Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your customers. With typical ROIs of around £35 for every pound spent, it’s a push channel that reaches your customers when you need to. This makes it a highly effective way to build your brand, drive sales and connect with your community.
In this post, I’ll take a look at how your copywriting for emails matters, including:
● What is email copywriting, and what’s its place in the overall strategy?
● Why email copywriting is important to your brand.
● Four takeaway tips and reminders for email copywriting.
What is email copywriting?
Email copywriting is the creation of the written parts of your marketing emails. The words in every email should be on-brand, compelling, and sit perfectly with any imagery or links. These emails may be to new, existing or lapsed customers, and can cover everything from communicating news to promoting an offer.
During the email copywriting process, the writer will create the main body copy, which will go through the marketing message in more detail, the calls to action (designed to compel the reader to click), the subject line and preview text.
Recent stats show that clear calls to action can increase sales by 1617% and 64% of recipients will open an email based on its subject line. This kind of consumer behaviour means that you need to craft your copy. So, an experienced writer will be able to hone these messages in your emails for maximum impact.
Why is email copywriting important?
With over 4 billion daily email users, email marketing is a way of tapping into a huge, active global market at the times to suit you. And the good news is that consumers feel positive about the right emails. Research shows that 86% of consumers want to hear from businesses they buy from, and 60% prefer email over other forms of communication.
This said, it’s a highly competitive landscape and you need to stand out to make it past the flood of emails in inboxes, or to warrant being moved from the spam folder. The way to do this is by creating value for the customer. Well-written and constructed emails will pique curiosities and offer something of value, be it an actual sales offer, useful information, or a reminder for an event.
Like any kind of copywriting, it’s not just the words themselves, but the structure that makes all the difference. Understanding that the important information needs to be at the top, that calls to action must be written in the active voice, and that subject lines and preview text should be benefit-focused are all innate considerations of a good copywriter.
There are other little tips and tricks an email copywriter with content marketing training will know too, such as the use of emojis in subject lines. (Yes, they can increase open and click performance, but you should only add one or two.)
Tips and Reminders for email copywriting
Let’s look at four ways you can refine your marketing emails straightaway:
1. Segment your database: start with segmenting your subscribers and developing different messaging for each segment. You can be creative here if you don’t have lots of customer data. For example, imagine you’re a pet store. You may segment your database to talk about tips for caring for your cat to your cat owners and something like dog grooming tips for dog owners. This combined approach of segmenting data and writing the right messaging can help you cut through, driving up to 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs.
2. Talk up your benefits: consider your customer’s problems, wants and needs and create emails that answer those directly. Not only will this tie into your overall marketing messaging for your products or services, but it will also create interesting, clickable content that drives a response.
3. Call to action: don’t forget to add strong calls to action (CTAs) in your emails. Make those buttons pop with contrasting colours, play around with different copy in those CTAs, and don’t forget to use active language to elicit action.
4. Don’t spam: These days, both marketers and consumers have a much better understanding of the laws around emailing. In the UK and Europe, we need to adhere to GDPR and in the US there’s the CAN-SPAM Act. When building lists (which should never be bought), designing your emails and reaching out to people on your database, keep these in mind.
Summing up
Ultimately, marketing emails that feel good for your customers are also good for your company. There are huge commercial advantages to developing your email strategy but always bear in mind the customer experience. A well-thought-out, targeted and creative approach will help you move out of spam folders, build your brand’s reputation in the real world and on search engines, and boost sales.
To discover how I can help develop your email strategy and write beautiful copy, contact me now.