Crafting Purposeful Emails

I have a question for you. To be more specific, I have a question that I want you to ask yourself each time you sit down to write an email for your list. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a broadcast or adding to your auto responder series. Before you sit down to write, or at the very latest before you hit sent, ask yourself this:

What’s the purpose of your email?

I’m serious. You won’t believe how often we simply go through the motions. Emailing our list is on the calendar, so we sit down, write something and hit sent. Sure, it may be a great tip, or maybe even some sort of an offer. But was it written with purpose and does each competent of the email support said purpose. How does the email fit into your overall content and marketing strategy? Does it serve a valid purpose there or are you just going through the motions?

If the purpose of your email isn’t something you think about before you sit down and write it, I suggest you change that right away. To be really good at email marketing and make a full-time living from even a fairly small list, you have to be strategic. Your emails have to have a purpose and play a part in that overall strategy.

Here are a few purposes to get you thinking about all this:

• Showcasing your expertise.
• Building rapport.
• Introducing your readers to a new idea.
• Introducing your readers to an expert you plan on promoting in the future.
• Getting your readers to share their most burning questions with you.
• Helping your readers reach the next step towards their goal.
• Showing your readers bigger goals to strive towards.
• Sharing a great product that you think will help them.
• Getting feedback about an offer you shared.
• Reminding them of a looming deadline.
• Showing your readers what they are missing, or what they don’t know yet.
• Getting your readers excited about a new product by sharing how someone else has used it successfully.
• Helping your readers make a smart buying decision by reviewing or comparing products.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about what purpose your emails may have. As you plan, start to think about what purpose each email will have and how it fits in with your overall marketing strategy. Then when you sit down to write your email you must be very clear about its purpose. This alone will make you a much better email copy writer. If you know EXACTLY what the purpose of the email is, and what goal you want to reach with it, writing it becomes much easier and feel more natural and organic. Give it a try!