Introduction
Email marketing is still one of the strongest and most efficient marketing tools you can use. According to research carried out by McKinsey, email marketing can be up to 40x more effective than social media marketing. However, you need to be sure you’re doing it right if you want to reach all your goals. Keep reading to learn about the 14 best tactics for powerful email copywriting.
1. Make it Brief
The modern reader does not have the time for lengthy, complex paragraphs. Just think about the ideal length of a blog post, YouTube video, or a social media post caption you would read. Find the golden mean between too little information and boring your readers with too much content.
According to data pulled from over 40 million emails, the best-performing email campaigns have from 50 to 125 words. Of course, this is just a suggestion, but your word count should be somewhere in the ballpark of that range.
2. Make it Scannable
A busy email reader needs to know exactly what the text is about before reading it in more detail. Not only that, but you will rarely find a user who reads your email word by word. Instead, modern readers just scan emails to get the main idea. That’s why you should use:
- short paragraphs
- lists
- bullet points
to visually organize your ideas and offers (see what we did there?).
3. Use Visuals (images, infographics)
Another must-have in a successful email campaign is visual communication. Just like we mentioned in the previous section, modern email readers are not looking for complex, hard-to-understand texts.
Whenever you can, use an image, diagram or infographic to illustrate what you are saying.
4. Use Blank Space
It’s tempting to make your emails as colorful as possible, but too much will oversaturate the eye and turn readers away. Blank spaces are like little pit-stops for readers to compose their thoughts and relax during their reading process. Make sure you incorporate them into your copy.
5. Highlight the CTA (make it visible and dominating)
A call-to-action can almost never be too over-the-top. Make sure that the CTA is visible without a scroll down. Take a look at some of these tricks for high-performing CTAs.
6. Write in a Conversational Manner
Use friendly, non-technical vocabulary and make sure your texts are easy to read. If you’re a beginner, you can use a professional essay writing service or academic writing company.
It’s just like Maya Angelou said: easy reading is hard writing. In other words, you might find it complicated to write in a relaxed, friendly manner. In this case, don’t hesitate to hire experts.
7. Stress the Main Benefits of Your Product/Offer
Readers are looking for crucial information right away. Improve their email reading experience by presenting the main benefits instantly. Don’t make the journey to the central part of the offer too lengthy.
8. Personalize (by name, location, or previous experience with your company)
Nowadays, email marketing tools allow you to leverage a great deal of personalization features. Use this whenever you can. There is absolutely no doubt that personalized emails outperform those that sound generic and automated.
9. Proofread & Edit
Having grammar or spelling mistakes in your copy is a huge no-no. Your emails are not just a platform where you advertise your latest offers. It’s also a direct point of contact between you and your customers. In other words, they are forming an impression about your brand and business according to the emails you send. Errors in your email signal that you’re not professional and that your team doesn’t pay attention to details.
10. Use Simple Design
It’s tempting to let your design ideas run wild and send out a flashy, pop-art email in HTML, but that’s really counterproductive. Although it’s fun to make, an over-the-top email message does not perform well, research shows.
Lately, there has been a returning trend of plain-text emails with absolutely no decorative elements. Why? Because it resembles an email you would get from your family member, friend, or colleague. To users, it appears more organic. However, it’s a bit of a risky move and could reduce your engagement rates. Use the following to avoid that:
11. Use Psychology Tricks
Behavioral and psychological tricks like cognitive fluency and the use of colors can be very effective in emails. Remember that every tiny aspect of your email has an effect on opening rates, click-throughs, engagement, and responses. Do as much as you can to increase all those metrics.
12. Test Different Email Copies
Now that we have mentioned that you should optimize even the tiniest details of your email, it’s important to note that you should always test which option performs better. There is no point in making speculative guesses based on your personal choices. Tests will always give you a better and more objective picture.
For example, research has shown that email messages with videos perform better. Try embedding videos in email and testing it against your email copy that doesn’t have video included. This is just one example of all the sections you can change and experiment with.
13. Create Urgency
This is another well-known and effective trick in marketing. If you want to capture the reader’s attention, you need to emphasize that they need to open your email right away. Once they are reading it, you need to present a time-limit on the offer. Otherwise, your reader will probably think “meh, maybe later” and you will never hear from them again.
14. Use Actionable Language
It’s as simple as this: if you want your reader to do something, tell them that they should do it. This is called actionable language – words and phrases that inspire people to take action. That is why you can see so many “buy now” or “read more” links all over the place. In many cases, email readers simply do not know what to do after reading an email. Don’t let this happen to your message and propose a clear line of action.
Conclusion
Email copywriting is all about reaching your target audience the right way. Use the tips above to improve your emails and raise the bar for all your biggest competitors. Most importantly, learn how to apply lessons from your previous emails and tests to your new campaigns. The crucial thing here is to stay on the upward trend and always boost your email marketing performance.
Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a copywriter and blogger at GetGoodGrade with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services.