Example #3: A follow-up email from Rentalo.com

Return to Example #2: Occasional emails from Innocentdrinks.co.uk

A follow-up email from Rentalo.com. This may strike you as a strange choice for a "great" email. The personalization is incomplete, there is a carriage return missing between the first two paragraphs, and it's not particularly well written.

So what do I think is great about it?

Three things.

First, the timing.

During the course of some work I was doing, I signed up at the site as a property owner. The site lists properties around the world that are available to travelers for short-term rentals.

So if you are traveling to Paris, France, but don't want to stay in a hotel, you can go to Rentalo.com and find an apartment.

Anyway, I received this email about a week after I signed up at the site. Immediately after signing up I got a welcome email. Then there was a break of about a week before I received this one.

It was smart of them to wait for a week. I didn't feel they were pushing me or crowding my inbox.

All too often companies flood you with communications as soon as you give them your email address. They can't wait to "leverage" the new relationship they have with you.

Well, that relationship is paper thin and easy to damage.

Rentalo.com made a smart move by giving me a week's breathing space between emails.

Second, the message.

There is only one important thing they needed to say to me a week after I signed up as a property owner. They let me know that people were looking to rent properties in my area. This may sound like a no-brainer, but what they did was very smart. They identified the ONE thing that I, as a reader, WANTED to hear.

They didn't need to write a long sales message. They didn't need to make a song and dance about it. They just found the one thing that would attract my immediate attention and interest.

Take a look at your own emails and ask yourself: Have we identified the ONE thing that this reader WANTS to hear?

Third, the absence of unnecessary text.

Having identified the "one thing," it was probably tempting to add some other points to the email. They could have told me how great their company was doing. They could have tried to upsell or cross-sell me. But they didn't. They simply mentioned what I wanted to hear and briefly told me how to take advantage of the opportunity.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

By getting the fundamental message right, it was easy to forgive them their sloppy formatting, personalization and writing. The execution didn't really matter because the message was dead on.

Isn't that the core of what good marketing is all about? Great marketing offers you something you really want. Mediocre marketing tries to persuade you that you want something.

As I mentioned in the opening to this article, it isn't easy to find examples of great emails. Fortunately, I needed to find only three examples. If I had needed to find 10, I'm not sure I would have found that many.

The problem with most promotional emails is that they are too heavy-handed.

One's email inbox is a personal space. It offers marketers the opportunity to connect with subscribers and customers on a personal, one-to-one basis. In their different ways, each of the three emails above used a light touch to reach their readers, whereas most promotional emails charge into people's inboxes with the subtlety of a late-night infomercial.

That's the wrong approach and misses the opportunity to develop long-term relationships with your readers.

Nick Usborne is a leading authority on the subject of writing for the web. Read full bio.