Email marketing, just like web development, has evolved a lot during the past few years. Some prefer carrying all of it in-house, while others choose to outsource web development and marketing. There are plenty of options available to the business owners to create an email from. While divulging into the extent of design and including way too many catchy elements in the emails that businesses send out, they forget one key element: simple plain text email may perform as good as the ones with tons of bells and whistles.
The fact of the matter is no matter how fancy your email looks, if it is devoid of good engaging content your customers or subscribers would become less interested in the email with time and soon start deleting them instead of reading them. This may lead to a large number of unsubscribers too. The question arises, so how do you write the perfect email copy?
It includes a mixture of various things that we will discuss in this article with examples.
The email is usually divided into parts. Let’s examine part by part how a good marketing email copy should be written:
SUBJECT LINE
The integral part of writing a good copy is to nail the subject line. The subject line is the way into your audience. If it isn’t catchy enough, nobody would bother opening the email up. Here are a few tips to write great subject lines:
MAKE YOUR LANGUAGE ACTIONABLE: Using actionable language does not necessarily mean relying on verbs. But sometimes you can actually rely on the verbs. Buzzfeed, for example, used the below as a subject to their email:
And it isn’t just the subject line that is catchy, the copy of the email is equally amazing.
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PERSONALIZE: Personalized emails cannot be stressed enough. According to a study by Direct Marketing Association, 58% of the revenue generate for the marketers under study was generated through targeted and segmented emails. The better segmented your email lists are, the better personalization you can add to the subject lines. Poncho sends out customized weather reports to its subscribers:
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ALIGN: Always align your subject copy and email copy. What you promise in your subject line, your email copy should be able to fulfill that promise. A subject line with a clear indication of what the reader would expect in the email should be followed by the email copy that contains the value promised to the reader.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32606/the-9-must-have-components-of-compelling-email-copy.aspx
EMAIL COPY
Now that you’ve managed to craft an exquisite subject line, let’s discuss how to write a perfect email copy.
RELEVANCY IS THE KEY: Relevancy should be established in the subject line through personalization followed by the personalization in the body of the email. Name tags aren’t enough to establish those personalization goals. At the very beginning of the email, establish a relationship with your reader by reminding them how you know each other.
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A great example of personalization and establishing a connection in the beginning of the email is shown above.
WRITE IN SECOND PERSON: Writing in second person would mean using pronouns such as “you”, “your” and “yours”. By doing that you’re making the reader the center of the attention. It means that you have oriented the email towards the reader instead of your business.
Notice how the pronouns are being used in this article. You’ve got to admit that you do feel a little special!
TALK ABOUT BENEFITS: Instead of throwing the product towards the customer, talk to them about the benefits of the product. Make it as engaging as possible. The blow email by Dropbox is an amazing example of how it should be done. All the required elements to create a perfect marketing email copy are present in it.
BE BRIEF: Let’s be honest here for a second, nobody likes to read really long emails. If you know your target audience and have segmented the email lists, there is absolutely no need to send all the content that you have to every single person. The email has to be relevant, brief and interesting. Any copy writer can attest that the longer the copy goes, the harder it becomes to keep the reader engaged.
WRAPPING IT UP
Be creative, be innovative. Always fish for new ideas. There is absolutely no limit to what might work with your audience but boring content. Even with the people who do not engage with your emails. On this note we’d leave you with a very interesting email by HireVue.
One would surely melt reading this email.