8 Tips for Writing Effective Email Copy

Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your subscribers with valuable information and resources, at the end of the day, the purpose of a list is to profit from it. And if you can’t write email copy effectively, you won’t be selling anything.

To get on the path to writing effective email copy, here are 8 tips.

Personalize

It helps to use the customer’s name in the email and sometimes in the subject line (don’t overdo it though). When a person sees their name, they feel more of a personal connection and will be more likely to be responsive to your email.

Write the Way You Speak

Use easy to understand English when writing email copy. It’s nice if you have a big vocabulary, but don’t try to impress your subscribers with it. Write the way you would talk to an old friend. Try to be as friendly and as personable as you can when you write.

Write Passionate Emails

You can’t see your customer when you write emails, so be sure to put some extra feeling in email copy. Be enthusiastic. You want to catch the attention of the reader and stay as far from boring them as possible.

Write to One Person

Imagine the ideal prospect and write your email to that person. No matter how many people are reading your messages, each person who reads them reads them as one individual. Writing as if you are writing to one person will increase the impact of the message on each individual.

Keep it Short Buddy

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs can be as short as one sentence, and make some sentences as short as one word. Also, each paragraph shouldn’t be more than about 4 or 5 lines. The key is to make your email easy to read with plenty of white space. Long word blocks are intimidating and make a person less likely to read. Also, forget what you learned in English class back in the day, you don’t need to make paragraph breaks based on content.

Don’t be Wordy

Simple enough. Keep things clear and simple. Make sure your message is clear and concise. If your messages are long, just be sure to tighten up your message and make sure it flows. If you want to be eloquent and wordy, become an English professor. This is marketing, so act accordingly.

Use Action Verbs

Make your sentences more powerful with the liberal use of actions verbs. You want your email to be clear enough for a 7 year old to understand. People get frustrated if they have to spend too much time figuring out what you have to say, so make it easy for them.

Use Compelling Subheadings

Your subheadings should be like mini-headlines. Use them to break up large bodies of text and to bring people back into the body of the letter. Many people will only scan your email, so make the subheads communicate a clear message.