Email Copy: Four Tips for Compelling Writing

Learning to write effective email copy is essential to your list building success. While you want to provide your list 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.

Here are four key tips to make your email copy more compelling.

Keep it Short

Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Make some paragraphs 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 it flow. 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.

Once you get a subscriber to your list, knowing how to maximize your profit over the long term should be your next concern. Writing effective email copy will enable you to get sales almost on demand, thereby increasing your ability to profit from your list significantly.

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.

Borrow Copy from Top Email Marketers

There is a very good chance that you get a lot of emails from various Internet marketers.  As a quick aside, I recommend that you start unsubscribing from lists that aren’t providing valuable information to you.  Too many top marketers sale without giving you useful content.  Give your email inbox a break and unsubscribe from their lists.  Now on to my point about email copy.

The main reason for this message is to convey the importance of paying close attention to and studying the autoresponder messages of effective email marketers.  What do they say in their email copy and how do they say it?  How much personality are they using?  Do they provide you with valuable content?  Pay attention to all of these key points.

The reason you should pay such close attention to these points is so you can use their messages as a foundation to write your own.  Do you think you have something to learn from someone who makes $30,000 just by sending a single email?  Probably.  As is common in the copy writing industry, a swipe file is something you should have.  But this swipe file will be of emails, not sales letters.  Look at the email copy that made you purchase a particular product or service and use that as a basic model for some of your products.

I’m not advocating wholesale confiscation of emails, unless of course you have have been given explicit rights to do so.  I’m talking about ideas to use as a foundation.

For me, a few email marketers stand out from the rest.  One of them is Michael Rasmussen.  When he sends an email recommending an affiliate product, he doesn’t just send a two line email saying in so many words- “Buy this.”  He gives a thorough rationale for why he is recommending a particular product.  And some of the stuff he gives away for free is pure gold.  So Michael is alright with me.

Another marketer who is quickly building a name for himself and who impresses me quite a bit is Jason Fladlien.  He’s an interesting guy.  And in email marketing, being interesting sells.  He’s also a top class copy writer, which helps tremendously in writing emails.  I recommend you check some of his stuff out.  He makes like 20 products a year it seems- if not more.

Frank Kern’s stuff is some of the most “borrowed” stuff out there- particularly his email subject lines, like “bad news”.  He is a trend starter, so he’s definitely one to pay attention to.  If he starts to do something, expect others to follow soon.

I think my point is clear.  Pay attention to the Internet marketers who actually provide value in their emails.  Pay attention to the marketers who draw you in with their autoresponders, the ones who make you feel like you are being somehow compelled to buy. Then use some of their ideas in your own email copy.