Copywriting is one of the toughest jobs in the marketing vertical but when you have to write stellar email copies you need to take your craft to another level. Your email copy plays a pivotal role in the success of your email strategy and it also helps build your brand’s intimate connection with subscribers if done right. The perfect email copy set is the sender’s intent, reader’s intent, delivers the right amount of information quickly, effectively, and most importantly engagingly.

However, you must realize that good email copywriting starts well before you design your responsive Mailchimp templates as you want the design to be aligned with the core message that you want to send (and that resonates with your email copy.) Follow this quick guy to learn the art of writing amazing email copies and stand out among the 126 emails that your typical subscriber bumps into on a daily basis. Let’s get started:

#1 Create High Performing Subject Lines

The first lesson in email copywriting is that you need to put maximum focus on your subject lines because that is where you make or break. As discussed earlier, the recipient will have at least 125 more emails and they will be scanning through subject lines in order to decide if they want to open your email or not. You need to keep the subject line factual, persuasive, personal, and yet leave room for one ring that makes the reader click for getting a view of the full picture. You must use A/B split testing to ensure that you are on the right track and repeat the process consistently to stay relevant to your subscribers.

#2 Use Pre-header Text To Your Advantage

Pre-header text is that light-colored text right beside the subject line which provides an additional layer of information. It may or may not be a part of the copy inside your Mailchimp email templates giving you the freedom to use that real estate to your advantage. One of the easiest ways to improve your preheader text copywriting is to take your subject line’s theme to a more logical extension without breaking the curiosity around it. You can also use it as a spot to draw conversations to make your email appear more personal.

#3 Keep Clarity At The Top Priority Spot

When writing your email copy it is necessary that you keep clarity at your top priority. A lot of email marketers get carried away with the creative aspect of email copywriting, thereby ending up with highly appreciable copies that just don’t satisfy the sender’s intent. It would be best if you describe your sender’s intent in one or two words and keep it in front of your screen to maximize clarity in your copy. The screening weight that you allocate to each section of your copy should also resonate with this approach to help your readers consume the copy in a lucid manner.

#4 Strike Conversations (Avoid Monologues)

One of the core principles of good email copywriting is striking conversations as opposed to lengthy monologues. Though a huge majority of email subscribers opt-in for the purpose of receiving marketing emails from brands, you still need to emulate a friend talking to them. This way you can avoid sounding pushy or sales heavy and make the email sound engaging. In fact, your offers will also be perceived as win-win while preventing your messages to sound cliched.

#5 Keep Any Sort Of Lingual Complication At The Bay

It is in your best interest to avoid any sort of complexity, be it using industry jargon or idioms and phrases. As time passes, most people are growing up in multicultural and multilingual environments, making them likely to understand very particular lingual terms like idioms and phrases. Also, simplifying the use of words will help you convey your message in a thoughtful and crisp manner without taking more than the necessary time for your subscribers.

#6 Keep Your Subscriber Super Informed About Why They Are Reading Your Email (And What They Need To Do Next)

One piece of timeless email copywriting advice that I gave all my readers is to keep your subscriber super informed at all times. They need to know why they are reading the message, why you sent it in the first place, and what exactly they are expected to do after reading it. This can help you reduce the gap between your open rate and your CTR which improves your ROI dramatically.

#7 Make It A Point To Distill Your Final Copy

Lastly, I would recommend you to distill your email copy i.e. review once you have finished it and slash off any unnecessary parts. This is a classical practice on copyrights but when it comes to email copy you might have a multifocal approach to what you want to cover. Thus, you need to keep the interdependencies within your copy into consideration when minimizing the number of words you send.

Summing Up

Typically copywriting can be perceived as sprints as opposed to lengthy marathons like in the case of content writing. However, email copywriting resembles relay races where you constantly need to hand over the baton to the next focal point without losing your target. The above tips will help you win big at email marketing as they will help keep your email copy engaging without costing you a lot of time and effort. 

Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.