Here’s a longer video (just over 7 minutes) to help your business grow. This one is a screen capture video so I can ‘show’ you how along the way.  

If you prefer to read it, keep going.  

Today’s video is 9 simple, practical tips to get your marketing emails delivered, opened and read in 2018.   

Here are nine tips from the experts in 2018 to get your emails delivered, opened and read.  

Hi there, it’s Kim Payne here.  

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your marketing email is pretty, what matters is that it gets results:  

• so it gets delivered  

• it gets read and  

• it gets a response.. 

and I’m going to show you what some of those tips are. 

Because at the end of the day, the key learning from all the research that I’ve done is that (the best) e-mails are plain text, so no design, no banners and it’s like you’re having a conversation with someone.  

Because plain text emails are what the emails from your friends and family look like.  

And guess what.. you open them and you read them.  

So let’s try and replicate some of that.  

Okay, Tip number 1 is to actually write like your writing to a friend.  

So if you’ve got a more casual style then use that.  

Don’t try and put on some professional corporate kind of speak if that’s not you. 

However, you need to make sure that your tone does fit with your brand.  

Tip number 2 is to make the body text scannable.  

By scannable what I mean is a lot of people nowadays when they’re reading online read from top to bottom. 

They scan through the content as opposed to traditional reading, or paper-based reading which is left to right.  

So in order to make your emails scannable, or open to those who scan, then no more than three lines per paragraph of text.  

Two or less is actually better and I’ll show you an example shortly.  

And use lots of spaces in between.  

Also be very generous with your HEADING’S bolding and underlining to really get the key points across, but don’t overdo it.  

So a quick glance at this (showing example on the screen) you’ll see there is bolding, there’s underlining there’s a heading and it just makes it easy for someone to scan. 

So the sentences are broken down, there’s not big chunks of text and that what’s really important.  

Bullet points are also fantastic, but three to five maximum. 

No more than five and make sure the bullets are actually containing the list, it’s not just bullet points for the sake of it.  

Tip number 3 is to make your emails easy to read.  

By that I mean use large plain fonts preferably around size 12 to 14. 

Black text on white background.  

You don’t need to get any fancier than that. 

And left aligned.  

So again, this (showing example on screen) is the way that if you were just writing an email to a mate, this is exactly how you would write it. 

And that’s how your marketing emails should be done.  

You won’t like this one, I don’t like it. 

Tip number 4: Remove the banners or the headers.  

The key reason for this is if you’re using a bulk email provider like say MailChimp or Infusionsoft when we say send to someone using ‘gmail’, what it does is it recognises there’s a banner or image contained in there and it often can send it through to the promotional tab rather than to the inbox. 

So as much as the banners look great, if they’re going to hold back your email from being delivered to someone’s inbox, it doesn’t work.  

So in these Make It Count videos that I do, this (shping example on screen) was the banner that I’ve been using up until last week and now you’ll notice the email has no banner in it.  

Yes it broke my heart, but it gets delivered.  

And that’s important.  

Tip number 6: Use the ‘ps.’ 

People often when they’re scanning scans straight down to the ‘ps’ section.  

So make sure that in your ‘ps’ is something you either want to remind them of, or maybe something you want them to do or something you want them to take note of.  

So really utilise the ‘ps’, it’s not an afterthought as it has been in traditional writing, it is actually something that’s really really important.  

Tip number 7: If you‘re going to use punctuation marks, and they certainly have a place, don’t use more than three in a row.  

Use one or two only.  

This is what I mean (showing example on screen)  

It’s unnecessary and again, a lot of our email providers are picking up on it and thinking it’s spam or junk and so it’s not getting to people’s email inbox. 

So just tame it down and just use two.  

This is really hard for me because I really love them.  

Tip number 8: Have a really clear call to action at the end of your email.  

This is just what does someone reading need to do next. 

Do they need to read something, or do they need to click a link, do they need to download something or do they need to respond to you?  

Whatever it is make it really clear when I’m reading the email what I need to do next so that I’m not just left hanging.  

And Tip number 9: Personalizing and segmenting. 

So personalizing of course using a name not just as name in ‘dear’ or ‘to’ or ‘hey’ George, but maybe personalising in the heading maybe personalising through the body of the text. 

And segmenting.  

So quite a common thing in the advice space that you need don’t do or send the one thing to every single person all the time.  

You’ve got different segments, different client groups different target groups.  

Make sure that you send the right content to the right group at the right time.  

Ok, some bonus tips.. use short engaging subject lines.  

So you know, don’t try to confuse me or be too ‘cutsie’ make it really clear what it is.  

Use questions or intrigue.  

You know ‘hey check this out’ or ‘got a question for you’. 

But don’t try and confuse me cause if I don’t get past the subject line then I’m not going to read the email.  

Really really important and the less words you can use the better.  

They do say somewhere between 3 to 8 (words) depending on which expert you’re talking to but just remember less is better. 

One of my favourite quotes is “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter”. (Multiple authors) 

We can all learn something from that. 

Bonus number 2: If you are hyperlinking, so if you want someone to click on a link that takes them somewhere else, that’s cool.  

Don’t just hyperlink the word, hyperlink a sentence.  

The reason is if I’m reading this on my mobile device it’s much harder for me to get specifically on one word to click the link.  

It’s much easier for me to click on a sentence (like you can see down in the bottom of this slide).  

So great to do hyperlinking, just make sure you include more than one word (in the hyperlink) to make life easy. 

And final bonus is: test it. 

Before you send out any marketing emails, send to yourself first and check it on your computer on your mobile device.  

Is it easy to read easy and are any links clear, and importantly have you followed those nine steps that I’ve just outlined.  

So whatever you do with that, Make It Count.  

Ps. What was tip number 5 again?? 

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