Preparing An Email To Send To Your List

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If you listen to many online marketing gurus, they would make you believe that growing a list of names and email addresses is all you need to create profit on demand. And while that list of contacts *is* vitally important, it's not the whole process.

You see once you have the ability to contact people at will, the next step is actually crafting and sending an email that will get results for you.

Too many people focus all their efforts on their list building but neglect this step to the degree that they actually make little or no money. So they focus even harder on gathering even more email addresses rather than actually observing what the problem really is.

To write a successful email, start off by writing the main email to your list. Make it friendly and relaxed like you were writing to a friend of yours. Keep the sentences and paragraphs short to make it appealing to the eye and to increase readership.

For best results, write the email in a text editor like NotePad rather than in a word processor. Too many people use Word or similar to write their emails but unfortunately these fancier applications have a nasty habit of adding all sorts of unnecessary formating that just makes your emails look weird when they get sent. So for best results, ignore the word processor and just use a basic text editor. NoteTab Light is my personal favourite.

Don't forget to gently softsell whatever product it is that you are promoting in your email and include the link you want your list to click to find out more.

Next, take some time to add the personalization features offered by most pieces of autoresponder software. For example you have the field at the beginning to insert the name of your prospect for a personal greeting ("Hi John!").

Now put the email away until the next morning. Come back to it with fresh eyes and read through it again ot make sure it makes sense, is friendly and really does encourage you to click the link. Also check for spelling or grammatical errors.

All good? Great! Time to send it then? No, not yet.

The next thing we need to discuss is that differeny email software displays emails in different ways. If your lines of text are very long, it is possible that this will all be cut up and look very strange when your mailing list subscribers receive their email. So to eliminate this risk we want to cut down the length of the lines of your email.

This is actually surprisingly easy to do in NoteTab Light. Simply highlight all the text, select Document in the menu, then Document Properties. Ensure you set the line length to 70 characters and you'll be fine. WHen you do this you will see each of your lines gets far shorts while the email still makes sense.

Now it's time to paste it into your autoresponder software, ensuring that your CANSPAM details are included at the bottom of the email. Before you click send though there is one more thing to do - and that is to check whether your email is likely to trigger the spam filters.

Most autoresponder software will now compare your email with standard filters to see the chances of it getting foltered out before your prospects get to see it. If necessary, make minor adjustments to ensure as far as possible that your email will get through.

Then finally it is time to click the button to send the email. Once it's gone, sit back and try to be patient as the results come in. My best result was a sale within the first 10 minutes of sending out a new product email.

Richard Adams is the founder of http://www.BuildingAList.net which features advice on building a profiting from an email list.