What's an email copywriter?

An email copywriter is a freelance writer that produces content for marketing emails, which is an integral part of digital marketing. They write email subject lines, preview text, and body that are brand-aligned and persuasive. They create content that’ll make a business' email stand out in the sea of marketing emails in a customer’s inbox.

Email copywriters should know what audience to write for, how to come up with attention-grabbing subject lines and preview text, engage your audience the moment they open your email, and add an actionable call to action (CTA) for your audience. It's also a plus to have a person with experience in your brand's niche.

Why hire an email copywriter?

Hiring an email copywriter gives you a new way to engage with and convert your audience. Working with the right person or team will give you an edge when it comes to getting customers to act.

A good email copywriter knows how to write with urgency. That means concise, persuasive writing with a faint sound of a clock ticking in their copy’s tone. If you have a good email copywriter working with your business, you can rely on them to contribute to making your email strategy work.

It’s a common practice for businesses to send weekly emails, bi-weekly emails, or monthly marketing emails. The more frequent your email marketing implementation is, the more you need to hire an email copywriter.

It’s highly recommended that you stick with a freelancer or an email marketing agency that's experienced in your specific niche and has a proven track record.

How much does it cost to hire an email copywriter?

Email marketing is an impactful form of direct, digital marketing and the content of these emails is direct to the point, giving email copywriters less wiggle room to deliver your brand’s message. That’s why hiring an email copywriter can cost you between $100 to $2000 per email.

With the amount of value a good email to your leads can provide to your business, it’s necessary to hire an email copywriter that specializes in your business' niche. They’ll know how to capture your audience’s attention with a concise, brand-appropriate tone, and keep your leads engaged.

Email copywriting examples

Email marketing has a wide variety of types for specific purposes and audiences. You can send emails about a future promotion your customers should look out for, surveys that’ll help you get to know your target audience better, product emails to introduce a new product, cold emails, and many more. There’s an email you can send for every stage of the sales funnel your ideal client goes through while engaging with your business. Here are some examples:

Promotional emails

A promotional email is an email sent out to your email list containing announcements about upcoming or ongoing brand promotions. Promotional emails are usually short and direct, containing just the promotion mechanics, timeframe, and the value it can provide to your email’s recipients.

Promotional emails are the perfect avenue for a persuasive form of writing because it gives an email copywriter the opportunity to induce a sense of urgency to your audience. Your email copywriter should create an urgent-sounding subject line, a preview of what your customers can get from the promotion, and an email body that gives recipients clear instructions on how to take advantage of a promotion.

Customer surveys

Sending out customer email surveys is one of the many ways you can get your customers to give feedback to your products and services. A survey can be about what your customers think about the quality of your offerings, the experience they had while browsing your website or app, and more.

The challenge of implementing a customer survey is getting your email list to take the time to answer your questions. That’s when you’ll utilize an email marketer’s skills, along with a good email copywriter. You’ll need to have relevant and valuable questions that you know your audience will care about. Top it with a good subject line about how their answers will contribute to making their experience with your brand better, and you’ll increase your chances of getting feedback from your brand’s audience.

The timing and relevance of email surveys also matter. An email marketer will know when and who should receive your email surveys. One example is implementing an email survey to be sent out after a website conversion. Ask relevant recipients about how the registration or purchase went and if they have recommendations to make their experience better.

Product emails

Got a new product or want to highlight the features of an existing one? Send out product emails. It’s a great way to tell your audience about a product or service you know they’ll like. An email copywriting expert will help you propose the value of your product to potential customers and existing customers with an informative and interesting product email.

An email marketer will help you decide the frequency, recipients, and content of your product emails. You can send product emails to customers who recently bought a product or service and let them know there’s a new offer that complements their initial purchase.

How to write effective email copy

Writing an effective email copy comes down to five must-dos. You need to know who you’re writing for, how to get them to notice your email, open it, and keep them engaged until they follow your email’s CTA. Here’s how to tick those boxes:

Know your audience

Have you ever received a marketing email that’s too close to home that you opened it and clicked through? That’s the same thing you want to happen with your marketing emails. You want to send them out to individuals who resonate with what your business has to offer.

When you have a solid email list, you already have a pool of individuals you can convert or re-engage. Combine this with a deep understanding of how to communicate with them plus proposing valuable solutions, and you can up your chances of making your email marketing campaigns effective.

Nail your subject line and preview text

With a small wiggle room to capture someone’s attention, you need to have a subject line and preview text that’ll make your email recipients click on the email. Your email’s subject line should accurately reflect what they’ll see when they open the email. Spammy subject lines and preview texts might capture attention, but your email will most likely go to your recipient’s junk folder.

For example, you have a blog post answering a question that's relevant to your audience, pose that question and a short answer to it in the subject line and preview text.

Have a powerful hook

After getting your audience to open an email from you, the last thing you want is to lose them with a weak hook. That means they’ll open your email because of a good subject line and preview text, only to end up with them closing or deleting your email because they didn’t find what they were looking for inside.

A powerful hook starts with a question you know your audience has too, or a statement you know they’ll relate to. Remember to keep the hook short and direct to the point.

You can also make use of an impactful hook when sending a cold email to an email address you found. Since a potential client has no idea who your brand is or where you got their email address, you'll want to keep them engaged with an immediate value proposal.

Keep your paragraphs short

Your audience can view your emails using smartphones, computers, wearable devices, and tablets. With varying screen sizes and attention spans in your email list, you need to optimize your email and make it easy to understand and interact with.

Get your point across with short sentences that provide what your audience needs. When they get to your email’s CTA, make sure they’re informed about what taking action will do for them.

Include a clear call to action (CTA)

When your recipient gets to the part where the CTA is, ensure that there’ll be no way they’ll turn their back last minute. In the part where your CTA is, propose the value of taking action and make it easy for them. The CTA’s placement also is essential, and you’d want it close to the hook.

If you want to lead a person to a blog on your website, make sure you reflect that in your email's content and include a visible link they can easily click on. When they land on the website, they should be able to see more of your brand's blogs.

Remember that the emails you send go to real people with lives of their own and only have seconds to view your email's content and take action.

How to hire the perfect email copywriting freelancer

To find the email copywriting freelancer that suits your business' needs, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve and the expected scope of work that comes with it. You can ask your network for recommendations, put up a hiring post, or use Mayple to find the best email copywriter for your business. Here’s a more detailed guide on hiring the right email copywriting freelancer:

1. Establish your goals

As a business owner looking for a copywriting professional, it's important to establish your goals clearly so that potential hires have an idea of how they can contribute, the size of the project, and how much they’ll charge for their email copywriting services.

2. Write a job description

A detailed job description will lead you to the right email copywriting freelancer and weed out hires that aren’t a good fit. You can also reach out to digital marketing agencies to find a suitable email copywriter.

3. Ask your network

One way to utilize your network of businesses, agencies, and freelancers is to ask them to refer freelancer writers for your brand’s email copywriting needs. Let them know you’re looking to hire a freelancer with experience in coywriting and they can recommend professionals they’ve worked with in the past. Doing this will give you a choice of freelancers with proven experience.

4. Advertise online

Aside from tapping your network, you should also advertise that you’re looking for an email copywriting professional in your niche. You can use freelance job boards such as UpWork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and more.

5. Look on Mayple

Mayple makes it easy to find the right expert for your email copywriting needs. We have a straightforward onboarding process where we’ll ask for information about your email marketing goals, your target audience, a brief history of your digital marketing campaigns, and what you want to achieve with the email marketing campaign you’re planning to implement.

Once we receive the information we need, we’ll match your business with an email copywriter, and Mayple’s digital marketing team will present an email marketing plan curated for your brand’s goals. Once we receive approval from your end, you can sit back and let our expert email marketers and copywriters do the work for you.