Debbie Mayo-Smith: Connections key to beating the email turn-off

Debbie Mayo-Smith.

It's funny. One of my Facebook business page posts last week that generated the most responses was this: "If I answered all my junk mail this morning, all my dreams would come true and I'd be in line for millions of offshore dollars plus I could verify my ANZ account (didn't know I had one) 20 times."

I'm sure you can relate to this. It highlights how it's more difficult than ever to get our marketing emails through to the recipient, and then read by them.

If people have filtered spam in their junk mail folder they need to run an eye over it just in case there are inter-office memos, normal emails and newsletters. So how can you get your marketing email to stand out?

I'd like to cover 11 tips to help you and your company make more of an emotional connection with your reader to help get your emails read and actioned. Most of these tips can be applied to your print communications, too.

* Get past the spam filters
Learn about the spam filters and black lists that ISPs, corporate filtering and Microsoft Office use to screen out emails.

Otherwise, you're sunk. You might want to refer to my Herald article, Stay on message to get past the spam filter.

* Subject lines that intrigue
While writing this column, a perfect email arrived from Purina. A while ago I signed up for a free dog food sample and had to give our dog's name. All Purina emails come addressed to our chihuahua. Corny, but you know what? I always look at them. The subject line? "Hey Gremlin - your two-legged friend MUST read this."

* Personality
Put "you" into your emails. For many people in smaller businesses, most of your email recipients will know you. Don't be stiff and formal with them. Write with personality. In fact, imagine you're talking to them; it's not only easier to write this way, it is more interesting to read. But using personality doesn't mean you can be lazy and just ramble on and not edit. Use personality - concisely!

* What is in it for them?
Write about benefits from their point of view. Enough said.

* Offer on top
People read from the top down, left to right. So if you're doing a promotional or selling email, be sure your offer is the very first thing and make it the first link in your message.

Try to resist including several offers: they will confuse your reader and depress the overall results.

* Paint pictures
People think in pictures. If you read "car", you see a car mentally. So try to paint pictures with words and descriptions in your emails and newsletters. But I repeat, be concise. It's the way of the internet: people do not have a lot of time for the luxury of reading. Concise, to the point, and with personality.

A marvellous aid (besides your handy thesaurus) is the MS Word synonym finder. Simply highlight the word you want to replace, right-click, select "synonym" and see if any of the options are suitable.

* Break it up
Keep sentences short. Keep paragraphs short. Use lots of titles and subtitles for paragraphs and put them in bold. A great tip is to keep the subtitle on a separate line.

This makes it easier to read, gives an idea of what the paragraph is about and helps people skim your material quickly.

* Clean, uncluttered reading
Make your email easy to scan. Add lots of white space to your strategy of short paragraphs and subtitles. Don't have a lot of text in different typefaces and different column settings competing for the eye.

* Wait a day
I suggest waiting and returning to communication the next day. It's amazing what clarity 24 hours provides, and the ability to make valuable editing decisions, too. Give it to someone else to read. Ask them to look for spelling, grammar, punctuation and content mistakes.

* Forget what your teacher told you
Writing for the internet is different. You can ignore some of the rules you've learnt, like never starting a sentence with "and" or having lots of short sentences. It builds a lovely rhythm.

* Minimal graphics
Especially moving ones - people are distracted rather than attracted by graphics when they are trying to read.

Modern email software doesn't show graphics automatically, anyway (Gmail, MS Outlook 2002-10). One has to click to allow images.

Book Giveaway
Be in to win one of five copies of Debbie's latest book, Make Your Database Your Goldmine. To enter, email thebusiness@nzherald.co.nz, putting "database" in the subject line. Entries must be received by Monday, September 6.

Debbie Mayo-Smith is a bestselling author and international speaker. Twitter mseffective

www.debbiespeaks.co.nz