Email Copywriting 101 Write Better Emails and Get Better Results Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 The 3 Biggest Mistakes ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Mistake 1: Not Knowing Your Goal .............................................................................................................. 4 Mistake 2: Neglecting the Audience ............................................................................................................. 5 Mistake 3: Ignoring Any of the 3 Parts of Your Email ................................................................................. 7 Master the 3 Parts of the Email ....................................................................................................................... 8 The Body Copy .............................................................................................................................................. 8 The Subject Line ......................................................................................................................................... 10 The Call to Action ........................................................................................................................................ 12 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 14 Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 2 INTRODUCTION Everyone’s out there using email to try and market their goods and services, but very few of them are succeeding. Why? Because email is easy to do but it’s very hard to do well. According to the Direct Marketing Association and Demand Metric, email has a median return on investment (ROI) of 122%. That’s more than four times higher than other marketing channels, including social media, direct mail and paid search. And according to Mailigen, 89% of marketers say email is their primary channel for lead generation.* But many if not most of those emails are poorly written, salesy and annoying. They’re generating irritation—not intrigue—and sighs—not sales. Sadly, many marketing emails generate more spam complaints and deletes than dollars. Yes, email is still the most profitable form of marketing, but only when it’s done right. And it’s even more profitable when your emails are well written—and when you avoid three common mistakes. I worked as a freelance copywriter for 20 years, writing hundreds of marketing emails for clients, and email has changed a lot in that time. (We didn’t used to get emails on our phones, remember?) Yet in all that time, despite the technological advances, I’ve seen people repeat the same mistakes again and again when they write marketing emails. I could look at my inbox right now and find a shoddy example, and I’m sure you could too. Don’t do that. Don’t be the one sending the mediocre, the mundane, the flat-out annoying sales emails. Learn to better. This ebook will help. In this ebook, we’ll talk about how to avoid the three biggest mistakes in email copywriting, and how to write better emails so you can sell more stuff—and stand out from all the crap. Let’s get started… Note: This ebook is also the workbook for the online class Email Copywriting 101. You can find (and take) the class at BetterFasterWriter.com/online-classes/ *https://emailmonks.com/blog/email-marketing/email-marketing-statistics/ Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 3 THE 3 BIGGEST MISTAKES As I said in the introduction, I’ve seen people making the same mistakes with email marketing for two decades now. The mistakes are many, but the three biggest mistakes I see in email copywriting are: 1. Not knowing the goal or job of an email 2. Neglecting the audience, not writing to them or their needs 3. Not giving enough attention to all three parts of an email I see these mistakes all of the time! And these aren’t mistakes made by amateurs, but by big brands and marketers who should know better too. Let’s make sure you don’t make these mistakes so your email marketing will be better than average. MISTAKE 1: NOT KNOWING YOUR GOAL One of the biggest mistakes I see is not being clear on your email’s job. You have to start with the end in mind. Ask yourself, “What do I want this email to do?” Drive people to your website? Get them to register for an event? Click to learn more? Get to know your business better? Be clear on the end result you want and work backward from there to write your email. Some possible goals might be getting the recipient to: • Click on a link • Learn about your business • Register for an event • Buy something • Call you • Forward your message • Download something • Fill out a form For example, if I’m writing an email to promote the online email copywriting class that goes with this ebook and I’m sending the email to a list that doesn’t know me well or doesn’t know the value of my online classes, my goal would be to get people to learn more rather than get them to sign up, because they haven’t heard of me before. On the other hand, if I’m sending the email to an existing customer base that has taken online classes from me before, my goal would be to get people to take the class. YOUR TURN Think about a marketing email you’ve sent or one you’re planning to do. What was/is your goal with that email? Be specific: Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 4 Avoid the first mistake: Be clear about your goal. MISTAKE 2: NEGLECTING THE AUDIENCE Neglecting the audience is another big mistake I see people making time and again. Marketers tend to focus on what they want to sell, not on what the consumer wants to buy. That leads to ineffective emails. You have to know your audience. You have to know who you are writing to and why they should care. It’s not about what you’re selling. It’s about what they are buying. You have to know what problem they want to solve, the pains they’re experiencing that you can help them alleviate. Get to know your audience before you start writing an email. Ask yourself questions like: • Who are you writing to? • Why should they care? • What is their pain? What problem are they trying to solve? • Is the patient aware even of the disease? Do they know they have a problem? • How well do they know you, your solution, your industry? Use your answers to these questions so figure out your audience then keep the answers top of mind as you craft your email. In addition, every email you write should answer the “What’s in it for me?” question. Also keep that in mind while you’re writing and make sure you’re clearly answering that question for the recipient. You also have to know how well the audience knows you and/or your industry. Ask yourself, is the patient even aware of the disease? If not, you have to take an indirect approach in your email marketing, first describing the problem to make them aware of it. Because if you’re talking about the disease and they don’t even know they’re ill, your email won’t communicate anything at all. I like to use the example of a home security system. To market that product, we might say our target audience is anyone who owns a house. But that doesn’t mean they realize they need a home security system. Therefore we can’t send an email trying to sell them a home security system. We have to start with something else to raise their awareness, like statistics around burglaries and how many homes are broken into each day. That would Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 5 make the patient aware of the disease—and, in this case, the need for a home security system. As another example, if I were writing an email to promote the email copywriting class that goes along with this ebook, I would want to know if the audience knew their emails were poorly written, whether or not they know who I am and what I can teach them, and whether or not they know the value of learning about the topic through online classes. YOUR TURN Answer the questions about your audience as completely as you can: • Who are you writing to? • Why should they care? • What is their pain? What problem are they trying to solve? • Is the patient aware even of the disease? Do they know they have a problem? • How well do they know you, your solution, your industry? Avoid the second mistake: Know your audience and their needs. Email Copywriting 101 © 2020 Sharon Ernst 6 MISTAKE 3: IGNORING ANY OF THE 3 PARTS OF YOUR EMAIL Ignoring any one of the three critical parts of the email is the third mistake I regularly see. Every marketing email has three parts you must pay attention to: the subject line, the body, and the call to action. All three have to be good because each one leads to the next. Your subject line has to get people to open your email so they will read the body. The body has to get people to click on your call to action. Your call to action has to be compelling to drive action. You must give full attention to all three parts in order to have an effective marketing email. Neglect the subject line and people won’t open your email or, worse yet, your email will go into their junk folder. Neglect the body copy and people will click delete or even report your email as spam. Neglect the call to action and people won’t do anything. Looking at those three parts and knowing people see the subject line before the body copy, you might think you should write the subject line first. In my opinion, however, when you are writing an email, you start with the body copy and then write the subject line and call to action after, because it’s the body copy that will determine what the subject line and call to action say. You can start with the subject line. It might jumpstart the rest of the email as you start writing.