What Makes a Great Email?

As the owner and operator of a site that sells work from home leads and business opportunity leads, I get a lot of inquiries from my clients, wondering how they can improve their success when email marketing.

Of course, there is no single answer, since what works in one market may not work in another market.

There is, however, a set of guidelines that most people should follow when designing their email marketing campaigns.

So what makes a great email?

First, it should tell a story. Second, every email should contain some kind of offer. Finally, you must include a call to action.

First of all, people inherently love stories. They’re engaging, and they put people at ease. If your emails are “all business”, people will quickly catch on that they are little more than sales pitches. Telling a story, on the other hand, engages your reader, and gives you a chance to build some suspense, and arouse some curiosity. Both of those are powerful elements in getting people to continue reading.

You can tell a story from a very personal angle, or tell the story behind your product or opportunity, or you can tell a story about your own success with the product you’re going to endorse. It really doesn’t matter, as long as your readers have some motivation to continue reading. The story gives them that.

Next, you have to make an offer. You can “offer” to finish the story on your web site, or you can “offer” to reveal the name of the mystery product you found so helpful in your business, or you can “offer” a limited-time discount.

Exactly what you offer is less important than the fact that the offer is there … it gives people a motive to respond to your “call to action”, which is the third and final component that should exist in every email.

Many people overlook the importance of the call to action. What is it? It’s that sentence towards the bottom of the email that says “click this link” or “visit my website”. Far too many email marketers fail to realize that you have to tell people what you want them to do.

You need to tell your readers to click your link. You need to tell them to buy your product. As trite as it sounds, telling people what to do will increase your response rates, often dramatically.

Review your emails for these three key elements, and watch your results improve!

Author John Barbour sells work from home leads from his site at Nitro List Builder.com. He is also the author of the email marketing ebook "The Email Profit Formula", and writes the "List Profit" email marketing blog.

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