A lot of people will scan your email so you need to make your subheads give a complete selling message by themselves. Also, be sure to use different graphic embellishments.

7. Eliminate excess wording: Simplify. Convey your message in a clear and concise manner -- but remember that doesn't mean 'keep it short'.

My personal guru of direct marketing, Ted Nicholas, repeatedly states that copy can never be too long, just too boring . All things considered equal, longer copy will always outperform shorter copy, AS LONG AS copy is compelling and not boring. And you need to ruthlessly edit your email for flow.

8. Use action verbs whenever possible: If you see too many "as", "is", "was" or "were" replace them. Sentences using action verbs are more powerful.

When writing your email you want it clear enough so that any high school student can understand it. Now, you probably think that your prospects/clients are a lot smarter than average high school student. But nobody has time anymore to sit down and figure out what you're trying to say -- so keep your writing simple and straightforward.

Oh, and go through your text and cut out word "that" wherever you possibly can. It's a 'dead' word that reduces impact of any sentence.

Or you might like to read above sentence as: It's a dead word and reduces impact of any sentence.

Which one do you think is more powerful?

Important particulars ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are a few important points you need to be aware of.

1. Always give people option of being removed from your mailing list. Very important now that Privacy Laws are coming in all around world and spam levels are so high.

2. Make your links 'clickable'. In order to make it easy for people to go straight from your email to your website you need to make your links 'clickable'. Here's how a link should be written in your email: http://www.yoursite.com.au

Most email programs will recognise this as a link.

And if you want to make an email link you should write it as mailto:emailaddress@yoursite.com.au

Well, that's it. Happy writing!

The wrong audience ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I once attended a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, of British Psychological Society.

Fortunate to have been presenting a paper there, I was nevertheless distracted by very large number of other presenters, many of whom were presenting papers that, on reading their paper's titles in Proceedings, looked really interesting.

With a couple of hours to spare before I was due to present, I picked what appeared to be an interesting presentation, and sauntered casually into lecture room.

So you can imagine my dismay when I found, about five minutes into presentation, that title was a 'trick' title, a play-on-words by author that no doubt struck him as funny and clever, but struck me as dastardly.

As Robert Cialdini would say, presenter was a 'smuggler' of influence. That is, he used a 'hot' topic of day to entice an audience in, only to then present to them something that had VERY little relevance to that 'hot' topic.

I was not alone (and not first) in walking out of lecture theatre and heading for a 'second choice' presentation (which, incidentally, I did thoroughly enjoy!)

I also remember a very large and cumbersome booklet being left on my desk overnight by a then employer. The booklet went to great lengths to inform me of latest company initiatives in a particular HR area. Whilst time and expense company went to to create and publish booklet was considerable, actual initiative itself affected perhaps less than a fifth of total employees in company. Even then, from talking to colleagues in that 'fifth' group, I doubted that more than a few of fifth would have been interested in it, too.

The company had its own intranet (it was one of pioneers in computing industry) before business really understood power and potential of internet publishing, so it could have just as easily and far more cheaply just emailed everyone with a link to specially-written pages on their intranet.

But these were days when it was IT department that controlled access to and publishing on intranet, not individual business groups.

At least these days HR Department could have published their own webpages on intranet and sent an email out to individually affected employees.

Presenting your message to wrong audience for your business communication is a complete waste of your time and money. Don't do it -- pick your audience then pick medium that will best find them.

A distracting environment ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There's nothing worse than trying to communicate your message to a group of people who cannot 'hear' you.

Whether their inability to 'hear' you is because of:

* your voice not being strong enough * too many others talking in room at same time * police and ambulance sirens outside venue * too many phone calls coming in to their office while they're trying to read your memo * interruptions while they try to read your report * incoming emails keep popping up while they are reading your web-based communication * their minds are full of other pressing matters * they are supposed to be somewhere else at that moment * their mobile phone keeps ringing, or vibrating if they've set it to 'silent' instead of switching it off * their internet connection is slow * their internet connection keeps dropping out * there are too many interesting people to look at * room's airconditioning is not working and room is hot and stuffy * room's heating is not working and room is cold and clammy

Well, there are of course a thousand possible distracting reasons why they cannot or will not attend to your business communication.

The point is to do whatever you can, whilst acknowledging that this might be next to nothing, to reduce number of distractions your chosen audience might be subjected to.

In closing... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The barriers to effective business communication are many, but with care and attention majority of them can be overcome.

The fewer barriers, greater chance that your business communication will be heard, understood and your MDA ('Most Desired Action' you wish them to take) will actually occur.