There were more than 4.48 billion email users at the end of 2024, so perhaps it’s no surprise that 87% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their email marketing spending. But with so many marketers using email, it can be difficult to cut through the noise.
That’s where great email copywriting comes in. An intriguing subject line can capture your reader’s attention and entice them to open your message.
Great body encourages your recipient to take the next step—whether that’s returning to an abandoned cart, browsing a sale, or purchasing a bestselling product.
Ahead, learn the key elements of email copywriting and see tips from expert copywriters on how to write great email copy.
What is email copywriting?
Email copywriting is the process of writing copy, or text, for an email. It typically refers to drafting content for marketing emails, which can include everything from abandoned cart reminders to branded newsletters to sale announcements.
Email copywriters center the brand personality and marketing goals of the company they’re writing for. They craft their messages with the company top of mind, adopting the voice of the brand and deprioritizing their voice as an individual.
5 elements of email copywriting
Consider these elements as a checklist: You’ll want to think through each component in order to draft an effective and engaging email.
1. Subject line
Your subject line will determine whether or not your readers open your message. Your recipients probably have crowded inboxes, so you need to write compelling subject lines to immediately grab their attention.
While you want your subject lines to be eye-catching, you also want them to be direct and informative. For example, don’t just write “READ NOW.”
Instead, preview your email’s contents. You could announce a sale by writing, “Our Biggest Sale of the Year Starts Now,” or market a popular product by writing, “Why Our [Product Name] Keeps Selling Out.”
To encourage recipients to open your message, try adding a sense of urgency to subject lines. For example, maybe you promote a fast-selling product with the phrase “selling fast” or remind customers to place gift orders with the subject line, “Three Days Left to Receive Your Order By Christmas.”
Here’s an example from the shoe brand Larroudé that reminds customers to shop its sale with the urgent phrase “last call.”
Make sure you keep your subject line short, too. To prevent cutoff on smartphones, keep subject lines less than nine words and 60 characters. Avoid words and styles that can trigger spam filters. These include all caps, special characters, and spam trigger words like “free” and “guaranteed.”
2. Preview text
Preview text is the brief snippet of text below or next to the subject line of your email. Like subject lines, preview text should entice readers to open your email.
Your preview text should complement your subject line. For example, it could answer a question posed in your subject line or expand on an announcement by offering details.
Here’s an example from the makeup brand Glossier. The subject line piques readers’ interest by noting that one of the company’s products is a “viral sensation,” and the preview text explains what that product is (“Crème de You”) and announces a 30% discount.
3. Body copy
Email body copy is the primary text of your message. This piece of writing should deliver on the promises you made in your subject line. For example, if you announced a sale, provide the details in the email body copy and include a link for readers to access it. If you announced a new loyalty program, include instructions on how to sign up.
As you draft your email body copy, keep in mind that many email subscribers will be looking at your message on a mobile device. Avoid long chunks of text that could fill an entire screen, and pepper in images to break up long passages. Remember that you can always link out to webpages and social media posts that will provide more information.
Here’s how haircare brand Oribe does it. In an email marketing its Gold Lust Dry Heat Protection Spray, it details key features and uses of the product while keeping the copy short and to the point. The email goes on to spotlight glowing customer reviews.
4. Call to action
Direct attention to call-to-action (CTA) buttons to encourage email subscribers to take a specific action, like purchasing a product, signing up for a subscription, or viewing a landing page.
“CTAs are essential for any email you send,” says Josh Rosenblat, a senior editor at Shopify who works on Shopify’s newsletters. “You want to be explicit about what action you want the reader to take.” Keep your CTA text to just a few words, like “Buy now,” “Learn more,” or “Sign up,” to ensure a clear message.
Here’s an example from the skin care brand Dieux. This email advertises free gifts with purchases over $85, and its CTA is simple: “Get your gifts.” The CTA button leads readers to a landing page where they can choose which products to buy to reach the $85 threshold.
Many marketing emails, like this one from Dieux, have obvious next steps, which you can easily translate into a CTA. Sometimes, however, the desired action is less apparent—but that doesn’t mean you should skip CTAs.
“Even if you’re sending a newsletter that is informational in nature, you still want there to be an explicit opportunity for the recipient to take an action that benefits your business,” says Josh. “So whether that’s forwarding it to a friend, clicking on a new product page, getting back their cart, or leaving a review, that CTA needs to be explicit.”
5. Unsubscribe link
In the US, consumers have a right to an unsubscribe option, so always include clear unsubscribe links in your emails that make it as easy as possible for readers to opt out of receiving your content. Doing so will improve your email deliverability—whether your email service provider delivers your messages to recipients’ inboxes or spam folders. It can also leave customers on their way out with a positive impression of your brand.
You’ll probably want to nestle your unsubscribe link into your email footer, where email users expect it to be. Most brands keep this straightforward by simply writing “Unsubscribe.” You might, however, add a little personality to the unsubscribe confirmation page with a line like “We hate to see you go.”
Here’s an example from the olive oil brand Wonder Valley.
Instead of manually adding an unsubscribe link to every email you send, use an email template, like one of the more than 100 available on Shopify Email. These marketing templates come with built-in unsubscribe links, and they can store your copy and branding elements to save you time.
9 email copywriting tips for effective email marketing
- Set clear goals
- Know your audience
- Stay consistent with your brand voice
- Perfect your subject line
- Use active language
- Focus on benefits
- Keep it concise
- Optimize your emails
- Source ideas
Here are some email copywriting tips for writing marketing emails that resonate with your audience and drive them to take action.
1. Set clear goals
To write effective email marketing copy, you first need to identify the primary objective of your email campaign. This could be increasing sales for a new product, traffic to your website, followers on social media, or another marketing metric.
From here, you can pinpoint a desired action. Once you nail this down, you can craft copy and CTAs that compel readers to take that next step.
2. Know your audience
Before you start writing your email, make sure you know who’s going to be reading it. You can think of the group of email list subscribers who will receive your message as your target audience.
Analyze key demographic data and purchasing habits, and evaluate customer surveys. If you’ve been hired by a company, consider asking the brand’s marketing team for this information. Once you’ve collected your data, create a buyer persona to help you conceptualize your average reader.
The more you know about your target audience, the better you can tailor your copywriting to pique their interest and address their pain points.
3. Stay consistent with your brand voice
When you’re writing emails, keep brand voice top of mind. For example, you’ll adopt a different writing style for a clothing brand with an edgy brand personality than you will for a technology brand with a serious and informative brand voice.
If you’re unsure about the exact brand voice, consult your company’s brand guidelines, read past emails, or look at other marketing materials like social media posts or paid advertisements.
Free Brand Guide Template
You’ve built a strong brand. Keep it consistent across all your channels with our detailed brand guide template.
4. Perfect your subject line
Drafting email subject lines can be tricky: You only have a few words to communicate what you’re trying to say. Don’t worry if great ideas don’t come immediately.
“I think one of the hardest parts of writing is the ability to just start—to sort of gracefully launch yourself over the first few hurdles without overthinking or overdrafting,” says Cassandra Landry, a copywriter who’s worked for brands and agencies, in addition to working as a journalist, brand strategist, and literary reviewer.
To overcome writer’s block, try making a list of potential email subject lines, then iterating on your ideas until you land on one or two subject lines. Many of your initial ideas will be bad—and that’s OK. The important part is that you’re generating ideas.
5. Use active language
Write copy with actionable language, directing a reader’s attention toward your calls to action. Stick to short sentences in the active voice, and use the second person to talk directly to your reader when applicable. Avoid industry jargon, which can alienate your email recipients.
6. Focus on benefits
“It’s really important to position yourself in the mindset of the recipient,” says Josh. In practice, this means explaining why the reader should care about what you have to say.
Make sure your email copy highlights the benefits for your readers. Those benefits might be discounted products, helpful product features, a free trial, or more.
Keep your reader top of mind as you format your email, too. People are busy, and there’s a good chance your recipient is scanning your message rather than doing a close read.
Make it easy for your reader to quickly parse through your message by adding headers and subheaders, keeping text blocks short, and adding images. Make sure CTAs are easy to see by designing them with bright, contrasting colors.
Familiarize yourself with email marketing best practices to learn more about how to optimize your formatting.
7. Keep it concise
“In most cases, people only have 30 seconds to a minute to read emails,” says Josh. That means you need to get to the point—fast.
“The copywriting needs to be quick, it needs to be witty, and it also needs to be informative,” Josh explains. Don’t worry about including every little detail about your product.
“You can let the product page on your ecommerce website do most of the talking,” says Josh, noting that in many cases, an email is simply a method to get people onto your site.
8. Optimize your emails
You can write the best email copy in the world, but it won’t matter if you’re not sending it to the right people (or if your email formatting prevents your text from showing up).
Email marketing software like Shopify Email can help you optimize your email marketing strategy with customizable email templates, audience segmentation tools, and email marketing metrics like click-through rates and open rates. You can use these metrics to see what did and didn’t work, and refine your copy accordingly.
Platforms like Shopify Email also let you set up email automations like abandoned cart emails, welcome emails, and order confirmation emails. These let you deliver timely, personalized communications without manually entering each customer’s information.
9. Source ideas
Sometimes, the perfect email campaign just needs a little push to make it out of your brain and onto the page.
One way to find ideas is by using artificial intelligence (AI). There are a number of ways to use AI in email marketing (like optimizing send times and segmenting subscriber lists), and AI can certainly help you with copywriting, too.
Shopify’s AI tool, Shopify Magic, works with Shopify Email to help you generate subject lines as well as body copy. Just make sure to fact-check and proofread the AI’s output to ensure accuracy and adherence to brand voice.
While it may sound counterintuitive, Cassandra suggests scouring other people’s words to generate truly unique ideas. “I know the most common advice is to write as much as you can, and that’s true, but I think it’s more important to read as widely as possible,” she says.
Sign up for emails from writers and brands you admire. Industry doesn’t matter—you want to immerse yourself in great writing. Consider adding individual Substacks to the mix, too, as brands often want to learn from what successful individual creators are doing.
“Exposing yourself to as many different sounds, and voices, and perspectives, and framings gives you something to work with when you need to inhabit a voice or tone that’s different from your own,” says Cassandra. “It allows you to bring more to those conversations, and increases your ability to generate something truly unique.”
Email copywriting FAQ
What is email copywriting?
Email copywriting is the process of writing email content for your business to inspire a specific action, like click-through to your website or buying a specific product. Email copywriting involves generating subject lines, preview text, body copy, and a clear call to action.
Does email copywriting increase sales?
An example of email copywriting includes headlines like “Good things come in threes” and CTA button copy like “Get your gifts,” which skin care brand Dieux uses in an email promoting free Milk Makeup products with orders over $85.
Does email copywriting increase sales?
Email copywriting can increase sales: Email marketing has an average return on investment (ROI) of 36 times, and email copywriting is a core component of email marketing. Email copywriting encourages readers to take direct action, like purchasing products.
Why is email copywriting important?
Email copywriting can make the difference between a reader feeling inspired to take action from an email, or losing interest, deleting your email, or marking it as spam. Writing compelling language for your subject lines, preview text, and body copy is best practice for a successful email marketing campaign.
