Email marketing is one of the essential parts of any business. Whether you’re B2C (Business to Customer) or B2B (Business to Business), email marketing is always a must. The problem is most businesses don’t have the time to create elaborate marketing emails from scratch. That’s why they usually use email templates or cookie-cutter approaches to avoid being repetitive. But it’s important to have a personal touch in your marketing materials, especially when it comes to b2b.
Creating a marketing email template in Microsoft Word is a viable alternative. With these templates, you can quickly send highly personalised and optimised emails to your customers without needing to write a single word of code. So let’s get started.
Step one: Open Microsoft Word.
If you’re reading this on a mobile device, you can access Microsoft Word via the Play Store or the App Store. Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see a classic view of Microsoft Word with the ribbon at the top.
As a first step, you should try to establish some sort of tone of voice for your emails. Do you deliver them in a formal or casual manner? What is your overall message? Are you selling a product or service?
You can also take this opportunity to write a little content for your emails – don’t worry, we’ll provide you with some great examples to follow.
Step two: Create a new document
From the File menu at the top of the screen, choose New to create a new document. Alternatively, you can hit the keyboard sequence Command+N to create a new document directly. Either way, Word will open up with a simple empty document.
If you want to write a business email, you should explore the different templates available. You can use the New Document window to quickly create a new email template in Microsoft Word. Simply navigate to the template you want using the File menu, select it, then hit the Create button to start working.
Creating a template in Microsoft Word is a very straightforward process. Once you’ve done that, you can start filling it with your own unique content.
Step three: Start drafting your email
Now that you have your email template ready, it’s time to start drafting your actual email. Remember that your email will be read from top to bottom, so make sure that everything is written in a logical order.
Start with a brief greeting – is your audience expecting a certain greeting? Will they respond more positively to an informal tone or a more formal one?
As a best practice, you should include several calls-to-action at the end of your email. This may seem obvious, yet many businesses forget to do this. When you ask yourself the question “Does this email serve a specific purpose?” the answer is usually “Yes” – but only if you do include calls-to-action at the end. Stating your purpose clearly at the beginning of the email will improve your odds of achieving it. In the example below, we’ll review three email purposes and show you calls to action for each.
Purpose #1: To introduce yourself
Let’s say you’re writing to introduce yourself to a potential new customer. At the beginning of your email, you would start with a greeting that’s as personal as possible. For instance, you could write:
“Hi there! My name is John Smith and I’m the Director of Marketing at Company XYZ. We’re a small business that specialises in Web Development, Digital Marketing and Technology Consulting. In my email, I’ll share with you some of the extraordinary things that our team has achieved and the numerous ways in which we’ve found effective (and creative) marketing to attract, engage and delight new and returning customers. I hope that you find this of interest and that we can continue to work together to create a mutually beneficial relationship.”
As you can see, this is a pretty lengthy and formal email. It’s a little heavy on the advertising and a little light on the useful content. But it’s a safe bet that this is the kind of email that will be opened and read. Even if the reader is not familiar with Company XYZ, they will almost certainly recognise the name John Smith.
Because this is a fairly formal email, you might want to keep the language clean and simple. So go for simple words and short sentences. You can also use the same technique to write a more informal email. For example, if you’re pitching a new product to a friend, you could write:
“Hey, Sarah. I know you’ve been wanting to try that new spa treatment for a while now, and I have some good news. Not only do I have an offer for you, but I also have an extra voucher to give away. Would you like to try a new treatment that has been recommended to me, or are you happy with your current regimen? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.”
As you can see above, this email is less formal and is written in the first person. This makes it much more personable and, because it’s not as formal, there’s more room for the content to shine through. This is a simple pitch, but what makes it stand out is the use of “I” rather than “We”. The use of “I” shows that the writer is personally connected to the product and cares about what is being said.
Step four: Check for spelling and grammar
When you’ve finished drafting your email, it’s time to go through it and make sure that it’s correct. Besides, did you use correct grammar and spelling?
Grammar and spelling are important because they make the writing easy for other people to understand. If you use correct grammar and spelling, you’ll also make the writing more persuasive. If there are any spelling or grammar mistakes in your email, just fix them immediately. Don’t worry, nobody will ever read your email after it went through several editorial processes, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Step five: Send it to friends and colleagues for feedback
Once you’ve fixed all the grammar and spelling mistakes, it’s time to send it to your friends and colleagues for feedback. Ask them to review your email and give you some pointers on how you can make it better. Ideally, you should get at least three different sets of eyes on it before you send it off to the wider audience.
By this point, you’re probably wondering whether or not you need to go through a professional editing service. While it’s not essential to have your email edited, asking for input from others will almost certainly give you an extra push towards making your email the best that it can be. Plus, having fresh eyes reviewing your work will almost certainly find some things that you’ve missed or overlooked.
Step six: Measure the success of your email
The final step towards creating an effective email marketing campaign is to measure the success of the email. Simply put, you want to know whether or not what you did actually worked. To do this, you need to set up automated emails that will notify you of the activity on your email list. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to track the results of your work.
It’s a good idea to set up automated emails from the get-go. This will save you the effort of having to chase down data manually and lets you focus on creating and optimising your email campaigns. Once you have setup automated emails, you can start measuring their success and performing an analysis to see what performs best.
What next?
Now that you have the foundations of a brilliant marketing email laid out, you can start thinking about the creative side of marketing. From there, you can develop the content of your email and create a plan for email marketing.