You just spent 45 minutes crafting what you thought was a masterpiece of email copywriting, hit send to your entire list, and then watched your click-through rate flatline like a heart monitor in a bad movie. Your boss asks what happened. You mumble something about "inbox fatigue."
Nope.
Your email copy just sucks. And that's fine, because almost everyone's does. The average promotional email gets about a 2.6% click rate according to Mailchimp's benchmark data. That means 97 out of 100 people read your subject line, maybe glanced at the first sentence, and decided they'd rather reorganize their sock drawer.
Email copywriting isn't some mystical art form. It's a handful of rules that most marketers ignore because they're too busy arguing about button colors.
Write Subject Lines Like You're Texting a Friend
Your subject line is doing one job: getting the open. That's it. It doesn't need to summarize the email. It doesn't need to be clever. It needs to create enough curiosity that someone's thumb stops scrolling.
What works: Conversational, specific, slightly incomplete.
| Subject Line Type | Example | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Curiosity gap | "this changed everything for us" | Lowercase, casual, begs the question |
| Specific number | "We lost $12,000 in 3 days" | Specificity = credibility |
| Direct question | "Are you still doing this?" | Feels personal |
| Pattern interrupt | "don't open this email" | Breaks expectations |
What doesn't work? Anything that sounds like it was generated by a committee. "Exciting News: Our Q1 Product Update Is Here!" might as well say "Please Delete Me Immediately."
Campaign Monitor found that personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to get opened. But personalizing with "Hey {first_name}" isn't personality. It's a merge tag. Good personalization means writing like you actually know who you're talking to.
Stop Writing to "Everyone"
Most email copywriting falls apart before the first paragraph even loads. You're writing to your "list." Your "subscribers." Your "audience."
Those aren't people. Those are spreadsheet rows.
Pick one person. Give them a name if you have to. Write the entire email to that one human being. A retention manager at a mid-size ecommerce brand who's two bad quarters away from updating their LinkedIn. That person.
When you write to everyone, you sound like a PA announcement at an airport. When you write to one person, you sound like a friend who's been through it.
The difference between a 1% and a 4% click rate often comes down to whether the reader felt like you were talking to them or at them.
The First Line Is Your Second Subject Line
Most people preview emails before opening them. Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, they all show a snippet of your first line right next to the subject line. So if your email starts with "Hi there, I hope this email finds you well," congratulations, you've wasted the most valuable real estate in your entire campaign.
Your first line needs to do one of three things:
- Create tension: "Last Tuesday I almost deleted our best-performing flow."
- State something surprising: "Your welcome sequence is probably losing you money."
- Ask a question: "What if your open rates have been lying to you?"
And before you say, "But I always start with a greeting because it's polite." Oh please. Cool story. Politeness doesn't pay the bills. Your welcome email sequence doesn't start with "Dear valued customer" either. At least I hope it doesn't.
One Email, One Job
This is the rule that experienced email marketers preach and then immediately violate. Every email should have exactly one goal. One call to action. One thing you want the reader to do.
Not "check out our new collection AND read our blog AND follow us on Instagram AND forward this to a friend."
That's not an email. That's a hostage negotiation.
Decide before you write: Is this email trying to get a click? A reply? A purchase? A booking? Pick one. Build every sentence around pushing the reader toward that single action.
HubSpot's research shows that emails with a single CTA increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1,617% compared to emails with multiple CTAs. Three hundred seventy-one percent. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a different sport.
Write Short Paragraphs or Don't Write at All
Your subscribers are reading emails on their phone while standing in line at the grocery store. They are not sitting at a mahogany desk with a cup of tea and reading glasses, prepared to digest your 800-word essay on seasonal product launches.
The rules:
- No paragraph longer than 3 sentences
- Use line breaks aggressively
- Bold the important stuff so skimmers get the point
- If you can say it in 5 words, don't use 15
Look at your email design best practices. The visual structure of your copy matters as much as the words. A wall of text triggers an immediate "nope" response in your reader's brain. They don't even process the content. They just see "effort required" and bounce.
Done.
Stop Being Afraid of Personality
The biggest lie in email marketing is that professional means boring. It doesn't. Professional means competent. And you can be competent while also being a human being with opinions and a sense of humor.
Nobody unsubscribed because your copy was too engaging. They unsubscribe because your emails sound exactly like every other brand in their inbox. Generic. Safe. Forgettable.
Here's a quick test: read your email draft out loud. If you sound like a LinkedIn post from 2019, rewrite it. If you sound like you're explaining something to a friend over coffee, you're close.
The brands crushing their email marketing ROI aren't the ones with the fanciest templates. They're the ones whose subscribers actually look forward to opening the email because the voice is distinctive.
Use Specifics Instead of Adjectives
"Our amazing product will help you achieve incredible results."
That sentence communicates exactly nothing. It's verbal wallpaper. Your reader's brain processes it the same way it processes elevator music: it technically exists, but nobody's paying attention.
Compare that to: "This flow recovered $47,000 in abandoned cart revenue in 90 days for a skincare brand with a 12,000-person list."
Same idea. One version is forgettable. The other gets screenshots and forwards.
| Vague Copy | Specific Copy |
|---|---|
| "Great results" | "$47K recovered in 90 days" |
| "Many customers love it" | "342 5-star reviews this quarter" |
| "Improve your metrics" | "Open rates went from 18% to 34%" |
| "Save time" | "Cut campaign setup from 4 hours to 20 minutes" |
Specifics build trust. Adjectives build suspicion. Every time you write "amazing," "incredible," or "game-changing," replace it with a number, a timeframe, or a name.
The CTA Isn't a Button, It's a Promise
Your call to action is not "Click Here" or "Learn More" or "Shop Now." Those are directions, not motivations. Nobody wakes up excited to "learn more."
A good CTA tells the reader what happens after they click. It answers the question every subscriber is silently asking: "What's in it for me?"
- Bad: "Read More"
- Better: "See the full breakdown"
- Best: "Steal the exact template we used"
And placement matters. Don't bury your CTA at the bottom of a 600-word email like it's a treasure hunt. Put it where the reader is most convinced, which is usually right after your strongest proof point. If you need tips on this, check out our guide on email CTA best practices.
Test Like a Scientist, Not a Gambler
A/B testing isn't optional. It's not something you do "when you have time." It's the single fastest way to improve your email copywriting without getting better at writing.
But most people mess it up the same way: they test everything at once. New subject line AND new body copy AND new CTA AND new send time. Then when version B wins, they have no idea which variable made the difference.
Test one thing at a time. Run it for a statistically significant sample. Document what won and why. Then test the next thing.
Priority order for testing:
- Subject lines (biggest impact on opens)
- CTA copy and placement (biggest impact on clicks)
- First line / preview text (second biggest impact on opens)
- Email length (varies wildly by audience)
- Send time (smaller impact than you think)
According to Litmus, brands that A/B test every email see an average ROI of 48:1. Brands that don't? 36:1. That 33% gap is just from bothering to test. Not from being smarter. Just from caring enough to check. More on this in our A/B testing guide.
FAQ
What is email copywriting?
Email copywriting is writing the text content of marketing emails, from subject lines to body copy to calls to action, with the goal of getting subscribers to take a specific action. It's not the same as email design or email strategy, though they overlap.
How long should marketing emails be?
There's no universal answer, but most high-performing promotional emails land between 50-125 words. Newsletters and educational content can run longer (300-500 words) if the content justifies it. The real answer: as short as possible while still being persuasive.
How do I improve my email click-through rate?
Start with one CTA per email, write benefit-driven button copy instead of generic "Click Here," and make sure your first line hooks the reader. Then A/B test relentlessly. Most low click rates aren't a design problem, they're a copy problem.
Should I use emojis in email subject lines?
They can help with visibility in a crowded inbox, but they don't universally boost open rates. Test them with your specific audience. What works for a DTC skincare brand won't work for a B2B SaaS company. Use them intentionally, not as decoration.
How often should I email my list?
Depends on your content and audience tolerance. Most brands do well with 2-4 emails per week. The real question isn't frequency, it's value. If every email delivers something useful, your subscribers won't care if you email daily. If every email is a sales pitch, even once a week is too much. Set up an email preference center and let subscribers choose.