Before Getting Started on Your First Email Writing

2.1 The Single Most Important Purpose of Your Email

Why is it that you send a marketing email to the members of your opt­in list? Most likely you aren’t sending email just for the sake of sending email or because you think that sending email is just a ton of fun.

No. You send email for just one purpose. That purpose is to convince those who receive your email to act on it. You want the recipients to buy what you are selling. You want them to click on the links you supplied, drag out those credit cards and buy what you are selling.

In plain English, the object of a marketing email is to sell the products or services that you are recommending in it.

There is a geometric therom that says, “ The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. ”The object of a marketing email should be a straight line between point A(You sending the email) and point B(the recipient of the email buying the product or service that you are selling).

You don’t want to send the members of your list by way of the sceneic route. You want them to get on the freeway and go as quickly as possible from receiving the email to buying whatever you are selling.

If you lose sight of the main object of a marketing email that you send out to the members of your list, you are very likely to send them on that sceneic tour and make them forget all about getting from point A to point B.

This is the reason that you need to keep your eye on your goal while you are composing your marketing email. Remember that the average email user does not actually read their email from you. They scan the email.

Their attention spans are notoriously short and you just don’t have th luxury of a longwindedsales pitch.

Long blocks of text will go unread . Not only will it not be read it will be the cause of your email being kissed by the delete button. People are not patient. The goal is to get them to make a purchase and not bore them to death in the process.

The very best marketing emails are short, one­page letters . They have short sentence. They have short paragraphs and they have bullet points that outline the top 3 or 4 top selling points of the product or service that you are promoting.

There is actually a good one word description of a sales email that is directed at the main purpose of making a sale. That word is ‘succinct’.

The dictionary defines ‘succinct’as: expressed in few wordsconciseterse.

Remember what your goal is when you are composing your marketing email message and remember the definition of ‘succinct’. They go hand in hand.

There are several very important factors to consider when you are composing an email that is succinct and on target. The first is, of course, convincing your list to buy what you are selling but there are other factors as well.

Your marketing email always needs to be formatted correctly.... that is it should only use ASCII characters, have only 65 characters per line and should not contain word­wrapped links. This formatting makes your emails readable in all email programs.

An attention getting subject line is vital, as well. If you can’t convince the recipients of your email to open it, they can’t act on it no matter how great it is. Additionally, every word needs to be spelled correctly and the grammar needs to be impeccable.

The ONLY goal of a marketing email is to sell the product or service being advertised.

2.2 What You Need to Know Before Writing Your Email

Writing powerful marketing emails take practice . You will look back someday on the first marketing emails that you write and not only laugh but wonder why anybody bought anything in the first place.

The first and most important thing to keep in mind when you are composing your marketing emails is that real, live people will be reading them...or at least you hope they will be r eading them. You aren’t sending email to email addresses. You are sending email to people.

The real people behind the email addresses on your opt­in list may not have a lot in common with one another. A housewife in Toledo, a business executive in New York and a rancher in Texas might not choose to have lunch together but they do have at least two similarities.

They are all human beings and they all opted into your mailing list. If you direct your marketing message to any one of them, the message will go right over the heads of the other two. Concentrate on the two similarities of all of them and direct your message to those commonalities.

There is no doubt that you have heard this question many times and phrased many ways...” What’s in it for me? ”That is precisely the question that the readers of your marketing email want answered....and they expect you to answer it quickely.

The members of your opt­in list want you to quickly answer the ‘what’s in it for me’question. They don’t want you to list reasons for them to buy what you are selling. They want to know how the product or service can help them achieve their goals, make them feel better, look better, answer pressing questions, solve their problems or answer their questions. They honestly don’t care why YOU think that they should buy the product or service that you are offering. They want to know what is in it for them.

A simple way to keep your marketing email focused on the ways that the product or service that you are offering is focused on th e needs of the recipients of the email is this there is no ‘I’in ‘sales’ .

Reread the marketing email that you have written. Every time you have said, “I”change it to ‘YOU’and rearrage the sentence so that it makes sense. If the sentence can’t be changed...remove it. It’s counterproductive.

The third thing to remember when composing your marketing email is that you need to always use the right ‘tone’when you are speaking to your perspective customers. For example: You would not speak to your boss in the same tone of voice or use the same words or phrasing that you would use if you were speaking to your child or your spouse or a stranger on the street. Each person that you speak to requires that you use a different ‘tone’so that your words are effective and understood.

The most effective tone for a marketing email is friendly but business­like. You don’t want your emails to sound stilted and formal. On the other hand, you don’t want them to sound too familiar or too casual. Either extreme would be a turn­off for some of the members of your list. Choose words and phrasing to convey your message in a friendly but business like tone.

The fourth thing that you should keep in mind when you are composing your email messages is that spelling and grammar count. Misspelled words and poor grammar make you sound dumb and uneducated. You most likely have a spell check program on your computer. Most spell check programs are very good but they are not infallible. The grammar check on Microsoftword will not correct grammar gaffs like using ‘there’when you should have used ‘their’or ‘your’when you should have used ‘you’re’.

2.3 Tools You Strictly Must Have

If you are an affiliate marketer, you simply must send marketing emails to the members of your opt- in list. There really isn’t any other better choice. Your marketing emails will generate more sales for your than all of the advertising you do put together.

As you most likely know by now, your auto responder requires that your marketing messages be in a specific format. There is a very good reason for this formatting requirement. That reason is that not all email programs are created equally.

Some email programs will scramble lines of text that are longer than the prescribed 65 characters . What your members get is an email that is mostly just gibberish. Some email programs accept only plain text mail. That means that your message must be made up of only ASCII characters.

ASCII characters are those that you see on your keyboard. When email programs that only support ASCII script are presented with characters that they don’t recognize, they often do strange things. A quatation mark, for example, might be sent as the number ‘0’.

A program comes build right in on your computer when you buy it that will produce text in only ASCII characters. It’s your ‘NOTE PAD’program.

Notepad is not to be confused with Word Pad. They are two different programs. In order to meet the ASCII character requirement of your auto responder, type your email messages in your note pad program.

You can type them in another program first, if you wish and then copy and paste them onto a note pad document. All formatting will be removed by the note pad program and all characters will be ASCII. You will then still have to shorten your lines to 65 characters.

There is a free program that you candownload from the Internet at http://www.notetab.com/ called Note Tab .

This program will produce type in only ASCII characters and will also allow you to format your line length. There is a free basic program on the site. Additionally, you will find some programs that have added features that you might well find useful enough to merit spending a few bucks to get. Note Tab Light is under $5 and worth a lot more because of the formatting ease it provides.

Another point of correct formatting for auto responders is that full URL’s must be used rather than be word­wrapped. As we all know, some URL’s are monstrous...especially affiliate links. They require many lines. That turns into a problem but there is a solution. Long URL’s can be reduced to simple URL’s at http://tinyurl.com/ . The service is free and you canlink to the site if you wish.

In order to achieve the formatting requirements set forth by your auto responder you need to use the correct tools. The tools that you should use are:

An auto responder account, I recommend Aweber.

Either the note pad program on your computer or the Note Tab software.

The URL reducing program that you can find at Tiny URL .

Additionally, if you really need some ser ious, no­nonsense affiliate marketing help, we recommend that you check out Secret Affiliate Weapon to get that help. Ewen Chia canprovide you with the secrets of affiliate marketing success.

Mr. Chia has been the top earning affiliate marketer on the Internet for the last eighteen years. He does know what he is talking about and he cancertainly help you in your quest to join him at the top of the affiliate marketing heap.

2.4 Different Types of Promo Emails You Can Write

The beautiful thing about promotional emails is that they are limited only by your own imagination. There are many different kinds of promotional emails and you canmost likely think up many that won’t be listed here. These are just a few types of promotional email that you can write and send to your opt- in list

members:
Promote your own product .

If you have a newsletter or a digital product that is your own, you can send an email to your list promoting you r own product.

Promote a product for which you are an affiliate marketer .

You are, after all, an affiliate marketer. The more products or services that you can sell to your list, the higher your income will be and the more valuable you become as an affiliate marketer. Many times the percentages that you agreed to when you became an affiliate for a product or service will be increased according to the number of sales that you make.

Offer a free gift .

Sometimes you must get something in order to get something. Website traffic is the key to success for affiliate marketers. You can entice your list to visit your website by offering a free giftthat can only be downloaded on your site.

Promote a webinar or temeseminar .

Webinars and teleseminars are big right now. People happily pay for the privilege of getting to participate in them.

Selling membership access to a membership website .

Membership websites that are dedicated to in depth information and the exchange of ideas about a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of the members of your list aren’t hard to sell.

Send a quiz or survey questions .

Post the answers on your website so that the members of your list will visit.