Oct 09, 2019

3 tips for writing great email copy

Tom Wozniak

Writing effective email copy can be a challenging process for any marketer. With that in mind, here are three tips for writing effective email content to optimize your next campaign. By Tom Wozniak

ITS'S NOT ABOUT YOU
Planning an email campaign starts by thinking about what you want to achieve; the new product you're excited to promote; how the email will impact sales, etc. But, once you get to writing email content, it's time to stop focusing on you/your company/ your product and think about your audience.

What do they care about? It's not the cool features of your new product, it's the benefits it will deliver to your customer. Think about what's in it for them. Make sure the final content is focused on what matters to your audience and you'll go a long way toward engaging with them in your email campaign.

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT
As a general rule of thumb, email marketers try to grab their audience's attention and quickly get to the point. Since recipient attention is limited, short and sweet is often the best approach to writing email copy. If the average recipient will only read the first few sentences of your email, then you want to get to the point in a hurry for them to convert.

However, many successful email campaigns go in the opposite direction. Instead of keeping the email short and to the point, they write LONG emails that scroll for page after page and 90% of the content is well 'below the fold'. These types of emails deliver a slow build toward the conclusion and often include repetitive sections of content, numerous testimonials, and other aspects that move a prospect through their entire customer journey in one email.

The best advice is to really get to know your audience and how they will respond to shorter or longer messaging. Testing is a great way to dial in the right copy length for your audience.

CLOSE THE DEAL
It's possible that you're just sending out an announcement and your goal is simply to get recipients to read the email. But, in most cases you want them to take some action after reading the email. It could be a simple as clicking a link for more information or it actually completing a purchase. In either case, the point of the email is to drive action. Still, many marketing emails fail to include a compelling call-to-action.

In traditional sales, there's a step called 'asking for the sale,' which many salespeople consider the most difficult part of the process. It can be uncomfortable to ask someone to buy. However, in traditional sales or email marketing, you have to keep a focus on that end result and call-to-action.

Even if the campaign's goal is to move a prospect one step further through their decision process, it is still designed to elicit a response. Always keep that in mind and it will show in your campaign results. [FF]