sees your email, they’re going to think, “Hey. What’s in it for me? Why should I read this?” My tip to you is to actually choose a particular person and write to them. Think of Chris at a particular business. Literally, write the email to just one person. The very first line of your email needs to be interesting to your reader. Then of course, we want to write in the first person. Write how you would talk to the person. Make it like a conversation. As you look at your email, ask yourself, is this email giving something to the reader or am I taking? We want to give.
3. Wording
The third and final W is wording. A thing I like to do with wording is count the number of you and your versus I, we, and us. This sounds too easy, maybe too simple but it’s really powerful. If you only do one thing differently, this might be the one to choose. Doing this will completely change the tone of your emails, which in turn will change how it feels to the reader and make your communication really effective.
Next, with wording, it’s nice to personalize. Go ahead and put hello and then the person’s first name. I heard recently that most people, a lot of people scroll to the bottom of the email to see who it’s from. Be sure to include a from signature. There are three learning styles to consider in your email copy, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. While we usually have all three, one is generally dominant for a particular person. Include words for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic in your email. You might already be familiar with this through neurolinguistic programming, and this idea of NLP.
For example, you could communicate an idea in three ways. You might say, “How does this look to you?” where look is the visual word. You might say, “How does that sound to you?” Where sound is the auditory word or you might say, “Does this seem like a fit to you?” where fit is that kinesthetic word. The idea is to use a mix of words in order to appeal to all of your readers.
Now, for the subject line, the most important part of your email. I love this quote from David Ogilvy, “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.” When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 80 cents out of your dollar. His wisdom applies to our quest for the perfect email subject line
Now, how did all that of that sound to you? If you use even one of these best practices for your next email, you’ll see a change in your business. Let me know how it works for you and if you have any questions.
Download your free email checklist here. (Bonus video included.)