Email Marketing 101: Don’t write yet another sucky email to your customers, ever again!

Email marketing can be a tough cookie to crack — but it’s not impossible. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that you’re probably sick and tired of writing emails to your customers that are getting poor click-throughs, hardly any open rates and the only buzz is the slew of unsubscribe notifications.

Been there, done that.

Luckily you have copywriting on your side. Having a formula of outstanding copy tricks ready to go and at your disposal can have your smashing out emails that people are going to actually WANT to read.

Side Note: Make sure you have done your audience research first before you send out emails willy-nilly. You don’t want to be sending special cat emails out to customers that have dogs now do you!

Ready? Let’s dive in.

The type of emails you will send out for marketing purposes usually fall into 3 different categories:

• Informative and Educational — newsletters, blogs, articles and updates
• Lead Generation — downloadable e-books, invitations to webinars, surveys
• Promotional or Offer Driven — Sales, discounts, offers, birthday emails

To be perfectly honest, while the information will be different, you should be doing the same type of copywriting on each.

But how? They are all so different!

Don’t panic. Let’s go back to the point of an email. It’s not to have people sit on the email and read it for 10 minutes, its aim is to grab their attention and have them click off onto your website/social media/event page for them to then take whatever course of action you prefer.

Here is what you should ALWAYS do when writing an email to get those sweet sweet metrics up.

Write a KILLER subject line

This step is crucial. If you don’t have a subject line that is going to knock the socks off your customer then you may as well pack up and go home. Honest. Your first course of action should be for them to open it SO BAD.

People are switched on and digitally savvy. They know it’s from a brand trying to sell them something. They know it’s from you. You can’t hide that. But what you can do is pique curiosity.

Now, not to overshare — but my dog used to have a somewhat irritable bowel. She was a stinky sloppy pooch until I bought her some special bowel protection and rehabilitation food at a pet store online.

About a week later I got an email from said pet store with the subject line…

“Eve, how is your puppies tummy going?”

Hooked, curious and intrigued I opened the email to find them trying to sell me other products that could help my poor dogs tummy.

To get this specific, you do need to go into the digital marketing territory of hyper-personalisation. Which I do highly suggest. But we’re strictly chatting copy today.

Here are some pointers to follow to get your killer subject line.

• Give them FOMO. “I wouldn’t miss this, would you?”
• Pique Curiosity “Don’t open this at work”
• Add Humour “I can see you’re ignoring me again”

Don’t be afraid to push the envelope — get a bit cheeky if that suits your brand. You’ve got a second to hook them, so you better do it well. If it scares you a little THAT’S when you know you’ve got it right.

Test a few combo’s and see what your audience relates to. Once you know what makes them click. Go for gold.

Insert a Grabbing Headline

Now that you’ve gotten them to actually open your email, the second part is to hit them with an attention grabbing headline.

And no, by attention grabbing I don’t mean 20% off. Hmmm great. $2 off a towel. Whooo. I have abandoned all other tasks to get that sweet deal (yes, I am being sarcastic). I mean a headline that makes them want to keep reading on.

Put yourself in your audiences shoes. What will drive them to purchase? Well, it’s usually solving a problem they have. Please don’t take this time to talk about you or your brand. Customers are selfish little creatures they want to know what’s in it for them.

An example may be something along the lines of

“YES, you are one step closer to….”

“Thank GOD you opened this email. You almost…”

“Stop looking, we’ve got you”

Punchy, Quick and Easy

No matter if you’re wanting them to click through to a company blog or to jump on a sale. Having tidbits of information that makes the customer want to learn more is key.

Don’t add in a slew of paragraphs and don’t over explain yourself. These customers have opted into your email marketing because they like your product or are interested in learning more about your business.

This means you don’t have to keep going on about who you are and what you do. Make the information and intent of your email punchy, easy to read and digestible.

What I mean by that is cut the waffle and get to the point. Less is more when it comes to email marketing.

Drive a Spicy CTA

Have your customer eating out o the palm of your hands with some great conversion copy or call to actions. I would like you to banish the following from your digital copywriting vocab.

“Click here” “Learn More” “Buy Now” “Contact Us”

Ick. Does this invoke in you the drive to click on that button? Probs not.

Get fun with it. Try different ways of encouraging your audience to take action — if only for them to be curious about what you’re going to say and do next.

Again, this has to align with your brand and tone of voice, but some examples include:

“I Can’t WAIT. Take me There NOW”

“YES! You’ve got me”

“Hmmm…I wanna know more”

Takeaway for Your Email Marketing: 

The moral of the story is…be interesting, be engaging. There are 10M other brands out there writing safe and boring copy. You’re not going to stand out from the crowd or get your engagements up if you keep writing this way.

You’re jostling for attention in an inbox with a slew of other emails. Give your customers something interesting. At the end of the day we’re all human, we just want to be entertained!