e-mail Production

Email promotions should be to-the-point' and not long-winded. Your email promotions should say just enough to get the purpose of your communication across. Remember, your customer's email inbox is getting busier and busier. Email promotions that get to the point are far more likely to be of interest to your readers on an ongoing basis. Your recipients will open and read your email if they know they are going to be able to quickly satisfy their curiosity.

However, your emails still need to be written in a warm, friendly and personable way. Give your regular email promotions their own "voice" and character (which should not be too removed from your brand's personality). Make them easy for your customers to relate to. Email is a very personal medium and a personable approach to email always works best. Remember, one-to-one!

From line
The "From" line is the most important part of the entire email, and despite what some email marketers think, the "From" line is even more important than the ‘subject' line. If you think about when you are scanning the new email messages in your own inbox, you would usually run your eye down the "From" column, first seeing if you recognise the people your messages are from.

Subject lines
The second most important part of your email is the "Subject" line. It should capture the attention of your reader and draw them into opening your email. The "Subject" line of an email is similar to an advertising headline, except it needs to be more ‘real'

Greeting
Personalise your greeting as much as possible. Use the recipient's name. You may decide to use either an informal and friendly greeting ("Hi David"), or be more formal ("Dear Mr. David Kelly"). It is generally accepted that informal and friendly works best when writing emails.

Opening hook
Your ‘opening hook' is what should hook your reader into your email. Make it clear right up-front what you are writing to them about and explaining why they should read the rest of your email.

Call to action
This is when you state exactly what you want your prospect to do. In an email promotion it is important to include a ‘call to action' very early in your message. This gives a recipient the opportunity to respond immediately without reading through the rest of the email. In this initial ‘call to action' you should not use ‘hard sell'- merely point them in the direction they can go if they are interested in your offer.

The body
The body is the main part of your promotional message. Make sure you focus on the benefits you are offering. It must be obvious what's in it for them. Use bullets to outline the benefits clearly. Your body should be around two to four paragraphs at the most. Use short, punchy paragraphs and include lots of white space around the paragraphs.