Email Copywriting
Writing for your email audience is quite different to traditional direct marketing. You need to think
about avoiding spam filters, the use of compelling subject lines to get as many opens as possible
and ensuring your message design pushes people to your web site.
In this whitepaper, I have prepared a few tips to help you on your way covering:
Before they open
• Making your from names recognisable and effective
• Writing compelling subject lines that people want to open
After they open
• Making the preview pane work hard for you
• Presenting your message so it’s easy to scan
• Pushing recipients to click-through to your web site
What can’t be emphasised enough is to test, test and again test at each stage and monitor your
campaign results from delivery through to sale; this will ensure that you’re finding the optimum mix
for your customer base.
Before they open
When an email is delivered, you have to encourage the recipient to open it. Transactional emails
such as order confirmations and password reminders always have the highest open rates, as do
those forwarded by friends or colleagues.
For your email marketing campaign, it is essential to think through your from name and your subject
line. Industry research shows that both play an important part, although it is important not to look
at each communication in isolation but instead as part of an on-going dialogue - previous history and
recognising sender details play a very important factor:
Top 3 factors influencing recipients to open emails
1. Know and trust the sender
2. Compelling subject line
3. Previously opened and thought valuable
Top 3 factors influenc (source: Return Path)i
From Name
This is the name they see in their in box when they receive your email.
ng recipients to open emails
This is one of the first things an email recipient will look at and therefore should be recognisable.
I recommend you use:
Your brand: for example Argos, B&Q
Your product: for example NMA Daily Alert,
Your company: for example BBC Shop, ODEON Cinemas
A person’s name: may seem like a good idea (more personable), however, you want your
email to strengthen your brand name – what happens if that person leaves your company
and goes to a competitor? The only exception would be when you have a well-known person
whose name is a stronger brand than your companies.
Recognising the sender, and having received good information from them before, is proven to be the
most important factor when someone chooses whether to open an email or not. Make sure that any
email you send out is worth reading! If you have nothing to say don’t send an email!
Subject Line
A good subject line needs to briefly describe the email’s content. The recipient needs to glance at
your subject line and want to open your email. Make sure it is attention grabbing, and, whenever
possible, use a call to action.
Excellent subject lines I’ve recently seen have included:
“June ODEONScreen: Free Shrek ears for the kids”
Explains what it is, and outlines the offer
“HURRY - 20% OFF ends 8th January...”
Pushes the offer with a deadline (real sense of urgency) and call to action
“Research Request: Email Marketing Census”
Clearly and concisely explains what the email is all about.
Great words to use in subject lines are below. However, please be aware that some of these words
do trip some rules in spam filters, so please make sure you run it through a spam filter before
sending:
Amazing Favourite
Appealing Free (watch spam score)
Bargain Guaranteed
Best Hurry
Brilliant Ideal
Captivating Imaginative
Distinctive New
Easy Only
Effective Outstanding
Enormous Perfect
Essential Quality
Excellent Quick
Exclusive Tempting
Fabulous Ultimate
Fantastic Value
Fast Wonderful
The best way to find which subject lines work better is to test, test and test again. See which ones
get the best response. Why not try special offer deadlines (add a sense of urgency)?
Subject line length is also important. Research from Return Path showed that click-through rates for
subject lines with 49 or fewer characters were 75 per cent higher than for those with 50 or more.
We’d recommend trying to keep your subject line length under 56 characters if you can.
Subject line & from name testing
It is very easy to implement split testing to learn and improve your campaigns. Simply divide the
campaign file in two and send one creative execution to one file and the other execution to the
other file. Statistically, to ensure your testing is significant, open rate is a good measure to start
with.
For example, take two test cells that each have 10,000 email addresses in them. After broadcasting,
the bounce rate was around 97% for both cells.
If one cell has a 1% higher open rate, this means an additional 87 people had to open it. The more
people that have to behave differently to create noticeable trends, the more significant those trends
are.
Cell Sent Delivered Opened Open rate
Cell A 10,000 9,734 2,920 30.0%
(subject line with personalisation)
Cell B 10,000 9,769 2,833 29.0%
(subject line with NO personalisation)
Common tests for subject lines
Obviously every marketer’s offer, audience and objectives are different, but below are some of the
most common elements:
Action words: using verbs to instruct an action e.g. Download your report
Deadlines: using a date upon which an offer would end
Personalisation: including the recipient’s name in the subject line
Promotion or product: leading with a campaign (e.g. summer sale) or product (Barbeques)
Occasion: associating the email with a date in the calendar- e.g. the weekend, bank holiday,
Monday morning blues etc.
Learning is a continuous journey, so a comprehensive testing program will ensure you continue to
learn and improve.
After they open
Once the recipient has chosen to open your email, they are showing you a clear interest in what you
have to say. The key trick here is to make it easy for them to scan your message and commit your
key action!
Unfortunately, this is also where the “fun” starts, as different email systems display html messages
in different ways, each of which bring their own challenges.
Preview Pane:
Ad hoc research shows that up to 2/3 of your audience will read your email in their preview pane,
before choosing to open it fully.
You must make the very top of your email clear and enticing, if you have an offer, put it here.
Remember the purpose is to make them act on it so use a combination of text and images (not just
images as they may be blocked).
Different email systems use preview panes as standard. It is worth analysing your list to understand
how many people are using web mail systems like Hotmail and Yahoo! to understand if this is
relevant to your design:
Email Client Preview pane?
Microsoft Outlook 2003 Yes
Microsoft Outlook XP and below Yes
Microsoft Outlook Express (sp2) Yes
Microsoft Outlook Express (older) Yes
Mozilla Thunderbird Yes
Hotmail (webmail) No
Yahoo Mail (webmail) No
Gmail (webmail) No
Once the message is opened in full
There are a number of considerations that should be acknowledged for all emails:
Above the fold:
(the area on view when the email is opened before you choose to scroll down).
Always put your special offer/most exciting news above the fold, capture their attention
straight away. Give them clear instructions on what to do to receive your offer.
Email Length:
Keep it short and punchy. Readers scroll and scan. Longer emails mean more to scan, less to
read and recipients lose interest! If people are interested to learn more, they will click to
your web site, and of course, this is an action you can track!
Format:
There are a few techniques that work regardless of your audience but they are related to
layout and formatting. However, don’t forget that you know your audience better than
anyone else, and clever copy will never support a poor, badly targeted offer. Remember that
your email will be ‘scanned’ quickly rather than being read.
Make it easy to do this by:
o Opening Paragraph: clearly state what the email is all about.
o Anchor links: can let users flick down to key points in your email, although it may be
better to push them to your web site.
o An email isn’t your web site: don’t feel the need to repeat the content off your
entire web site - otherwise, there is no need for them to click through!
o Short paragraphs: Break it up into short paragraphs it makes it easier to scan, most
people will scan an email rather than read it in its entirety.
o Bullet points/ numbered lists: space out key points
o Headings: use headings to road sign key points.
o Emphasise: Use Bold, underline and italic to draw the reader’s eye to key details.
Don’t forget most people expect underline to be links though.
o Links: position them on separate lines so that they stand out and are clear. Don’t
forget that text that is underlined in blue is the international format for a link.
o Call to action: use clear call to actions in separate sections not hidden in text and
link directly to your landing page.
o Images: use images to draw the eye to key points, but repeat key messages from the
images within the text. If an image is blocked, at least they’ll still understand your
message! Formatting images with alt tags and specific size attributes is key to
ensuring your mails don’t distort when images are blocked.
Other ideas include:
Personalisation – If you have your customer’s name use it. Let them know you are talking to
them, they will feel as if you have written it especially for them. Use appropriate salutation
for your customer base. Don’t forget you can use conditional personalisation and use a
default if you don’t have that information on their record such as
“Sir/Madam”.
Signature – If it follows the convention of a letter, ensure it is signed by someone.
Add to Safe Senders – ask the recipients to add you to their safe sender list or address books
to ensure your mails are not accidentally filtered into spam folders.
Web versions – Add links for recipients to click to see the email on a web site.
How to subscribe/update your details – include a link to a form that allows new contacts to
add themselves to your mailing list, or for existing contacts to update the details you hold on
them.
One simple question is to ask contacts if they’d like to receive html or text versions of your
newsletter or emails.
Forward to a friend – encourage contacts to forward your email on to their colleagues and
friends
Keeping compliant
Finally, don’t forget to ensure you are compliant with legislation:
Unsubscribe – it must be on all your emails- make it really clear so that the recipient doesn’t
use the “mark as spam” button which may cause you deliverability challenges.
Companies act 2006 - states that the following needs to be placed on the bottom of each of
your emails:
o Company name
o Registration number
o Place of registration
o Registered address (if registered)
List rentals
If you are doing a campaign to a 3rd party list that you’ve rented, it is good practice to add a simple
footer that highlights where the recipient’s details were obtained and how they can change their
preferences to avoid receiving on-going communications.
Example text is below:
“You are being sent this email as you have signed up to receive third party offers from (LIST
RENTER). If you’d prefer to not to receive this email, (UNSUBSCRIBE INSTRUCTIONS)
In our experience, recipients are more sensitive to campaigns to third party data rather than your
own data, and unless you are careful you may receive a number of ‘mark as spam’ complaints and
damage your sender reputation.
In Summary
Keep it short, make your offers stand out, always have a call to action and make it personal. Finally,
keep testing; it’s the best way to find out what your customers want!