Despite the scourge of spam email marketing still rules the roost when it comes to reaching out to your target audience. Nothing beats the good old email although services like Gmail are constantly working at creating an interface that separates normal, individual emails from promotional, marketing emails, but this is good, and shouldn’t be taken as a negative development. The more the garbage is controlled, the better gets the environment for people who really want to work hard and derive results off that hard work.

So how is content writing related to your email marketing success?

Because it is the content of your email that decides what sort of response you’re going to get. If the content is great, the response is going to be great and if the content is lousy, so is going to be the response.

But what is “great content” vis-a-vis your email campaign?

In order to understand that you need to understand what your email recipients actually want. If they want blankets because the winter is approaching, you cannot sell them ACs unless you’re selling them with off-season discounts and a great saving for the next summer is offered. The offer needs to make sense to the recipients.

Two things are very crucial for your email marketing success: why people subscribe to your email updates and whether you provide just the sort of content they have opted for. It is counter-productive to broadcast content they haven’t subscribed to. For instance, if you subscribe to my email newsletter updates to get tips on content writing and content marketing you wouldn’t like me to go on promoting my services or promote someone else’s services through my mailing list. You will immediately subscribe and you should definitely do so. However, there is no harm in sending promotional messages if that’s what they have subscribed to.

So make sure when people subscribe to your mailing list they know what they are getting into. They will be more receptive to your messages.

Email content should be conversational whether your marketing campaign is B2B or B2C. Email is highly personal and esoteric expression and jargon don’t convert well. Always try to talk in first person and avoid using “we do this” or “we offer that”. Even if yours is a bigger organisation assign someone with a name and a clearly defined designation to handle your email marketing messages. Always talk in “you”, “I” and “me”.

Try to limit one sentence per paragraph because most of your recipients may be browsing through your messages on their mobile devices and they may get distracted or put off if you have long streams of text. Keep your message short (not at the cost of communicating your message, though) and be ruthless when it comes to truncating words and sentences.

Call to action should be after every paragraph if possible. This is because in an email marketing campaign, every paragraph should be able to convey a distinct message on its own so that if a person wants to click a link he or she can do it without having to further read your message.

Remember that the sole purpose of broadcasting an email marketing campaign is to offer something valuable to your recipients, otherwise they will not be interested in hearing from you. You don’t have to offer something “irresistible” always because this is not possible and even not realistic (and your recipients will understand that).

It isn’t necessary that you send mailers to your recipients only when a business transaction is expected. Keep in touch with them. Encourage them to stay in touch. Seek their feedback on set days.

What about the subject line?

A big part of your email marketing campaign success depends on your subject line. It’s your subject line that makes people open your message and read it. There is no use having great content within your email if people don’t access it. Spend as much time coming up with a compelling subject line as you spend creating your email message. Your subject line is also your content because it contains text that prompts people to do something – in this case open your email message.