Let’s face it, most days it’s almost as if the e-mail inbox is none other than a convenient collection point for junk mail. In fact, I sometimes doubt whether or not my own e-mails make it through the system or if they get lost in the maze.
The bottom line now is whether you’re communicating with a client, or whether you’re in the midst of an active email marketing campaign, unless your e-mail gets to the top of the list, it’s not going to be read. The question is, how do we get our e-mail to the top of a person’s list.
E-mail is your voice
As you yourself may have already noticed, most promotional or business-originated e-mail we receive is cold and without any feeling. In fact, they contain far too much jargon, and try too hard to sell you something. Little, if any attempt is made to draw the reader in and as a result, I seldom read past the first few lines.
Sure I read some e-mail messages, but I only read those which come across as being written in a friendlier, warmer tone. Essentially the only way an e-mail will captivate me is when it feels as though the writer is communicating with me directly. When you genuinely put your voice into an e-mail, people will be more willing to read it, irrespective of the content or subject.
Below are a just a few good tips for putting your voice into your e-mail:
Always avoid trying to sound like somebody else but instead, be yourself and use the power of your own voice. Furthermore, rather than trying to impress others with long fancy words and technical jargon, just be yourself and speak casually, using plain and simple English. In other words, speak as if you have nothing to lose. Ideally, when you speak to someone via e-mail you should speak the same as you would if you were sitting in the same room as them. If that person was in the same room as you and asked you a question, how would you respond? This is exactly how you should write your e-mail copy. Far too many marketers concentrate entirely on trying to sell their product or service and in so doing, they fail to capture the attention or imagination of the reader.
There are millions of marketers out there and many of them use the same old boring catch-phrases time after time after time. Remember, before you decide to use a cliché, others have more than likely used it already and for this reason it’s better to be creative. To achieve this, you could either say something unexpected, or you could say what you want to say in an unexpected way. The important thing is that you need to be different and unique in your own way.
