Copywriter for Email Campaigns

Most of us complain that we receive too many emails. But that doesn’t stop us from checking our email throughout the day, which is why email remains one of the most effective mediums for marketing.

Email remains an effective marketing medium with most of us checking our accounts multiple times a day.

In fact, email has an average return on investment of $45 for each $1 spent, making it a highly cost-effective way to reach and engage with customers. Globally, the daily volume of emails exchanged in 2023 reached 347.3 billion, reflecting a 4.3% rise compared to 2022’s figure of 333.2 billion emails sent and received per day.

Need more proof? Optinmonster notes that 99% of consumers check their email every day, and many check their email account more than 20 times per day. And that explains why 91% of B2B (business to business) marketers in a Content Marketing Institute study rated email as “important” or “extremely important” to their content marketing distribution efforts.

But what makes one email marketing campaign successful while another gets ignored or causes the recipient to hit unsubscribe? What motivates a reader to take action? How can you cut through the clutter?

To get the maximum benefit from your email marketing, learn what goes into crafting an effective message or work with a professional copywriter, someone who can write email campaigns that will resonate with your customers. Let’s take a look at how it’s done.

Provide Useful, Relevant, Timely Information

The copywriting in your emails should provide a steady flow of interesting information that will get the prospect to trust you, like you and then eventually buy from you.

To do email marketing right, strive to build a relationship with your recipients.

The goal is to establish a relationship with your prospects. Help them to get to know you. Build rapport with them via your e-mails by imparting interesting, useful information. Yes, you can promote your services and products, but you’ll see better success when you focus more on educating than selling in your emails.

Segment Your Market

When people opt in to your marketing emails, you have an opportunity to collect different data points. With this data in place, you can start creating emails with messaging that appeals to specific segments. You can tailor your approach to a more granular level.

Targeting and segmentation can greatly boost the ROI of any email campaign. You can send hyper-targeted content to a wide range of different users.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify and target these segments,” according to bant.io, an AI marketing company. “In doing so, you can create relevant emails that are going to get a high response rate. In turn, these emails create more revenue, build a relationship with your customers and help you retain them.”

Here’s a quick example. Let’s say you own a nutrition supplements company. Using AI, you determine that you have many regular customers in your database who are interested in body building. You know this either because they’ve provided this information or you’ve figured it out by what they buy.

Targeting and segmentation can improve the ROI of any email campaign.

Imagine if you did a mailing to these customers telling them about a new supplement for body builders or a special price on an existing product line popular with body builders. With the right message, you’re sure to capture their interest and generate sales.

Build Interest with Email Campaigns

Individual emails on relevant subject matter can work, but you might find it easier to think of emails in terms of campaigns. Each campaign should have an objective, and each individual email separately and together should contribute in some way toward achieving that objective.

Permit me to share a few examples of successful email campaigns I’ve written.

Email Campaign for a Canine Eye Medication

One of my clients manufactures a pharmaceutical for preventing tear stains beneath dogs’ eyes. They wanted to market their pet product to veterinarians.

Instead of writing a single email, compose a campaign of multiple emails and increase results.

We created a series of five emails to be mailed over the course of one month that sought to educate the prospect on the medication and ultimately led to the client trying the product on their patients. Here’s how the email progression broke down:

• Email #1 – Described the problem the product solves and why it should be fixed. It ended with a brief introduction of the product.
• Email #2 – Discussed competitor products that target the problem but have certain inadequacies that need to be addressed. Naturally, the client’s product has addressed them.
• Email #3 – Explained how adding the client’s product to their veterinary practice could not only help their patients but would also be a revenue generator.
• Email #4 – Gave a few brief testimonials from satisfied veterinarians and dog owners.
• Email #5 – Offered the veterinarian a sample case of the product to try with their patients. The client was confident that once the vet sampled the product, they would see its effectiveness and place an order.

Email Campaign to Promote Subscriptions 

A UK client of mine sells subscriptions to standards information for various industries. Let’s say you own a restaurant, you need to know what the standards are for food service.

Or imagine you have an engineering firm, you might need to know the latest standards for say building a bridge or a road.

To promote subscriptions, you can send out teaser emails that provide useful tips on pertinent subjects.

Or, if you’re an architect, you might want to know the building standards for the best fire safety in skyscrapers. My client has documented the latest standards into advisory guides for hundreds of industries.

For a recent campaign, my client was looking to promote a subscription to their engineering standards to a segment of their mailing list comprised of engineers, architects and building developers. They had me write a series of eight emails. Each one highlighted a different set of standards (i.e. standards for fire safety, standards for windows and doors, etc.) and explained its importance.

The emails were educational and informative. At the end of each email was an offer to learn more about engineering standards. And the final email was wholly dedicated to an offer for free demo software of their product.

Email Campaign for a Real Estate Agency

A real estate company I work with specializes in selling investment (rental) properties. About twice a month they send out emails they call Property Alerts.

One real estate company uses emails to send its Property Alerts that announce new properties on the market.

Each Property Alert email highlights a new investment property about to come on the market. It includes copywriting about the property’s description, details such as features and floor plans, photos of the exterior and interior, information about the location and an offer to arrange a site tour.

The company, which now has a mailing list of over 25,000 prospective buyers, has built its success around these Property Alerts, which have generated millions of dollars in property sales every year for 15 years and counting.

Email Campaign for a Cargo Shipping Company

A company that does cargo shipping had me write a series of emails to send to a targeted mailing list of global businesses. Each email was essentially a story or mini case study describing some difficult shipping problem they solved.

Educational mini case studies work well for email campaigns.

One was about how they helped an aeronautics company ship a helicopter from the U.S. to Europe.

Another email was about a client whose business involved shipping frozen bull sperm to breeding farms around the world.

Another email told the story of a large ship stuck at a port in the Middle East while awaiting some extremely large and heavy repair parts from China, which the shipping company transported.

The copy on every email ended with a call to action, “Contact us to solve your shipping challenge.”

Email Campaign for a Real Estate Photographer

My client, a professional photographer, wanted to promote his services to realtors so they’d hire him to take photos of their property listings.

Photographers can use emails to showcase their work and attract new clients.

We designed an email campaign to send to realtors in which each email highlighted this photographer’s capabilities in text and with sample photos of his work:

• Email #1 – Explained how best to shoot home exteriors.
• Email #2 – Highlighted the importance of shooting details in home interiors.
• Email #3 – Told how aerials of properties are ideal for showcasing locations, such as proximity to beaches or schools.
• Email #4 – Discussed why shooting home exteriors at twilight is particularly effective for selling properties with a pool or nice landscaping.
• Email #5 – Listed the benefits of using professional photography such as how it helps sell properties faster and for higher prices.

The copy of each email included a link to the photographer’s online portfolio and also an offer for the prospect to request a free quote on photographing their next listing. The final email also offered a 10% discount for booking their first project.

One Focus Per Email

As you may have noticed in each of the above campaigns, every email had a singular focus and was designed to take the reader on a journey that ultimately motivates them to take action.

An informative approach in writing your emails helps build a loyal following.

Most of the emails also had an educational angle. Although they included a call to action, they weren’t overly salesy or pushy. Instead they delivered useful, interesting information.

A large data analytics company I’ve worked with for the past three years has found this educational approach to be extremely effective. They use their email campaigns to generate interest for long-form collateral they’ve created.

You can use email to drive traffic to your blog, reports, brochures, infographics and white papers.

So, for example, they’ll have me write a blog post (approximately 500 words) and then a brief email to promote that blog post to their mailing list. The email will provide just a few key points, enough to intrigue the reader and get them to click on the LEARN MORE button in the email, which takes them to the published blog post.

We’ve also used this same technique to generate interest in white paper reports, case studies, infographics, brochures and ebooks. In each case, the email is a teaser to persuade the recipient to take action and read the more comprehensive collateral material.

The collateral is almost always informational, not “salesy,” however it does include a call to action at the end, something along the lines of, “For more information, contact…” or “To schedule a demo…”

A Cost-Effective Medium

I’ve been a copywriter for more years than I care to count. Suffice to say, I was writing before the internet and email existed. That means I wrote a lot of sales letters and direct mail promotions that were sent though regular mail.

Email is one of the most cost-effective mediums for promotion. Add it to your marketing mix.

Because snail mail was (and is) so expensive when you figure in printing and mailing expense, we had to be highly selective in who we mailed to. And mailing multiple times to the same list, a proven technique for direct mail results, was often a luxury we couldn’t afford. 

Email changed all that, thankfully, and is why it makes sense to include it in the marketing mix for most companies, no matter their industry. 

“When you want to communicate something about your brand or sell your stuff, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to do so,” according to Mailchimp, one of many email marketing services.

A common misconception is that email marketing is not as effective in 2021 as it used to be. Thanks to the inundation of spam and low-value content, many messages do get ignored.

But while spam is bothersome, the reality is that email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel, beating out social media, SEO, and affiliate marketing. It can deliver huge returns. As of March 2023, almost 90% of surveyed full-time workers reported using email daily for work purposes. If email campaigns haven’t been part of your marketing program, you might want to rethink your strategy.

Work with a Skilled Email Copywriter

If you want your emails to be effective, you must make them worth the reader’s time. Consider working with a professional copywriter, someone who can come up with a strategy for your campaigns and follow through with carefully crafted wording that resonates with your customers and motivates them to take action.

Need help crafting effective emails? Contact a professional email copywriter who can deliver results.

The money you invest in working with a professional email copywriter and doing a well-thought out email campaign will come back to you many times in the sales your email campaigns generate.

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