Email Copywriting: How To Create Effective Email Copy That Converts11 min read

Email marketing is still one of the most effective and profitable strategies as it generates an exceptionally high ROI  – for every $1 you spend you’ll earn $38.

This is why many small companies and startups can’t afford to fall flat with their email marketing because there’s hardly any other tool that can do so much for promoting their brand, driving traffic, and generating qualified leads, with so little money. 

But, let’s see how to capture your target audience and hold them spellbound with your email copy.

Check out these effective email copywriting tips. 

1. Exercise Brevity

Although you might be tempted to elaborate on all the benefits of your product or service, the email copy isn’t the place to do so. Your emails should be clear, concise, and free from any kind of clutter.

You should aim to convey your message in simple language and make your call-to-action button easily identifiable.

Keep in mind that you’re addressing busy professionals who are bombarded with tons of emails every day – the number of sent and received emails per day was more than 306 million, while according to estimates an average office worker sends and receives 121 emails every day. In other words, your prospects simply don’t have enough time and energy to read long-winded emails.

So, being a person of few (relevant and meaningful) words is actually a good thing in this case.

2. Leverage Preheader Text

This short excerpt of your email body is displayed, together with the subject line, in the inbox preview panel. 

It offers your recipients a sneak peek into what your mail is actually about, and it’s also one of the crucial factors which helps them whether the email is worth opening or not.

Think about this when you’re penning the introductory sentence and compose it as an extension of your subject line. 

Including your call to action in preheader text, when it’s possible, and assertively invite your recipients to open the email or click on the link to find more about your offer.

Paired with the subject line, preheader text adds more context to your email and convinces your prospects that they will benefit from opening it.

3. Declutter Your Offer

Don’t confuse your prospects by offering them two or three things in your email copy. 

There should be just one, very clear conversion goal, and you should build your whole narrative around it. 

As we have already mentioned, people are usually either too busy or too distracted to read the entire email. That’s why you should map out your content in such a way that it’s very clear even to those who skip a few lines what you want them to do and how you want them to do that.

• Sign up for our new product.
• Register for our free trial.
• Upgrade your subscription.

If you put all these calls to action in a single mail, you are going to confuse your recipients and they won’t be able to figure out what your main goal is. 

So, the less is more in this case.

4. Use a Conversational Style

Try not to load your email copy with salesy phrases and pack it with over-the-top adjectives unless you don’t want to sound along the lines of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Save these high-flown words for your website. 

It can’t be stressed enough how powerful a simple language can be in the world of marketing, so instead of describing your product or service as amazing, one of a kind, time-saving, profit-increasing, and productivity-boosting, try to get rid of all those bombastic words and use the language that you would use to describe a very cool and helpful gadget to your friends.

Also, using industry jargon won’t impress your prospects or make your product come off as more superior. 

Quite the opposite, you’ll just alienate them, so to avoid this scenario, talk like a layman.

5. Don’t Talk About Yourself

Sticking to a customer-centric approach is essential in your email copy.

It’s not recommended to dwell on yourself and your company too much. 

Your prospects have subscribed in order to learn more about the products and how they can help them solve their pain points, so make sure to focus your narrative on them and their well-being.

Consequently, this means that you should switch from I, we, me, and us to you and yours. It’s worth noting, however, that for calls to action, you should use the first person. 

A split test conducted by Unbounce has shown that a CTA “start my 30-day free trial” performed 90% better than “start your 30-day free trial”.

6. Talk About Benefits Not Features

In the same vein, your prospects don’t actually care about the benefits of your products if there’s no word about the value they add.

Benefits and features are frequently confused, and whenever you want to brag about some amazing functionalities that your product or service has, remember that your customers are more concerned about how these functionalities can help them solve their pain points and make their lives better.

The main reason for your prospect to actually read the mail is a benefit they will get by taking the action you proposed. 

In a nutshell, the email copy should give an answer to your recipients’ question “what’s in it for me?”

So, the next time you’re composing your email copy, explain to your prospects why they should opt for your product, and leave its specs for some other occasion.

In case that you’re strapped for time and can’t come up with decent email copy and subject lines, don’t despair. 

Autoklose can help you with that too. 

We’ve created a number of practical, customizable email sequence templates convenient for the most common business situations, such as a new product launch, webinar, product upgrade, or meetup. 

All you have to do is tweak a couple of details, schedule your campaign, and wait for replies.

Check out our Free Email Template Library and find inspiration for your next campaign.

7. Make a Difference

At the same time, you need to make your prospects sure that they won’t get such a benefit from anyone else, including your competitors.

So, if it is a sale you are focusing on, you have to make a difference either by the price, a discount, or the special feature you’re offering.

If it is an excellent blog post you want them to see, be sure they understand the way they’ll benefit by reading it – they’ll never use spam triggers in their emails again if they learn how to use the new feature of your software, for example. 

Tell your prospects what sets you apart from the rest of the crowd and why they should pick you instead of your competitors. 

8. Segment and Personalize

We’re living in an era of the hyperconnected customer.

In other words, people want to communicate on a personal level with their favorite brands, and they won’t have bland, impersonal, mass-emails aimed at an audience of thousands of people.

They want to feel that you’re writing directly to them.

Sure, adding the first name is good, but it’s not enough.

Your email campaign will show the best results if you segment and personalize your copy.

There are quite a few subgroups in your audience, according to age, gender, location, etc. and they can have very different expectations from your email.

You won’t send the same email to prospects who have just subscribed to your blog, and to your long-time customers, neither will you offer the same products to a young woman in her twenties, and a middle-aged man.

Another crucial moment for the success of your email campaign is personalization, both of the subject line and the text body.  

Stats claim that emails with personalized subject lines boost open rates by 26%, while personalized email marketing campaigns increase CTR by 14% and conversion rates by 10%.

If you aren’t sure how segmentation works, I suggest you check out our blog post on the topic.

Another thing that you should bear in mind is that Autoklose offers a number of different filters based on which you can personalize your emails.

Apart from that, there are different personalization tokens, but we’ve taken things to the next level by allowing you to create your own tokens and practically personalize any element of your email.

Finally, our Autoklose Template Analyzer helps you make sure that your subject lines, copy, CTAs, signature, and other elements are well-optimized – you’ll get a lot of tips that will suggest to you what to do to come up with high-converting emails.

9. Include a CTA

Including a call-to-action button instead of just a regular link can increase conversion rates by almost 30%.

Still, to make your CTA effective you need to be sure it resonates with where your prospect is in their buyer’s journey. Also, your CTA needs to follow certain principles, and be:

• Action-oriented
• Persuasive
• Visually strong
• Creates a sense of urgency
• Specific

Never put more than one CTA in your email because prospects can be confused with what you want them to do, so be sure you’ve made it clear enough.

To cut the long story short, read our blog post on how to create CTAs that will make your recipients’ click.

10. Proofread Your Copy

No one wants to leave or see grammatical errors and typos in an email, and when it comes to your business, it may even seem completely sloppy and unprofessional.

Although “aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe,” it’s not a pretty sight (but you can try this one out if you want to entertain your recipients and capture their attention, but don’t do it often or accidentally!)

If you want your email to be grammatically and typographically correct, you should give your copy a rest, and double-check it after a while.

Also, be sure to use error-checking tools, such as Grammarly, and ask one of your colleagues to have another look, since errors are more difficult to spot when you’ve written the content.

These simple email copywriting tips can make a world of difference when it comes to your email campaigns and bring you tangible results. 

Their simplicity and straightforwardness sometimes make people shrug them off as not particularly effective. But they will prove to be the right secret ingredients you need to make your campaigns convert.