8 Essential Tips for Writing, Editing and Proofreading Your Emails for Powerful Results

But this doesn’t just relate to content you may be posting on your websites like blogs and articles. In fact, the content you include in your emails is just as important to ensure that you’re getting right. Emails are still renowned for being one of the most effective forms of marketing, even more than website advertisement or social media!

But that doesn’t make the process any easier. When it comes to writing emails for your business, here’s eight key things to remember so you can ensure your emails are perfect for your readers and get the results that you desire.

Before we start writing our emails and put fingers to keyboard, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re organised and ready for the content that you’re about to produce. To make this easier, let’s break the entire process down into seven steps which read;

• Ideas (brainstorming)
• Researching
• Writing
• Editing
• Proofreading
• Publishing
• Analysing

“These are the basic seven steps that you’ll follow when writing your emails. However, some of your processes may include more or fewer steps; it completely depends on what your business is aiming to achieve. With these steps in mind, be sure to be proactive in making sure that you have everything ready at each stage, so you’re as organised as possible,” shares Elizabeth Holder, an email marketer for Big Assignments.

For example, while the ideas stage may simply require a meeting with your team where you organise your thoughts and topic ideas, the researching section is where you’ll bring together all the information you’ll need so you won’t ruin your writing flow at a later date.

When it comes to writing emails, you need to make sure that you’re putting yourself in the mind of your reader and consider how they are going to read your emails and the experience they are going to have from reading it, rather than how the email can benefit your business.

For example, one of the most common traps that people fall into is not being personal in their emails and respecting the reader as an individual. If you’re constantly referring to your readers as ‘followers’ or ‘subscribers’, you’re in the trap.

Although people long to be a part of a social group or community, individuality is also vital, and as a customer, a reader of your emails wants to be respected as that. Likewise, make sure the content that you include in your emails is actually worthwhile talking about.

Your readers will feel very disrespected by your business if you’re sending them email after email with content about things that are insignificant, or they simply don’t care about. The chances are that you’ll more than likely end up in the spam folder.

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when writing your emails is actually getting people to open them, so let’s put ourselves in your reader’s shoes. They open their web browser, sign into their email client and now they’re in their inbox.

What can you see in regard to your emails? Your name and the subject line, so let’s draw our focus in here. Of course, your name is simply going to describe who the email is from, but it’s important it doesn’t read something like “123sxccat@hotmail.com”, or something like that. Instead, ensure it reads your business’s name.

Now let’s move over to the subject line. This is the part of the email that’s going to grab their attention. So, the first thing you’ll want to do is to promise something good in your email. What content have you included in this email and what’s in it for your reader once they open it?

Max Tyler, an email marketer for Assignment Writing Service, continues;

“When writing subject lines, you’re going to need something to stand out from the rest of the emails in the inbox. Start by trying to include a number on the subject. This helps your email to stand out and keeps eyes on you. Next, try to promise something within the subject line that your email will provide your reader once opened. Finally, be sure to chuck some power words in there to make your emails irresistible.”

So, if you’re currently using a subject line “OPEN ME FOR A DISCOUNT IN MY STORE”, you might want to consider switching it to something like “5 Essential Ways to Save Money Shopping Online”.

So, you’ve invested a bit of time in making sure your subject line is perfect, and people are going to want to click. So, your reader is hooked and says ‘okay, let’s see what’s going on here’ and clicks. Now the reader is in your email, so they’ll start at the top and work their way down.

Naturally, if you’ve included any images or visuals in your email, especially in the top section or header, your reader’s eyes are going to be immediately drawn to this area, so be sure if you’re overlaying a message on this image that it stands out and starts your email off strong.

However, there are a couple of things you’re going to want to remember when writing the content itself. Firstly, you’re going to want to write fast. This is a simple writers trick, but the faster you write, the more passion and enthusiasm will be evident in your content, making your emails much more enjoyable to read.

Additionally, try to keep your sentences and paragraph short, sweet and direct to the point. Imagine you were reading this article in your email browser and it was simply one big block of text with no subheadings or paragraph breaks. The chances are that you wouldn’t even want to start reading it and it will go straight to the trash folder.

You’re also going to want to remember to try and keep your writing as natural as possible. Since you’re probably representing a business, the customer doesn’t want to talk or read what a cog in the capitalist machine is saying; they want to communicate with a real life human being and hear what they have to say.

This means you’ll need to include your reader’s name, ask them questions they get them thinking about what you’re writing about and include emotional words and stories that will hook your readers and keep them contented to your content.

Of course, writing emails is difficult to describe because your requirements will vary depending on your target market, demographics, industry and the specific aim that your business has with your email marketing campaign. Just remember to put yourself in the reader’s shoes and experience the email and its content from their point of view.

Writing emails can be a laborious task if not managed properly, especially when you add in the essential editing and proofreading processes. However, to save time, here is a list of tools that can help:

• State of Writing and Via Writing: These are two blogs that are full of writing guides you can follow when writing your emails.
• Boom Essays: An online writing agency that can assist you in proofreading your emails, as recommended by the HuffingtonPost in Write My Essay.
• My Writing Way and Grammarix: These two blogs are loaded with posts that can help to teach you about using grammar properly.
• UKWritings: An online service that can edit and proofread your emails on your behalf.
• Cite It In: A tool for adding citations, quotes and references to your emails in a professional format.
• Essay Roo: An online writing agency that can write your emails for you, as suggested by Best Australian Writers in Essayroo review.
• Easy Word Count: A free online tool for tracking the word count of your emails when writing.

For most of us, our emails are going to include some kind of promotional material that will try to tempt the reader into buying something from our website or eCommerce store. However, as you’ll probably already know, this is easier said than done.

The first thing to remember is not to jump straight into selling, not only with each individual email but rather your entire email marketing strategy. For example, if a customer has just signed up to your mailing list, you’re not going to want to jump straight in there and start barraging them with promotional content.

Instead, you want to introduce your business slowly to them and start to form a relationship of trust and loyalty with this customer. Marketing statistics show that the 80/20 rule is one of the most effective marketing tactics where 80% of the content you send is educational/inspiring/entertaining etc. whereas the other 20% is promotional.

However, the rest of the selling tactics of what you actually include in your email are much like the rest of your business. You’ll need to describe the problems that people are facing and start to describe the solution that your product or service provides. You can also include customer reviews from previous purchases and tell a story in your content to connect with your readers and subscribers on an emotional level.

Now that your emails have been opened and read by your customers, it’s now time to get them to leave your email and on your website. Of course, the best way to achieve this is by using clear and defined calls to action buttons in your content.

If you’re currently writing the 20% promotional email content, this will be simple since you can add a call to action button that will link to the product page that you’re advertising. However, what if you’re providing your readers with one of the 80% kinds of content? Things aren’t that simple.

Although it can be. If you’re writing a high-quality blog post that you’ve shared with your readers, one of the most effective methods of bringing those customers from the email to your website is cutting off the blog after it starts getting to the good bit. Then, all you have to do is add a ‘click here to continue reading’ call to action, and you’re sure to get people clicking through to your website.

People also love to be valued by businesses. Let’s face it, everybody’s email inboxes are overflowing with emails these days, and you should feel special that someone has taken the time to read your content and stay up to date with you. To reward this, why not offer a limited time discount or coupon code for your emails.

Not only does this make your customers feel happy that you respect and appreciate their custom, but it also helps to drive up your click-through rates dramatically.

Once you’ve completed the first draft of your email and you’re happy that all the information that should be in each email is present, it’s time to start perfecting them. The first stage to this process is editing your email.

This is completely different to proofreading (see below) and is a process that’s focused on making sure the message you’re trying to communicate it perfect for your readers and conveys the actual message that you’re trying to send. Whereas the message in your head might have sounded perfect, you need to remember that a lot of people are going to be reading your email and may perceive it in different ways.

For example, if you’ve included humour in your email, remember the demographics that are reading your email. Will this humour fly over their heads or will some readers potentially find what you’re saying offensive? These are all things you’ll need to remember.

When editing, it’s best to take a break between writing your first draft and editing so you return to it with a fresh pair of eyes. Likewise, it can also be beneficial to have a colleague, friend or family member read through the email to see what they think and if they can point anything out. Or you could use help of professional writing services like OXEssays and Academized (read Academized review to check the quality).

Once you’ve completed the penultimate step of writing your email, it’s very important that you carry out the last step precisely. This refers to your proofreading process. This means checking through your content to make sure it’s free from errors, spelling mistakes, poor grammar, typos and much more. Any errors in your emails will damage the credibility and reputation of your business.

Proofreading can take time and it may seem long-winded to go through your content again and again but it’s vital to the success of your content. After all, would you want to buy the products or invest in the services of a business whose content was littered with mistakes?

To ensure your proofreading is accurate, take a break between the editing stage and this stage. When you return, completely ignore the content of the email itself (since this was perfected in the stage before) and focus on the actual language, grammar and punctuation that you’ve used.