How To Get Your Marketing E-mails Read

More and more people are using e-mail marketing in their business as a way to quickly and easily contact hundreds if not thousands of prospects and customers. However, few people fail to realize that there is a lot more to e-mail marketing than that.

E-mail marketing is no different than any other type of marketing, the same types of rules apply. It is important to understand that e-mail marketing is just a tool and like any tool you must learn how to use it. Your goal should not always be to make the sale, but to get the prospect to request additional information.

Most e-mail marketing is doomed from the start. As much as 90% or more of e-mails sent will never be read. Why is that?

There are two big reasons for this...

1. Poor subject line - screw this up and the rest of your message is irrelevant.

Your subject line announces your e-mail and tells the reader if the message is important to them or not. Your subject line should do one thing and one only - get your reader to open the message and read the first sentence.

Simply stating "You can make $30,000 in the next 30 days" just wont cut it. In fact, a line like this will probably increase the chance that it will be considered spam and not read at all. The more hyped your subject is, the less chance of getting a response. How do you attract the reader's attention without hype? There's no magic formula, but personalizing the subject line with your prospects name greatly increases your chances for a second look. But name alone wont get you great results, you still need to write the rest of your subject line without the hype.

2. Don't confuse the prospect in the first paragraph

Now that the prospect has opened up your message, another huge percentage of your prospects will not make it past the first sentence. Your goal is to get them to read the first sentence, which leads to the second and so on.

Don't state in the first sentence why you sent the e-mail message, how to opt-out, apologize for your message, etc... and for sure don't state that this message is not spam! Every sentence should contribute toward moving your prospect towards your objective what ever that objective is. If your subject gets the prospects' attention, the first paragraph should lead them into the rest of you message. You should allows keep one thing in mind, your prospect only cares about one thing - what is in it for them.

Provide your prospects with something of value and they will take you up on your offer. What do you have that can help them in making a decision? What can you give away that will be an asset to them? If you become a resource to your prospects you will see the quality and quantity of responses change for the better.

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