Email is one of the most popular marketing channels for businesses. And for good reason, it’s low-cost and reaches your customer directly. But nowadays, the average customer receives over 120 emails a day, and it can be hard to stand out. Even worse, if you send a poorly written email, your customer could unsubscribe from future emails or mark your emails as spam, making it harder for you to reach them.
So, how do you make sure your customers are getting your emails, opening them and clicking your links? You start by writing a good email.
Before we get into the details, we should note that most of the marketing emails we receive (and send!) can be broken up into two types:
In this blog post, we’ll be focusing on how to write a good promotional email. A well-written promotional email is made up of:
Your email header is the first thing a customer sees when they open your email.
For this reason, we recommend putting your logo in your email header so customers know where your email came from. Make sure you also link your logo image to your website or social media account, so if customers click on your logo, they’ll be taken to your business.
Underneath your logo, you will also want to include a short headline or title for your email. This will give your customers an idea of what to expect when they scroll down to read the rest of your email. This headline can also be the same as your subject line (more on subject lines later). If your headline isn’t self-explanatory, you can also include some subheader text to provide more context.
Here’s an example of what our newsletter header looks like. You’ll notice our logo is at the top and it links to our website, and we’ve included a header “Gearing up for Growth - September 2020” and some subheader text to explain what customers should expect from this newsletter moving forward:
Some entrepreneurs prefer to send emails that are formatted more like a personal email to their customer. These often start with “Hi (first name),” or “Dear (first name),” and can be just as effective as traditional promotional email styles, like the example above. If you’re going with the personal email style, you may consider adding your logo into the header and leaving out the headline and subheader text.
Now for the fun stuff! The body of your email is the main content that you want customers to read and take action on. You want customers to feel that reading your email was worth their time, so your body content should be engaging and useful.
When creating email body content, consider the reason why you’re sending this promotional email: Are you sharing new products? Promoting a sale? Encouraging customers to sign up for a webinar or event? Make sure your body content actually achieves that goal!
You should use a mix of text and images in your body content. Images, for customers who can see them, are highly engaging and can add a creative element to your email. They are also another opportunity for you to link to your website or social media accounts. Text is generally more useful for conveying certain information, will be searchable in your customers’ email platforms, and is more accessible for customers who use screen readers.
Balancing the amount of images and text in the body of your email is important, too. You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of an email with a huge image and tiny 8-pt text, right? You also wouldn’t want to receive an email with small 100 pixel by 100 pixel images and 56-pt bold text. So, make sure your text and images are balanced and formatted correctly.
Body content also needs to include a clear CTA, or call to action. This can be as simple as a link to your website or blog post, or you can include a button to make it really obvious what you want customers to do after reading your email. If you go with a button CTA, make sure your button text is clear, logical and helpful. Common and effective CTAs include “Learn more”, “Read more”, or “Click here”.
Body content usually takes the longest to create, and we know that it can be time-consuming and stressful. When writing your body content, remember that it can be short and succinct, and that you don’t need to write a whole essay! You can use bullets or numbers to shorten your text and still convey the same ideas.
Here’s an example of some of our body content. We’ve started our body content with a nice image that links to our blog, included a section on “New (free!) resources from us” and then provided a succinct summary of the latest content we’ve shared, with a CTA button telling customers they can “Read more on our blog”:
If you’re struggling with your email’s body content, go through your own inbox and see which emails you’ve received that you’ve liked or found useful. You can also change up your body content between emails, and see what performs best for your business.
At the bottom of your promotional email, you will need to include an unsubscribe link. If you’re using an email tool like Mailchimp, Klaviyo or ConvertKit, they’ll often require that you have this in every email and will automatically add it to your email and/or not let you remove it in their editor. If you’re using another tool to email customers, like your POS or e-commerce tool, they may similarly include the unsubscribe section and link for you.
Unsubscribe links are required because promotional emails need to comply with spam laws, like CAN-SPAM in the US. Spam laws are typically enforced based on the recipient (your customer) and their location, not yours.
Here’s what our unsubscribe link looks like:
Last but definitely not least, a good email needs a strong subject line and pre-header text. The subject line is what customers see first in their inbox (beside the sender), and the pre-header text is typically located next to or below the subject line. Generally, email tools will prompt you to write a subject line and pre-header text before writing the rest of your email, but we find that it’s more helpful to write your email and then come back to this before you send!
These need to be succinct and convincing, so your customers want to open your email. At the same time, they should not be deceptive so as to trick customers into opening it. You can use the same text as your headline, or something similar, and generally you will want to keep it short so it doesn’t get cut off in your customers’ inbox or on their phone. If your email is time sensitive, or part of your seasonal marketing campaign, use your subject line to indicate this!
You can have fun with subject lines, engaging ideas include:
Your pre-header text should similarly be engaging and informative. You can also make it match your subject line. Here are a few examples where the subject lines are in bold, while the pre-header is regular text:
And voila! Now you’ve written an engaging promotional email.
Before hitting the send button, don’t forget to check your email! Make sure it’s free of any typos or errors, and that all of your links go to the appropriate pages. We’ve seen plenty of typos in emails before (like a misspelled company name, or accidental curse word), and those will end up distracting your customers! When you’re checking your email, you can send yourself a test to see how the email looks in your inbox, and even check your email on your phone before finalizing it.
Sign up for our newsletter to get marketing tips & tricks delivered straight to your inbox!
As a thank you, we'll send you our free downloadable 12-month marketing calendar. Use this calendar to keep track of your tasks and build your marketing plan.
*We promise not to spam or share your details with anyone.
Ada Chen
Ada Chen
