Writing Effective Email and Newsletters

Email or newsletter marketing is quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to promote a business using the Internet. 

Last week's article discussed the most important things to keep in mind to avoid getting deleted. The next thing to do is to craft an effective email message.

What's Your Point?
Your email should focus on one thing. The first thing you should do is decide what this one thing is going to be.  Once you decide the one point that you want to get across, take a look at your idea from the view of the people you're sending it to. See if you can turn the idea into a hook.

A hook appeals to the interests of your audience, not yours. If it appeals to you, your message is Spam. If it appeals to your audience, your message has the potential to be an effective email.

This hook should do one of two things. It should either help cement your relationship with the receiver, or move them to act.

Everything else in the message should work to communicate this one point.

The Three Most Important Parts of Your Message
The three most important parts of your email, in order of importance, are: the subject, the first paragraph, and the last paragraph. 

The subject line serves as the title of your email. It should introduce your hook. It doesn't have to be a complete sentence or even state the point of your message. It should, however, lead into your point, and be short and catchy. People determine if they will read your email based off of your subject line, so it has to work like a title and work to catch your reader.

The first paragraph should introduce you idea in complete terms. If your goal is to get your audience to act, you should do it in the first paragraph. If you want them to go to an URL, put the URL in the first paragraph.

The last paragraph wraps things up. Users often will skip to the last paragraph to make