The In and Outboxes of Email for Sales and Lead Generation

In this fast-paced world we live and work in, email has come to be a standard part of our everyday experiences. Think about how many emails you send, personally and professionally, on any given day. Is it in the double digits? Triple? With so many emails being sent and received, how many do you think are effective?

Turn that thought to the marketing side of email. How many SPAM-like “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” sales-oriented emails do you delete each day? It’s doubtful that having their email deleted was the intent of the sender, so what went wrong?

The purpose of using email as a communication medium, whether for business or personal reasons, is to relay information or trigger an action. However, more often than not, emails fall short of that goal. Content, verbiage, and even the layout of the content can all reduce the potency of your email message, leaving your recipient confused, indifferent, or worse, irritated by your message.

The following tips will help optimize your email message and achieve your intended objective(s) when considered prior to writing your first draft:

• Think about the intent of your email message and the action you want your recipient(s) to take.
• Keep the talking points simple. Stick to ONE message.  All content on the email should support one point from multiple perspectives with the intent of having the recipient take some action.
• Use images because people think visually and will often scan a page based on the image, or use the image to understand the purpose of the page. This is why you can’t use just any image or an image of poor quality.  Photos are workhorses in email communication, encapsulating the gist of the story in one eyeful – so be very thoughtful of your selection and the way you go about taking a photo or choosing one.
• Read the content for tone, usage and then, read it again. But do so after separation time.  Save the email and come back to it. You’ll be amazed at what a little distance will do.  Once you do read it think of yourself as the target audience and see if there is anything that could be miscommunicated, misunderstood, or understood in more than one way.  Then ask a couple of other people to read it, whether they are in your target audience or not.  The more diverse the backgrounds of those how to provide feedback to you, the greater the likelihood that you will be introduced to something that would never have crossed your mind.

Email can be a highly effective communication tool, but there needs to be a strategy with goals and recipients in mind. Before your hit send, remember to re-read the whole thing from beginning to end one more time to be sure it makes your intent and the benefits to action crystal clear.