Email marketing copywriting - persuade your prospective clients to take action

Why good email copy matters

Although the quality of a database used is essential to the success of campaigns, what is also key is the quality of the email marketing copy. 

Writing emails can help you email subscribers’ attention, hook them in on the product or service you're offering, and prompt them to get in touch.

For every £1 spent on non-consumer email, the Data and Marketing Association reports a 4,300% ROI on investment.

More Than Words note – email marketing for non-consumers is marketing towards decision makers within businesses, schools, charities, and the public sector.

Creating email marketing copy: 4 must-follow rules

Simplicity is the key to sales. Complexity confuses and obscures.

Email marketing copy should include the following to be successful in generating leads and sales from a B2B audience:

• what you want from your campaigns,
• what your recipients want,
• the product or service you offer which is going to be the most attractive, and
• the bait you need to get them to express an interest

What do YOU want from this?

B2B email marketing to a lapsed or potential customer list should not be treated as a brand-building exercise. Most business owners only care about their own brands and, even if you had amazing offers every day for a year, they wouldn’t even be conscious of your brand.

The purpose of your B2B email marketing campaign should be to generate a measurable financial return.

Look at your business internally – is there a department you would like to enhance or a product or service you would like to promote?

In three, six, or twelve months time, where do you see that department or that product or service? Be as precise as possible about your financial and other campaign targets when using this marketing channel.

Who are your recipients and what do they expect from you?

There will be certain comfort zones for your clients, particularly when it comes to pricing and product quality.

No matter what, your email marketing must reference your customers’ expectations. You will want to mention any guarantees or warranties you offer, the delivery time, the presence of an account manager, payment options, and so on. If they don’t see what they expect, they’ll assume that you don’t offer it.

Prices should be based on average order value.This gives you a sense of what price range companies are willing to pay for your product or service.

Concentrate your email marketing copy on one product or service

Choice is the enemy of sales, one offer per email would be ideal. One offer that is so special that it’s worth giving over all the text and design space to it. 

You can upsell once they are a customer. An email doesn’t have the space or the reader's attention span to compare scores of different offers.

Why one email is never enough

You should never send just one email to your audience – you should always aim for a minimum of six or preferably twelve.

The “ Rule of Seven ” strongly confirms that a recipient must see your B2B email marketing message at least seven times before they’ll buy from you.

However, there is so much more behind than this statistic than just familiarity.

How does the buying journey work?

Either your customers need your product or they don’t. 

Around 3% of your audience are in the market at any given time and another 7% are in the process of making a purchase and looking for alternatives to their current supplier.

Both of these types of recipients present very real sales opportunities, especially those making purchase decisions now or in the near future. 

Use marketing automation to spread your marketing messages over a number of months to catch more 3% companies – those who are actively looking to purchase. 

Each month, the companies in the 3% category change, as current supply contracts end or increased capacity and scope due to internal growth.

Over a 12 month period, there are four distinct stages to a B2B email campaign:

• Early adopters (emails 1-3) – companies in the right part of the buying cycle and not familiar with your company, but whose offer is attractive. Early adopters have the lowest response rates.
• In the growth phase (email broadcasts 3, 4, and 5) your phone will ring more and you’ll see more interaction with your campaign. The average customer will be familiar with who you are and what you offer. Your company is known and that makes a big difference.
• The plateau phases (6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) – you are now an established presence in the market. You should see even more enquiries and new orders coming in.
• Decline phase – responses generally drop and level off from month eleven onwards. You’re still in a much better position than in month 1. It’s time to refresh your digital marketing message to provoke new interest.

Don’t just send your target audience one email campaign. Stay in touch, become a well-known name, and let them know the benefits they will receive from your products and services

What does great email marketing copy entail?

In each sequence of emails in a marketing campaign, there are seven goals that we want to achieve. Since every client and campaign is different, don’t use email copywriting templates. The first step in every campaign is to understand how to write a persuasive marketing email.

The seven goals of email content are:

1. Great story-telling involving the client as the hero

The products and services you offer have a story to tell, but maybe not the story you think.

The best email copywriting services focus on the benefits of the products and services you sell rather than their features.

Use B2B buyer personas – consider what the buyer’s day is like, their hopes, and their pain points.

Your key to engaging buyers is to demonstrate how your products and services fit into the environment they work in, and how they can help:

• save the client money,
• make the client more efficient,
• enable the client to take advantage of an opportunity previously closed to them, and
• make the client money.

2. Test, test, test your email marketing copy

Not every marketing approach works. You might not get the results you want, even though you are sure it will work before you send it off.

It’s sometimes necessary for a copywriter to adjust the tone. Sometimes, we need to focus on a different product or service. Other times, the right product or service is the right one, but the benefits we highlight are the wrong ones.

When you find the right formula, response rates and interaction with your email marketing campaign rise dramatically. Additionally, once you know what works well, your sales and marketing teams can apply the same lessons to your other marketing activities.

3. A powerful headline

The “From” text is also important in persuading decision-makers to open your emails. There will be no leads or sales until someone opens the email and reads the pitch.

The email subject line must be compelling and, at the same time, relate to what we discovered about the buyer persona. 

The “preview text” is also something to consider. If you use Outlook, that’s the little snippet of text which appears under the sender’s name. If your company uses Google Suite, it appears to the right of the headline.

4. Education in plain English

After the client opens the email, we need to explain in plain English what your product or service does for them. We have around eight seconds to convey the core message in your email body. 

Many clients want a quick, persuasive “above the fold” presentation (this is the bit of the email you see before you scroll down) with a longer, detailed pitch below. The more you tell, sometimes the more you sell.

Meanwhile, some clients just want a quick-to-read headline and a summary of the benefits.

5. Get them to respond and interact

In either case, the goal is to make the recipient interact. Business, schools, charity, and public sector email marketing rarely leads to sales – instead the objective is to get the recipient to leave their contact details. 

Email marketing is usually the first step in the sales process. Your email must contain a strong call-to-action – a clear instruction on how you want the recipient to respond. It could be to click through to your website, respond to your email, or call you.

6. Reward new customers

An increasingly popular way of getting recipients to contact you is to offer something free, like your knowledge and insight. Perhaps you want your subscribers to click through to an informative blog or article on your website.

You may want them to confirm their details to receive an e-book, or white papers. You can encourage them to all of this via your sales email.

Standard products – such as products that you and your competitors sell that are similar – may be a good candidate for a discount on first orders to attract customers.

7. Your voice, your style

Each company is unique.

The biggest selling points of your company are:

• the ways you communicate with the outside world,
• how you look after customers post-purchase, and
• the tone you use in all of your communications.

The best email copywriting reflects your voice and your personality. Your clients should be able to tell who wrote the content before they even see your business name/offer.

This helps to strengthen the relationship between you and your clients.

Our full email marketing service

If you are buying an email list and want help with your first three email broadcasts, our full marketing service includes:

1. Your chosen database

• a list of decision-maker email addresses regularly updated for accuracy and relevance, free of duplicates
• multiple fields per entry, and
• after purchasing the data, users have 12 months to use it.

2. Email marketing design and three email broadcasts carried out for you with full follow-up reporting

• we will design an email marketing campaign for you based on the offer, product, or service you choose.
• we will send three email campaigns for you from our trusted servers to ensure maximum delivery to all of your contacts
• three days after your campaign, your account manager will send you a full report, including how many people clicked through to your site from your email.

3. Support with your database

We have a team of data specialists at More Than Words who will help you use the data you purchase regardless of your technical capability.