The Anatomy Of An Effective Email
Have you noticed similarities between emails that compel you to action versus all the others you send to the trash?
Some emails appear to have been written and sent on the fly without a second thought. Those probably don’t live too long in your inbox.
Then there are those emails that truly catch your interest or curiosity and, whatta ya know, you made the click and ended up on their landing page.
Good emails aren’t just thrown together. There’s actually a structure for creating the momentum that drives subscribers to open and click.
Let’s dissect and look at the anatomy of a winning email…
The From Line
Your From line is just as, if not more, important than the body copy of your email. If your subscriber doesn’t know who sent the email, or doesn’t care about them, then the chances of your email being opened take a big dive.
This is why I don’t promote using a company name - use your own name. It’s much more compelling to have “Allison Phillips, Realtor” send me an email versus “Red Brick Real Estate.”
Remember, email marketing is really about developing relationships. I can relate to Allison, I can’t relate to Red Brick Real Estate.
The Subject Line
Your subject line’s most important job is to get your email opened. Without this, your email fails.
There are a few ways to leverage your Subject to get your subscribers to make with the clicky:
Curiosity: enquiring minds want to know, right? give them a tease as to what they may find inside
Controversy: make a bold or contrarian statement
Questions: ask a questions that hints to the answers contained in the email
Big Benefit: promise a big benefit in your subject
The Salutation
Your salutation is the first thing your reader sees once they open your email. It also sets the tone and relationship for the remainder of the email.
Start out with a stuffy, business-sounding salutation and folks will continue read the rest of the email as if a business were talking to them (if they continue to read at all)… not a close, personal friend.
You want to approach your reader as if you know each other and have a personal relationship.
Avoid using “Dear {firstname}.”
For building relationships through email you need to use a salutation that’s more personal and approachable.
Some examples are:
“Say {firstname},” or “Hey {firstname},” or even just “{firstname}”
The Opening Hook
Your Subject is the bait to get your email opened, your Opening Hook is the bait to draw your reader into your message. This is the stage where your reader asks himself, “Do I want to continue to read this?”
If the answer is “no” then they’re gone. Bye-bye. But, if the answer is “yes” then they’ll stick with you throughout the entire email.
Obviously, you want to make your opening hook “interesting.”
- Make a mysterious statement
- Give your reader a hint
- Ask a question
- Make a contradiction
- Start with a story
The Body
You captured attention with your From and Subject lines. You established interest with your Opening Hook. Now it’s time to build desire in your email’s Body.
It’s time to promote benefits - what your reader has to gain by taking the NEXT action.
For example, let’s say you want your reader to visit a landing page where you’re selling the idea that they should pick up the phone and call you. On the landing page they’ll also learn some interesting statistics that would be helpful in their home buying decision.
In your email sell your reader on the benefit of knowing the statistics. Let your landing page sell them on making the call.
The Ending Hook
Your ending hook leverages all the desire or curiosity you built in your email’s body copy. It’s your closing trigger to get your reader to act and should be directly followed by a link.
At best, make it short and sweet. Even if they’ve skimmed the rest of your email, if you can make this jump out and irresistible then you can still get the click.
Here’s a few examples of ones I’ve used in the past:
“The results were… interesting, to say the least.”
“Fortunately for you, I have the key right here…”
“How could this happen?”
The Closing
Folks often miss using this key branding spot as you sign-off in your email.
You want to keep your sign-off consistent across your emails. Don’t say “Regards” one day and “Your Realtor” the next. Being consistent here creates trust and helps define your personality.
Making sure the email is kept on a personal level rather than something more formal, use a style that’s friendly and natural.
Here are some examples:
“Be awesome”
“Bringing you home”
“Keep it green”
The P.S.
Interestingly, everyone typically reads the p.s. even if they read nothing else. That being the case, what do you want here? Something tempting…
There’s a couple of things you can do in your p.s. You can allude to something previously mentioned (so those that skipped the message go back and read), provide a testimonial, another closing hook, or what I often like to do…
Prepare them for what they will see on the landing page once they click. This is how you merge the conversation between email and landing page: go to your landing page and pick out something interesting and refer to it in your p.s.
As you can tell, an effective email is more than just sitting down and typing away. Each piece of the email has a distinct purpose in drawing your reader in and getting them to act.
As in any aspect of business, success doesn’t just come willy-nilly. Crafting persuasive emails is the same way. Follow the structure outlined above, pay attention to the details, and you find more of your subscribers will click, buy and beg for you.
Email Marketing That Drives Results : A Comprehensive Guide
Email and autoresponders are quite possibly the most powerful tools at your disposal in online marketing. Webpages pretty much serve as the hub for your online business, but it’s your autoresponder - and it’s sequential drip of emails - that do much of the heavy lifting, especially in high-ticket purchases.
But autoresponders go way beyond the “are you ready?” emails… “Two weeks ago you signed up for my Super Dooper home research tool. Go ahead and call me so we can discuss the homes you liked best and I can let you know what homes have recently become available that best match what you’re looking for.”
Can those emails work? Maybe, but I wouldn’t put money on them, that’s for sure.
Autoresponders, leveraged best, become your 24hour online sales force reaching out, building rapport, overcoming objections, establishing value and nurturing prospects through your sales funnel to the glorious conclusion - an enthusiastic client.
Email marketing can create highly profitable relationships when you know how to use your autoresponder. And that’s what this 7-part autoresponder email marketing tutorial is all about.
A Seven-Part Guide to Effective Email Marketing
In Email Marketing That Drives Results we’re going to have some fun exploring the psychology behind email marketing and what emails you need to include in your autoresponder series to get the big bang.
Everything you’re going to learn here is based on successful real-world campaigns I’ve written and managed for my own clients.
Stay tuned 
Twitter Pursists Call Me Blasphemous?
Twitter purists may label me a blasphemer but as a marketer I can’t ignore the market testing opportunities that twitter provides.
Obviously, you can use Twitter to listen to the conversations of your market - what’s hot, challenges, frustrations, excitement, and news.
I also use Twitter to test headlines and time-of-day for broadcasts.
Headlines: somewhere I read that the most responsive headlines are between 80-131 characters. Whether it’s true or not, it fits into Twitter’s fixed 140 character limit.
Using tweetburner you can create a redirect-tracking link for your webpages. The nice thing is that it tracks across all twitter aggregators, too.
Broadcast timing: I’ve also found that my market is active at their PC between 3pm and 6pm Pacific.
I tracked this by sending out the same tweet at varying times of day. The winner was always in that time frame.
Now I know when I should be sending my emails, too.
So, most definitely use Twitter to get involved with your market community but look beyond that and use it as a test bed. Besides, it couldn’t be any easier.
The Birth Of Guerrilla Marketing Online was… Comic Books?
Your parents may have thrown them out when you were a kid but little did they know that comic books could make you so much money.
I’m not talking about reselling the comics as collectibles, either. That would only make you money once…
The other day I was interviewed by copywriter Kelly Watson from Wordwise Marketing about online Guerrilla Marketing and the fundamentals that separate it from other forms of marketing.
During the interview I revealed the impact of comic books plus a few other goodies… like the 4 stages of marketplace authority.
Download the PDF transcript
Listen to the 15 minute interview
It just may be the coolest 15 minutes of your day
An Unsexy Case Study in Control & Persuasion
For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a series of projects inside the real estate market but I wanted to take some time out to highlight a product launch that’s going on right now over at Marketing White Papers.
The initial “magnet” video used in the launch is full of controls and persuasive elements. The dude does a great job and in what I consider a pretty unsexy market: whitepaper reports.
Anyway, watch this case study video and I’ll walk you through his magnet video and uncover a number of the controls and persuasion points along the way. Cool thing is, after watching this you should have no problem using similar techniques in your own campaigns.
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