Based on our experience, we look at the five essential steps for creating a successful email. Be it a single email, a enewsletter or part of an email marketing campaign.

Email is a most effective marketing channel for businesses to communicate with clients and prospects. Yet emails are pouring into people's inboxes all the time. It's all too easy for your email to become buried.

Just because the email is important to you, it does not automatically follow the recipient will “drop everything” to read it. Indeed, as you are probably all too aware, emails quickly disappear “below the fold” - below the screen.

So, how on earth can we email our way to success?

Five steps on creating a successful email

Here are my five steps on the essentials of creating a successful email: one that is opened, read and actioned!

1. An Attention Grabbing Subject Line
Whether you are sending one email or thousands at a time as part of an e-mail marketing campaign, paying attention to the subject line is most important. Indeed, I'll go so far to say that the creation of an attention grabbing subject line, relevant to the topic, is the single most important thing we can do to increase the chances of having our email read.

2. Personal Salutation
Next up, I believe is the personalisation of the email, with a “Hello Firstname” or the equivalent. There is no excuse. Simply ripping into the topic is not good enough, and nor is a ubiquitous “Dear Member”, or “Dear Client”. It's not as if the technology for personalisation of mass mail-outs doesn't exist.

3. Chunk the Text
Unfortunately, although you have grabbed the recipient's attention with a snappy subject line and made use of a personal salutation, there's still more work to be done to improve your chances of success.

Online, people have a tendency to scan text, looking for clues as to whether or not the contents look interesting and might be of use to them. Making the text scannable is fairly easy to do. Simply chunk it! Then, give every paragraph or a group of paragraphs, a headline - one that summarises the text presented in the following paragraph(s).

4. Include a Call-to-Action
By now, hopefully, your email has been opened and read. But there's a critical piece of text missing! Now some e-mails may simply be to inform, but most business emails are sent with a particular purpose in mind. In a general sense, the purpose is to have the recipient take some form of action.

If you want the recipient to contact you, say so. If you want them to go to your website to download an article, let them know. Having a “call-to-action” included in your e-mail is a smart move. And just to ensure things happen, there’s nothing like a deadline.

5. Add Your Phone Number
Strictly speaking, this recommendation, isn’t essential. Does however, make too easy for the recipient of the email to contact you. 

I always include my contact details at the bottom of my emails. You never know, the email may well prompt a client or prospect to pick up the phone to talk to you about the email or some other business matter.