At my first big paid mastermind meet-up, I scrawled a quote in my journal that’s now cemented in my brain:
We have to build businesses that run when we can’t.
That in a nutshell is why I believe fervently in copywriting. Marketing copy should do the heavy lifting for your business when you walk away from it—you’re probably like me and HATE the whole “sip mai-tais and work from the beach with your laptop” skeezy thing and “your email list is like an ATM!” concept (ew.), but we DO need our businesses to make money while we rest.
Life happens, babies happen, mental health happens—some days, weeks, or even months, we need to (rightly) rest.
And that’s why I love email marketing: it’s the #1 generator of revenue for my business, and my clients like Jenna Kutcher, Julie Solomon, Beth Kirby, and more—it’s worth spending time on.
In this read, I’m assuming you KNOW you need to have an email list (after all, you’re reading this RTS guide) …
… and I want to give you 3 ways to uplevel what you’ve got going.
1. Use a go-to newsletter copywriting formula.
It’s going to be a lot easier to see a spike in your click-through-rates with this tip, if you’ve never tried it. One old-school copywriting formula I’ve put to work myself and clients is “PASOP”
… a gussied up version of problem-agitation-solution.
- Start with the end in mind: you want to drive to your latest blog, podcast, or video. Back up a bit and think of the problem your audience would be faced with before that. Talk about it—show them you know what it’s like, and …
- … agitate a little.
- Then, give a solution , maybe it’s 3 tips, or an easy action item or learning that they can implement immediately.
- But you know what they say, mo’ money mo’ problems, so now, I want you to explain this new opportunity they have. Maybe after they wanted to know how to encourage their nervous fiance before kissing in front of a complete stranger photographer for engagement photos, they need to know what to wear. Maybe after they know the psychology behind colors, they’re ready for a designer to lead them through picking brand colors for themselves.
- And this is the NEW problem , which you can solve with a call to action button to your latest blog post that answers it. This formula helps you stay on task, not go on a tangent.
2. Mine AOL.com for preview copy text.
Ninja trick here, but go with me. When you open your email app on your phone, you know how you see a little blurb about the email that isn’t necessarily the body copy of the email?
That’s called preview copy.
Like your subject line (sometimes the only thing a subscriber reads in your email—make it GOOD!), this little copy snippet is make-it-or-break it. These two things can make someone open the email, or click delete.
My tip? Get hints from AOL.com. Kinda weird, but look at how AOL writers describe what happens after the jump. Those snippets can be madlibbed for what you’re trying to drive to in your email.
Here’s an example. These hyperlinks from AOL.com could be great preview copy in your emails:
“Never would have expected to see this!!”
“These things? They’re NOT cool.”
Give that hack a whirl for endless inspiration when you’re drafting your own email newsletter preview copy.
3. Read every email out loud—always.
I recently had a client that didn’t want to start sentences with “and” or “but,” because she wanted to stay professional. If you’ve watched any of my YouTubes, you’ve heard me say it: typing like you talk will help you sound less robotic.
Even famous copywriters and authors agree: when it comes to sales copy, grammar rules don’t always apply. You don’t say “in which palace does the queen of England live” … you say “what palace does the queen of England live in?’ That’s ending a sentence with a preposition, and it’s how we *actually* talk.
Start some sentences with a conjunction.
Have sentences stand on their own, without any 10th-grade-English-teacher-approved 4-sentence paragraph style in action.
Line breaking often gives people the opportunity to feel like they’re working down the page … you’ll know you need to break a line when you come up and take a breath when you’re reading aloud.
Reading aloud editing can cover a myriad of woes before you hit send. Even when I’m working on campaigns for launches that have pulled in way more than $500k, guess what I still do before I turn copy over to my clients? I print out the emails, and I read them aloud.
Writing about email marketing as a conversion copywriter and funnel strategist is like fitting an ocean in a teacup, but if you struggle with confidence in writing newsletters for your email subscribers, I hope these tips help you write better newsletters!
Having a strong email content strategy definitely can help you work from a place of rest, not hustle—as long as you have a sustainable, effective email marketing plan in place.
Ready to have email marketing do the heavy lifting for you? Get our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing here.
