How to Create a Compelling Email Copy for E-commerce

In this guest post, Newoldstamp experts talk about e-commerce email copy best practices to help you write emails that convert. You may also want to read about the most popular triggers for e-commerce in their blog post.

So, what actually makes a perfect e-commerce email? Here are 11 tips you need to follow to write an excellent copy.

How to Create a Compelling Email Copy for E-commerce and Skyrocket Your Conversions

Tip #1: Segment your list for better targeting

Imagine this: you are sitting in front of your PC trying to write a fantastic email for your audience, but you are having a hard time finding the right angle. Sounds familiar? This is indeed a widespread problem among marketers and copywriters. They don’t know who they are writing for, meaning they haven’t identified their target audience and haven’t grouped their list. Before you put your fingers on a keyboard, you should understand who will read your email copy. Are they fellow marketers or tech-savvy IT people? What are their problems? What do they need? The more segmented your subscriber list, the more personalized and relevant content you can provide, including subject lines, marketing offers, design and copy. If you want to know how to segment your audience properly, you can read Newoldstamp’s blog post here.

Tip #2: Personalize the content of your emails

Most articles about writing a good email would tell you to personalize your content. Indeed, customers like it when you call them by name; they want to feel that you’re reaching out only to them, and not just to some group of people. Using customers’ names in subject lines and the body of the email gets and keeps their attention, but personalization is more than that. Segmentation is key to effective personalization as well. Keep in mind that each segment is searching for something different from your business. You can send personalized emails taking into account the recipients’ age, gender, location, their previous interactions with your brand, and much more.

Tip #3: Send your e-commerce email from a person

Spammers often send emails from addresses like jeremy77715@yahoo.com. If you don’t want to look like a spammer, use email addresses with your first name/your full name/company name, and other versions that look credible and professional. In addition, people like to realize they are dealing with a person, not a faceless company. For example, John from Xyzcompany usually communicated with his audience using his role-based email address info@xyzcompany. He sent out news about events and new offers. But then he was genuinely surprised with the audience feedback when he tried sending emails from his own corporate email address, relaxed his tone and made emails more friendly and casual.

Tip #4: Be natural in your email copy

As you work on your e-commerce email sequences, stop thinking about marketing. Consider your emails to be a way of reminding people that they are not alone. Talk to them, pay attention to their needs and offer solutions to solve their problems.

Tip #5: Add email signatures at the end of your emails

Professional email signatures not only grab readers’ attention — but they also add instant credibility and improve brand recognition. You would ask how it works. The answer is simple.

Use professional signatures to make even promotional e-commerce emails personalized.

You can make your signature a bit more special than just „Best Regards, Jim.“ Add your photo to the signature so that recipients could see that there is a real person behind that email.

If you post special offers from the email to social media, consider adding social icons linking to your business pages. It will give your customers more social proof and push them a bit further in their buyer’s journey.

Add a banner with call-to-action as a final touch to your signature and the last chance to convert your client. Create compelling call-to-action copy that will naturally follow and wrap up the email body.

So if you decide to add an email signature to your e-commerce email, you may need to use HTML format. Don’t worry about your coding skill. You can use a signature generator. It helps to design signatures extremely quickly and to add them to your email.

Tip #6: Stick to the KISS principle

KISS is an acronym for „Keep it simple, stupid.“ The main idea of this principle is to keep everything simple rather than complicated.

Tip #7: Use actionable language and power words

The goal of smart copywriting is to entice people emotionally. There are several key emotions that every human goes through, such as greed, fear, surprise, anger, happiness, and sadness. Power words are the words that appeal to those emotions. For example, the words „authentic“, „best-selling“, „certified“, „money-back“, „professional“, „reliable“, „research“, „refund“ make your readers feel safe. If you want the readers to take action immediately, use the words such as „don’t miss out“, „limited“, „last chance“, „deadline“ or „right now“.

Tip #8: Leverage preview texts

Every inbox displays the „from“ name and subject line of an email message. Many email clients also show preview text, which means your subscribers will be able to read it without even opening your email. Use this part to show the benefits they will get inside. Don’t waste an opportunity of summing up the email content, adding a call to action, or encouraging users to actually click and read the email.

Tip #9: Avoid CAPS

Caps and multiple exclamation marks look spammy. Try to avoid those in your subject lines and the body of the email.

Tip #10: Make your emails easy to scan through

Because of technology, people’s attention span is at its lowest ever, so you have to make your content as digestible as possible. The core rules are to use simple language, use one idea per paragraph, and keep paragraphs as short as possible. Also, feel free to use bullets and subheadings.

Tip #11: Make sure your subject line and preheader match the content of your email

Don’t hurt the trust between you and your subscribers by using misleading subject lines or preheaders.

Conclusion

Well-thought-out emails drive high conversion rates. If you want to improve your conversions, be sure to pay attention to such things as properly segmented email lists, appropriate formatting, power words, professional email signatures and email usability. Good luck!