Eight essential elements

Eight essential elements

While you are mapping out your offer, here's a checklist of ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS that you need to include in every promotion. You should already know the answers to these questions before you write your ad copy.

1] What single product or service are you offering?

Don't fall into the trap of trying to promote more than one product or service in any e-mail promotion. When you do this, you water down the effect of your promotion for ALL of them. Focus on just ONE product or service and your readers will focus, too.

 
2] Who is your target audience?

This question only applies if you have more than one mailing list. If, for example, you have a newsletter mailing list plus a seperate mailing list containing the names of the purchasers of each of your products (for example), then it's important to decide who you are going to target beforehand. The more personal and the more relevant you can make your message the more chances you will have of making a sale.

The first sentence of any promotion should ideally include a reference to the relationship you have with the reader. This immediately establishes your credibility and increases the probability that they will at least read your message.

 
3] How will you create urgency in your offer?

Do you have limited supplies?
Is the price going up soon?
Is it a time-critical promotion?
Is it a test-marketing - available only to the first x people who respond?

Urgency is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL because it's what compels your readers to act NOW rather than put it off with the intention of "coming back another time." (Which they never do!)

 
4] How will readers BENEFIT from responding to your call to action?

You're not selling the product, you're selling what it will
do for the reader... YOU'RE SELLING THE BENEFITS.

Describing your product will do nothing for your reader. Describing how your product is going to help the reader will draw their attention straight away. Use benefits to create excitement, so that readers will act without hesitation when required to do so.

Benefits SELL: Product Features COMPARE

If your offer includes NUMEROUS benefits, you should consider using bullet points. These allow you to cover information quickly in a limited space.

If your e-mail promotion focuses on ONE outstanding benefit, you should write a really strong personal letter, since this usually generates better results with a "one benefit" promo.

 
5] How long should your copy be?

First of all, you should make sure that your pages are formatted with a maximum of 60 characters per line. Personally, I never use more than 55.

Generally you should try to limit your offer to one full page of text (that's an imaginary sheet of paper with your text in a single column 60 characters wide!). Much more than that and you risk 'the boredom factor' setting in.

You can keep your copy short by remembering that you are not trying to 'sell' your subscribers anything at this stage. You simply want them to take a particular action like...
Click through to your web site and buy your product
or - Subscribe to your newsletter
or - Request more information about your product or service

 
6] What links will be included and where should they appear?

Your call to action (i.e., "Click here now" or "Visit my site") with your link should appear AFTER you've presented your benefits and created urgency -- NEVER BEFORE!

The only exception to this is where you are offering something free, in which case you can place your link almost anywhere.

Don't forget to always use the "AOL" link formatting protocol by adding HTML holders <a href=" before the link, and ">Click Here</a> after the link. So to properly format the link http://www.mydomain.com you would type, <a href=" http://www.mydomain.com ">CLICK HERE</a>

In this example, all that AOL users would see would be the words "CLICK HERE", but it would be a live Hyperlink taking them to http://www.mydomain.com. Don't be tempted to ignore this formating otherwise you will be ignoring almost 20% of your subscribers!

 
7] What contact information will you provide?

The final paragraph of your ad should include a contact name and e-mail address. Including this information creates credibility! Don't be afraid to remind your readers that you're a real person living in the real world. They'll be far more comfortable with your offer if they're comfortable with you.

 
8] What "extra" benefit will you include in your P.S.?

The first and the last sentences of any email are the most important -- people naturally skim the first line, then scroll to the bottom and read the last line, before deciding whether or not they'll read your entire e-mail.

For that reason, an effective P.S. should either restate the biggest benefit of your offer or should offer a "bonus" that isn't mentioned in the body of the e-mail. And of course, your P.S. should also restate your call to action