Uncover the Secrets to Writing Successful E-mail Promotions that will Drive Swarms of Customers to Your Affiliate Products! Part 2Follow these seven simple steps to e-mail success: 1- Keep it personal: Write your letter as though you were sending it to a close personal friend. This is one of the best ways to guarantee that you avoid any exaggeration or hype that will scare away interested potential customers.
2- Tell them "Why": If you believe that you’re recommending a good product that your readers will benefit from, tell them. Be specific about why you think it’s such a great product and how they stand to benefit from checking it out!
3- Be honest: If you’ve had personal experience with the product, then let your customers and subscribers know how you’ve personally benefited from it. Results speak for themselves.
4- Be knowledgeable: If you don’t have personal experience using the product, familiarize yourself with it by taking a few minutes to read the product information. Think about how it will benefit your customers and subscribers, and express this in your letter.
5- Keep it short: An effective e-mail shouldn’t be any more than a page and a half. Remember that your job is to get the reader to click through your affiliate link to the product information. Once the visitor is at our web site, we'll look after presenting the more detailed product information and closing the sale.
6- Keep it simple: Don't fall into the trap of trying to fill your letter with big words and complicated sentences to make it sound more 'official'. That kind of language is a surefire way to turn people off. Think about what you want to say in your letter, then imagine that you're sitting down with a friend and telling them these things in a casual conversation. That's the tone you want to capture.
7- Test it! Before you e-mail the letter to your entire opt-in e-mail list, consider e-mailing it to a test group to gauge the response. If the results aren't what you hoped, you can always go back and 'tweak' it before you send it out to everyone.
Important! If you want to create a custom e-mail, you don't need to start from scratch. Why not use the copy we've already created, and make changes to suit your audience? We've even written the subject lines for you, and it's all been carefully tested -- so you know it's going to work!
How to write subject lines that get your e-mails opened Of course, the best e-mail content in the world is useless if you can't get people to open the e-mail in the first place! That's where good subject lines come in. Think about all of those e-mails you're probably getting on a daily basis with subjects like: MAKE $75,000 EVERY WEEK GUARANTEED! EXPLOSIVE STOCK PICK AT $0.45!!!! newsletter THIS IS NOT SPAM! Do you open these e-mails? Probably not. The subject line makes it obvious that the e-mail is spam... that it's from someone you don't know... or it doesn't offer a clear benefit that makes you want to read it. Now, how many of your legitimate newsletters and e-mails are mistakenly deleted by your subscribers who read your subject lines and assume it must be spam? How many potential sales could you have saved simply by rewriting your subject lines? Here are three ideas that will help you write stronger subject lines that get your e-mails opened: Give news: When you write your subject line, you can make an announcement or give news that your readers will want to hear. For example: My review of Corey's new course Increase curiosity: Another good approach to subject lines is to make your reader curious about what's in the e-mail. For example: Here's my secret marketing weapon Emphasize benefits: You can also write subject lines that emphasize how the reader will benefit from opening your e-mail. For example: Learn how to increase sales Remember, too, that you'll always be most successful if you write subject lines that state a clear benefit and tell the reader exactly how they're going to save money, save time, make their life easier, etc., by opening and reading your e-mail. If you can state a benefit AND create curiosity, so much the better! The key when writing subject lines is to emphasize benefits by considering your product or service from your customers' point of view: How will they benefit from taking the time to read your e-mail? Two other key points to remember when writing your subject lines are: Keep it short and sweet: Don't let your subjects run any longer than 60 characters -- and make sure that the most important details are mentioned first so they don't get cut off. If your subscribers can't read your entire subject line because it's too long, chances are they won't open your e-mail.
If possible, personalize it: A subject line like "Bob, here's the info you need..." is going to get a MUCH better response than simply "Here's the info you need" because the recipient assumes you know them -- and is therefore more likely to open the e-mail. We've proven that personalized e-mail like this can increase the response you receive by as much as 64%! So don't take this technique lightly... How to format your e-mail promotions Okay, so once you've written a solid e-mail and created a winning subject line, it's ready to go, right? Well, almost. You still need to check the formatting, to make sure it's free of embarrassing errors that will make you look sloppy and unprofessional -- destroying your credibility and ensuring that your letter ends up in your subscribers' trash bins. Remember that different e-mail programs, like Outlook, Hotmail, and so on will display your e-mail differently. Plus, different people will have their personal program set to read their incoming mail in different fonts, different sizes, different widths, etc. To ensure that your messages look consistent for as many of your readers as possible, follow these simple formatting tips: Use a good text editor: As useful as Microsoft Word may be, it is NOT the tool to use when formatting e-mail copy. Word has too many formatting quirks -- "macros" that are embedded into the program that most of as are unable to work around. These can (and often do) result in bad line breaks, weird characters, and formatting errors on the recipient's end. You are far better off using a text editor. Notepad and Wordpad, which come with Windows and can be found under Programs > Accessories in your Start menu, will do the trick.
Watch your line lengths: Make sure you set your line length to 65 characters in order to prevent embarrassing line breaks. If your lines are too long, your e-mail could turn out looking like this: > You might be wondering how anyone could >let this > happen. After all, wouldn't they notice >that their e-mail has been broken up into numerous different > lines, >each a different length? You've probably received e-mail that looks like this before. It's not only hard to read, it's annoying!
Use hard carriage returns: Some older e-mail clients don't actually have "word wrap," so to avoid having your e-mail appear as one long line of text that readers will need to use the horizontal scroll bar to read, insert a hard return (by pressing "Enter") at the end of each line (i.e., every 65 characters).
Use a fixed-width font: When formatting your e-mail, do so in a fixed-width font like Courier that uses an equal amount of space to display each character. For example: This is Courier This is Arial As you can see, Courier consistently uses the same amount of space to display each character, while Arial varies in width. This is important because the majority of e-mail clients use fixed-width fonts as their default (the exception being Eudora, which defaults to Arial). While an e-mail formatted in a fixed-width font looks good when displayed in a font like Arial, an e-mail formatted in a font like Arial looks terrible displayed in a fixed-width font. By formatting your e-mail in a fixed-width font, you'll ensure that it looks good no matter what font your reader's e-mail client defaults to.
Check spelling and proofread everything: Everyone makes mistakes now and then, but there is absolutely no excuse for the blatant errors you routinely see made in many e-mail promotions. Remember that spelling mistakes and poor grammar make you look unprofessional and damage your credibility. So before clicking "Send," take that extra minute to proofread your work and have a couple of other people read it. You may save yourself some embarrassment... and prevent lost sales!
Keep paragraphs short: By keeping your paragraphs three to four lines in length, you ensure that your e-mail is easy to read. The more white space you use, the better. Long, never-ending sentences that run on for 8 lines get very difficult to read, causing readers to become frustrated and delete your e-mail.
Test, test, test: Before sending your e-mail to your entire list, take an extra 15 minutes to test how it looks in a variety of e-mail clients such as:
Eudora -- free versions at http://www.eudora.com Hotmail -- free account at http://www.hotmail.com Tools for managing your e-mail campaigns Depending on the size of your opt-in list, you may want to consider upgrading your e-mail tools. E-mail programs like Eudora and Outlook are great for sending e-mail campaigns to a small group of people, but once you start to grow your opt-in list (which you need to do if you're going to be a really successful affiliate), you need to consider more sophisticated e-mail management software. A good e-mail management tool should be able to manage all of your contacts' information, send e-mails to your entire list with the click of a button, automatically handle your "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests, automatically deliver your electronic information products, minimize and manage "bounce backs," and give you the ability to automatically follow up with customers via autoresponder any time you want. One tool that can do all of that is Mailloop http://www.marketingtips.com/mailloop And because Mailloop was developed by IMC, you know you'll be benefiting from the exact same features that we use to make millions of dollars online each year! PLUS, as an IMC affiliate, you can order Mailloop through your affiliate link, and receive your usual commission! Final thoughts A professionally written and formatted e-mail with a catchy subject line makes you look like a credible business owner who takes what you do very seriously. It invites readers to examine your e-mail... check out your offer... and seriously consider making a purchase based on your recommendations. Courtesy of IMC - Internet Marketing Center |