THE ESSENTIAL

STARTER GUIDE
TO BETTER EMAIL

Table of Contents

Introduction & the Elements of Email

1. The Friendly From Address
2. Subject Lines that Increase Opens
3. Optimizing the Preheader
4. Why You Shouldnt Send Fancy Emails
5. How to Structure Email Copy to Drive Results
6. Checklists

Introduction
Your emails should be helping you accomplish your goals whether thats increasing
your business, making customers happier, engaging your community, driving people to
your content, and everything in between.
So what are you doing to make the most of your emails?
Whether youre new to email marketing or just looking to bring your emails to the next
level this guide will take you through the basics of creating better emails in 5 quick
lessons. While this information may seem like elementary, beginner stuff its
astonishing how many people dont take advantage of these best practices to
optimize their emails. These small wins can really get more people to open, read, click,
and convert on your emails.
Before we get started, lets go through a guiding framework for thinking about,
planning, and approaching your emails. Well call it the ARM funnel.
There are 3 stages you want each
email to go through with a reader:
1. Attract: attracting peoples
attention in the inbox to get
them to open your email.
2. Rivet: getting people to stick
around long enough to
actually read your message
3. Move: motivating and
persuading people to
respond, click through, and
otherwise answer your call to
action.

People will drop out at every stage, but the best emails will get all of them right.
While we focus largely on the ATTRACT stage of the model in this guide, Chapter 5
provides a tried-and-true copywriting formula to help move readers through the
funnel. The ARM model also serves to remind you that email isnt all about one stage
over another, that opens, engagement, and conversion all work in concert.
Through each stage in ARM, youll be most successful and effective if you follow these
2 rules:
1. act like a friendly, real person
2. make the answer to Whats in it for me? clear to the reader
Refer back to the ARM model and these principles as you read about supercharging
the basic elements of your email.
In every section, youll find simple tips and best practices to make sure youre getting
the most out of your emails and examples to guide you along the way. In the last
chapter, we provide 2 checklists one for overall strategy and one for right before
you hit send (or schedule) to make sure you dont miss a thing.
Lets get started!

The Elements of Email: a refresher

in the inbox:

in the email:

The Friendly From Address

Best Practice: Send your e-mail from real people.
Emails that look like they come from real people are more likely to be opened.

1. Say who you are.

Email is all about relationships, which means it can take time to build up inbox
familiarity. If users doesnt recognize you as the sender, theyre more likely to mark you
as spam. Thats why emails should generally come from specific people and
companies.
For example, we got an email with this From name and subject:
From: David Dollar
Subject: ACTION REQUIRED: Aspen Sunsetting
We didn't recognize the name and looking at the email subject line didnt give any
helpful context. Aspen Sunsetting sounded like a relaxing walk in the mountains,
and Mr. Dollar was aggressively saying ACTION REQUIRED. It was unclear what
relationship we had, if any, with this sender was this spam?
It turned out to be quite the opposite. Heres a better from name and subject line:
From: David from Heroku
Subject: You'll need to migrate your Heroku app
This was an important email with critical information on what customers had to do with
their account and many folks probably missed it. The From name can be much more
important than you think.
Consider the level of familiarity your readers have with who you are and the type
of email youre sending. Include context in your From name (and subject line, if
necessary) to provide information about that relationship.
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Designate some person at your company as the face of your emails. Choose a
structure (depending on the type of email) and stick with it.
- Name from Company
- Company
- Company Team
Here are some examples:
Colin from Customer.io <[email protected]>
Karma <[email protected]>
Joanna at Copyhackers <[email protected]>

2. Dont use [email protected] on emails.

Using no-reply addresses tells your customers you don't care. Its pushing a one-way
relationship that allows you to blast people with email while refusing them the
opportunity respond.
This power imbalance makes no sense, especially considering how people had to give
permission for you to get into their inbox in the first place. Peoples happiness
depends on feeling like theyre in control and throwing up a barrier at this natural
communication point will quickly drain away goodwill.

If youre sending a newsletter to leads and prospects, shouldnt there be a super easy
way to get in touch with someone? Why get in the way of a prospective sale? Hitting
reply to ask a quick question is one of the easiest ways for people to solve problems.
Why get in the way of an easy customer support win? Youre leaving opportunities to
hear valuable information and feedback on the table. Can you afford not to listen?
No-reply is no way to build an awesome customer relationship and no way to
ensure deliverability. Some email clients like Gmail will treat no-reply addresses warily,
and youll risk getting filtered straight to spam.
Your email address is part of your brand and identity and its also where you can
have fun and express some personality.
Here are some more welcoming from-address examples:

[email protected]

[email protected] (Taco is Trellos mascot)

[email protected]

[email protected]

Subject Lines that Increase Opens

Best Practice: Default towards being useful. (Sometimes, be
intriguing.)
The #1 tip for getting more people to open your emails is to improve your subject line.
Your subject line is your pitch for someones attention and youll be competing to
stand out with every inbox sea of pitches.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon who set out to find out how people decide what
emails to open found that it came down to two reasons: utility and curiosity.

Utility: clarity is the most powerful motivator.

Straightforward subjects may seem boring, but clarity stands out to people scanning
their inboxes. In fact, MailChimp discovered that newsletters with the highest open
rates (60-87%) had informative subject lines that simply described the emails contents.
The useful email subject is specific laying out details like what, where, when, how, or
why and relevant. When you check your subject lines, do you see a promise or
benefit? The prospect of a gain or loss? Whats in it for the reader?
Here are some examples of utility subject lines I found in my inbox:

Your itinerary for your Portland trip

Game Plan for the Next Two Weeks

Your 2014 Student Loan Tax Information

Another cold one, high of 37

One useful formula for thinking about how to make a subject line useful is Dane
Maxwells Instant Clarity Headline, which combines:
End Result Reader Wants + Specific Period of Time + Address Objections

For sales and certain promotional email subject lines, the instant clarity headline can
work wonders. (Remember, you dont have to use all 3 elements.) Heres one we came
up with following this formula:Get 7 subject line ideas in 2 minutes even if youre
not creative.

Curiosity: intrigue can lead to clicks.

When you perceive a gap in your knowledge, youre naturally motivated to fill in that
information blank. Encountering an email with an intriguing subject line drives you to
satisfy your curiosity by clicking open.
Here are some examples of curiosity subject lines I found in my inbox:

if you secretly like seeing failure, youre going to love this

Work with me?

I just looked through this list of potential album releases this year

This is what someone who makes $200,000+ sounds like

While marketers often employ intrigue and curiosity to create clickbait-y headlines,
email subject lines are more complicated. Too much of an information gap can
backfire. Its much harder to gauge relevance when you cant predict an emails
contents, and if you arent familiar with the sender, curiosity often wont be enough to
drive opens.
So when choosing between the two tactics, its best to go with utility.
As the researchers discovered, when people experience email overload, their scanning
process became more ruthless, as they feel more stressed and time pressured.
Curiosity loses its motivating power while utility became even more integral to
catching peoples attention. When youre busy, you dont have as much mental power
to spare on filling information gaps.
An intriguing subject line like See this crazy chart! might perform really well if
youre emailing a list of growth hackers and data geeks. It will do less well for a
general audience because its not clear how that crazy chart benefits them.
Two more things to keep in mind when considering utility and curiosity:
Context: What kind of email is it? Transactional emails such as welcome email,
notifications, and receipts are inherently functional. Nobody wants an information gap
when theyre waiting for a password reset or order confirmation.
When Buffer fell victim to a security breach, their notification subject line was to the
point: Buffer has been hacked - here is whats going on is everything you need to
know to open the email. Thats no time to play the curiosity card.
Personalization: Using details like names and locations can increase both the
perception of utility or peoples curiosity. For example, when we tested including a
first name in the subject line of our products welcome emails, we got a 10% higher
open rate.

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Optimizing the Preheader

Best Practice: Use the preheader to attract attention.
Dont forget about the emails other most important line: the first line of the email.
This first line appears in the inbox view along with your subject line, the jelly to the
subject lines peanut butter. Savvy emailers use this text to draw readers in, because
they know it affects peoples split-second decision whether or not to open your email.
Now, the first line of your email is often not the first line in your body copy but your
preheader.
Theres often a default preheader in email templates. It might be a view-in-browser
link, social sharing options, or a request to be added to your contacts. This type of text
is never attention-grabbing, but if you take a look at your inbox, youll probably see
this again and again. According to research from ExactTarget, 54% of brands dont
fully optimize this snippet text.
Provide interesting or informative text in your preheader. Heres what you can do with
this copy snippet instead:

preview or summarize your message

snappy call to action

use this space to have fun, get creative, or express some personality

follow-through on your subject line

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For example, Jeff Goins uses his header text to follow through on the message of his
subject line: Youre in! Here are the bonuses flows right into Hey there, Thanks so
much for signing up for this newsletter. Designing that flow is a compelling tactic to
get you to open his message and continue reading.
Dont waste an opportunity to entice people into opening your email and add value to
your email.

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Why You Shouldnt Send Fancy Emails

Best Practice: Use a simple design for friendliness and focus.
We get asked all the time whether emails should be written simply or put in a fancy
HTML template. Fancy templates, pretty images, and cool fonts are always tempting,
but the point of your emails is also always contained in the text. Put your words first.
In fact, people are more likely to respond to emails that look like they came from a
friend simply formatted. So dont send every email from your company in a glossy
layout.
Don't believe me? Every copywriter we've spoken with claims that their data shows
how simple layouts performs better (though their clients often assume the opposite).
Take a look at the formatting in emails from people who make their living from email,
like Ramit Sethi, Marie Forleo or Ben Settle. These are folks who who can afford to
create the fanciest of email layouts but dont. Heres one of Ramits:

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Scrap those multi-column crazy layouts, which often distract readers from the actual
message or distract you from seeing that you havent communicated a clear goal. A
single column email that isn't fancy will have a better chance of looking great across
desktop, mobile, tablet platforms. You'll get more replies to your emails (you want
these!). And if you do things right, people will view you alongside their friends and
family in their inbox.
For messages that youd like to have that personal touch including thank you emails
or asking for feedback use the simply text approach.
Whether youre using an HTML design that mimics plaintext or working on the plaintext version of your email even simple text should be visually appealing and welldesigned.
Note, there are situations when you want to do something a little fancier in email. A
more complex design may better serve certain types of information and goals you
want to communicate, such as:

Making complex information easier to understand (like in a weekly report)

Helping people know an email is official (like an invoice or if it contains sensitive

information)

Visual clarity showing lots of items in a grid (like products from an e-commerce
store)

The most important principle at work here is that the copy should dictate the design.

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How to Structure Email Copy to Drive Results

Best Practice: Use the AIDA copywriting formula to get
readers to act.
AIDA is a time-tested copywriting formula thats been used in marketing and
advertising in all types of media for over a century. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest,
Desire, Action four building blocks that combine to motivate your readers to your
call to action, from making a purchase to reading a blog post to filling out a survey.

AIDA the Breakdown

Attention
Attention is the key that gets busy people to open your email. Youre experts at this
now! The key is getting from name + subject line + preheader right.
Interest
Catching someones initial attention doesnt mean theyll stick around for the entre.
The interest section is the meat of your email, where you make your case. Writing
toward interest means making copy substantive, educational, even enjoyable.
Storytelling wins any day over blah, business-y jargon or self-involved blather to get
people on your side. For example, instead of announcing a new feature by describing
the mechanics of what it does, paint a scene showing off all the compelling benefits.
Or share the valuable lesson you learned from the speaker at an event you're hosting.
Desire
Pave the way to your call to action. This may be short, even one line, but winding up
before your pitch ensures you dont jar or turn off the reader.
Consider what your audience wants. Maybe its more sales, more traffic, and happier
customers. Or they want to be in the loop, improve themselves, and, yes, even to help
others. Can you draw on those desires for mutual benefit?

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Action
Generally, one call to action per email is optimal. You dont really want to ask people
to do more than one, maybe two, things. Having too many asks not only seems
presumptuous, it lowers peoples motivation to do anything at all.
So focus on one desired outcome and overwrite common button phrases like
sign up or "download" or read more to motivate. Add specificity and context
about the benefit or value, even if the copy is located on a button. Instead of Sign
in, write Sign in to see your top matches! or even simpler, See your top matches!
Rather than "Download now, try Learn how to write amazing blog posts.

AIDA in Practice
Heres a Shopify email that
uses this formula.

(One recommendation wed

make here is to test changing
the call to action from Read
More to text that
communicates value to
readers, like Learn how to
grow your business or just
Grow your business.)

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Lets take a deeper dive into AIDA with a newsletter email from Skillcrush, an online
platform for learning digital skills to transform careers, whose emails are lively and
engaging. [Click to see the entire email.]
Attention
The subject line 3 steps to writing a resume that gets you the tech job of your
dreams is useful, clear, and specific. It follows 2 of the 3 elements in the instant clarity
headline, communicating a result the reader would want (an effective resume) and the
timeframe (3 steps sounds short!).
Note how the preheader Your old resume isnt pulling its weight anymore.
shows up in the inbox preview, adding a reason to open the email.

This subject and preheader pack a 1-2 punch rationale for an audience interested in
leveling up their career to find what practical steps will improve a meh resume.

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Note how the introduction in the email body aims to catch attention too. The lead-in
question Does everything about the tech job market make you nervous? in large,
bold letters tugs on an existing worry of this set of readers, drawing them in.
Interest
The introduction flows seamlessly to further engagement, an explanation why
updating your resume makes such a difference in this digital age.

Placing an image midway rather than at the beginning of the email, which is a
common practice, helps break up the text and introduce the very real person who will
teach you the steps to an effective resume.

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Desire + Action
Here, the email taps into the readers feelings of uncertainty and point of view.
Fiddling with resumes is tough and annoying. (I certainly cant think of a single person I
know who enjoys this process.) And its especially tough and annoying when youre not
sure how to talk about yourself in a field thats new to you.
Reflecting readers desire in this way provides a smooth windup to the pitch.

The email doesnt end with a bland watch our video command but an appeal to
what the reader probably wants at this point: practical steps to make this whole
resume updating rigmarole less painful and ultimately successful.

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Checklists
Strategy Checklist (setting up recurring emails)
Determine the purpose of the emails
Designate a trustworthy, welcoming From address and From name
The from address isnt [email protected]
The from name is specific: Company, Company Team, Name from Company.
Use a simple design:
Set the maximum width to 550px
Bold or italicize key phrases you want the recipient to read
Use white spaces such as paragraph breaks and margins help make reading
easy and digestible.
Move default preheader text like View in browser down or to the footer.

Out-the-Door Checklist (before you hit SEND)

Does the subject line compel? (Is it useful and clear, or intriguing?)
Preview how your email looks in the inbox. Are you taking full advantage of your
preheader or first line? Are you running into character display cutoffs?
Are you communicating one clear goal for the reader?
If youre using the AIDA formula: does your email contain Attention +
Interest + Desire + Action elements?
Proofread & double-check:
From: correct, friendly name and address?
To: sending to the correct recipients/segment/list?
Subject + Preheader
Body copy
Any dates or locations
Are all the links working and correct? Did you forget to add tracking?
Are personalization fields working?

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Happy Emailing!

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