In the past notes, we discussed in details the first two steps in the email marketing cycle when you want to set up a new email marketing campaign: first, you set your objectives, then you develop your email list. Once that is done, you will need to create the actual content of the email.
Email is a very powerful tool. However you only have few seconds to convince your prospects or customers to open your email and take action.
We will review in a next note how to write powerful subject line. In this note, I am going to concentrate on the content of an email.
An email can be divided into the following part for content:
- Headline
- Subheadline
- Body copy
- Call to action ( the call to action should not be put in the end of the email. We will discuss that in the next post when we will talk about the design of the email). However we are just talking about the content.
Let’s look at each part in details:
- Headline
The headline should contain a summary of your entire message. It should be not more than 10 words. Generally speaking, it will be the first line that the reader of your email will see. You will need to grab their attention and generate curiosity to make them read the content below.
For instance, you can talk about the biggest benefits of your product if you are trying to sell a product
- Subheadline
The subheadline draws the attention for those that like to scan the email for what is appealing to them. So you would want to avoid subheadlines that are too simple. Your sub headline should be following your headline while introducing a specific part of your copy.
Where headlines can be very generic and broad in scope, a sub headline can not. A sub headline needs to be specific and pointed. It should be relevant to the following section of text.
- Body copy
The body copy will need to be descriptive. However don’t make it too long. The goal is to encourage the reader to act on the call to action. The content need to be clear. It is also recommended to use personalization if possible on the greetings or or throughout the message. Make sure you state the benefits. Make sure you center your message on the reader and their needs. Try to not mention too much yourself (I, our, ours) but concentrate more on the reader (you, your, yours).
- Call to action
The call to action needs to be very short ( don’t take a sentence to make your call to action). It will be a button or an hyperlink. Call to action can go from “buy now”, “learn more”, “subscribe now”, “forward to my friend”,etc. Your call to action will be linked to the main objective of your email.
