When it comes to your emails, what you say is important — but so is how you say it. Great email copy helps keep your subscribers interested and can make all of the difference between emails that convert and emails that fall flat.

Of course, it’s really hard to craft unique email copy that dazzles your prospective clients. Many marketing teams bring on copywriters to help create content and establish a specific tone, but that’s not always in the budget.

Fortunately, there are things that you can do on your own to get creative, elevate your email marketing copy, and optimize your message.

Why Email Writer’s Block Happens

Email writing can be a daunting task for even the most experienced marketers. In fact, many marketers aren’t necessarily copywriters. Many are great at campaign strategy and execution but are not necessarily trained in writing compelling copy. This can cause email writer’s block, where marketers stare at blank screens trying to create content for their email correspondence and marketing campaigns, struggling to come up with new ideas.

And staying creative as a marketing professional is never easy! Marketers juggle a million different tasks and must constantly keep up with the latest marketing trends. And on top of all that, they have to write email copy that will sell the product or service that their business offers. As a result, they are frequently preoccupied and don’t always have the time to dedicate to creating great email copy.

Also, email copywriting is different from other types of writing. It’s direct and to the point – there’s less room for lengthy messages. This can be challenging for marketers who know so much about the product or service but don’t know how to distill the knowledge into a few paragraphs that succinctly expresses the core points to your audience. Plus, with email being such a crucial part of the marketing mix, there’s often a lot of pressure on marketers to get it right. This can freeze up even the most experienced writers.

Besides the above, marketers may simply find themselves looking for a little extra inspiration. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when you send out emails daily. Trying to think of new and exciting things to say can be challenging, especially when you feel like you’ve said it all before.

Luckily, you can do a few things to overcome email writer’s block and take your email copy from good to great.

9 Tips for Elevating Your Email Copy From Good to Great

Here are nine tips for getting started:

1. Lose The Stiffness

Effective email marketing copy builds your brand’s authority without coming off as rote and dry. Highlighting your expertise doesn’t mean being boring. You could consider making your language more casual and eliminating all of that confusing marketing jargon that makes sense to you but just serves as a barrier to understanding for your readers. If you write your copy with a friendly, approachable tone, your subscribers will be sure to have a more positive response in return.

2. Reference Viral Content Or News

As a voice in your industry, it’s helpful for both your campaign and your email subscribers if you tie in some of your copy to current viral content and news. While we don’t recommend relying solely on this sort of time-sensitive material (or dragging out its relevance for longer than necessary), popping in to say your piece on things that matter to your leads helps humanize your brand. It also brings in an element of commonality that serves to strengthen your connection further.

3. Get Poetic

Writing tricks like puns, rhymes, and alliteration add variety to the cadence of your copy and keep your readers hooked. Not a poet? That’s fine! Take a stab at something simple, and when in doubt, make it funny, too. As for alliteration, it’s always appropriate and awfully arresting to read (see what we did there?). As with all writing tricks and flourishes, be sure to balance it out with a more editorial tone elsewhere so that your copy doesn’t come off as unprofessional.

4. Tell A Story

Narrative writing engages your subscribers and keeps their eyes on the page, especially if it’s a story that they can relate to. Don’t be afraid to use storytelling in your email copy and to use newsletters and other marketing emails to share narratives that expound on the value of your product, service, and/or the people around it. Customer stories, in particular, can enhance your strategy by offering a peer-to-peer connection that you just can’t get out of other types of copywriting.

5. Make It Personal

Unlike press releases, where words like “I,” “you,” and “they” are strongly discouraged, you can feel free to get personal with your email copy. This furthers your mission of creating content that’s written by real people for real people, making your copy seem more like a message between friends than just another piece of marketing material.

6. Keep it Short and Simple

There’s a place for long and elaborate descriptions — and your emails aren’t it. Effective email copy is short, punchy, and to the point and should clearly let your subscribers deduce what the email is about and what further action you want readers to take. If you bog down your copy in elaborate language and drawn-out verbiage, you’ll end up losing your readers’ interest or confuse them so that they’re not exactly sure what they’re looking at or why it matters.

7. Highlight Your Call-to-Action

Every section of your email copy has an important role to play, but it’s your call-to-action that really needs to jump off the page. At the end of the day, email marketing content is about inciting leads to take action. If you don’t make it clear what that action is, you’re going to end up with much lower conversion rates.

8. Pull Inspiration From Existing Content

One great way to get inspired is to look at what’s already out there and see what’s popular to create fresh and effective content. Start by checking out the popular blog posts on your website to see which topics get the most traffic. Use that content to inspire new email content or focus on the same topic in your content.

By connecting with your audience on a topic they’re already interested in, you can create email content that is more likely to resonate and convert. In addition to looking at your popular blog posts, look at past emails and email campaigns that have performed well. What made them successful? Make a list of these elements and see how you can use them in your current and future emails.

9. Stay Away From Industry Jargon

Clarity is one of the pillars of effective writing. Your email copy is great if your subscribers open your email and understand what you are trying to say. One way to lose your readers’ attention is by using too much industry jargon. While some jargon may be second nature to you, using it in email copy will make it difficult for the average person to follow.

Write for everyone. If your subject requires you to get technical, be sure to explain it in layman’s terms so that everyone can follow along. Also, incorporate real-life examples to illustrate your points. This will help bring your message home for the non-experts out there.

Benchmark Email’s Smart Content

Whether you’ve got excellent writing skills as a marketer or you are just getting started with crafting email copy, there’s no doubt you could benefit from using an AI-powered writing tool.

Benchmark Email’s Smart Content gives you the head start you need to create compelling email copy better, faster, and more efficiently than before. Smart Content is powered by OpenAI, the research firm behind ChatGPT. Smart Content allows you to streamline all aspects of your email copy, from brainstorming ideas to writing and editing. With Smart Content, you’ll be able to create truly great emails without spending hours upon hours writing and editing them.

Place a priority on creating email copy driven to delight and engage. If you can keep your leads’ interest, you’ve already overcome one of the significant hurdles to moving them through the customer journey. And as always, have at least one extra set of eyes review your copy before hitting “send” so that you can be sure it comes off correctly.

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by Benchmark Team