by Janine Popick, CEO and founder of VerticalResponse
If you’re like me and in the business of marketing, you spend a great portion of your day writing. Writing emails, proposals, blog posts, guest articles … If you’ve got email marketing in the mix, that’s even more writing. How do you keep things interesting and “skim-able” for your email recipients so that they can quickly see what you want them to see, and still motivate them enough to take an action? Here are eight tips to help your email marketing copy shine and hopefully make the writing process a little easier.
1. Write using benefits, not features. Features are the things the product has. The iPhone 4 has a 3.5-inch touch screen, 5 megapixel camera, 16 GB flash drive. I’m thinking great, but what does that do for me? Well, that means the iPhone 4 lets me easily take and store high-quality, print-ready photos – these are the benefits. As a marketer, you need to answer the recipient’s question, “What’s it going to do for me?” “How is it going to make my life easier?” Many businesses get caught up writing about themselves and all the nifty things they offer rather than how those nifty things will help their customers. Don’t make that mistake.
2. Sprinkle in subheads. Attracting the attention of your readers using subheads is a tried-and-true tactic. It breaks up your thoughts and gets to the heart of what you’re selling or promoting quickly. It lets the reader skim through the email yet still get the message you want to convey.
3. Keep it tight. You need to get to your point fast in small, succinct paragraphs. When was the last time you read an entire press release or news article in an email? No one likes to scroll and scroll and scroll (maybe unless they’re shopping for shoes!); it’s difficult and time-consuming. Include links off the page to more information so that if a reader does want more details, they can find it quickly and easily.
4. Use bullets. Bullets break up points or benefits so that, again, your readers can scan copy without losing any key takeaways. Bullets are great for email and Web writing in general.
Tips 5-8 are even more valuable. Get them in the full blog post.
