If you are an email list marketer, you already know that your bread and butter comes from people clicking on the links in your email. When they click on your email links, they can sign up for all sorts of stuff.
Every time they sign up for something, eventually, dollars will appear in your bank account. This is pretty straightforward. This is why you’re in the game.
It’s All About the Content, Right?
You’ve heard the saying “content is king”. But does that apply to emails? The problem is, a lot of list marketers assume that list marketing is all about substance. To a large extent, I would agree. But the problem is, people also pay attention to format. That’s right. Not only do people judge a book by its cover, but often times, they only have time, or the attention span, to look at the cover.
The moment they see your email and they think that it is going to be a hassle to read, they’re going to shut down. They’re not going to be interested and they’re going to move on to the next email in their inbox. Eventually, they will delete your email.
In fact, if you make sending hard to read “wall of text” emails a habit, your mailing list members are just going to ignore your emails. What you end up doing is you train them to be scared of your emails. They think that it’s too much of a commitment to read your updates.
Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That
This doesn’t mean that they think it’s worthless. It doesn’t mean that they think you don’t know what you’re talking about. Instead, they feel that they just don’t have the time to actually read your stuff. Quite often, they decide to read it later. Well, they never get around to doing that, because they’re too busy, or have too many other distractions.
Opens are Crucial
It’s really crucial to get your readers to open your emails. But you also have to be careful as to your format. It really would suck for you to put in all this time, effort and energy coming up with killer headlines that get opened time and time again, only to have them closed or deleted right away.
The problem is, once people open your email, you fail to deliver because they see an intimidating wall of text. They feel that reading this stuff is going to be a chore. It’s going to be too much of a hassle. They don’t have the time.
So what do you need to do? How do you deliver? How do you get them to see your affiliate links so their actions can make you money? Please pay attention to the following tips:
Keep it Short
The first thing that you need to do is to write short emails. When your average list member receives your update and they see that your email has a lot of white space and the email itself is generally short, they are in the right frame of mind. They’re not intimidated, they’re not scared, they’re not under the impression that reading through your materials would take something out of them or take something away from their schedule.
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Keep it Simple and To the Point
One of the best things that you could do when writing emails is to work with tight space constraints. This prevents you from beating around the bush. This prevents you from saying ten words when two words would do. This also prevents you from using $10 words when 25 cent words will do the job.
Keep it simple and keep it focused on the point. You’re sending email updates for a reason. That reason better be about adding value to the lives of the recipients. Keep it at that level.
Plain Formatting Kills Reader Intimidation
Now, I understand that there are all sorts of email systems out there that enable you to put in all sorts of fancy formatting. This is very tempting because a lot of people are under the impression that if the text looks nice and fancy, people will love it. This is not necessarily the case, although I will say that if you can put your text into a few bullet points, and add a sub-title or two, that will help to break up that “wall of text” look. Just don’t overdo it.
Again, people are busy. Instead, they’re looking for value. They’re looking for ideas or information. When you format in a very plain way, the focus is on the idea or the information contained by your email. That is the payload.
Do yourself a big favor and kill the intimidation of your reader by sticking to plain formatting, regardless of the other fancy formatting options available at your disposal.
Give Yourself a Better Shot at Getting a Link Click
Unfortunately, nobody will give you that shot. You have to do it yourself. You have to run all sorts of tests to your mailing list until you find the right kind of formatting and message length that would maximize your link clicks.
There is no magic formula here. Somebody might be running their own list and they might be doing well with a fairly long email. They should stick with that. You, on the other hand, might have a list whose membership might prefer something shorter and more basic. Focus on what works for you.
Unfortunately, this is one piece of information that you have to find out for yourself. You will only discover this information through actual experience.
