Master the Art of Email Copywriting: 13 Secrets to Boost Open Rates in 2025
Email marketing is effective, and isn't going anywhere in 2025. According to a 2023 study, half of B2B marketers stated that email marketing is their most powerful tool. Learning how to write a compelling email is a must for all business owners.
In this article, I'm going to cover how to write email newsletters that nurture and convert an audience. We will go over the basics of email copywriting, including email copywriting tips, email marketing strategy, and more.
As an email copywriter, I know what it takes to craft effective emails with compelling content that directly leads to sales.
With that being said, let's get into it!
Secret #1: Identify Your Email's Purpose
Before you write a word, make sure you know what the purpose of your email, or email campaign, is. Is the purpose to sell a product? Advertise a sale? Show off your expertise? Having a crystal-clear focus for your email is the first step to writing an email that converts because once you know your email's purpose, you can write an email that has relevant content. This step is crucial in creating your email strategy so make sure you don't skip it!
Here are some questions to ask yourself in order to identify the email's purpose:
What do I want my email subscribers to do after they finish reading the email?
What is my goal with this email?
What unique value am I bringing my email subscribers with this information?
Am I building a long-term relationship or driving immediate action?
How does this email fit into my broader email marketing campaign?
Does this email resonate emotionally or solve a practical problem?
How will this email align with my overall tone and brand message?
Who is my target audience?
To think like am email marketer, I recommend spending some time with these questions and grabbing a pen and paper to write out your answers.
Secret #2: Craft Compelling Subject Lines
The importance of a strong subject line cannot be overstated. It is the first part of your email that your email subscribers will see. A strong email subject can mean higher open rates and incredible conversion rates. A weak email subject won't lead to much, and won't convert how you would like it to.
There is an art to composing killer subject lines. Though the mastery of this skill comes with time and practice, like any other skill, there are some things you can do each time you sit down to write subject lines that will strengthen your emails
Here are some of my tried-and-true tips:
Evoke Curiosity- Make the reader want to read your email by putting just enough information in the email subject line to give a sneak peak into the content without revealing too many details.
Examples: The #1 Mistake 99% of People Make Daily; The One Shift that Will Change Everything; Eat This Every Day for Optimum Health
Personalize It- When possible, personalize your email subject lines. We all love seeing our own names! When the reader sees a subject line that appears specific to them, they are more likely to open your email
Examples: [First Name], I Have Just What You Need; Just for You: An Exclusive Offer
Create a Sense of Urgency- A surefire way to get sky-high open rates is to make the reader feel a sense of urgency related to your email or offer. You can create this by giving the reader a sense of urgency related to time ("Only 3 Days Left to Take Advantage of Our Biggest Sale") or quantity ("There are Only 5 Spots Left for my Coaching Program").
Keep it Short- As the human attention span diminishes, we seek out shorter and shorter methods of getting the same work done. Similarly, in email marking, people prefer short, concise subject lines to lengthy ones. Why? Your audience wants information in as few words as possible. Ideally, your subject lines should be 50 words or less.
Examples: 3 Tasks to Add to Your Morning Routine; The Secret to Saving More Money
Use Emotional Triggers: Words are powerful! Some more than others. Certain words entice readers and provoke curiosity, like "discover", "life-changing", "proven" and "incredible". A word of caution here: you'll want to use these words sparingly. There should be no more than one power word per subject line.
Examples: Proven Strategies to Lose 5 Pounds, Discover how I Improved My Life in One Day
Secret #3: Personalize Your Content
The era of serious business content only is over. Your target audience wants to see you, the real you. They want to read content written by a human that relates to their experience. Your target audience wants to connect with you on a human level.
In your email body copy, don't be afraid to get personal. This starts with knowing your target audience's pain points, desires, and fears. You also need to know certain demographics about your audience, like age, gender, stage of life, income, etc., in order to write email messages that speak directly to them, not at them.
Some ways you can personalize your email copywriting include:
Segmenting your audience, aka sorting them by demographic information. Once you have a whole group of, say women, you can craft emails that speak directly to female problems.
Speaking to the audience's pain points, making them feel seen and heard.
Using conversational language that is easy for your target audience to digest and understand.
Leveraging data and past purchase history to encourage your audience to buy more services or products. You could implement this by having an abandoned cart sequence or a follow-up sequence for when someone purchases a specific item. (PS- This is one of the services I offer! If you're interested in this for your business, hit me up.)
Secret #4: Keep Your Email Copy Concise
Let's face it: no one likes to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of text. Opening an email with a large amount of copy is intimidating and off-putting.
Our short, attention-span brains can't handle it anymore. The human attention span at the moment is less than 10 seconds, less than that of a goldfish.
When writing your email marketing campaigns, keep in mind that your target audience doesn't have a lot of time, nor do they want their time wasted.
Keep your emails tight, succinct, and clear. Many of the marketing emails I write are no more than 200 words.
More email content or copy does not automatically mean sales. Effective email copywriting can be done in a relatively short amount of text. I'm talking 100-200 words. Not much, of course, but short messages can pack a powerful punch, wooing potential customers with crisp, persuasive language that gets its meaning across in more concise ways.
This isn't to say that you can't write long emails. Of course you can! But considering the fact that the average human receives over 100 emails per day, keeping your core message short and sweet ensures that the entirety of the body content will get read.
Secret #5: Maintain a Consistent Brand Voice
Effective email campaigns all have this facet in common: they maintain a consistent brand voice across all emails. Whether you send sales emails, nurturing emails or educational emails, your brand voice should be similar across all of your marketing.
Keeping a consistent brand voice starts with knowing what your brand voice is. If you don't have a brand voice yet, consider these questions to find your voice:
What are the core values of my business?
Who is my ideal customer?
How does my ideal customer communicate?
How do I want my ideal customer to feel when they interact with my brand?
Does my current tone match the image I want to project?
What feedback have I received about my communication style?
If my brand were a person, how would I describe them?
What brands have voices I admire?
What do I want people to remember about my brand?
Once you have your brand voice locked in, consider how you can keep the tone consistent throughout your email marketing. It helps to use similar words and phrases in your marketing, so you may want to think about making a word bank that you can draw from in your messaging.
Think about using email templates and visuals in all your marketing to keep your voice consistent. You may want to implement a sign off, greeting, or similar phrasing that aligns with your voice. Using the same phrase in your blog posts, emails, social media posts, and other marketing material is certain to add recognition to your brand.
Secret #6: Utilize Targeted Marketing Strategies
Delivering targeted marketing to specific subsets of your audience is a powerful method that can skyrocket your sales or any other action you want your audience to take.
Here are a few ideas of targeted marketing to get you started:
Divide your email list into smaller groups based on demographics like location, gender, income level.
Create subsets in your email marketing based on past purchase behavior. For example, you could create a marketing campaign geared towards individuals who bought from you during a sale you ran last year, or towards those who have never bought from you at all.
Target your email marketing to where customers are in the customer journey stage. You could have emails for lapsed customers, new subscribers, and repeat customers. (Pro tip: I highly recommend an email marketing campaign for new subscribers! They are warm leads who want to learn from you and are eager to purchase from you. Creating new subscriber marketing campaigns is one of my specialty areas. If you'd like one made for your biz, reach out to me!).
Like I discussed above, personalized emails are a fantastic way to target your audience. You could suggest items or services based on past purchases, offer location-specific offers, or show different email content based on user behavior.
Secret #7: Leverage Psychological Principles
Luckily, we don't have to wonder how or why people make purchasing decisions. Behavior psychology is a field of psychology that focuses on how purchasing decisions are made. Incorporating these techniques into your email marketing campaigns is essential if you want to see results.
Though I'm not going to dive too deep into all the techniques here, I want to give you a few that you can begin using in your email messages today:
Employ FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
No one wants to feel like they're missing out on a great opportunity. When people feel like an offer is limited, they are much more likely to pull the trigger and make the purchase.
Employ FOMO email marketing by integrating time limitations ("only two days left for this sale"), scarcity ("I only have three spots left in my coaching"), offering exclusive deals ("as a loyal subscriber, you get first dips on this offer"), using clear calls to action ("purchase this product today") and emphasizing loss over gain ("this chance won't come back for another year").
Incorporate Social Proof
Social proof is hands-down one of the most powerful psychological tools to use in email messaging. The idea is simple: show potential customers that others have invested in your business and loved it.
Customer testimonials is the easiest way to use this. In your promotional emails or product launches, show testimonials that highlight the benefits and transformation your clients or customers have experienced through purchasing your services or products. Customer reviews are helpful for building trust and showing your target market that you are able to produce the results they're looking for.
Secret #8: Create a Clear Call to Action
Don't make things confusing for your potential customers. Tell them exactly what you want them to do in your emails. If you want them to read a blog, watch a video, subscribe to a service, or make a purchase, tell them!
Your email messages should be written so persuasively that your call to action is a no-brainer for your ideal customer. They should be eager to do whatever it is you want to them do.
Make your call to action obvious. It should be towards the middle or end of your email. The reader shouldn't struggle to find what you want them to do. Using action verbs and putting your call to action on a separate line of copy in your emails, along with a CTA button, will make it clear to your audience what the next move is.
Secret #9: Use Formatting Tools Effectively
No matter which email marketing software you use, you have access to tools that improve readability. Use them! To improve your email formatting, and your email performance, follow these tips:
Create a concise layout by organizing your email copy into headers, sub-headers, and paragraphs. Make your paragraphs short, no more than 4-5 sentences. Looking at a block of copy is intimidating! In my opinion, a regular-sized paragraph you might see in a book is typically too long for an email. Making short paragraphs improves the skimability of your emails.
Consider using bulleted lists for writing any lists in your copy
Use larger fonts for headlines, as well as bold colors
Integrate your brands colors and images in your emails, particularly in your headings, links, and buttons.
As tempting as it might be, use videos and GIFs sparingly. Too many will distract your audience from your call to action and the purpose of your email.
Secret #10: Optimize Your Emails for Mobile Devices
Mobile readers open more than 40% of all emails. Improving your email open rates by refining your email for mobile devices.
To do this, you can:
Choose templates and formats that are easy-to-read on mobile devices
Using white space to your advantage by strategically spacing out your calls to action, content, and images.
Avoid overloading your emails with multiple links. Choose one call to action!
Ensure that any images in your email messaging are formatted correctly for mobile devices.
Keep your subject lines short and sweet
Keep an eye on your email metrics, paying attention to open and click-through rates for mobile users (more on this below).
Secret #11: Test Different Elements Through A/B Testing
Split testing, or A/B testing, is an important tool that not all business owners take advantage of. The data you'll get from split testing is worth the extra steps you'll take!
Simply put, split testing is sending two versions of one email to two different groups, with the purpose of gathering data to send out stronger emails.
To get started, decide which element you want to test. You could test the subject line, content length, personalization, design, call to action, or email layout. Once you've made your selection, create two versions of your email: the standard and the modified version.
Split your audience into two random groups. Send out the email to both groups at the same time to make sure that timing doesn't unintentionally influence the testing.
Finally, measure the performance based on metrics like the open rate, conversions, and click through rate. Implement the data you gather in your subsequent emails.
For some business owners, this is too much to do, on top of all the regular business functions. This is one reason why businesses choose to invest in an email copywriter like myself. Split testing is a part of my monthly email marketing retainer. This ensures that I'm sending out emails that convert.
Secret #12: Analyze and Interpret Your Email Metrics
I've already written on how data can inform your email marketing decisions. Knowing what to analyze and how to interpret those results is key! Let's dive into two key email metrics, the open rate and the click-through rate
Open Rates
The open rate is the percentage of email recipients who opened your email. If you send out an email, you want people to read it! This number can tell you a lot about how enticing your emails are to read, and how much value they offer your audience.
While figures differ according to industry, on average email open rates are about 15-30%. If you're consistently getting rates lower than those figures, ask yourself some questions:
Am I sending out my emails at a convenient time for my audience?
Are my subject lines short, appealing, and informative?
Is the sender name trusted or familiar to my audience?
To improve your open rate, consider using split testing (explained above), adding a preview text to your emails, sending your emails at ideal times, and personalizing your emails.
Click-Through Rates
The click-through rate is the percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your email. This information is critical because it tells you if your audience is responsive to your calls to action.
Like the open rate, the click through rate varies in different industries, but on average click-through rates are 2-5% of your email audience.
If your click-through rate is lower than average, or lower than you'd like it to be, take action in the following ways:
Create email copy that is clear and engages your audience.
Make your call to action obvious, and don't include more than one.
Read through your email copy to make sure there isn't too much text or too many images
Use action verbs when writing your call to action
Focus on bringing your audience value in every email
Secret #13: Adapt Based on Feedback and Results
Imagine that you're ill. You know you are because you're experiencing a variety of symptoms. Nonetheless, you ignore those symptoms and continue on with your life, not making any changes to get well. That would be crazy!
Similarly, your email metrics are symptoms of the health of your email marketing. If your marketing campaigns aren't doing so hot, take that as a sign that something needs to change.
It's important to be responsive and flexible with your email marketing. You should be open to making changes based on your email metrics and your audience feedback.
I've already given you some tips on how to improve your email marketing, like sending out personal emails, split testing, and paying attention to your metrics. Beyond that, there are other things you can do to craft stronger emails:
Get insight into the customer experience by asking your audience to participate in a survey. To get maximum participation, offer an incentive like a percentage off certain products, or an entry into a raffle for a service or good.
Take negative feedback seriously. If subscribers opt out of your emails, find out why, and receive that criticism well.
Stay up-to-date with industry or email trends to ensure your methods are relevant.
There you have! The ultimate guide to killing your emails. If you have questions about this content, or want to inquire on how I can help you with your email marketing, feel free to get in touch!
