"Sorry about that email."

I'm excited to meet you!

If I sent you an email recently that was too long, I apologize. Chalk it up to youthful exuberance.

That's me in the photo. I've been excited to share my ideas with you since age 5. Sometimes I get carried away! We all do.

Email is Fraught. Marketing is Simple.

We all know email is hard. Nuance adds length. Length gets ignored.

But brevity–yikes. Brevity gets interpreted as rudeness.

What's an emailer to do?!

Try . . . marketing. Despite all our collective experience in "email marketing," most of us–even marketers–forget that personal emails are powerful marketing tools. Here's how to make the most of them.

TL:DR

If you aren't starting with the hook, you're doing it wrong. Yep, I'm guilty of it, too.

Share the most important ask or idea first. Offer supporting information after that. You can even say, "Below is more content to support this ask/idea."

Frontload

After the TL:DR, put your most important ideas at the top, in descending order.

Frontload sentences so your most important clause comes first. Like I did just there. Why? Active voice and shorter sentences. Try it and see.

Get Buy-In

Earn your readers' buy-in. Make each line worth their time so they'll opt in to read the next, and the next, and the next.

Spacing + Pacing

What do line breaks, headers, bullets, numbers, and even images and captions have in common?

• They help writers guide readers to the ideas we want you to see.

• They excite readers for what's next.

• They alert readers to "important details coming."

Also, they show readers that the writer cares. Spacing and pacing are the antidote to the dreaded "text brick."

Beware the text brick.

Write For You, Revise For Your Reader

Sure, we all need to draft an email and sort complex ideas on the page to figure out what we need to say. But please, don't send that draft! Let it cool, come back, and then revise your draft with your reader in mind. Use the tips above, and let me know how they change the responses you get over email! Send me a note at matt@axismarketingstrategies.com.

For more practical skills that will transform your client service, check out Axis Accelerator Training.