It's 10 o'clock at night and you have no idea where to start with your promotional emails. Writer's Block has seized your brain and all you have to show for the last hour are 2 empty glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon and a blank white screen with a blinking cursor.

Sure, the company you used to work at had a great staff who wrote their marketing emails. But that wasn't you. And now that you've launched your own new business, everything's all up to you to get it done.

​Assuming you're ahead of the game, you already know that email marketing is the most budget-friendly, and the most effective way to grow sales for your business.

And now you're stuck. Don't worry. You're not alone. Most entrepreneurs starting out their businesses have probably never written a promotional email in their lives.

Fortunately, you've come to the right blog post. Here's a simple framework that's been proven over the years to help you write the best email content that will get your readers' attention, and most of all, get them to respond to your call to action.​

Professional Copywriters teach the 4P's of writing persuasive sales copy. Email copywriting is no different than copywriting for magazine ads, flyers, radio or TV. The end goal is to use your copy to tell a story compelling enough that the reader, listener, or viewer responds to your call to action.

According to the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), all successful sales copy always include these 4 qualities: Promise, Picture, Proof, and Push.

Together the 4P's help your copywriting for emails that stimulate your readers to enthusiastically respond to your call to action.
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PROMISE
Every email you write needs to be about the benefits of your product or your service. Emails fail when they're written about features, and not about the benefits. "20GB of storage" is the feature. "A 1000 songs in your pocket" is the benefit. Which resonates with you?

Your email must make a promise at an emotional level. What are the visceral fears of your target audience that the benefits of your offering will overcome? What are their inherent desires that these benefits will satiate?

The better you know your target audience, the better you know the fears and desires that drive them. The better you know what drives your audience, the more enticing your promise will be.

PICTURE
Use descriptive words to paint a BELIEVABLE picture of what it's like to be enjoying the benefits that you're promising. Involve as many of the 5 senses in your copy as possible.

- "Allergy suffers can now feel the cool, soft grass tickling between their toes as they walk barefoot across a lively green meadow thanks to changing their dietary habits according to your meal plan."

- "The claws of dread that grip the CFO's stomach every end of quarter are finally released and gone forever thanks to the automated simplicity of this new financial accounting software package."

- "The Magellan HD webcam means that Grandma can see and hear the soft, angelic sounds of her newborn grandchild from a hundred miles away."

PROOF
You need to back up your promise with evidence that you're not just selling another brand of snake oil. Now that you've made the promise, and painted the picture of what it's like to be enjoying the promised benefits, you need to offer proof that the benefits you're promising are real.

Customer testimonials, of course, are always the best. And so are statistics. Anything that objectively attests the validity of the benefits you're offering will work. An accounting firm can state that they helped their clients receive over $589,079 in tax refunds the previous year. But if you don't have statistics about your own offering, you can always use statistics about your product category, or your industry. So while you may not have statistics about your child car seat safety harness, you can state that seat belts saved 14,955 lives last year.

And of course, if you've got it, flaunt it. Awards you've received, and patents you've been granted are all excellent ways to establish proof to the picture of success your email copywriting is painting.

PUSH
The Push is your call to action. Make it obvious, make it irresistible, make it urgent, make it simple to understand and easy to respond to.

Don't lose sight of the fact that the whole purpose of your email copywriting is to get your readers to convert -- whatever "convert" means in that specific context. Maybe it's to schedule an appointment. Maybe it's to download a whitepaper, a template, or some other type of lead magnet. Maybe it's to buy something. In either case, once your reader clicks the link or the button in your email, now what? Does the landing page seamlessly flow with the same story you've told in your email? Is the call to action easy to follow up on and complete?

And the 4P's for persuasive email doesn't mean that you have to write gobs and gobs of copy. Quite the contrary. The 4P's mean that you now have a framework that helps you choose the perfect words to include in your email.

If you're starting out with email copywriting, the best way to write your email copy is to begin with a simple outline. For each of the 4 P's, write 1 or 2 bullet points -- no more than 3. Remember; you're writing for email. That means you have only a few seconds to get your persuasive message across. Think about how you read your emails. You don't read them line by line, word by word, do you? No. When you read an email, you scan it quickly, looking for key points that will decide whether it's worth reading it in detail. Make sure your bullet points are words that leap off the screen, capturing your email readers' attention.

If you've already been email copywriting for a while, maybe it would be a good time to review what you've already written. Are the 4 P's present in your email copy? How clear is the promise? Perhaps a promise with a different benefit -- one that is longer-lasting, or one that appeals more to a different deeper emotion? Maybe there's room for improvement for how you paint the picture of the benefit?

I'm appreciative to the AWAI for educating generations of professional copywriters. I'm sure that you'll find these 4P's of persuasive email copywriting will greatly increase the responses to your email campaigns.