Not so fast. A well-crafted email can be a sweet treat, no different than the most inviting of desserts: the ice cream sundae.

Let’s start with the copy. Rich, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth copy is the foundation, like a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. You copy should be sweet, simple, and provide a scrumptious place for toppings to lay. Don’t go rocky road, or neopolitan, or Cherry Garcia. Instead go with vanilla bean – not bland vanilla, but delicious creamy vanilla with specks of the bean. In other words, be brief, get to the point, but give it just a touch of excitement, enticement, or pizzaz to spark the reader’s interest.

The hot fudge, yes, that is the call to action button. What do you want your readers to do? Buy something? Take a peek at your new video? Donate to charity? Make sure your call to action buttons appear at least twice in the email – probably once at the top and once at the bottom (for those who actually read the whole thing…chocolate sauce drizzles all the way to the bottom, you know). Sure, the ice cream is good, but it’s the chocolate sauce that calls people to action.

Next, the whipped cream and sprinkles that make up the HTML email template. Just as fluffy whipped cream and colorful sprinkles excite your eyeballs and make you jump for joy, so it shall be with with an irresistible, visually delectable email template. Your company logo embedded in the attractive header, the sidebar with quotes, links, and promos….whipped cream and sprinkles make it all the more fun.

The cherry on top? Of course, the subject line. Perhaps the most important part of your email, a poorly written or spammy subject line will get as many people interested in your email as there would be people lining up to grab a sundae with a moldy yet mysteriously half-eaten cherry on top. Don’t type in all caps, don’t put 135 exclamation points in there, and stay away from cliches like “buy now”, “X% Off”, “Refinance Today”, or any other trite, rotten cherries. Even if your sundae, er, email makes it past the recipient’s spam filter, chances are that they will never be read with such subject lines. A marachino cherry is not only eye-catching, it is a sweet way to start a sundae. Make sure your subject lines are equally appealing at under 60 characters (the less the merrier, for the most part), and give people a reason to open your email.

Put it all together and you’ll have a delicious treat that will get the attention of your audience.

I’ve combined my advice and my vice in an effort to educate you, may it serve you well.