The All-in-One Guide to Email Copywriting 2023

What happens when your audience opens your high-quality-looking emails? Do they find what they’re looking for? Does the email copy follow the lines of your attractive subject lines? This is why email copywriting is as important as an attractive subject line, if not more.

If you don’t know yet, email copywriting is writing an email for a prospective customer with a goal in mind. This goal can be to push them to a sale, sign up on your website, subscribe to your newsletter, etc. This guide will discuss the components of a successful email copy, the dos and don’ts of writing one, and the tools you can use.

Table of contents

• What is email copywriting?

• Benefits of email copywriting

  • 1. Higher engagement and conversion rates
  • 2. Stronger relationships with the audience
  • 3. Increased return on investment (ROI)

• Sections of an email copy

  • 1. Subject line
  • 2. Pre-header
  • 3. Email body
  • 4. Call-to-action (CTA)

• 5 Tips for effective email copywriting

  • 1. Choose a copywriting framework
  • 2. Represent a single idea
  • 3. Talk directly to your customer
  • 4. Optimize your subject lines
  • 5. Introduce yourself in the introduction

• Things to avoid vis-a-vis email copywriting

• Tools to use for email copywriting

  • 1. Email marketing platforms with built-in copywriting features
  • 2. Copy analysis tools
  • 3. A/B testing and optimization tools
  • 4. Subject line generators

• Takeaways

What is email copywriting?

Email copywriting is creating compelling content for emails. It uses persuasive language, storytelling, and clear CTAs to engage readers and drive desired actions like purchases or sign-ups.

Benefits of email copywriting

Email copywriting is essential if you want your email campaigns not just to look valuable but also to offer value to your prospects. Here are a few ways your email campaigns can benefit from email copywriting.

1. Higher engagement and conversion rates

Email copywriting captures your audience’s attention and encourages them to take action. When your email copy is relevant and resonates with your audience, they read your emails and click on the links and CTAs in your emails, resulting in higher conversion and engagement rates.

2. Stronger relationships with the audience

A good email copy goes beyond communicating what’s important for your brand. It delivers valuable information to your audience and resonates with them on a deeper level that makes them feel understood and valued. This nurtures trust and customer loyalty over time and creates a long-lasting relationship between you and your audience.

3. Increased return on investment (ROI)

When your emails are crafted right, they will increase engagement and conversion and acts as a powerful tool to drive revenue. Stronger relationships also lead your audience to promote your services and products to their acquaintances. As a result, the time and effort invested can yield enough ROI to justify the investment.

Sections of an email copy

When crafting a good email copy, it is important to understand the key sections of an email copy. It is important to note that each section has its own importance and nailing every section is important to have an effective copy that converts. Let’s take a look at the different sections of an email copy.

1. Subject line

The subject line is one of the first things your recipient sees. It is technically the first impression your email has on the recipient, and he carries it with him the entire time he engages with that email. A good subject line is concise, intriguing, relevant and gives a clear picture of what the email holds.

2. Pre-header

Pre-header text, also known as the preview text, is a brief snippet of text that accompanies the subject line in most email clients. An ideal pre-header will complement the subject line in encouraging the recipient to open the email. Ideally, it should also make complete sense either by itself or by expanding on the idea of the subject line.

3. Email body

The email body is the heart of your email. A good email body must be concise and organized in format and convey the email's main idea with as much clarity as possible without unnecessarily elaborating.

Needless to say, your email copy must be engaging and relevant to your recipients and must also align with your subject line and pre-header. You can also include images, interactive elements and other visual elements to make the experience better for the readers.

4. Call-to-action (CTA)

The CTA represents the actions the brands want recipients to take after reading the email. It’s technically the desired outcome of the email. A good CTA should be attractive, have good visibility, compelling and must clearly communicate the action it performs or leads the recipients to. It could be something like ‘Shop now’, ‘Register’ or ‘Subscribe’.

5 Tips for effective email copywriting

If you practice copywriting and aspire to write email copies that convert, follow these tips that will take your email copywriting game to a whole new level.

1. Choose a copywriting framework

If you suffer from Copywriter’s Blank Page syndrome (CBPS), you might want to consider using a copywriting framework that helps you organize your thoughts and present them in a presentable format. Here are a few that you can leverage in your email copywriting.

• PAS

  • Problem - describe a pain point that the recipient has
  • Agitate - elaborate on the problem and show the effects
  • Solution - provide a solution for the problem

• FAB

  • Features - explain the features of your product
  • Advantages - what are the advantages of the features
  • Benefits - how it will benefit the recipient

• AIDA

  • Attention - Get the attention with a catchy statement
  • Interest - deliver information to interest the reader
  • Desire - show the benefits of your product
  • Action - lead to an action of signing up, ordering, etc.

• 4Ps

  • Picture - present a picture that attracts
  • Promise - talk about how our product will deliver
  • Prove - provide customer testimonials and feedback
  • Push - push them to take action

• 5Gs

  • Grab - grab their attention
  • Glue - connect with them, relate with them
  • Give - give a solution
  • Get - tell them what they are going to get, end result of your solution
  • Grow - help them grow

• STAR

  • Situation - describe the situation
  • Task - explain the task or challenge
  • Action - actions that you took
  • Result - discuss the outcome of the action

• GPS

  • Goal - state the desired outcome
  • Promise - make a compelling promise or commitment
  • Support - provide evidence and testimonials

• DIC

  • Disrupt - disrupt the pattern to attract
  • Intrigue - keep the reader intrigued
  • Click - lead the reader to click

• HSO

  • Hook - grab the attention

  • Story - keep engaged via a story

  • Offer - make a value proposition

Generally, my cold email framework is as follows, I don't have a name for it - but after several iterations, this is what I have found performs best:
[Hi|Hey|Hello|] {{first_name}},
{{First line personalization --> can be something that's personalized to the person, or company}}
{{Problem statement & value proposition --> a short description of the pain your product solves, ideally with metrics}}
{{Social proof --> XYZ companies are using our product to drive ABC results}}
{{Call to action → Would you be opposed to a quick chat sometime next week?}}
Cheers,
Adam
-Adam Purvis, Founder, Adam John Purvis

2. Represent a single idea

Ensure that your subject line, email body and CTA align with each other. They must convey a unified message that guides the recipient to a single action.

3. Talk directly to your customer

Writing your email copies in the second person gives a perception that you are talking directly to your audience. It creates a conversational tone and feels more engaging and personal.

4. Optimize your subject lines

Subject lines are the first impression you make on your readers. Try to make the best use of it. Keep your subject lines short, precise and attractive. You can use capital letters, punctuation marks and even emojis to make it attractive. You can also try using an AI subject line generator for inspiration.

5. Introduce yourself in the introduction

Nobody likes talking to a robot. Introducing yourself in your emails gives a personal touch to it and the readers feel like they are talking to a human. It gives your emails a human touch that would otherwise be a message from a faceless identity.

Check out some more tips on email copywriting in our guide below.

Things to avoid vis-a-vis email copywriting

Crafting the perfect email goes beyond knowing what to do. It involves being aware of the common mistakes that copywriters make. To keep your email copy free of such nuances, watch out for these common mistakes.

If you are a brand, you have a target audience and they perceive your brand in a certain way. It is important that when you send emails, the tonality and voice aligns with that of your brand. The same should be maintained for future communications too. Maintaining a consistent brand voice across your emails helps you elevate your brand’s personality and values.

Another mistake you must avoid is overdoing the subject line. While subject lines are a great way to attract the attention of your readers and are also mainly responsible for opening of cold outreach emails, they can also be spam triggers and land your emails in the spam folder. Try not to overuse spam trigger words like ‘free’, ‘urgent’, ‘act now’, etc.

Tools to use for email copywriting

Crafting effective email copies require a mix of creativity and strategy. Here are some tools you can leverage to help you in the different aspects of your copywriting.

1. Email marketing platforms with built-in copywriting features

Email marketing platforms are now leveraging AI to offer insights that help you in your copywriting efforts in real-time. Lavender is a great example. It offers an AI coach that finds and fixes anything wrong with your email copy. It also has features that offer personalization suggestions and even starts writing the email copy for you.

2. Copy analysis tools

Copy analysis helps you understand and improve the quality of your email copy. Grammarly and Hemmingway App are tools that I personally use and recommend. They are highly effective and can identify and remove spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, etc. They even suggest rephrasing complete sentences which may be too complex to read and offer suggestions to improve the readability and conciseness of your copy.

3. A/B testing and optimization tools

We’ve seen earlier in this article that testing your emails is very important to maintain your brand image and credibility. Mailmodo, for instance, allows for A/B testing of subject lines so you can gather insights on which one resonates best with your audience. It allows you to experiment with different email elements and helps you optimize your emails for the best results.

4. Subject line generators

Subject line generators can help you come up with attractive and intriguing subject lines based on the copy of your email. Some subject line generators even offer you more than a few options along with a subject line score which shows the probability of success of a subject line. You can even check out Mailmodo’s new AI subject line generator.

We often use tools like Grammarly and LanguageTool (which is a great free alternative) for basic grammar and style checks – correct spelling and grammar is the bare minimum for coming across as professional in your email copy. And professionalism matters a lot in our industry. Hemingway App is another good tool to use to ensure readability. Combining these tools, with a deep understanding of our client personas, helps us tailor our messaging effectively.
-Teresha Aird, Co-Founder and CMO, Offices.net

Need more inspiration? Check out some of the best email copywriting examples in our guide below.

Takeaways

Email copywriting is a very important aspect of email marketing. It delivers your most important message to your audience, which is why it deserves a lot of attention and effort to be perfected. You can use the tips we’ve discussed in our article to elevate the email experience you deliver to your audience and create perfect-looking email copies using the tools we’ve discussed. It will take your sales game to new heights.