4 Essential Email Copywriting Best Practices

A model that is used in copywriting a great deal is AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). This is a great acronym to keep in mind when planning your emails.

Attention

First, you must get your readers’ attention. A great title for your email should be punchy. Something such as ‘Top 10 ways to save yourself big bucks’ is going to grab the attention of the reader a lot more than. ‘A guide to saving you money every month’ which sounds quite boring.

The first email will be opened the second email is more likely to just get deleted.

Now all you have to do is keep the attention of your reader. There are some important things to think about here. Firstly, you should consider the tone of your email. This should convey what you are trying to say. Think about what type of company you represent and how you want to come across. Then keep the tone consistent throughout the email so that you don’t confuse your readers. This confusion only leads to the delete button.

The tone you use should talk directly to your reader. You need to have them onside to get them to buy from you. Overall, people buy people, not products. You are going to be the reason they don’t buy a similar product from your competitors. Get them to like you and go on the journey with you and they will buy from you.

Next, think about font and layout. You want to catch the attention of your readers while keeping the tone in check.

You can experiment with the font and layout before you send your email to decide which one works best for you.

Make sure your target audience knows what you are saying. For example, if your readers are the general public use words and language that everyone will understand rather than industry jargon that will make them press delete.

Interest

This is the part where you get to take your reader on a journey. You need to tell a story. Your reader wants to know why this product has been brought to market. What was the issue someone had to make them invent the product or service that you are telling them about?

Let the reader know why they might have the same problem themselves. If they find themselves nodding in agreement they will read on. You have caught their attention.

People like to see similarities in others. They want to share their pain so if you can get them to agree that there is a source of pain in their lives just like the one someone else has they have already started to buy into your product. Make the email resonate with them. Readers want to feel as if you are talking to them directly rather than just being sent a blanket email. They want a solution to this issue, and they believe you do too. Now you have created interest.

Desire

You may have heard this one before, but it is an important point to remember – features tell, benefits sell.

You may have a product with some fantastic features that you want to shout about, and you will put these in your email. After all, everyone will want these features and the product will almost sell itself, right? Unfortunately, you are wrong. You may keep their attention this way but now you must invoke their desire too if you want them to buy.

You need to hit them with the fact that your product can solve their problem. People want to know what is in it for them and just listing features that you might think are amazing is not going to have your customer base desperate to buy. People want to understand why they should part with their hard-earned money, especially when it comes to a problem they haven’t been thinking about before they read your email.

By the end of this stage, they should be ready to buy from you and you should only need to tell them how to buy.

Action

At this stage, you need to call them to action and close the deal. This section of your email needs to let them know how to buy and you need to make it easy for them. Make sure they can buy from you by clicking a link that is right in front of them or hitting a large and easily noticeable ‘buy now’ button.

The reader needs to be very sure of what action they need to take next and should need to exert little effort to make that next step. This call to action should be cased in very definite language. For example, ‘buy now’ is a much stronger action than ‘learn more.’

Readers are all triggered into buying slightly differently. Some may want to click on words, others prefer to see a URL or a button that says, ‘buy now.’ It can be beneficial to put a couple of these buying triggers into your email. They don’t need to all be at the end. You could put one in the text, one at the end, and the buy now sign at the side. That way the reader has more than one easy way of taking the next step. You want to make this as simple for them as possible.

Keep these four points in mind when constructing your copywriting emails will have some fantastic results. You will be amazed at just how good the response and the buy-in will be.

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