Four Timeless Email Copywriting Commandments

Four Timeless Email Copywriting Commandments

Any successful email campaign begins with a good offer. But you won't close the sale or earn the click-through if your copy doesn't do its job.

For instance: Are you discussing features without explaining benefits? Or placing your call to action "below the fold" where subscribers won't see it unless they scroll?

In a post at The Point, J. Sewell outlines his 10 Commandments of email copywriting—including key takeaways like these: 

 

Don't bury the "lede." In journalistic lingo, burying the lede means obscuring an article's most important information in the fifth or eighth paragraph when it belongs in the first paragraph. The same rule applies to your email message: Within the first few sentences, subscribers should understand your offer, why they want it, and how to get it.

Skip information a subscriber already knows. "It's OK to 'set up' the offer by describing the problem or issue that your solution solves," Sewell notes. But there's no need to reiterate the unnecessary information that follows an introduction like: "As an IT manager, you know..."

Keep your focus. Don't let anything distract you from the purpose of an email, which should have a single offer, a single message, and a single call to action. When you go off on multiple tangents and provide multiple ways to take action, you give readers multiple opportunities to become distracted.

Avoid weak calls to action. According to Sewell, there's nothing less motivational than the vague phrase learn more. "It means absolutely nothing," he notes. "Be specific, be tangible. What is it that you're offering exactly?"

Conclusion: Don't decree, just communicate. Think like a reader when you write email copy: If you wouldn't take action, why would your subscriber?