The purpose of your promotional emails is to drive traffic to your site and build sales. Right?

On a very simple level, that may be so.

But you'll create smarter, more effective emails if you take a much deeper look at the purpose and function of each email you create.

A couple of years ago I opened a Hotmail account and signed up to receive emails from dozens of different companies. Just so I could see what those companies were doing.

Last week, while preparing to give a seminar on online copywriting, I took a good look through some recent emails in that account. It became apparent to me that these companies were taking some very different approaches to email marketing.

Here are some examples.

QVC.com sends out a daily email under the name of 'Today's Special Value'. It's a one-day special - the price is good only for that day. And the email features just one product.

What is very noticeable is that the copy is long. One recent email featured an exercise machine, with 175 words of supporting text. That's the kind of length that most companies would use on their Web site's final product description page.

The purpose of QVC's emails appears to be to get most of the selling done within the email itself.

UnbeatableDeals.com sent me an email that featured a variety of software programs, all of them for personal use at home. Accounting software, legal software, home improvement software and so on.

They presented a group of products within one specific theme and wrote only about a dozen words about each.

The purpose of that email appears to be to capture the attention of homeowners, and hope that one of the several products presented will generate a click-through to their site.

FutureShop.ca sent me an email that featured three or four products, each with long supporting copy. As with QVC.com, they were trying to get most of the selling done within the email. In fact, each product was accompanied by a large 'BUY' button.

When it came to the BUY, they gave me an option. Buy online, or 'click here' and print out a coupon to take to my nearest Future Shop store.

The purpose of this email was to generate sales for both their online and offline stores.

Victoria's Secret sent me an email (under the assumption that I was female) that featured the usual beauty shot, a very few words about bras and some drop-down menus.

I was invited to use the menus to select my bra size and choice of style.

Their purpose? To get me to self-qualify and drive me to a very specific page on their site that would showcase the exact right products.

SiteSell.com sent me an email that was 22 pages long when I printed it out. And it was just the first in a series of five emails over 5 days.

Was this an email at all? Absolutely. Ultimately, they wanted me to buy one of their SiteSell products. But they didn't use that incredibly long email to SELL - they used it to give me the knowledge and information necessary for me to RECOGNIZE that their product would be right for me.

The purpose was not to sell, but to put me in a frame of mind where I would want to buy. An important distinction.

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Each of these retailers took different approaches with their emails. Each email had a different purpose. And I know that UnbeatableDeals.com tests very different approaches on a regular basis.

So what is the purpose of your emails? Are you just sending promotional messages out there and hoping for the best?

Or is each email crafted with a very particular purpose in mind?