The main challenge to writing a good copy for email marketing comes from the author’s mindset. And this is because most of the people who create the texts, write using text processing software, being implicitly closer to hardcopy-oriented, rather than digital media thinking. That is why we are listing below several basic principles you need to take into consideration when creating a newsletter.

 

 

Think about the actions you want the email reader to take: to order a product, to request a brochure, to recommend the article to friends, to subscribe for the newsletter. Place all these at the top of the menu bar.

 

 

Use two thirds of the page for your main message and one third as a sidebar. This way, you will have two text areas to draw the reader’s limited attention to. The sidebar should emphasize:

 

-          Consumers’ testimonials

-          The offer

-          Products' characteristics

-          An interactive quiz or questionnaire

 

After the structure is complete, add headlines, or a Johnson box or a customized opening line, to have as many contact points with the reader as possible. Another usual strategy is to create a short table of contents in the beginning of the email, containing links to the paragraphs following down the page.

To write a persuasive email, you should try to structure your thinking: write the main benefits on Post-its. Move the Post-its to various positions on the screen-size page, to see how many texts can fit into the upper part, dedicated to the main message.

Let’s suppose that you need to promote, in your email, three types of training courses. Instead of writing the training modules vertically, you should place them side by side, on three columns. This way, the reader can see all three training courses on a single screen, instead of scrolling down the page.

 

 

 

Often, the email copy contains the offer and the call to action at the bottom of the page. This may be a reminiscence of the fact that, in the old times, letters used to present the subject matter, explain its solution and then present the offer. This logic is no longer valid in the case of the e-mail. Very few people read a long message to the end. Place the offer and the call-to-action within easy sight and associate a dead-line in order to urge to prompt action.

 

 

 

Instead of including certain text bodies, create links to these texts. Do not overload the text with paragraphs about the company reputation: include a link with the text “why should you trust us”. If you need to include several product descriptions, show the products and add links to the detailed description. Apply the same method for the biographies of the main speakers in a conference; place the speakers’ photo with a very brief description, just to intrigue the reader.

If you have a designer, use graphic buttons in some places. A relevant example is that of a conference promotional campaign, whose newsletter usually listed, with bullets, the first five subjects of interest within the industry. To generate more enthusiasm, we changed that list to five graphic buttons, under the title “The 5 Industry Hot Buttons”.

Before ending, remember the saying “if you talked to people the way advertising did, they’d punch you in the face”. The text of your e-mails has to be relevant for the receiver, not only for the issuer. It should be interesting, amusing, in order to render the offer transmitted memorable. The offer has to be as easy to understand as possible. Remember that Einstein believed in the rule according to which, if you cannot explain your idea to a six-year old child, then you haven’t understood it.