5 Tips To Improve Email Copywriting For Your Next Campaign

The copy is the heart and soul of your email campaign. It’s your copy that will drive your email list subscribers to action. These actions may range from availing of a discount, making a purchase, or upselling your readers to more premium options.
 

4 Reasons Why Your Email Copy Is Not Working

Poor-performing marketing emails don't consider the factors we're about to mention below. These are some of the most common reasons a newsletter isn't working.

 

Wrong Target Audience

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a cold email, a resume or an office report. In all these instances, you should bear in mind that different tones resonate with different people. Skater lingo won't resonate with those at the retirement home. A corporate voice won't appeal to high-schoolers.

Your tone will determine how effectively your recipient will understand the message. But how do you determine which voice to use in your email newsletters? You must first understand your target customer and make money with an email list. One of the best ways to do this is by creating a buyer persona. The customer persona is a representation of the characteristics of your ideal customer. Once you have the perfect tone for your target audience, you'll create higher converting and engaging collateral that gets the message across.
 

Boring Subject Lines

Email subject lines are the first thing your email recipients will see when receiving your newsletters. You may have an engaging body, but people won’t read your content if you don’t get them to open your email. The easiest way to know if your subject line is boring is to ask a third person (or several) if they’d read your email once they see the subject line. If they say they won’t read it, here are a few tips for creating an interesting subject line:
 

• Keep your email subjects short: You want your subject line to be fewer than 40 characters. The goal is to ensure your subject line is not truncated
• Conversational: You want a subject line that seems friendly and approachable
• Personal: Many email marketing tools like NotifyVisitors, Mailchimp, Aweber allow you to add dynamic fields to your subject line. That means you can do things like add someone’s name
• Have fun: Don't be afraid to use emojis to make your subject line stand out and appear engaging

These tips make your subject lines conversational and compelling, enticing the receiver to learn more. Your subject lines should provide enough insight about the entire email but not detail so much that they aren't encouraged to open and read the email.
 

Poorly Written Email Copy

You want the copy you write to engage your audience. Spend time creating a style guide for your company. You want your emails to be informal. Also, don’t use buzzwords and make them fun. Importantly, the copy should be distinct from your competitors’. You should emphasize that in your B2C, retail, or SaaS email marketing plan. After all, if you want people to recognize your brand, you need to stand out in the first place.

If you’re not confident in your writing style, you can use a grammar checker to ensure your copy is easy to read and various email marketing examples and templates. Have an editor or colleague review the email also. Constructive feedback will help you write better emails.
 

Too Many or Unclear CTA

Every email you send should have a clear purpose. That means one goal per email. That goal could be getting people to make a purchase, sharing information about your company, a blog post, or something else. Your CTA should also contrast with the background. After rectifying these mistakes in your email copy, verify that your email addresses are correct in the first place. That’s the only way your emails can reach your intended audience. Many email lookup tools come with verification features you can use for this purpose.
 

5 Email Copywriting Formulas

There are many high-converting copywriting formulas you can use for your emails. Here’s a list of some of the best email copywriting strategies to help you engage and sell to your audience.
 

AIDA (Attention – Interest – Desire – Action)

The AIDA method aims to capture the initial attention of a user and uses that window of attention to interest them further. It’s great for sales emails. Under the AIDA method, an email can be divided into different components:

Attention: The attention portion may include an interesting statistic, a weird unbelievable fact, or a statement that personally addresses the recipient.
Interest: Get your reader interested after you've caught their attention. It transitions nicely to the rest of your email and keeps your email subscriber reading.
Desire: Now, you need to create that desire for the product or service. Mention concrete benefits. Show them how their lives would become easier if they avail of your product or service.
Action: Finally, you ask people to take action. This final part normally involves getting people to click a link in the email.

You can use the AIDA model in other sales and marketing material, too. You can use it as a basis for copywriting newsletters or even for developing sales pitches.
 

FAB (Features – Advantages – Benefits)

The FAB technique is a fantastic way to sell a product when paired with other email structures. You may use this structure when you describe your product – for example, during the Action portion of the AIDA structure.

Here’s an overview of the elements of FAB:
 

• Features: List the features of the product or service offering
• Advantages: Discuss the advantages of the product or service offering
• Benefits: Show how the person would benefit from purchasing the product or service

You can use the FAB copywriting technique for creating product landing pages.
 

4 Cs (Clear – Concise – Compelling – Credible)

The four Cs are more of a checklist than an email structure. This technique maintains that your email should be clear, concise, compelling, and credible. But what does each of the four Cs mean?
 

• Clear: The email copy should be easy to read through by your target market
• Concise: Don't make your email longer than it should be. Concise copy is often more engaging than longer emails
• Compelling: Your email copy should provide valuable information that excites your readers to take action
• Credible: You want to be a trusted source of information. You can establish credibility by writing with a confident tone, avoiding phrases such as "I guess," or "I think."

Ideally, all of your content should align with those four C’s. You want your email content to be easy to understand, short, and engaging. Finally, you need your audience to think of you as trustworthy if you want to generate sales.
 

PAS (Problem – Agitate – Solve)

Another way to hook people's interest is by introducing the problem first. By doing this, your brand seems much more appealing as it's introduced as the solution.

The PAS formula goes like this:
 

• Introduce a problem: Consider the product or service you are selling. Pick an issue related to your offering that you know frustrates your audience
• Agitate: Expand on the problem and the frustrations that people face
• Solve the problem: Introduce your brand or the product or service offering that solves this issue

The PAS formula is effective because it helps the reader learn something new about a problem. By introducing to them this newfound knowledge, they're more likely to take action on your newsletter. You can use this strategy to get people hooked to your other content marketing forms, too. PAS works great in webinars, for instance.
 

BAB (Before – After – Bridge)

The BAB technique is effective for customer testimonials or humanizing the email marketer. This successful email marketing template aims to inspire the recipient, saying that they too can achieve something they dream of when using your product.
 

• Before: The Before section describes a scenario before the product or service offering. For example, before you could drive, you might have had to wait hours to catch a bus to town
• After: The After section describes the situation once you have the solution. For example, how convenient it is to get into your car and drive into town
• Bridge: The Bridge is how you get from the Before situation to the After situation. Essentially, it’s the product or service you are selling

Your Before-After section may move your reader, but they won't be able to take action without a clear Bridge. An effective bridge may also have a CTA button so readers will have an immediate action to perform.
 

In Closing

Email copy may be the last thing in business owners' minds, but optimizing it should increase email open rates. Ultimately, good copy will increase conversion and sales. Your copy could not be working because you're using the wrong tone for your audience, your subject lines are boring, you have poorly-written copy, and your CTAs may be unclear. You can fix these by researching your audience and applying the write email tone, writing shorter, more compelling subject lines, checking and editing your grammar, and having a maximum of only two CTAs per newsletter.

You also ought to follow some formulas to help you write better emails in a fraction of the time. These formulas include AIDA, FAB, Four Cs, PAS, and BAB. You can even string them together for a potent email copywriting strategy. Follow this in-depth guide on email copy to improve your conversion rate and improve your email performance.