Email & Newsletter Copywriting / Marketing 101

by Jon Wuebben

Email is one of the most brilliant ways of communicating that human kind has ever devised. It’s fast, efficient, cheap, and fairly easy, once you get the hang of it. Plus – it can be measured. And that’s the beautiful part. What better way is there to improve your writing each time around?

Email marketing is part art, part science…and all about connecting better with prospects and customers.

So, how do we begin? It all starts with your subject line. And this is where most of the mistakes happen – right at the beginning. We all know what bad subject lines look like; we’ve seen enough junk email to last ten lifetimes. But how do you write your subject line so it will have maximum impact? The first thing to do is include your company name or brand. This provides instant credibility, and the spam filters will look kindly on this, especially if you consistently use this type of format on all your email campaigns. Next, use a benefit or call to action. That’s right; you want to put something that will trigger interest immediately. Don’t make the subject line too long. 40-50 characters should do it.

Here’s a good example of a quality subject line:

Telegent Media: October Newsletter – Top 20 Tips for Lead Generation

Next is the email body. If you have written business letters before, it may come easy to you. If you haven’t, there will be a learning curve. It may take multiple attempts. How to write the actual email copy? It depends on what specifically you are emailing about, but there are certain elements that they all have in common. At a basic level, make sure it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Like we discussed in an earlier chapter, use “AIDA” – awareness, interest, desire, action. Talk about benefits and make it interactive. Many companies are now experimenting with sending video through their emails. Be sure to give the copy some sense of urgency. Whatever you are communicating, you want them to take some type of action. Use the end of the email for the big call to action piece. The “PS” is also a good place.

Finally, make sure it’s clear, concise and not too “salesy.” Make it personalized too. Use the customer’s name. When people read their name, it’s magic. Even in an email. We all like to hear or see our name.

Links and Landing Pages

In any email, there could be as few as one link to one landing page, or as many as ten or more. The main emphasis here is that you do in fact think in terms of the email being a conversation you would have on the phone with a customer. After you say something, you want them to say (or do something) – like click on a link for example and sign up for your white paper, or take a demo of the product. This is fundamental to high quality email marketing.

Be sure to measure the activity your links inspire. You’ll find some that hardly anyone clicks on, and others you thought may not have been as interesting, clicked on the most. It’s always interesting to see what happens when people open up the email. What’s their behavior going to be like?

• Be sure to include your phone number and if you are a local business, your physical address so people who want to contact you in other ways can do so. Remember, not everyone likes email.

• Place the most important content of the email “above the fold” – in other words, above where they’ll need to scroll on the screen.

• Use the right email list or database! This is probably the number one most common problem. The wrong group gets the wrong message. Oops!

Special Considerations for Email Newsletters

If you don’t have an email newsletter or a newsletter sign up on your website, you have to get one. They can have huge benefits. What are some of the special points about writing newsletter copy?

• You want to include many different types of content in the body of the newsletter: articles, surveys, promos, research findings, simple case studies, links to multiple landing pages on your site. It’s all good.

• The way it looks is really important. Work closely with your graphic designer, web designer or automated email marketing vendor to ensure it looks good before it goes out. You don’t want to look amateur.

• Make it easy for them to forward to a friend or bring another party into the fray. Leverage the viral aspect. A good newsletter with lots of subscribers can be very powerful, especially to those who are receiving it for the first time. I know I’ve considered signing up for online marketing newsletters simply because they had thousands of people reading them