Emails that Inspire

Completed

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Download Resource #3 here

Hi there. Welcome to unleash your email awesomeness lesson three. How to write emails, that inspire action, because that's the entire point of sending out an email, right? To encourage people to do something with it, to read it and maybe click on a link or book an appointment, or make a purchase, maybe share with a friend or continue to think about it long after they've read it.
These are all actions that you want your emails to encourage people to do. Right? So. How do you do that? You're about to learn the word power formula for writing, engaging action driven emails that encourage people to read to the end, easily understand the value and import of your message. Click on whatever links you're presenting them with and take action.
Exciting stuff. This formula consists of seven key ingredients. These are the main elements that determine how many people open read and take action on your emails. The better crafted these ingredients are. The more effective your emails will be. So in this lesson, we're going to look at all of these elements and explore how you can optimize them for better results.
Now these ingredients and this formula work for any kind of email you send out, it doesn't matter if you're sending it for the purpose of building a strong relationship with your audience, presenting them with an offer to buy something or sending them a transaction email as a followup to an action they've taken.
All right. So let's take a look at what these seven ingredients are. The first one is. Your subject line. This is the first thing that people see when they notice your email in their inbox. Then when they click on the subject line and your email opens, the next thing they see is your salutation line, where you say hello to them and you kick off your communication with them.
After that you have your opening and a hook of some sort that captures their attention and encourages them to keep reading. Because of course you want them to do that. Right? Then we get to what I like to call the meat of your message, the core information you most want to share with people after that, you've got your call to action.
This is where you tell people what to do and you make it easy for them to do it. Then you have your sign off. And after that you have your PS one last opportunity to emphasize an important point and or encourage people to take action. And there you have it, the seven key ingredients of an effective action driven email.
So now let's take a closer look at them. Number one, your subject line simply put your subject line is the most important part of any email you send out. Why because it's the first thing people see when your email lens in their inbox. It's the one thing that's going to catch their attention and to convince them to open your email or not.
Here's a list of subject lines in my inbox, for example. And as you can see, I've circled one that I wrote for one of my personal clients, a place where miracles happen. It's for an email promoting one of this client's live events. I especially liked this subject line because it's short and eye-catching, and it skirts the edge of hyperbole.
It's making a pretty audacious claim here yet. It's a direct quote from one of the testimonials included in the email itself. So I feel totally justified in using it as a subject line. Now we're going to be talking more about how to craft amazing subject lines in lesson four, but for now, remember this.
Your subject line is crucial to the success of your email. It doesn't matter how great the rest of your email is your message, your offer, your call to action, the landing page on your website, that your email leads people to. None of these things are as important as the words that land in people's inboxes and say, okay, Open me.
And that's why you really have to pay attention to lesson four, which comes after this one because it's going to make or break the entire performance of your email. Okay. So that's about subject lines. What comes after that? If you'll remember, it is. Your salutation. When people click on your subject line to read your email, this is going to be the first thing they see.
The salutation tells the recipient exactly who the email is for. So they can be reassured that this email was intended specifically for them. Here's what a typical salutation looks like. Right? Hi, Aaron. As you can see, it uses a merge field to add the first name of the subscriber and give the email a more personal feel.
It also reassures people that the email is less likely to be spam. After all of the sender has your first name. That means you probably entered it into an opt-in form or an order form at some point now, pretty much all email servers worth their salt, allow you to easily merge first names and other personalized information into the emails you write.
And that's a very good thing, and I encourage you to take advantage of it. But just in case you don't have this capacity right now, or you haven't started collecting people's first names along with their email addresses, you can put something a bit more general in your salutation, such as dear awesome person.
I like this because this is how I talk actually. Or dear aspiring writer, if you tend to be writing to an audience that's comprised mainly of writers or dear success coach, if that describes your audience or dear future bestselling author, if you want to be talking to their aspirations, or how about dear personal trainer?
Or dear fitness expert or dear wild woman. If you write specifically to women and your encouraging them to think of themselves as wild or outside the bounds of proper society in some way or whatever you can think of that does a great job of identifying who the audience is. Or even better who they want to be or become the more specifically targeted to your ideal customer or client, the better your salutation is going to be.
Now, this is also a great opportunity for you to add a bit of voice to your writing. After all, if you start your email with dear awesome person that tells them a lot about what kind of person you are and you know, the level of energy that you bring to things it's very different than the kind of person who had started an email with dear esteemed colleague.
Right. And these are both. Okay. It all depends on the audience that you're writing for. The main thing that I want you to be understanding here is overly generic is bed. Yo. And I say that because when you write overly generic greetings, um, it tends not to work in your favor. I'm talking about salutations, such as dear friend or dear valued customer.
Let's take a look at that first one. Dear friend, in my personal opinion, it never rings 100% sincere because if you don't know my first name, I can pretty much guarantee that you're not a friend. And to personally, that kind of artificial presumption of closeness makes me cringe a little bit. Another one that irks me is dear valued customer that kind of impersonal boiler plate copy sounds like a bad junk mail letter.
And it suggests that they haven't even taken the effort to figure out what my name is. And it doesn't exactly convince me that I'm going to find the following message meaningful. So that's why I encourage you to come up with something a bit more original and true to who you are for your salutation.
Now, right now, you might be wondering why bother including a salutation at all. Why not just leave it blank or get right to the point of the email and the first line. Here's why studies have shown over and over and over again, that personalization boosts conversion, and one of the simplest and most obvious ways to personalize your message is to include the name of the person receiving it in the salutation.
And when appropriate, you might even want to include it in your subject line as well. Okay. So what comes after the salutation? Your opener, which ideally should include some sort of hook. Now, when I say hook, what I'm talking about is a short teaser where you include just enough information about what the email is about to peak people's curiosity and interest, and inspire them to keep reading, to be really effective.
Your hook should make some sort of promise. For example, you're about to discover or learn or experience this amazing thing. What that amazing thing is, of course depends on the purpose and or the offer of your email. If it's a sales email, maybe promise them that they'll learn how to solve a big problem, or maybe let them know that you're going to tell them how to save money on their next training, something like that.
Okay. So let's take a minute to explore what your hook could look like. Here's a simple one. You're about to discover this amazing information or gift or solution to a problem. But first, uh, let's say I have a question to ask you, and then you could ask them a question that gets them thinking about the problem or challenge your product or service addresses, hopefully in a way that generates some sort of emotional response.
Or you could start by telling people that you have some exciting news to share about, say an upcoming event in your area, or a powerful new way to solve a challenge that, you know, they struggle with. But first you'd like to let them know about something else by creating a sense of expectation and then delaying their gratification, you get people's attention and you motivate them to read your email more closely, which as you can guess is a good thing.
Here's another way you could frame it. How would you like to solve this problem or experience this phenomenal thing? I'm going to show you how, but first then again, you ask them a question or you present them with a short but useful piece of information that gets them thinking about the main problem or topic at hand before giving them whatever it is.
You promised them in the hook. Finally, here's one last powerful way to encourage people to engage mentally with your email, right from the opening line. Imagine. Imagine yourself enjoying this incredible experience, or imagine yourself solving this problem once. And for all, whatever's going to peak their interest and make them think, Oh, hell yeah.
I'd like to imagine myself in that situation. When you start off your email in this way, you get them completely invested in your message. And they will keep on reading, which is entirely the point of the email. Right? So let's take a look at the hook I included in this email that I wrote from my client.
Oh, and just to let you know, when I write emails or any other sort of marketing copy for my clients, it's very much a group effort. My client and their team will tell me the purpose of the email and the general gist of what they'd like to say. And then I craft their ideas into an email, and then we might go back and forth a little bit.
To ensure it says exactly what they want to say. And that's a great process as it always helps to get a few different people, looking at an email to make sure it makes sense and does a great job of getting the point across before you send it out. So getting back to it, let's take a look at the hook we used in this email.
Ooh, I like this one. If a genie offered to grant you one wish anything you desire to accomplish with your life, what would you wish for? Here's a chance to make your wish come true. Wow. That's quite a hook. Isn't it? It makes a very bold promise and encourages people to imagine the impossible, what could you accomplish or create or bring into your life.
If there were no barriers to stop you from making it happen, then the email goes on to say that whatever they just imagined is actually doable, motivating people to keep reading, to discover how that could possibly be. So what could your hook be about. If it's a relationship, email, maybe your hook is what inspires them to read or click through to the full blog post you're sharing.
This could be a surprising piece of information. They'll discover if they read the full article or it could be information on how to solve some kind of problem, or it could be the beginning of a story that you want to share with them. People love stories, right? Whatever fits the purpose and content of your email.
So your hook could be something like this. When I was younger, I used to dream of accomplishing this amazing thing, for example, but these obstacles always stood in my way. Here's how I finally overcame them. Do you see how that hooks people in and then leads them to the solution that you're going to offer them in the blog post or the email itself?
Or how about this one? Have you ever wondered how to solve this problem? Or have you ever wondered why things work in this particular way? Here's the answer, right? So you got them asking the question in your own mind, and then you let them know that if they keep reading, they're going to find out the answer to this question that they may have always been wondering about.
Or you could even say something like this. I was in the middle of this common occurrence, like a client meeting, for example, when this surprising thing happened and this is how it impacted my life and how it could impact yours as well. Now, these are just a few examples to spark your imagination. You'll find a lot more possible hooks to use in your handout.
53 email hooks to spark interest in spirit engagement, which you will find on your dashboard. I encourage you to check them out before you write your next email. Okay. So before we move on from the hook, there's just one thing I'd like to point out. Transaction emails are kind of the exception here. You don't really need a hook to start off an email that's being sent out in response to an action.
The person has just taken on your website, such as making a purchase. Right? That's the first thing they should see is acknowledgement of the action they've taken. So in this case, I would say it's probably better to get to the point right away and say, here's that thing you just signed up for. Or here's confirmation of that action you just took and then give them one more thing to do, rather than present them right away with something that they're not expecting.
I think a hook might throw them off track in this, uh, in this particular instant on top of that, because it's response to an action. The person has taken, they're already invested in opening and reading the email and they already know what they're looking for in the email confirmation that the transaction has gone through as expected as well as what they need to know or do next.
Because they're looking for this kind of information, it's best to give it to them right away without, you know, getting in the way of that information with a hook that doesn't necessarily apply directly to the content of the email. Okay. So that's what your hook is all about. What comes after the hook?
The meat of your message or the main body of your email, the sentences, or paragraphs that explain as succinctly as possible, what your offer or piece of content is all about and how people will benefit from it. Simply put the main meat or body of your email should answer the following question. What is it?
And where is it if you're promoting an event, for example, Who is it for? Why should I care? And finally, how do I act on this info? Try to answer all of these questions as briefly and powerfully as possible while still giving people all of the information they need to make a decision to take action. For example, here's the meat of the event, email that I wrote for my client.
As you can see, it describes the event, says where it will be and how many people will attend, explains what their experience is going to be like and lets them know what past participants have said about it. Even answers the question that most people will probably have on their minds as they read the email, how powerful or impactful is this event going to be?
And then the end of the email gets them excited about the opportunity to experience this powerful event for themselves. And who is this event for? Well, as you can see in the paragraphs immediately beneath that second subheader it's for people who want to take their career or business to a much higher level, change the script completely and set off in a new path.
That's better aligned with their passions. Revitalize their relationships create more balance and harmony in their life and achieve their lifelong dream. Most importantly, it's people for most importantly, it's for people who want one or more of these things and are willing to reach out and embrace it.
Remember if your email is sending people to a sales page or landing page where they can learn more and take action. The sole purpose of your email should be to get people to click on the link and go to that page. So the meat of your message should include just enough information to motivate them to do that, which brings us to our next element.
Your call to action. Your call to action is where you tell people what you want them to do, and you make it easy for them to do it. At its most basic a call to action is a hyperlinked piece of text that says something like this click here to learn more and it takes people to the sales page or landing page that expands on what the email is all about.
In order to make sure the maximum number of people click on your call to action. It should stand out from the rest of your email and be easy to see and understand at a glance. Remember, people tend to skim read information online. They don't really read it for word, for word, super closely. So if your call to action is hard to see.
For example, it's buried in the middle of a paragraph, fewer people are going to click on it and you're going to want to make it compelling enough and easy enough to see so that they want to click on it. Simple. You make it obvious you keep it simple and direct so that people know exactly what's going to happen.
If they click on that link and you should put it on its own separate line and include a lot of white space around it. So that it's visually obvious on the page as well. If you include it in the middle of a paragraph, you are going to see lower conversions guaranteed because people won't be able to see it as they skim.
Read your email. Also, I encourage you to play with the language and try to make your call to action as irresistible as possible. Something they can't help, but click on because it's so awesome or delightful, or because it piques their curiosity in some way, give people a strong reason to want to hang out in your world for a little while longer.
And guess what people will. For example, let's take a look at how I presented the calls to action on this email for my client. We actually have two calls to action in the section that you can see right here, one that's in the box and one that's just below it. The first one is that line that says, join me this October.
And then it goes on to say in a five star luxury resort in a place that I've whited out for privacy reasons. And then it says. I will give you the private one-on-one mentorship. You need to create the life of your dreams. So the call to action here is join me this October to create the life of your dreams, basically, right?
That's pretty strong. And as you can see, I'm kind of breaking my own rule here because I've got that hyperlinked piece of text in the body of a paragraph. And I just was talking about how don't do that, but I feel safe doing that in this particular context, because as you can see below, I have another standalone line that says, click here to learn more and reserve your spot.
So. Both of these links are going to take people to the sales page. The first one is encouraging people to work with my client in person in October. Uh, getting them to think about where they're going to be at that time of year and imagining themselves to be at the place that I've waited out here. So they can imagine themselves in that place with my client and start to get kind of excited about that, especially since they're going to be creating the life of their dreams, which sounds kind of awesome.
And then beneath that you can see the second line, which is going to stand out more and catch more eyes, actually saying click here to learn more and reserve your spot. So both of these are pretty straightforward and to the point, okay, so you could jazz up your call to action here with something that says something like, are you ready to create the life of your dreams and have that the hyperlink to text.
Or you could have something that says, click here. If you're ready to take your life to the next level, both of these, add a little bit more information into the hyperlinked piece of text and the call to action, to get people a little bit more excited to click through, but you know, this email did well. It filled up the event.
So, you know, you can also be very straightforward and expect to get pretty good results that way. Okay. So those are my thoughts on calls to action, but your email isn't over yet. What comes next? Your sign off after you've told people what to do and given them really strong and compelling reasons to do it, you're going to want to include a personal sign off that reminds them exactly who the email is from.
Now. Here's your chance to add one last splash of personality and credibility at its most basic. Your sign-off good looks, something like this, all the best, your name. Name of business title claim to fame, that kind of stuff. Right? I do recommend that you start your clothes with something simple and genuine, such as all the best or warm regards, or even cheers, whatever you use in the personal emails you send out to friends.
Then you can include your name, your title, the name of your business, hyperlink to your website, of course. And your claim to fame. For example, if you're the author of bestselling book, be sure to mention that here, it's a good way to remind people of who you are and why they're receiving emails from you.
Or if you have certain credentials that speak to your skill set and expertise, maybe you're certified in a particular program, mentioned that as well. Again, it helps to build that sense of your reputation, your credibility, and your level of expertise. For example, here's one of my clients signed off on that retreat email to your personal journey into greatness because it reflects the theme of the email above.
And it also gets them kind of excited about that idea of embarking on a journey to greatness. And it implies that if they join him right. At his event, then they are going to be taking a big step on that journey. And then underneath that, we include my client's name and the warm and friendly picture of my client underneath to convey a sense of his lovely personality.
Now, you may also want to include a small picture of yourself so that people can see exactly who their email is coming from. And I recommend you do that. Because not only does it strengthen a sense of personal connection, it also increases your brand awareness. As people are more likely to recognize. And remember you across all your online platforms after all, if people know what you look like, they feel like they know you more.
So that's your sign off, but wait, we're not done yet. There's one more high converting element to include, and that is. Your PS and yes, I definitely recommend that you include a PS at the end of every email, you send many, many eye tracking studies over the years, showing people as they read emails and illuminating where their eyeballs literally tend to focus.
Most shows that the PS is one of the most read parts of any email. It's usually number two after the opening hook. So it just makes sense to use this valuable real estate to encourage people one last time to take action. If you're writing a sales email or are encouraging people to download or sign up for something, your PS is one final opportunity to encourage people to check out your sales page or landing page.
And that's awesome. Right? A great way to do this is to reiterate the strongest, most compelling reason why they would want to take that action. Or you could just use your PS to create urgency by telling them the offer is available only for a limited time or for a limited number of people. Just make sure that you're telling the truth here.
Otherwise you're going to come off as fake and untrustworthy, and that is never a good thing when you're marketing to people online or offline for that matter, right. Or you could highlight and intriguing aspect of your offer that you haven't mentioned yet. Whatever. We'll give them that final push. They need to click on the link and learn more.
For example, here's the PS we used in my client's email. It contains one important piece of information. We did not include in the main body of the email. The fact that there are only 16 spots left. So anyone who wants to go he'd better book their ticket fast. This information was true. And it was useful to those who had been thinking about attending, but hadn't acted yet because it showed them that their opportunity to do so.
It wasn't going to be hanging around. Forever. Right. It also pointed out that this event was the last chance people would have to work one-on-one with my client that year, which was another powerful motivator to get them to act. And then once again, it has a clear call to action. That's written in a different way than the two hyperlinked calls to action above.
As you can see, this one says, so the time to act is now hopefully motivating them to think, Oh my gosh, you're right. And to click on the link. So, this is a fairly typical example of what a PS on a sales email can look like. Let's take a moment to explore how you could use the PS on a relationship email first and most obviously you could use the PS as one last opportunity to get people to click through to your site and read your article or whatever, or you could use it to introduce them to a product or service you offer.
That's related to the information contained in the email in some way. Or you could use your PS to encourage them to connect with you in a different way. If you're really active on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or another social network, you could use your PS to invite people to connect with you.
Finally, you could use your PS to give people a heads up about something exciting that's coming down the pipes. So you could start creating anticipation for a new product program, service or event that you're about to launch. Same goes for transaction emails. Don't be afraid to include a PS. It's a great opportunity to introduce people to related products, encourage them to read your latest blog posts, connect with you on social media and more.
So those are the seven elements I encourage you to include in every email, but before we sign off, there's one more thing I'd like to address that is images. And here's why people often ask me if they should include images in their emails. And the answer is. Sure why not do it, but I encourage you to be sparing and strategic about it because if you're writing a sales email for a specific product, feel free to include an image of that product, especially if the visual aspect of it is one of its main features.
Same goes. If you're writing a relationship, email on a topic that can really be brought to life with the use of a visual or two, or if you're using your email to send people to a video on your website, it's great to use a little screencap of the video so that it immediately registers in people's minds.
That that's what they're going to do. If they click on the link, they're going to watch a video, but by including the visual, you're going to bring your message to life in a very real way. And. That's awesome because the more clearly people can visualize themselves taking an action such as buying a product, using that product, watching a video, anything like that, the more people are going to take that action.
Right. Just be aware that some email providers still don't show images by default, which means that some people will only see empty squares where the image is supposed to be. For that reason, I encourage you to never include key information in an image such as putting essential text over top of the image that isn't actually repeated anywhere else in the email.
That's no bueno at all, because chances are people aren't going to see it. If you do that right. Okay. So that's basically my advice around using images in emails, use them sparingly, make sure that you use them strategically to help people visualize them selves using your product or taking whatever kind of action you want them to take, but make sure that the text in the email itself carries the main information because otherwise you might not see the results you want to see.
Okay. So those are the main elements of a high converting email. I hope you found this information helpful. Your next step is to complete assignment three. How to write emails that inspire action have lots of fun with it because learning how to write an email that works is one of the greatest skills that you're ever going to learn as a marketer and an online communicator.
So how fun and good luck, and we will see you back here for less than four.

Download Workbook

Copywriting Fundamentals

30:50

Are you sending the right emails?

Emails that Inspire

Email Subject Lines

Emails that Inspire

Up next

Email Subject Lines

Sign up to our mailing list

Can We Get a Testimonial?