If you've been wondering whether email marketing is still a relevant strategy to engage your blogging audience and turn them into paying customers, the answer is a resounding YES.
It's true that there are plenty of promotional tools you can use to convince people to do business with you.
However, the fact that there will be more than 3.7 billion email users worldwide by the end of 2017 makes email marketing a gold mine for the massive growth of your blog.
Today, I'm about to share with you a useful guide to writing powerful emails.
Remember that a successful campaign that drives conversions depends on a well-crafted email copy. It all boils down to knowing and applying the right methods.
Before you write your next email, make sure to apply the 6 strategies below. What are you waiting for? Let's get started.
Create Better Emails Using These Strategies
1. Be helpful and authoritative at the same time
Nothing wins people's hearts better than a helping hand.
Regardless of the objective that you want to meet through your email, whether you want people to buy your product or join your course, always let them know what's in it for them.
Talk about the benefits of your offer instead of simply stating the features. Let them realize how better their current situation can be through your help. You need to sound human and sincere, like a true friend.
At the same time, establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry or niche. Share your story and include personal anecdotes. Show proof of how you were able to help others like them. In this video Ms. Ileane introduces you the tools she used to Get Started with Email Marketing.
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2. Pay attention to your subject lines
There are plenty of marketers who have great offers but fail to convey their value in their email subject lines. People rarely open emails with vague subject lines.
As a crucial element of an email, how you write your subject lines influences people's decision to click through or ignore your messages. Nail them and your efforts are sure to pay off.
Here are some tips to write great subject lines:
- Inspire urgency by stating a deadline.
- Keep them short and sweet. Stick to 5-7 words.
- Use an active voice to spark action.
- State a surprising fact or stat.
- Pose a direct question.
- Address your recipient using his or her first name.
3. Format your email for skimmers
Readers have now become skimmers. With today's accessibility of online information anytime and anywhere, people want something fast.
If you want more conversions, you need to format your copy in a way that readers can easily find what they're looking for. Ensure that the body of your email is scannable.
Check one of the emails you've sent in the past. Ask yourself: “Will this email entice a highly distracted person to stick around and read further?”
Write your future emails for skimmers or scanners by writing shorter paragraphs (preferably 1-2 sentences). Use bullet points, numbered lists, and paragraphs. Include the links you want your recipients to visit.
4. Include an intro, body, and conclusion
Remember when you used to write essays during your English class? You may not have heard this advice but yes, keeping your emails well-structured is important. An email message should have a beginning, middle, and end.
Each part of your email (Introduction, Body, Conclusion) includes the following:
- Introduction – Begin your introduction with a friendly greeting. You can also include a quick recap of last week or an idea of why you're reaching out.
- Body – Whatever it is that you want to tell your audience, state all the details in the body. Include all necessary explanations behind your offer.
- Conclusion – In this section, mention the final action steps your readers should take. Add your final thoughts and signature.
5. Get personal with your audience
Are you segmenting your mailing list and creating buyer personas? These are the things you need to do if you want to tailor your emails to your audience's needs.
To get personal with them is to know their interests, and pain points. After you begin building your blog, collect data about your target audience. You can accomplish this by requiring them to enter personal details before they can download one of your lead magnets.
Use these personal details to get closer to them. Cater your future emails based on their background. For example, if some of your recipients love sports, you can relate your message to football or basketball.
6. Use a clear call-to-action
In every email, there has to be a call-to-action (CTA) that entices a person to act. As tempting as it can be to provide multiple calls-to-action, it's much better to focus on one per email. This prevents confusion.
Motivate people to click through your CTA by using action words like order, get, buy, shop, download, and join. Don't be afraid to repeat your call-to-action. Stating it twice or thrice is okay.
Repetition increases the chances for more click throughs. A skimmer might not notice your first CTA or decide to act later in the process.
What smart bloggers do is that they repeat a call-to-action by using a “P.S.” at the end of their emails.
Before You Go
Convert your email subscribers into paying customers by following this guide. Remember that an effective email relies on a copy that's written with a blog's audience in mind.
Last but not the least, don't forget to test your emails to check which one performs best. I hope these tips help you launch successful email campaigns and grow your business blog today.
Hi Kevin, thanks for these tips. I have to work more on my CTA’s. And I love your tip to add them in more than one place.
What type of email service providers do you recommend?
I really like your tip too about asking more questions for them to download a free product, something I am currently working on. Thank you.
Lisa, you’re very welcome! I find that repeating a call-to-action more than once in my emails gets a higher conversion. I myself skim through email messages and think there’s no harm in adding multiple CTAs. Personally, I recommend AWeber and GetResponse.
Thanks for your comment, Lisa, and best of luck on the project that you are working on! 🙂
Hi Kevin,
Great topic and wonderful tips.
Writing click-worthy emails is NOT easy. It takes time, efforts and a lot of research.
Here are few more cents apart from writing great subject lines, using personalization etc.
– Research your competitors: People with BIG email lists like Ramit Sethi send millions of emails each month (he sends around 6 million emails a month). They test a lot. So trying to copy their framework (what subject lines they use, introduction, the length of the email) can help. Although the email length varies from industry to industry but by analysing the successful people emails, you can learn a lot.
– Know when to send your emails: For me (in IM industry), sending emails on Wednesday and Thursdays can get you better email open rates. Just try and test your emails by sending them at different days and timings to see which days work better for you.
– Last but not least, resend your unopened emails: I use GetResponse and I can resend the same email to those people who didn’t open it (I don’t use this feature often though, but I definitely use it when I’m sending really important emails such as announcements, product launches, giveaways etc).
Thanks for the great post Kevin! 🙂
Hi Kevin,
I appreciate the post. I will bookmark so the next time I email about my services I will have your tips in front of me.
By the way, I believe your tips are also helpful for tweets. For example, the part about generating a feeling of urgency could be helpful on social media as well as emails.
Thanks for the post.
Janice
Hi Kevin, Thanks for these awesome tips. I have always treated my email subscribers with respect and tried to provide helpful content and products to them.
These days with so many emails, people have started to skim the content so fast that the headline and start of the email become very important aspect. They need to clearly define what problem are we going to solve for them, otherwise people might lose interest and go away.
Hi Sanjeev, I totally agree with you. I’m getting a ton of emails myself on a daily basis, and the only thing that catches my attention every time is the headline. Benefit-driven headlines work best – and yes, we need to nail the first few lines of our messages as well.
Thank you for sharing your experience on email marketing. See you around!
Hi Kevin. thank you for sharing your ideas. This is a great input!
Hey, Mike! You’re very welcome! Thank you for your comment. 🙂
Hey, Kevin!
Brilliant content!
And the tips are the best!
That example of Jeff Goins is too relevant to understand the need of the “perfect email message.”
I am not much into the emails but these are the tips I will keep remember for me in the near future!
So, thank you for the best sharing of the super-useful tips! 🙂
~ Adeel
Hello Adeel,
I subscribed to Jeff Goins’ email list because he’s one of the best writers I know. His email (screenshot above) models the perfect message.
You’re welcome, Adeel, and I’m glad you dropped by to appreciate this article. Thanks! 🙂
Kevin
Hello Kevin,
Great Post. Email with personal touch is definitely a game changer and increase the open rates of your email. I always prefer to personalize my emails to create a strong bond with your subscribers. A call to action option is also very important to increase the conversions. Thanks for providing these valuable tips here.
Have a great Day 🙂
Vishwajeet Kumar
Hi Vishwajeet Kumar,
If we can’t segment our mailing list to send out really personalized emails, we can still apply personalization by addressing our recipients by their first names. That will already do. Also, if there’s an occasion (like Valentine’s Day) a great idea would be to send a message with a pretty, personalized template.
Thank you and you have a great day as well! 🙂
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I’ve definitely noticed an increase in my open rates now that I’ve been writing in a more personalized fashion.
I think readers like to hear a little bit about my personal life and what I’m doing?
Now I just need to see if I can improve my email headlines. I have to admit that I’m not the greatest and am always trying to see if I can improve my headlines.
Thanks for sharing these tips have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hi Susan,
Sometimes we stress about writing the “perfect” email when all we need to do is “let it go” and just talk to our audience like we would to a close friend. This was one of my struggles when I first started out.
I think your readers will love hearing about your day! For example, if you’re having a cup of coffee, why not talk about it and maybe include a photo of your coffee? 🙂 At the same time, share some tips on blogging and making money.
And by the way, I think I forgot to mention in this post that we can use headline analyzer/generator tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, Tweak Your Biz, and Title-Generator.com.
Thank you, Susan, and see you around!
Kevin
I don’t believe I have seen a story on writing effective emails before. A lot of great tips I would like to incorporate. For those of you who don’t do email marketing, why not?
Hi Kevin,
This is a good read. I was going to write an email to my subscribers about a new category I am going to add to my blog.
Will implement few of your tips to optimize my approach in the email.
Thanks
Hello Manpreet,
Thank you so much. Giving your audience updates about your blog is a great idea. 🙂 If you can recommend some more email marketing tips, I’d love to hear them.
You’re very welcome. Have a great day! 🙂
Kevin
Great post! I always wanted to learn on how to write effective emails to promote our business. Thanks for sharing.
Hi David, you’re very welcome! Glad you found this post helpful.
Thanks Kevin,
I have normally just focussed on content for the website first and not considered email as that important. I guess if I did we would get better response rates!
Hello Kevin Mallon,
I think you’ll really get higher response rates if you engage your blogging audience via email every week. Why not add lead magnets in the middle of your blog posts? That would be a great idea if you need more subscribers.
Thanks for commenting! 🙂
Kevin
I think that modifying the subject line is the most crucial step because it is the most important factor for people to open the email.
Hello Kevin,
You cover an exact point that I am looking for. I am a new blogger and usually find it difficult to write an effective emails. If I contacted ten other bloggers through email then hardly I get one or two replies because of my poor email writing.
Thanks for sharing such cool tricks on email writing. It helps me a lot in improving my email writing skills.
Great article Kevin!
I wanted to ask you.
In which situations you can be more helpful than authoritative?
Kind regards,
Filip
Hi Kevin. thank you for such a great post.
This was a crucial input as we are more to emails electronically as compared to paper work, so I totally agree on your recommendations and tips!
Input from Rahul also valuable.
Thank you guys, keep it up.
Thanks,
Muhammad Shahid
In my case the subject of the email sent to my subscribers was crucial to receive clicks.
I sent boring emails to my subscribers for about two years, but when I tweaked the subjects, the results were much better.
Thanks Kevin for sharing this!
I have been looking for an article like yours for a while now. I regularly send marketing emails with not much luck so I am hoping these tips from your article would help.
Thanks for the great article, Kevin! I’ve never really gave attention to writing emails and email marketing as a whole but your explanations are really good. I guess I should try it out and see if it works for me.
Hi Kevin,
Great post! Thanks for sharing. This could help us a lot. I will follow this strategies for our email marketing campaigns to promote our business and for our lead generation. Again thanks.
Very informative article. This will eventually help us in writing effective emails. Thanks for sharing.
Good informative article, I am into blogging and writing is my passion. I have many clients for whom i do email marketing writing.
Awesome post.
It is no secret that Emails are still the best way to promote your brand since it is still preferred by millions of people as a platform for professional transactions. In that sense, those who engage in email promotions are more likely to be trusted. Even more so if it is employed with the use of the tips you enumerated.
Thanks for sharing!