Writing business emails that convert is not a simple case of internet tricks. A large part of your success will come from knowing what the recipient wants and knowing what the recipient expects from you. Another element is going to be making sure you do not make the mistakes that so many others have made. And the last one thing – a little bit magic.
Here are a few tips based on the mistakes that we often see when dealing with email marketing.
#1. Do not dumb it down
When writing online articles there is a certain need to dumb down your text and this even includes when you are writing on rather esoteric matters. This is not because the populace is dumb by all accounts, it is because people have a funny way of interpreting text one way or another, and where the written word is not as open for interpretation as the spoken words, it is still a ripe area for misunderstanding.
Still, if you are writing to business partners or clients then you need to throw this caution to the wind and be as complex and esoteric as needed. Take your risk based on your current relationship with your client/business partner and remember that they should be looking at you as if were a expert.
#2. Skip your intro
If you are sending a newsletter, then you do not need an introduction and there are many other email messages that do not even require a “Hi”. If you are used to dealing with your client or business partner then there should not be a need for the polite intro on every business email. The only times it may be needed (if you are contacting a client/partner you know well) is if they have a team of staff that may view your email before the decision makers do.
#3. Keep it simple
This means your business email should not be an example of old English essay writing, nor should it have more graphics than the adverts on Broadway. You can add in flair and you can even add in complexity, but the overriding theme should be simplicity. If your design is complex then you should lead the eye so that the process of reading your email is simple.
#4. Have a goal or a point to your business email
Sending messages to remind people of your existence is a terrible idea. It is like the kid in a classroom who coughs overly loud when new people enter the room. It is annoying and wastes the time of the recipient. It also trains them to devalue your emails. If you are not emailing for a specific reason that may be allied to a certain specific goal then do not email.
#5. Make it fast loading
People over the age of 15 years old are going to remember a time when you risked infecting your computer by simply clicking on a bad email, and for those of us who remember those times there is an air of caution that comes with opening emails. If your email takes just a shade too long to load then the user may opt out and click back (or even close the browser if severely worried), and you can avoid this by simply making it load faster.
#6. Do not rely on images
There are a lot of bugs and problems that come with email. They are related to the operating system of the device being used, the browser, the email service, the service server and any related email website bugs. In short, it means that there are times when your images are not going to show up on some of your recipient’s emails. This means you cannot rely on images. You need to build your emails without images and add them in nearer the end remembering that the email still has to make sense without the images.
#7. Be wary of design templates
They do look good but unless you have designed them and tested them yourself then you cannot be sure how good they are. They are restrictive in terms of design and may have bugs that do not show up on your desktop computer but that are glaringly obvious on mobile devices. Design templates may also be overkill as sometimes a very simple email format and design beats out the fancy and flashy template designs.
Images: ”Got e mail from tablet / Shutterstock.com“
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