This is the process I use every time I send a marketing email. It’s fast, effective, and gets great results.
The Idea
The first draft of the email doesn’t need to be pretty. You just need to get your ideas out so that you’ve got the materials to work with and build something beautiful later on.
It is easier to come up with ideas when you have a blank sheet of paper and can write by hand. Without the constraints and distractions of your computer, you will get to a working draft of an email a lot quicker.
Pull out a sheet of paper and write the purpose of the email right at the top. Why are you sending this email? What do you want your audience to do?
Next, write out five subject lines. The subject line of an email is like the title of a blog post. It is the single most important sentence of the email. People will see the subject line in their inbox and decide if they want to continue reading or ignore the email.
A good subject line is short, interesting, and descriptive. You want to let people know what to expect in the email, but also deliver something that makes them curious.
You don’t come up with a good idea by luck; you come up with a good idea by volume. Producing a whole bunch of bad subject lines will lead you to a good subject line.
Once you’ve got subject line options, you can dive into the email body. Create the following for sections on your page. You will use these four sections for the content of your email.
Attention:
Interest:
Desire:
Action:
Once someone has decided to open an email, they are going to make a decision about continuing to read it very quickly. That is why it’s important to have something that is worthy of attention right at the start of the email.
From attention, you move to interest. Shift the focus onto the reason for the email. This is a good place to focus on a pain point the reader is having. A pain point that you have the solution for, which is what the desire section is for.
Desire is painting the picture of better possibilities for the reader once they have your thing.
Finally, Action. Be clear about what the next step is. Show the reader what they do now. This often means using a big button or something visually obvious.
Attention, Interest (problem), desire (solution), action.
The Creation
Creating the email in whatever program you use is the next step. Going from paper to computer serves as your first edit. Tweak you wording, fill in gaps, cut useless information.
Your Edit
Once you’ve created the email, send yourself a test and do a second edit yourself. Read the email out loud to yourself (or mumble quietly if you’re in an office). Saying it out loud will allow you to feel if anything is clunky. If it sounds weird saying it, it will feel weird reading it. Go through and check your links, make sure your pictures are displaying correcting on desktop and mobile.
Feedback
No matter how good you are at email copywriting, you are never good enough to skip feedback. When you are creating something, you will overlook things. By the third time you’ve read it, you’ll miss an obvious grammatical error. Or something that seems obvious to you may confuse someone else.
The Delivery
Even though you’re finished the email content, there is still important work to do. Earlier, I wrote that subject line was the single most important sentence you will write. It is so important that you don’t want to leave it up to your judgment to decide what is the best subject line. Unless the email is urgent, test the subject line. Pick your best two emails and send out an a/b test to 10% of your list. The small increase in open rate can make a BIG difference in $$$ at the end of the day.
Analysis
There is a lot of good information online about how to write a good email. Keep researching and learning, but the most important place for you to learn is from your audience.
Every audience is different. What is a rule of thumb for almost everyone may not work for your audience. That is why it is crucial to pay attention to your email statistics. What type of subject lines get good open rates from your audience? What type of emails get lots of clicks from your audience?
These are the questions you can only answer by experimenting and paying attention to your feedback (results).
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