The Construction Of An Email

The Construction Of An Email

There are many different ways that one can construct an email. However, because of the amount of research that has been done for email marketing, we know which type of construction works best these days.

Many people build lists for the purpose of sending out a newsletter. Newsletters are still good, and still read, but we have found that recommendation sales letters seem to work better now. A recommendation letter is faster at getting to the point than a newsletter.

A sales email should start with a good, strong subject line. Often, a marketer will take more time choosing a subject line than writing the actual email. It’s very important, because it is the difference between your email getting opened and getting trashed. We will cover subject lines in more detail in the next section.

Once the email is opened, the email should greet the reader. As with subject lines the greeting is important, and is covered in more detail later. Following the greeting, you have the body of the email, which consists of an opening paragraph; follow up paragraphs, and a closing paragraph.

Following the closing paragraph, you will include your signature. You may or may not include a post script. The email will also contain verbiage that makes it CAN- SPAM compliant.

How to Write Successful Emails

The email must be formatted. The lines should be no more than 50 characters wide, including spaces and punctuation. If it is longer, it is possible that the email will break up, as described earlier. The length of the email message doesn’t matter, although many experts believe that shorter emails are better.

These are the mechanics of the email sales letter, however there is still more to it. When it comes to email sales letters, it isn’t so much how the email is constructed – although this matters – as what you say, and how you say it. Let’s look beyond the mechanics.

The email sales letter must draw the reader’s attention. You don’t have very long to capture that attention, and you are competing with all of the other emails in the readers inbox. This is done with the subject line.

The email sales letter must address the person, by name. You must greet them, and that greeting must compel them to keep reading. Think about any salesman you know. Their first objective is to learn your name, and then they continue to use your name throughout their conversation with you.

The body of the email is also incredibly important. Each paragraph matters, because it determines whether or not the reader reads the next paragraph, or whether or not they hit the delete button. Getting them to open the email and to start reading is only half the battle – you have to keep them there.

Towards the end of the body of the email, there must be a call to action. What do you want your reader to do, and how are you going to get them to do it? This is determined in the words that you use, and the promises that you make.

Postscripts are a source of debate. There are those who use modest postscripts, and those who literally beat the postscripts to death. You’ve seen those website sales letters and email letters that have a P.S, followed by P.S.S, followed by

P.S.S.S. That is going a little too far. One P.S., if it is needed, is plenty, and since the email is typed with a word processor, and you could easily go back in and add the information in the postscript to the body of the letter, it really isn’t necessary at all.

Experts, however, state that the postscript is your last chance to get your reader to take the action that you desire. Other experts agree that if you did a good job with the body of the email, it isn’t necessary. Both sets of experts are correct. It is your last chance, but if you’ve accomplished your goal in the body of the email, it isn’t necessary. We will cover closing the email sales letter in more detail later.

How to Write Successful Emails

So, as far as the construction of the email, it is important to remember the mechanics, and at the same time to remember the psychological aspects of the email sales letter as well. Think of this as physical construction and mental construction. It doesn’t matter how well your email is put together physically if it doesn’t have anything that will cause the reader to take the action you desire.

On the other hand, it could be very well constructed from a mental standpoint, but so hard to read because you’ve failed in the mechanical sense that the recipient doesn’t read far enough to be compelled to take that action. They both matter, and you have to learn to perfect it.

Again, we are going to cover more aspects of the email sales letter in much greater detail. This includes the subject line, the greeting, and the body of the email, the closure, and the CAN-SPAM compliance.

Make sure that you read each section carefully, so that you understand the physical expectations of the email, and how those aspects affect your reader on the mental level, remembering that both aspects work together to get your desired result.