email copywriting

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How To Use Email Copywriting To Skyrocket Sales

Do you know that every $1 generates $42, an impressive 4,200% ROI on email marketing?

Are you ready to build relationships with your target audience by speaking directly to them in their inbox?

With the right messaging copy, email can become your most impactful marketing strategy.

Email is used in every step of the customer journey to drive insane high-quality traffic, generate leads and boost sales.

However, as potent as email marketing is in generating leads and boosting sales, readers are burnt-out.

And if you do not have a persuasive copy and a well-designed marketing strategy, your readers will not read your email. Worse yet, you may lose brand loyalty.

In this article, you will learn the following:

  • What email copywriting is
  • How to write a consistent high-performing email copy
  • And email copywriting examples you need to see

Let's get started.

What Is Email Copywriting?

In basic form, email copywriting is the same as any other type of copywriting. It uses text and other media to craft an email copy that engages and persuades your target readers to take the action you desire.

That action, conversion, or goal could be a reply, signup, a trial, or even reading your blog posts. A high-quality email copy achieves your goal.

A converting email copy is in a conversational style. However, the biggest challenge of any email copywriter is creating a copy that is opened and read.

For copy to be persuasive, the email must be something people want to read. And that starts with a well-thought-out subject line. A well-crafted subject line entices the subscriber to click.

And nobody reads without clicking on a compelling email subject line. Coming up with an attention-grabbing headline that draws eyeballs in a crowded inbox is not easy.

Many copywriters know that it is harder to write a good short story than a full-blown novel. The same is true for your email copy.

Having said that:

Benefits Of Email Marketing

benefits of email copywriting

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Despite new online marketing channels, email marketing is considered the top channel by most marketers. According to Campaign Monitor, marketers who use segmented email campaigns had as much as a 760% increase in revenue.

4 out of 5 marketers said that they would give up social media than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)

Here are reasons to make email marketing part of your online marketing strategy:

It cuts through the annoying online clutter and helps you build relationships with your target audience. It is so effective that 81% of SMBs consider emailing their most effective customer acquisition and retention marketing strategy.

Email marketing is more effective than social media marketing

  • It does not cost a lot of money and is cost-effective
  • It makes it easy to personalize
  • It helps to tie all marketing channels together
  • It works well on mobile and desktop devices
  • Email also has a much longer lifespan than social media posts
  • It directs traffic to your website and drives sales

Ways To Improve Your Email Copywriting

Here are strategies that will help you improve your email copywriting:

Define Your Email Goal

Defining your email goal helps you understand what you want to achieve with your campaign copy. Before you craft your email, it is best to understand:

  • Your target audience;
  • And what they will get from your email.

Before creating your campaign or revising your email copy, use the answers to these questions to define and laser-focus on your email goals.

Setting goals helps you measure whether your email copy was successful or not. 

Where are you now on your sales funnel?

Creating a baseline based on your current metrics helps you measure your success when starting a new campaign or selling a new product.

To get an idea of where you are starting, note metrics like:

  • Open rates
  • Click rates
  • Unsubscribe rates
  • Conversion rates
  • Spam rate

What is your desired action?

What action do you want your email reader to take? Understanding the purpose of your email is, makes it easy for you to tailor your copy so that your reader takes the desired action.

What action do you want your reader to take after reading your email?

  • Do you want them to read an educational article? Let them know how it benefits them.
  • Do you want your readers to try your app? Show them how easy it is to log in. And what they can do inside the platform.
  • Do you want your readers to buy your products or services? Show your readers why the product is perfect for them.

Are segmenting your email readers?

email copywriting boosts sales

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If you offer a trial use of your product or service, the trial users should get a different email copy from paid subscribers.

Also, paid customers should receive their email copies differently from prospects. Email segmentation helps you achieve these goals.

How will you persuade your readers to take your desired action?

What motivates and persuades your readers to hit the buy button? Customers will not buy because of your product features. They buy because of the perceived benefit of those features.

What is the promise that you are making to your readers?

Once you understand it, it becomes easy to craft a persuasive email copy that helps them achieve their emotional desire.

After establishing your goals, you can dive into audience research.

Now that you've set your goal, what is the next step?

#1. Use Catchy Subject Line

Because of the abundance of irrelevant messages, most readers spend just a fraction of a second looking at email subject lines.

However, the best subject lines communicate the promise of value.

In other words, your subject line has to convince the recipient that the email contains information or messaging that will improve their lives or their businesses.

Also, that short one-line description of your email copy may be the only chance to connect with your readers. Do you want to dramatically improve the results you achieve from your email copy?

Here are the characteristics of impactful email copy subject lines:

Keep It Brief: Short subject lines quickly grab the attention of the reader. Research shows that short subject lines between six and ten words had the best open rate.

Most people spend time reading emails on their mobile devices. Keep subject lines short and sweet and focus on quickly grabbing the attention of the reader.

This is likely because most people spend time reading emails on their mobile devices. Keep it short and sweet and focus on quickly grabbing the attention of the reader.

Choose Action Words: Use action verbs in your subject line. These words help your readers understand the action you want them to take before they even open the email.

Action words like “act now,” and “don’t miss out” create a sense of an urgency.

Capture Their Interest: Use subject lines that are interesting, unique, and catchy. Grab their attention and let them understand why opening your email benefits them.

Offer Something Of Value: Communicate the promise of value with your subject line. Compel and convince your reader that your email contains relevant information that will improve their lives.

Build Trust: Use your subject line to build trust with your brand. Make sure that the information on your email copy is consistent with the promise in the subject line. Keep your subject line free of spelling or grammatical errors to preserve credibility. And maintain your trust with your audience.

Keep It Personal: Email readers demand and expect relevant and personalized copy. And the purpose of personalizing your email copy is to make your target readers feel like VIPs and not like just another email contact in your list. Studies have shown emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened than those without. And Rich Relevance found that revenue is 5.7 times higher in emails that employ personalization.

#2. Use Preview Text

email preview text

Preview text helps you improve the open rate of your email marketing campaigns. What is an email preview text.? Email preview text, or the pre-header, is visible in most email inboxes.

It is the text after the sender and subject lines that introduce the content of the message. Most often it is an excerpt of the email message.

However, some marketers craft creative preview text for a more catchy and persuasive introduction.

The goal of writing a unique preview text is to highlight for the recipients the main points of the message they are about to read.

Email preview text is usually 35-90 characters. On the other hand, some email clients may show up to 140 characters.

Why Use Preview Text?

Email preview helps you arrest the attention of your recipients as they scan their inboxes.

A stunning and persuasive email preview copy stands out in crowded inboxes. And it compels them to open and read your email. High-quality preview texts grab the attention of your recipients.

It also can drastically increase open rates.

How To Create Effective Email Preview Text

Here are tips to help you write good attention-grabbing email preview text that entices your recipients to open your message:

Get To The Point

Keep in mind that your readers get tons of emails every day. Your preview text must get to the main point of your copy.

Some savvy marketers use unique teasers with a good summary of the email message. This tactic intrigues your audience to learn more.

Keep The Subject Line Short

Keep the subject line of your email messages short. And you can use the preview text to provide more information.

Use Action Words

Action words get attention. And using them in your preview text convinces your recipients of the importance of your message. Action words can compel your readers to take action, like opening your email right away.

Consider Characters And Length

Though there is no character limit for preview text, the display limit is generally between 35 and 90 characters.

Keep your preview text to about 35-40 characters. That will help your recipients to see it in its entirety and on all their devices.

Other considerations for preview text length are:

  • Two lines of preview text on AOL and Gmail inboxes.
  • Three lines of preview text on Phone 6 email client.
  • Only 40 characters of preview text on Windows phones.

A/B Test Your Preview Text

Word your preview texts differently. And test them. Test half your email list with one wording and half with the other. Check and see which half has a higher open rate. A/B test helps you learn more about your audience and improves your conversions.

#3. Personalized Email Copy Converts

personalized email converts

Email copywriting personalization is the use of the personal information of subscribers to create more targeted emails. It treats the reader as an individual. And it increases email conversions massively. 

Why is email personalization important? 

Personalized emails reward readers with new experiences. And this is made possible by understanding the personality of the subscriber. When emails address their pain points, it turns reading your emails into an enjoyable and exciting experience. Besides positive emotions, here are other benefits of a personalized email copy:

Personalized email copy improves the relationship with your subscribers

Personalized email copy humanizes communication between a brand and a subscriber. And email readers appreciate them because the brand examines and responds to their tastes and needs. Personalization increases shared value, and both sides win.

Personalization maximizes your email campaign

Your subscribers are flooded with tons of irrelevant and noisy emails every day. Personalizing your email copy maximizes its potential as a marketing tool.

In other words, you need fewer emails to get your subscribers to take the action you desire. 

Future of email personalization 

Email personalization has become more precise and sophisticated. Almost every email vendor makes it easier to implement personalized email campaigns.

You can dive deep into your email personalization. That depends on your business needs and possibilities. 

Have a look at the inspiring results email personalization achieves:

Email personalization stats

These stats show that personalization is helping boost the success of email marketing strategies across many industries.

  1. 66% of marketers are working toward securing internal resources to execute personalized marketing programs. –Conversant Media
  2. When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most important to marketing in the future, 33% of marketers answered: “personalization.” –Adage
  3. 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. – eConsultancy
  4. Only 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email. – Certona
  5. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. – Campaign Monitor
  6. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. – Experian
  7. 53% of marketers say ongoing, personalized communication with existing customers results in moderate to significant revenue impact. – DemandGen
  8. Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. – DMA
  9.  Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. –Campaign Monitor
  10. Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized experiences. – Monetate
  11. 50% of companies feel they can increase interaction within email by increasing personalization. – Experian
  12. Some brands recorded an 8x improvement in click-through rates with a personalized video compared to standard outbound email campaigns. – Marketing Land
  13. The open rate for an email with personalization was 18.8%, compared to 13.1% without any personalization in 2016. – Statista

#4. Email Copy Should Be Brief - Very Brief

Over 300 billion emails are sent to people each day. The number grows every day. Also: 55% of all email today is spam.

That number should not surprise you. How many emails do you get each day? What is the point here? Think about when you open a marketing email in your inbox.

How do you read it? Do you read every single word in there? Probably not. Most people do not read their emails thoroughly. They scan for important points.

They do so to have an idea of the overall message. And then decide whether they want to take any action.

So if you're sending an email with lots of words of copy, you're making it much more difficult for recipients to decide whether they want to read through it.

And that's because they can't quickly sift through all of the information in your email. Instead, be brief. Summarize what the reader will get compellingly.

Let them click on a link that sends them to your website for more information.

Take a look at a successful brief email offer:

brief email copy

After a brief, friendly hello, Postmates got straight to the purpose of the email: their new "free lattes on-demand" promotion. After the introduction, then a few of the essential details, and then the call to action.

Keeping your message on-point is how to write a successful brief email copy. Having just one primary call-to-action in your email marketing results in a better outcome.

#5. Use Email Copy To Stay On Brand

Create brand identity emails that fit your business image.

The images of the products or services make you memorable, dependable, and authoritative.

And as a result, you become the first choice customers can rely on, time and time again. However, your email copy helps you build and maintain the image you want.

Focus on email marketing as a strategy for building your brand image because of its cost-efficiency.

Compared to other marketing channels, it is one the most valuable ways for promotion.

To stay on brand, use brand tone and voice guidelines in your email copy.

Good brand tone and voice guidelines will help you keep the same level of consistency as you do with other copywriting.

The same uniformity in your design is what you want in your tone of voice.

email branding tone of voice

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Conclusion

Use email copywriting to reach your targeted audience and build your brand. Spend time and resources to understand your audience and how to help them. Be as engaging and persuasive as possible. 

A/B test your email copy. Send out previews to a select group of your most engaged subscribers to see the one they opened the most.

Get the most out of every email copy. Craft your email copy in a conversational tone.

Talk to your readers like human beings. And they will be compelled to take action.

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