5 Critical Elements of Successful Email Marketing Messages that Convert

Every email marketing message must deliver on the promise of your subject line by providing relevant details. To do that successfully, your messages should contain five key elements: power, personalization, description, trust, and persuasion. Let’s take a closer look at each one so you can write messages that convert.

1. Be Powerful

Always start your emails with your most powerful messages. If recipients read only the first one or two sentences of your message, you need to be confident that they’ll have enough information to determine if the offer is right for them. Next, provide supporting information to tell them your full story.

It’s important to write in the right style and use the right words for your target audience. Be conversational, and write like you’re talking to one person rather than an audience of multiple email recipients.

Furthermore, use words that trigger emotions in your copy. When you can evoke powerful emotions in your copywriting, recipients will be far more likely to follow the call to action in your email marketing message.

2. Be Personal

Being personal should extend beyond the language used in your email messages. It also includes using personalization and dynamic content to offer highly targeted offers to the right people.

Also, don’t be afraid to break grammar rules by using contractions, slang, and sentence fragments if that’s the language and style your target audience is comfortable with. Being personal in your language, rather than overly corporate or robotic, can make a significant difference in the response rates to your email marketing campaigns as long as doing so is consistent with your brand personality.

3. Be Descriptive

Your email marketing messages should include descriptions of the features of your offer. Benefits sell, but no one will complete your call to action if they don’t know what they’ll get by doing so.

With that said, don’t write paragraphs and paragraphs about features. Instead, provide a concise list that briefly explains the tangible things recipients will receive if they follow your call to action.

4. Be Trustworthy

Every email marketing campaign you create and message you write should build trust between recipients and your brand. If the content of your message is perceived as inauthentic, people are unlikely to trust your brand, which will ultimately hurt conversions.

For many email marketing messages, it’s helpful to include customer reviews, testimonials, customer success stories, or brief case studies to prove your claims. Anyone can claim their product or service will deliver a set of benefits, but when an audience can see real people who experienced the same positive results that you promote in your message, they’ll be much more likely to follow your call to action.

5. Be Persuasive

An essential part of successful copywriting is understanding how to write persuasively without overselling. An area of your message where persuasion is essential is the call to action. If it doesn’t motivate recipients to act, then your message will fail.

The best calls to action are brief, clear, and specific. They explain exactly what the audience should do with no room for confusion. Therefore, your call to action should use action words and create a sense of urgency.

In addition, your call to action should make your audience feel like there is little or no risk involved when they follow it. Instead, focus on the benefits and value they’ll receive when they follow the call to action.

Finally, create a sense of anticipation and excitement, and remove any obstacles that could get in the way of completing your call to action so the process is as easy as possible.

Key Takeaways about Copywriting and Email Marketing Messages

If you understand the five critical elements of successful email marketing messages, you’ll be able to write compelling copy that drives people to complete your calls to action. Your conversions will go up and your business will reap the rewards.

Of course, if you need help with your email marketing or copywriting, don’t hesitate to contact me or pick up a copy of my book, The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Business, which provides even more details to help you create, write, and run successful email marketing campaigns to grow your business.

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. and Founder & Editor in Chief of an award-winning blog, WomenOnBusiness.com. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored 10 books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.