Online, you sell with words. No salesperson on the floor, no handshake: a subject line, a hook, a button. If your emails are getting delivered (we covered deliverability here ) but not converting, the problem is almost always the copy. The good news: email copywriting isn't a mystical talent, it's a checklist. An email gets read zone by zone, in a predictable order, and each zone has exactly one job. Here's the checklist we apply in our email marketing mandates , zone by zone.
Before writing a word: research
The best copywriting isn't written, it's collected. Your customers already describe their problems, their hesitations and their exact words in your product reviews (and your competitors'), your ad comments, your customer service conversations. An email that reuses the customer's real vocabulary always rings truer than the finest phrase invented in a meeting room.
Also define who you're writing to based on their stage: a new subscriber who has never bought doesn't need the same message as a three-order customer. That's the whole segmentation logic of our flow catalog.
Zone 1: the subject line
One job: get the open.
Do:
- Keep it short: aim under 50 characters, because mobile cuts off the rest.
- Curiosity or a concrete benefit, not both in the same subject line.
- Personalization when it's relevant (the first name, or better: the context, "your cart", "your order").
- Numbers and lists when the content calls for them.
Don't:
- Words that scream spam: FREE in caps, the !!!, emoji pileups.
- False promises: a subject line that oversells a banal email buys an open today and a complaint tomorrow. Complaints are what destroy your deliverability.
Zone 2: the preview text
The grey line next to the subject in the inbox. One job: complete the subject line, never repeat it.
Do: continue the subject's idea, add the value or the urgency ("your gift is waiting", "24 hours left").
Don't: leave it empty, or worse, let the default "View this email in your browser" eat the most valuable real estate in the inbox.
Zone 3: the hook
The first lines visible on open. One job: earn the next 10 seconds.
Do: open directly, with a strong statement, a question that hits the real problem, or the immediate continuation of the subject line's promise.
Don't: open on the logo alone, on "We are proud to announce...", or on three paragraphs of context. Nobody reads a commercial email like a novel.
Zone 4: the body
One job: make the reader want to press the button.
Do:
- Benefits before features. Nobody buys "3,000 mg per serving"; people buy "finally sleeping".
- Two-to-three-sentence paragraphs, bullet lists, a spoken tone.
- Social proof: one well-chosen customer review beats three paragraphs of argument.
- Short: a designed email gets read in about thirty seconds; save the long formats for the blog.
Don't: technical jargon, dense text blocks, and detours. One email, one idea.
Two classic frameworks structure the body when you're starting from a blank page:
- PAS (problem, agitation, solution): name the customer's problem, make it concrete and costly, present the product as the way out.
- AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action): hook, engage on the benefit, build desire, direct toward the action.
They're not magic formulas, they're guardrails: they keep the email from talking about you instead of talking about the customer.
Zone 5: the call to action
One job, and it's literal: ONE action.
Do:
- A direct verb: "Shop the collection", "Recover my cart", "Book my call".
- The button visible before scrolling, and repeated at the bottom of the email.
- Urgency when it's real (sale ending, limited stock). Invented urgency wears out in two sends.
Don't:
- Multiple competing calls to action. Three different buttons means three times fewer clicks on each, and a reader who no longer knows what's being asked of them.
- The context-free "Click here", and the button buried at the bottom of the email.
The cross-cutting rules: mobile, testing, language
- Mobile first. Most emails get opened on a phone: fonts readable without zooming, buttons big enough for a thumb, compressed images.
- Test before sending. A test send on your own devices, every link clicked, one proofread for typos. A mistake in a mass send can't be recalled.
- A/B test one thing at a time. The subject line is the best place to start: same email, two subjects, and the data decides instead of the opinions.
- Write in the customer's language. For a Quebec list, that means natural French, not a word-for-word translation of American formulas. "Don't miss out!" translated literally rings false; "il reste 24 heures" rings true.
The most expensive mistake
If you only eliminate one error: emails that talk about the brand instead of talking about the customer. "We are proud", "our new collection", "our story". Flip every sentence: what does it change for the person reading? It's the same underlying principle as the identity strategies we covered here: you don't sell a product, you sell what the customer becomes with it.
FAQ
How long should a sales email be? Long enough to make the click desirable, never longer. In practice: a few sentences for a designed email built around an offer, a bit more for an editorial plain-text email. The email sells the click; the landing page sells the product.
One call to action per email, or several? One single action, possibly repeated twice (top and bottom of the email). Several different actions cannibalize each other and blur the message.
What's the difference between PAS and AIDA, and which should I choose? PAS starts from the customer's problem (ideal when the product solves a clear pain); AIDA starts from attention and climbs toward desire (ideal for launches and novelty). Choose based on what you sell, then test.
Rather have your emails written, built and tested by a team that does this every week? Book a call