Tips on Writing Effective Emails
Grab attention via the title – 80% of people will only read your title. Make sure you include a catchy title that makes them open the email. For example, it might be a question, controversial, provocative or combo of both. “Are you about to go bankrupt?”
Spend half your time on the email content and half on the title. The title is that important. And the content should be aiming for a simple easy action you want them to take – don’t ask for marriage on the first date! 🙂
Use bullets in your email to make it easy to see the key messages or benefits you are offering. In general you want to keep your email short and to the point. Time is precious, everyone is time poor these days.
Structure your email message so it’s clearly showing how you will help your customer move away from pain and towards pleasure. Always cover both. Show how you will help them avoid pain. Show them how you will help them experience pleasure. When you make statements about benefits, see if you can back them up with stats or specific numbers to add credibility.
Use a ‘ps’ at the bottom. Second highest read part of the email! Use it for a call to action, deadline reminder, special offer.
Use Your Vision and Values to Boost Business
1. Hire the right people
Assess existing staff and candidates you are interviewing by asking yourself this question, “Will this person help take my business to my vision?”
“Do they share the same values?”
You might be surprised at the answer.
I’ve seen business owners that are chronic bad hirers turn things around just by doing this.
You also attract better candidates when you include your vision and values in your job ads.
It can scare away the one’s that are not serious and motivate the one’s that resonate with them. And that is what you want.
2. Test your marketing collateral
Hold your marketing and your vision and values side by side and ask yourself if there is a match.
Are they in alignment?
Does your marketing take your business towards your vision?
Does it express your values?
3. Share it!
Don’t hide your Vision or Values.
Especially if you depend upon repeat business. We ‘buy’ people, not just products.
As a customer, we are looking for certainty and a match to our own values, therefore the more we know about the values and vision of a business, the more ‘certain’ we feel about doing business.
Brain Hack: 3 Strategies to Boost Your Success
Here are 3 powerful strategies to trick your brain into helping you succeed.
Using them regularly will rewire your brain and improve your ability to quickly connect to answers rather than blocks.
Our brains are like the internet. Our language is like the search terms we enter. If we Google “how to…?” we get all kinds of random ‘how to’ suggestions. If we use more accurate and specific search terms, eg “how to make chocolate cake” we get the answers we are looking for. Same with our self talk – it can help to be more specific.
Trick 1: Ask how
Instead of saying “I can’t afford it”, rephrase it with “How can I afford it?” Or “How can we afford it?” Or “How can we overcome this issue?”
When you say “how can I afford it?” your brain looks for ways that you CAN afford it. Use this for business or investment situations. I discovered this 16yrs ago when I started investing in property and it helped me obtain properties in WA, VIC and Qld.
Trick 2: Just add ‘yet’
“I don’t know” versus “I don’t know…yet”.
Repeat each one and note how you feel after saying it. Can you feel the difference?
Trick 3: Eliminate confusion
Instead of saying “I’m confused” use “I’m seeking clarification.”
The first one reinforces an unhelpful state. The second triggers your brain to help you find the answers you need. Big difference! brainhackforsuccess, mindstrategies, betterthinking
Beware the Ugly Box Syndrome!
How we describe our product or service is very much like putting it in a ‘box’.
The words we use to describe it to someone that can’t see it or haven’t experienced it yet, is a form of ‘packaging’.
Our words are the ‘packaging’ that the customer can see and create an opinion on.
Would you intentionally put your product/service is an ugly box?
Yet many sales emails are doing exactly this.
This happens when we write our sales emails, flyers or websites from our point of view and not our customers.
We list features rather than benefits. We HIDE our great product/service in an ugly box that we then enthusiastically shove in the face of a potential customer and expect them to get excited and buy it.
Here’s a great little strategy I’ve developed to help solve this problem.
Take your email or any other promo text and draw boxes around features or facts.
It is especially important to do this for your first and last sentences!
Then ask yourself, ‘can I unpack these boxes? How can I turn the facts or features into benefits to my customer?