Mastering Effective Email Copywriting: A Startup Guide
- Kelvin Kwan
- Jul 1, 2024
- 4 min read
Effective email copywriting is essential for capturing your audience's attention and driving engagement. This guide dives into the nuances of crafting compelling emails that avoid spam filters, boost open rates, and connect with decision-makers. Learn how to personalize your messages, create impactful subject lines, and balance professional and personal tones. With these strategies, you'll transform your email marketing efforts and achieve higher conversions. Ready to elevate your email game? Dive into our comprehensive guide and start seeing results today.
Introduction: The Importance of Effective Email Copywriting
Effective email copywriting is the bedrock of your messaging. It’s your sales pitch in the written word. Writing bad copy is akin to you sitting across from your prospect, starting your pitch, and losing their interest in the first 30 seconds.
‘Bad’ copy doesn’t necessarily mean bad writing. You might have a flowery way with words that would be well placed in a 1980s romance novel, or the structural backbone of a solid university essay.
But if the person on the other side of that copy isn’t hooked within 10 seconds, you’ve lost the sale.
A small caveat before you read on - this blog post assumes you know your customer inside and out. If you don’t, let’s take a step back. Check out our resources page for our ICP and Buyer Persona templates. These tools will help you create detailed profiles of your ideal customers, making your emails far more effective. Imagine how much more powerful your messaging will be when you truly know who you’re talking to.
The Critical Role of Subject Lines
A good or bad email can make or break your outreach efforts, and ergo, your business.
Only 23.9% of sales emails are opened.
Read that again.
We can’t stress enough the importance of your subject line. Just think about how many emails you’re inundated with everyday - how many do you actually open? Exactly.
You’re writing to another business with a value proposition. That needs to shine through from the get go, without being too ‘salesy.’
Which email subject line are you most likely to click?
What if you could reduce your overheads by 30% next month?
We have some software you might like
The second is general - it tells you nothing about the company and what you might get by opening an email. Use this subject line and you’re dead in the water.
The first offers value - reduce your overheads. It offers close to instant gratification - you could see those improvements by next month. It poses a question that makes one introspect - “well I’d love it if I could reduce my costs next month.”
There are no guarantees in this business, but writing a headline that hooks is the first critical step just to get people to open your email.
We love some of the creative, effective subject lines that our friends at Woodpecker put together in this post.
Then comes the first line.
Crafting Engaging First Lines
So you’re in the minority of people who got your email opened. The work’s just getting started.
Your reader will skim the first sentence of your email and if that doesn’t act as a second hook, they won’t stay for the 2nd or anything beyond.
You get the point - from top to bottom, you need to be writing hyper effective email copy.
What are some of the hallmarks of effective email copy?
Personalisation - use your recipient’s name throughout the email. Show you’ve put some effort in - nothing turns people off like an obvious mass blast.
Precision messaging - be concise, get to the point quickly, and highlight your value in as few words as possible.
Call to action (CTA) - you are asking your reader to do something, whether that’s book a call or watch a demo. So tell them, directly and easily, what you want them to do and how they can do it.
Professional vs personal tone - sound too professional, and you’ll come off as robotic (and these days everyone will assume you Chat GPT’d your email). Sound too personal, and you’re not professional. Striking the balance is an art that requires practice.
Anecdotes / case studies with statistics that are relevant to your email target
If you’re feeling lost, there are a few tried and tested frameworks that can help you structure your emails.
Check out this blog post from LeadIQ. https://leadiq.com/blog/b2b-cold-email-templates-and-frameworks’
Make sure you consider mobile.
Here are just some quick statistics on emails for mobile:
Approximately 41% of all email views come from mobile devices (HubSpot Blog Research)
Mobile campaigns that use a mobile-responsive design see a 15% increase in unique mobile clicks (Mailchimp)
Up to 80% of people viewing an email on their phone will delete it if it isn’t optimised for mobile viewing (Chamaileon)
This blog post gives some great insight into how to make sure your email is right for mobile.
The power of A/B Testing
Your first email probably won’t get opened. Your second might not either. But test and try, try again.
If we all could achieve 50% open rates from the get go, life would be too easy.
You’ll need to - buzzword - A/B test.
Use different variations of email messaging and different subject lines, and track performance diligently. If one version doesn’t work, refine it and test a 2nd version on a different group of emails. Eventually, you’ll start to notice patterns - are there certain days, or times or days, or subject lines, where people are more likely to open your email?This is specific to every business, and so you’ll need to trust the process.
Though Tuesdays and Thursdays have been earmarked as the highest email engagement days of the week. Hint hint.
Conclusion: Continuous Improvement
Writing Effective, Engaging Copy is a Process. But it’s also one of the strongest weapons a startup can use as part of its strategy.
Elevate Your B2B Email Outreach with Incrementum’s Expertise
Ready to elevate your B2B email marketing with impactful copywriting? Incrementum is your partner in optimizing every aspect of your email campaigns, from personalized content to compelling CTAs. Let us help you leverage data-driven insights to boost engagement and conversions. Transform your email outreach strategy with our expertise and start achieving remarkable results today.
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