If you read the previous guide, then you know how to get attention with a subject line that gets clicks. But once you have your reader’s attention, you need to hold it. Otherwise, your readers are going to abandon your email without ever getting to the end, seeing your call to action, or clicking on your link.
And that’s what this guide is about. In just moments you’ll discover the 17 essential elements of effective email copywriting. These tactics work in tandem to help you create an email that your readers stay glued to right until the very end.
Let’s get started…
1. Define Your Goal
Before you write a single word of an email, you need to define your goal. In other words, what do you want your audience to know or do once they complete your email?
For example:
- Take action on what they just learned.
- Purchase a product.
- Watch a free video or read a blog article.
- Join another list/request a freemium.
- Fill out a webinar registration form.
- Enter a contest.
- Become an affiliate.
- Join a membership site.
- Participate on a forum or in a group.
- “Like” your comment on social media.
- Comment on your newsletter.
- Share your content on social media with their friends.
- Click a link for some other purpose (such as seeing an example).
The key is to pick ONE primary goal, and then craft your email around this primary goal.
2. Know Your Audience
The second big key to creating an effective email is to know your audience. The more you know about your audience, the easier it is to create content that really resonates with them.
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To catch the reader’s attention immediately, personalize your emails. Use their name right in your email salutation (e.g., “Hi, Susan”). (Note: this is why it’s a good idea to capture first names when building your email address, so that you can personalize your emails later.)
Secondly, create content that speaks directly to your audience. For example, if you know your audience consists of busy moms who want to lose weight, then you might say something like this:
“Seems like you spend an inordinate amount of time chauffeuring the kids to their practices and appointments, helping them with homework, bathing the little ones, and doing everything else it takes to make your household hum along smoothly. But at the end of the day, you don’t have time to cook extra meals for yourself or go to the gym. So how can you possibly lose weight?”
See how that connects with the audience? It’s much better than saying “Losing weight is hard when you’re busy” (which is generic, and doesn’t speak directly to your target audience).
In order to create content like this, you need to profile your market. This includes:
- Researching their demographics.
- Viewing their online discussions on forums and social media to get more insight into what they want.
- Surveying them to get more insight into who they are, their challenges, and what they want.
Next…
3. Grab Attention Immediately
As soon as your recipient’s open your email, you need to have an opener that grabs their attention immediately. Here are different ways to do it:
Empathize with the reader. E.G., “I know how frustrating it is to spend hours in front of your computer trying to build a business, but you have nothing to show for it…”
Tell a story. Ideally, this should be a story about how someone like the reader overcame the same problem the reader currently possesses.
Share a startling, relevant fact. E.G., “Your business is likely to fail this year…”
Start with a relevant quote. E.G., Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try…”
Next…
4. Engage the Senses
Whenever you tell a story in your email or describe something, bring in the reader’s senses whenever possible. This tends to engage the reader and keeps them hooked on your email.
For example, perhaps you’re sharing a weight loss story about how hard it is to not cheat on one’s diet. Your story might talk about the smell of fresh-baked bread, or the silky feel of hot chocolate in one’s mouth being like a little piece of heaven.
5. Ask a Question
Asking questions in your opener (and all throughout your email) keeps readers engaged and even helps them self-qualify, depending on the type of question.
Here are three types of questions:
Self-qualifying question: “Do you ever struggle mentally to keep going when you’re nearing the end of a long race?”
Engaging question: “Can you simultaneously rub your tummy with one hand and pat your head with the other?”
Curiosity-arousing question: “Do you know which common food can stop your sugar cravings cold? Most people don’t, and the answer might surprise you…”
Which brings us to the next point…
6. Drop Cliffhangers/Build Anticipation
To hook readers in your email opener, build anticipation for what’s coming. This works particularly well if you’re sharing a how-to article or similar.
E.G., “In just moments you’ll find out the three best ways to save enough money for retirement. Most people have never even heard of the third method, so keep reading to find out what it is…”
The middle of your content should also make use of curiosity-arousing cliffhangers to keep people reading. This tells readers something good is coming up so they should keep reading.
E.G., “In just moments you’ll discover my #1 trick for getting rid of cellulite. But first, let me share with you a story about how I discovered the keys to getting rid of this ugly fat for good…”
7. Create a Series
One really good way to get more people opening and reading your emails is by creating an engaging series. E.G., a five-part series might be called, “The Five Keys to Rapid (Yet Safe) Weight Loss.”
At the end of each email, be sure to build anticipation for the next email. E.G., “Stay tuned, because next time you’ll discover which simple food will kickstart your fat-burning metabolism…”
8. Engage the Reader’s Imagination and Emotions
When some people talk about engaging emotions, they often are referring to manipulating people, evoking fear, or using sleazy tricks. Take note: that’s NOT what I’m referring to here.
Instead, the idea behind this strategy is to engage your reader’s emotions and their imagination in a positive way. For example, sharing your own struggles with a problem will engage the readers’ emotions, show them that you truly understand the problem, and show them that you care.
E.G., “I know the humiliation of not fitting into a standard airplane seat. Sometimes you feel like everyone is staring at you, and all you want to do is just disappear…”
Another way to engage the reader is to get them to imagine what it will be like to solve their problem. In other words, you get them to imagine and feel the joy of the solution. If people can imagine themselves using a product and getting a positive benefit as a result, then they’re all that much closer to clicking on your links (and your order button).
E.G., “Imagine waking up two months from now and seeing a new, slimmer you looking back from the mirror. Imagine how good it will feel to actually LIKE the person in the mirror…”
Next…
9. Offer a Quick Win
Whether you’re sharing how-to information or a promo message, you can hold your reader’s attention by giving them a piece of information that will provide a quick win. In other words, give them a “wow” moment with a really good tip that they can apply right now to get fast results.
For example, if you’re sharing copywriting info, then share a headline-tweaking tip that will boost conversions.
Sharing this info will impress your readers and keep them hooked on your email in search of more good information.
10. Raise and Handle Objections
If you’re selling a product or service in your emails, then your prospects are going to have objections as to why they shouldn’t buy the product. If you create a series of promo emails, then you can devote one or more emails to raising and handling these objections.
For example, if people say they don’t have time to implement a strategy that you share in an infoproduct, then offer a bonus app that makes it quicker and easier to take action and get results.
11. Be Succinct
People don’t have the time or attention to read long emails, especially if they’re on the go and reading it from their phones. That’s why you’ll want to be as succinct as possible.
For example, if you’re selling something that requires a lot of words to sell it, then don’t try to turn your email into a sales letter. Instead, use your email as a short, benefit-driven “teaser” to get people to click through to your sales letter.
12. Be Aware of the Preview Text
Most email clients let readers preview the first couple lines of the email without clicking to open the email. That’s why you’ll want to be sure that the first 100 characters of your email are as compelling as possible. Look at these first characters in isolation and ask yourself, “Would this text persuade me to open the email?”
13. Proof Your Copy
If your readers are met with spelling errors, grammar errors and other problems, they’re going to view your email as low quality. Likewise, whatever you’re promoting inside the email will also be associated with low quality. That’s why you’ll want to take care to proofread your emails before you send them. Better yet, have someone else do it for you. For the most important emails, it’s a good idea to hire a professional proofreader using upwork.com or similar.
14. Utilize a Professional Design
In addition to judging the quality of your email based on whether it has typos, your readers are also going to judge it based on the design. That’s why you’ll want to be choose a clean, professional design template – and be sure it’s responsive, so that mobile users can easily read your emails.
TIP: Most big email service providers (like Aweber.com) provide multiple templates for you to choose from – no design experience required.
Next…
15. Format for Skimmers
While you hope that everyone reads every single word of your email, sadly that’s not the case. Quite a few people are going to skim it. And in order for you to get these skimmers to take action (or at least draw them into the text), you need to format your email for skimmers.
How? By emphasizing the main points of your email using headlines, subheadlines, italics, bolding, different font sizes and colors, utilizing bulleted lists, inserting Johnson boxes, using captions under graphics, and similar.
The key is to only bold the most important parts so that a skimmer gets the gist of your email simply by reading anything that you’ve highlighted in some way. For example, if it’s a presell email, then highlight who the target market is and what the product will do for them (i.e., highlight the benefits).
Which brings us to the next point…
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16. Close with a P.S
Your P.S. (postscript) is a really important part of your email, because many people won’t read every word of your email… but they WILL read the postscript. As such, you should use this postscript to do one or more of the following:
- Remind people of the main points/benefits of the email they just read.
- Provide a call to action and link (see below).
- Offer a “closing argument” as to why people should take action.
- Share a new benefit not mentioned elsewhere (such as a guarantee or a discount).
E.G.,
P.S. People are selling access to this information for $50, $100 or more. If you act now, you can register for this webinar for FREE. But hurry, because this offer is only available to the first 150 people who click here…
17. Craft a Compelling CTA
As mentioned, you have a goal for your email, and you’ve created your email around achieving this goal (such as getting someone to click a link to buy a product). Now what you need to do is craft a compelling CTA (call to action), which tells people exactly what you want them to do next.
E.G., “Click here to watch this video – and do it now before I take it offline…”
Conclusion You just discovered 17 surefire ways to get more people reading every word of your email. The key is to be helpful, offer relevant, targeted information shared in a conversational tone (that’s a bonus tip for you!), and construct your email with a singular goal in mind. If you apply all these tips, you’ll see fewer abandoned emails and more clicks and sales!
Keep Reading: 17 Things You Can Do Get People To Leave Their Inbox To Go To Your Site
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