According to the Direct Marketing Association, over 66% of purchasers claim they made a purchase based on an email marketing message. That tells you that email marketing is still very important.

In fact, according to McKinsey & Company, email marketing is almost 40 times better at new customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter combined. The Direct Marketing Association reports that marketing managers, on average, earn an ROI of 38 dollars per every 1 dollar spent on email marketing.

Marketers will tell you that “the money is in the list” and they’re not joking. It’s true. When you have a healthy, targeted email list where you promote relevant products and services, your income will continue to grow. However, you need to learn to write attention-grabbing, result-oriented emails that are opened, read, and acted upon.

You’re about to learn how to:

• Get Your Audience to Open Your Emails
• Write Effective Email Copy That Your Audience Wants to Read
• Create Results-Oriented Calls to Actions That Your Audience Clicks
• Craft Copy for Email Marketing That Doesn’t Feel Salesy

The good thing about succeeding with email marketing is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can follow the steps that have already been proven to work and write attention-getting and results-oriented emails. Let’s start with getting your emails opened.

How to Get Your Emails Opened

Before you can get any results from email marketing, your list needs to full of targeted and interested audience members. The next important aspect is getting your emails opened. Let’s explore the different ways in which you can entice your audience to open your emails so that they can receive the value of your messages.

Build Trust and Relationships

From the moment they provide their email address and join your list, it’s time to use every opportunity to establish trust, promote your expertise, and build a relationship with each member of your email list. You can accomplish this by understanding the process your prospect goes through once they provide their information. Then use each step of that process to reinforce what your promises are.

• Thank You Page – Depending on how you have set up your system your audience may be taken directly to the thank you/ download page to download the opt-in. This is where you can explain what they can expect from your email messages, along with the download instructions. This page not only provides info but shows respect and appreciation to your subscriber, which is important to building a trusting relationship.
• Double Opt-in Message – If you’re using an email system that requires a double opt-in message, readers may be taken to instructions about opting in for your list so that they can receive download instructions. You begin to build trust by explaining that you use the double opt-in for their safety and security as well as to verify that they want to receive the info requested.
• First Email – Once someone opts-in and/or verifies the opt-in, you will need to send the first email, also called the “welcome” email. Although you may have given the reader all of the information needed, it’s important to remind them of the info and links in an “official” message. Be sure to thank them and let them know when to expect the next email. These first messages are often part of an autoresponder series.

Remember, when you make these promises to your prospects you need to stick to them. So, don’t blow smoke. Tell them exactly what to expect, when to expect it, how it will work, and follow through. Let them know how often you’ll send emails, the type of information they will contain, and other pertinent information. The next thing that helps get emails opened is the subject line.

Create Actionable, Personalized Subject Lines

If your subject line doesn’t resonate with the person receiving it, they’re not going to open it. If it looks like it’s from a stranger, or someone they don’t know, like, or trust they’re not going to open it. These tips will help you create subject lines that really make sense to your recipients, ensure more emails are opened, which means your audience is more likely to answer your calls to action.

• Be Clear Not Clever – When you create an effective subject line ensure it both considers your audience and your goals while conveying a sense of urgency. The more you can personalize the subject line the better. Avoid the use of puns, unless it really works with your audience, because you want them to know what’s in the email.
• Ensure Your Subject Line Matches Your Email Copy – Don’t try to trick your email recipients into opening an email with a subject line that doesn’t match the copy of the email. What is the email about, who is it to, and what is the benefit for them to opening it? Try to express that in the subject line.
• Use a Friendly Reply Email — Don’t use a “no reply” or look too corporate with your reply email address. When possible, use your name. People are more likely to open your email message if they feel it came from someone that they know. You want your audience to be able to hit reply to send you a message if something in the email resonates with them. It builds trust.

Email subject lines that are actionable, personalized, and relevant are more likely to be opened than emails that use trickery to get people to open them. Sure, we’ve all been fooled by an interesting subject line that tricked us to open it, only to find information that was not relevant. This is not a good practice for a business owner who wants to earn money through email marketing.

Keep Your Audiences’ Interest

How would you feel if you joined an interest group and the leader talked about interests that were not relevant? You’d likely feel frustrated, disappointed, and/or mad if you signed up for information about coloring and heard more about knitting. To ensure that you stick to your niche follow these rules.

• Know Your Audience – When you get to know your audience you’ll be able to match your skills and products to their needs. While it’s true that your audience may have other interests, those other interests aren’t why they signed up. They signed up because they want information and solutions regarding the niche you marketed to them. They signed up because they thought you’d provide a solution to them and information to them about specific pain points.
• Know Your Products – Whether they’re products you’ve created, or you promote via an affiliate program doesn’t matter. You need to know and understand how they fit in with your business model and niche. It’s imperative to know what the products do for your audience and how they solve the pain points that your ideal customers have.
• Use the Right Vocabulary – When you really know your niche and your own expertise you’ll be able to use the right vocabulary in your email messages to truly communicate with and engage with your audience on a whole new level.

If a topic comes to mind that has nothing to do with your audience, your products, or the products you promote then it’s not the right email to send. Remember why people signed up for your list and stick to that topic. Keep it narrow and on point for the best response to your email messages. If you get off topic, your audience may stop opening your emails and will likely unsubscribe to your list because they’ll believe they’re on the wrong list.

Send Emails on a Regular Basis

Knowing the right number of emails to send to your list is critical to your success. Too many emails and your subscribers will get irritated and unsubscribe. Too few and they may forget about you and unsubscribe when you finally do send something. It seems like it’s hard to do this right but it’s not.

• Train Your Audience – Whether you plan to email them daily or weekly it’s important that they know this in advance and that you stick to that schedule. You may need to test your audience to find out how often they’ll accept emails. You can be sure that most of the time more than daily is going to be too much.
• Have a Reason – Don’t just email for no reason. The reason you email should be focused on the audience’s needs, not yours. Sure, you send email because you want to make money and sell something to them. However, from their point of view, they want emails that benefit them and don’t really care if it benefits you or not.
• Include Occasional Valuable Benefits – Make at least one of every three emails a non-promotional or resource based email. The reader is more likely to open every single email when they feel your emails aren’t all about getting their money. A few resources to consider are checklists, cheat sheets, sneak peaks, and exclusive opportunities.

If you’re not sure what to send to your list, study your audience more. Send worksheets, checklists, cheat sheets, short videos or offer your list members a behind the scenes look at what you do every day. The more exclusive your email list feels the more likely they are to open and act on the emails you send.

How to Write an Effective Emails

Once you get your subscribers to open the email, you want to ensure that you deliver an effective email message that helps your list member. When you focus on delivering value, you’ll not only ensure that your audience is happy with your messages, but you’ll ultimately make more money too.

• Immediately Show Relevancy – When you created your subject line you ensured it was relevant to the topic in the email message. Show that relevancy within the first sentences and paragraph to make sure that the audience sees that the message has something to do with the subject line. This will help develop trust that what’s in the subject line is inside the message.
• Ignore Your English Teacher – When it comes to writing copy for an email message, it’s important to use words like YOU, YOUR, and YOUR’S. Make the copy focused and personal to If you write in the third person, the email will feel impersonal. Use a combination of 1^st and 2^nd person in all your email messages. “I know you’re going to absolutely love this.” Instead of, “This is loveable.”
• Benefits Over Features – When you discuss anything about a product, service, or idea always focus on how it benefits your readers and not how it helps you or about all the features it has. It helps to focus on the problems the feature solves for the customer. For example, if you are promoting done for you PLR content what benefit does that content provide the reader that will make them want to click through and buy it?
• Keep it To the Point – Emails should not be long. Know who you’re sending the email to, know what you want to convey to them, and make it actionable. If you have a lot to tell people, it may be best to put it into a blog post rather than an email. Emails should not require a lot of scrolling. People are often reading them on their smartphones and it’s a lot easier to read if it’s not too long.
• Be Authentically You – Finding your business voice is important because it’s going to be a lot easier getting to know people if you are yourself. People want to know, like, and trust you and they can’t do that if you are trying to be someone else. You are your brand. Only you can do what you do. No need to try to be someone else.
• Include an Actionable CTA – You don’t have to sell something in every single email, but a call to action of some kind is important to include. Whether it’s clicking through to read a blog post, clicking through to grab a coupon, a freebie, or buy something putting one in every email is important because it helps build trust.
• HTML Includes an Attractive Button – If you choose to send HTML messages an effective way to present a CTA button is to make a nice attractive button that stands out. Make it big enough to stand out. However, remember that most people are reading your messages via mobile device so make sure it looks right.
• Use the Right Words on the Link or Button – Whether you use a link or a button the words on the link or button matter a lot. Instead of putting things like “click here” or “buy now” or “sign up” put something actionable like, “Yes, I want to change my life right now.”

Writing effective emails means that you need to know who your audience is, why they signed up for your list, what their pain points are, and how you are the right person to help them with their problems. Then present everything in a way that is easy to digest by keeping each email short and to the point while also engaging your audience. Let’s talk a little about writing effective CTAs for your email marketing messages.

How to Write Result Oriented Calls to Action

Consumers are smart. They know when they’re being sold to and they know when you’re not being authentic. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to craft effective calls to action for your email marketing messages. A well-crafted CTA will help you to encourage your subscribers to take the action that you want them to take. Let’s look at some tips for writing effective CTAs.

Type of CTA

Within an email, there can be two types of CTAs. They can be hyperlinked text or an image that is linked to the landing page you want them to go to. Whether you choose to use an image-button or hyperlinked text depends on the type of emails you send.

If you typically send text-based emails, you’ll need to use a long link that doesn’t always look great, but if you use a hyperlinked image, sometimes the image button will be blocked. One way to fix this problem is to send text-based emails and use pretty links that explain what the link is going to.

For example, www.yourwebsiteurl.com/getmoretimenow or you can use a shortening service like TinyURL.com or a plugin such as Pretty Links Pro to create your links so that they look nice. If you are in a very visual niche, your audience may not block HTML based emails. In which case, using button-linked images will work fine. Hint: Test.Test.Test

Placement

Where you put your CTA in an email is also very important. If your audience doesn’t see your CTA, they can’t take the action you want them to take. You can place your CTA above the fold, within the copy of your email, after your email, and even in the postscript of your email message. It’s important to place the CTA in the right place, based on your audience’s reading and click-through habits.

Size & Color & White Space

If you use a button it’s important that you surround it with plenty of white space to make it stand out. Even with hyperlinked text, it’s important to make sure it stands out by using whitespace and color effectively. You can also make the hyperlinked text a little larger.

The point is to use the tools that you will make your CTA stand out so that people see it and want to click it and follow it. Ensure that your colors match your branding, look great on mobile devices, and that the size is right for any type of device or browser that your audience is using to read their emails.

Reduce Risk

It also helps to include copy that helps reduce your audience’s feeling of risk by clicking through to see what you’re offering to them. Mention any type of money back guarantees, or words that imply a lower risk to the customer. This type of wording will ensure that more people will click your CTAs. Remember not to blow smoke, and be honest about the benefits and the risks.

When you take the time to create calls to action that get results it’ll pay off by ensuring that more of your audience receives the benefits of your offers, increases your return on investment, and will keep more of your audience interested in staying on your email list. Another thing that will help you get the most out of email marketing is to understand more about copywriting.

Copywriting for Email Marketing

Effective email copy is a type of copywriting. There is a science to copywriting, which will help you create effective messages. You don’t need to be a copywriter to use their techniques. You can move the potential customer from curiosity to purchase, when you implement sound marketing and copywriting strategies.

• Understand Your Product’s Benefits – Not only should you understand your product’s benefits you should understand them from your client’s perspective. What problem does the email solve for your audience? Will it save them time, make them money, or help them with something else?
• Know Your Competition’s Weaknesses – It might seem strange to need to learn about your competition to create amazing emails with good copywriting. However, looking at how your competition forms their emails can help you fill in the gaps and do even better for your audience.
• Answer the Reader’s Question: What’s in it for me? – Know the goal of the message and then frame the words to express what’s in it for the reader. How will the information make your reader’s life better? Will they save money? Will they get more time? Will they feel happier?
• Focus on the Reader – It’s tempting to use the word “we”; but, it’s important to focus on the person who is reading so use “you” in your copy. Instead of saying “We all experience frustration”, say, “You feel frustrated when …” so that you can make it very clear that this is about that particular person.
• Keep Some Things to Yourself – Effective copywriting lets the audience know just what’s need to understand and get the benefit. Whether it’s making a purchase, contacting you for more information or something else good copywriting keeps unneeded details away to focus the customer on the one thing you want them to know and do. Too much information just clutters the situation.
• Use the Right Words – Good copywriting uses repetitive, though concise language, from the customer’s perspective to get the point across. Learn the words that make your audience feel what you want them to feel. Using words like you, imagine, and other words that really put a picture in your customer’s minds.
• Remember Your CTA – Always include a well thought out call to action. The call to action is the entire reason for sending your email message. If you don’t know what your CTA is, there isn’t much reason to send an email. A good CTA creates urgency and provides instructions on what the reader should do next.

When you use the right words and phrases, you can calm their fears, excite their imagination, and compel them to follow through on your call to action, that’s good, motivational copywriting. Copywriting takes practice, testing, and some prep work but, it’s not difficult. Make sure that each email has a purpose, uses the words your audience understands, and lets them know what’s in it for them.

Getting Started

You’ve learned a lot about writing attention-getting and results-oriented emails including:

• Getting Your Emails Opened
• Writing Effective Email Copy
• Writing Results Oriented Calls to Actions
• Copywriting for Email Marketing

Now it’s time to put what you’ve learned into action. Remember not to make it too hard. Each email you send doesn’t need to be as long as a blog post, or as deep as a novel. Provide the relevant information using the words that resonate with your audience staying on topic based on the sort of information they signed up to receive. If you do this, you’ll be very successful.