Do Business Well

David Mill, of specialist e-marketing agency MediaCo (www.media.co.uk), gives these best-practice guidelines for e-mail copy: You can read more detailed advice by David on copywriting and all aspects of online marketing in his book Content is King, which is also part of the E-marketing Essentials series (Mill, 2005).

Body Content

You have some 10 seconds to grab the attention of recipients after they have opened the message. Therefore, the content should:

• be relevant and focused. The more it appeals to your audience, the better the results.
• Make the objective obvious. For example, ‘Enter our competition to win’ or ‘Here is the latest news on …’. In addition, it is often good practice to take an early opportunity to tell recipients why they are receiving the e-mail - for example, ‘You have received this newsletter because …’.

With regard to the message itself, it should:

• be clear and concise.
• be written in plain language.
• avoid jargon - no buzzwords, jargon, funky phrases or punctuation unless expected by the target market.
• be kept short - short copy delivers results but, if it must be long, a synopsis or content list should be provided at the outset. HTML versions that can be viewed in one screen are also most effective. If they are longer, key elements should be viewable above the fold.
• be immediately of interest — have the key points and main clickthrough links in the immediately viewable area.
• be creative, so it stands out from the crowd.

Generally speaking, the content should:

• use compelling active voice and action verbs
• use compe^lling active voice and action verbs
• talk about THEM not you
• place readers in the action
• stress benefits, not features
• build real and perceived value
• have personality, so you and the recipient connect.

A newsletter is most effective when it does one of two things:

1. Reflects the typical reader’s personality, appealing to the reader at another level — i.e. a personality the reader can both recognize and accept within the context of the newsletter.
2. Has a personality that adds to the human element of the newsletter and boosts the one-to-one characteristic of e-mail marketing, bearing in mind it is not an audience that’s being addressed — it’s an individual sitting alone in front of a screen.

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