How to Write a Marketing Email That Gets Attention and Results

Marketing emails are synchronous with your brand identity — they demonstrate your uniqueness and persuade the email marketing subscriber to act. An effective marketing email comprises compelling content, audience segmentation, and personalization.

Readers typically spend 12 seconds reading an email, and marketers put extra effort into grabbing readers’ attention within that time frame. Even so, the average open rate for marketing emails stays at 20-25%. That means you must write short and effective messages to engage your recipients. 

That’s exactly what we will look at today — how to write a marketing email that increase email response rates. We will also look at the components of marketing emails, give tips to create engaging content, and share best practices along with examples.

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The Components of a Good Marketing Email

A good marketing email grabs attention and encourages recipients to forward them to their friends and family. Every component works together to bring out the desired effect for your emails.

Here are the essential components you need to have:

Component	Purpose	Tips
Email subject line	Grab attention and entice readers to open emails.	Make it concise and compelling and create urgency where appropriate.
Email personalization	Make the emails feel relevant and personal.	Address recipients by their name and use dynamic content.
Good copywriting	Convey value proposition	Focus on brand or product benefits and make it scannable.
Proper visual elements and design principles	Capture attention and enhance understanding.	Use a visually appealing layout with graphics and interactive elements.
Compelling CTA	Direct recipients toward the desired action.	Use persuasive language and aesthetic buttons.

Let’s go over more important components in detail.

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Segmentation and Suppression Lists: How to Use Them the Right Way 

Segmentation and suppression lists are important factors that determine your marketing email campaign performance. Let’s go over them in detail:

Segmentation 

Along with the basic email elements, your marketing emails must have a strong segmentation strategy in place. That means dividing your audiences into groups based on their likes, preferences, purchase history, and demographics.

For example, you can segment audiences based on their product preferences and send them exclusive product updates, discounts, and deals. This will allow you to solve their pain point through your email sequences, which is why they signed up in the first place.

Suppression List

Suppression is the opposite of segmentation; you create a ‘do not send’ list of recipients for marketing emails. This method avoids sending duplicate content to the same people who interacted with your emails in the past. For example, if a recipient has already viewed a product, suppressing them in future product emails saves time and resources. You can create a master suppression list and automate the process through your ESP platform. This way, your marketing emails will not reach uninterested recipients, reducing unsubscribe rates and spam complaints.

Segmentation and suppression lists are critical to steering your marketing emails in the right direction. Without this, you may not be able to choose the right audience to send emails to and end up with a low sender reputation. 

Before you implement these aspects in your email marketing, let’s start with the basics — what makes your marketing email worth a read?

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What Makes a Good Marketing Email?

Marketing emails nurture leads and guide them through the email marketing funnel. Email marketers know that success depends on targeted and segmented emails. In fact, data suggest that subscriber segmentation (78%) is the most effective strategy by far. 

Bundle these prerequisites with the guidelines below to create effective marketing emails.

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4 Main Tips to Write an Effective Marketing Email 

Your marketing emails are more than the visual appeal and consistent branding — they must inform, engage, and nudge the subscriber to take action.

Here are the best ways to move your subscribers to take that desired step:

1. Craft a great subject line

The email subject line is a preview of the email body copy and must align with the topic at hand. Always include the recipient’s names and interests to increase anticipation.

You can brainstorm more like these, but ensure they stick to the spam rules. For instance, stay away from using too many exclamation points in your subject lines. 

The best way to avoid falling prey to spam traps is by running a spam check on your emails. Even if you unknowingly include spam trigger words, the spam checker can catch and rectify errors. 

2. Use a nice preheader text 

An email preheader gives recipients more information about your email and increases the chances of subscribers opening your emails. 

This is an example of a good preheader text: 

”Get 25% off on your first order”

This is a bad example:

“Unsubscribe here if you don’t like our emails”

A preheader is a second opportunity to grab the reader’s attention, and when it syncs with the subject line, your email open rates will likely increase. 

3. Utilize Images and Videos 

Using images and videos can make your emails more appealing and incite the desired action. You can use a simple background with text on it, or a diverse image. Keep your images readable and responsive, and utilize interactive elements like GIFS, email surveys, and polls to make them more interesting. 

Ensure your images load quickly on all devices, and that you aren’t using too many images in your emails. Avoid including images and videos as email attachments, since this can raise suspicion.

4. Keep content crisp and clear 

Your body copy must provide actionable insights and solve customer problems. 

Particularly, abide by the unsubscribe law and make it easier for recipients to remove themselves from your email list.

The ideal length of your marketing email should be 50-125 words. Data suggests that emails of this length have a response rate above 50%. If you find it difficult to stick to the word count, aim for under 200 words.

Finally, keep your CTA clear and let your readers know what they should do next. 

Tip: Use action verbs and create a sense of urgency in your CTAs.

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Additional 6 Steps to Craft Your Marketing Emails

Start by jotting down your email marketing ideas, purpose, and target audience in detail. This will give you a complete picture of your customers’ email marketing journey.

Let’s start with the basics, though:

1. Define your goals

Your email content depends on the type of goal: do you want to increase conversions, create brand awareness, or drive traffic to your page? Your marketing emails must align with the broader marketing goals of your company. Use your email sequences to promote your products, give out updates, and reward subscribers.

2. Know your audience

Every subscriber is different and has unique needs. Even though you segment your audience, your emails could only reach the right people if you finalize the target groups for each campaign. For example, let’s assume you own a clothing brand. 

When you send marketing campaigns, choose one audience set on the list, and create valuable content for them. For example, you can send product promotions and discounts to the audience with the highest engagement level and suppress the rest of the list. This will allow you to customize and produce tailor-made content that each of your audiences will enjoy.

3. Personalize emails

67% of people use personal recommendations while shopping. Layer emails with customized content and personalization — use the recipient’s names, product preferences, and other relevant information in the subject lines and greeting. Also, ensure your personalization is relevant to your audience and the email content. 

Let’s see what good personalization looks like.

Personalization Strategy	Purpose
Collect useful customer data	To know the location, email frequency preferences, demographics, and psychographics.
Create surveys and interactive emails	Use link-tracking and surveys to know more about the audience.
Connect to ESPs for more data	Integrate with third-party platforms to understand buying habits and engagement through email metrics.
Build sequences and flows based on the customer journey	You can send product announcements, and re-engagement campaigns, and status alerts.
Use behavior triggers	You can use event registration, loyalty membership, cart abandonment, etc.

Your emails could have different purposes, but try writing them in an active voice and using the second person in your messages. Including ‘You’ can make the reader feel involved in the communication.

4. Convey your brand value 

If you only show your readers what you can do, they won’t know your value. 

Let’s see two examples to paint a clearer picture:

Which do you think will perform well? Without a doubt, it’s product B. Combining benefits with features will tell your customers why your product best fits their needs.

You can also include a question in your email sign-offs to start a conversation.

5. Proofread Emails 

Run your emails through your team to spot errors and check loading speed, and email format. Lack of personalization and salesy tactics are commonly linked with bad email marketing practices. That’s why it’s critical to scan your campaigns for spam words and malpractices before sending them.

6. Test and measure results 

Marketing emails are about convincing your customers why you are the best for them. If you don’t track analytics, you will never know how your emails perform over time. Use email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to determine your email quality. You can also send feedback emails to understand how well your content resonates with your target audience.

But how can you use these tips if you don’t know which type of marketing email you’re sending? Let’s learn about them below.

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How to Write Different Types of Marketing Emails With Examples

There are plenty of types of marketing emails you can send, but today, we will cover 5 of them.

Here are ideas on how to write:

1. Welcome Email 

This is a type of transactional email that introduces your brand and provides valuable information regarding future emails. You can include your brand history, and what subscribers can expect going forward, and other relevant updates. If it’s a welcome email for a product, it’s a good place to show how everything works.

2. Newsletters 

If you regularly update blog posts, you can send your subscribers a round-up of the latest ones. You can also include promotions and other brand-related information. Email marketing newsletters are typically scheduled once or twice a week. Anything more than that will displease your readers.
Find the best time to send newsletters to prevent overwhelming readers.

3. Product updates

Product updates are usually scheduled once a month to brief readers on the latest upgrade. Although not as interesting as the other marketing emails, updates help maintain customer loyalty. You can also wait for a few updates and send them as round-ups.

Avoid using too much jargon or email abbreviations not to confuse recipients. Not every user might be proficient with technology.

4. New Content Announcement 

This type of marketing email is where you spread the word about your products, offers, build webinars, or e-books. You may additionally include your next sale announcement, discounts, and email coupons. The main element of the email should be your offer; highlight CTA and lead customers to the product page.

5. Event Invitation 

You can promote an upcoming event through compelling visuals and a clear CTA. Tell your readers why they must register and what they get if they do.

It doesn’t matter what industry you come from and what your daily job entails, marketing emails are a great way for you totell your stories to the world. 

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Marketing Emails Across Industries

Whether it’s about learning email marketing for startups or e-commerce, a few common questions include: how to write an email sequence for affiliate marketing or how to let people know about my business.

Marketing emails follow a similar structure in any type of industry, and we uncover a few common ones below:

Aspect	E-commerce	B2B Services	SaaS
Subject line	Use product offers and urgency	Solve business challenges	Highlight software benefits and updates
Personalization	Recommend based on past purchases	Address specific needs of the business	Customize solutions based on user behavior
Content tone	Engaging and persuasive language	Professional and solution-oriented	Clear and concise, focus on value
Visuals	High-quality product images	Professional graphics	Screenshots, infographics, and product demos
CTA	Compelling and clear – ”Shop now and get 10% off”	Request a demo, learn more	Start a free trial, upgrade now
Social proof	Customer reviews	Case studies and client testimonials	Testimonials and success stories
Follow-up sequences	Abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations	Follow up on inquiries and provide support	Send targeted content
Open rates	40.6%	36.5%	33.5%

We hope this serves as a starting point to tailor your marketing email strategy. Monitor analytics and refine your emails according to the audience’s behavior. More importantly, work with a reputable email marketing service.

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Optimize Your Marketing Emails With Campaign Refinery 

Crafting compelling marketing emails requires you to maintain a friendly tone alongside sending the right information to your subscribers. This process includes segmentation, personalization, email list-hygiene, and automation. If you are just starting out, it can be a lot to handle, and this is where a sophisticated ESP comes in.

Campaign Refinery’s built-in segmentation and automation tools can help you glide through the process without manual intervention and on a regular basis. Our automatic email list cleaning feature stamps out inactive email addresses, guarding your sender reputation and email deliverability.

We also feature a campaign library with email campaign templates and elements to help you build the most engaging marketing emails while having the lowest spam complaints and highest inbox placement rates.