How to Create a Good Email

When creating emails to send to subscribers, we care about what gets people to take action.

Subject line

Your subject line needs to be:

• Appealing: Have a hook; avoid blending in with other emails.
• Concise: 50 characters or less is best for mobile.
• Self-evident: Don’t make people guess why you’re bugging them.

Here’s an email that was sent shortly after using the Chipotle (restaurant) app without ordering. It’s short and to the point, and our eyes gravitate to the gift emoji. It’s appealing because it’s clear that there’s a reward inside—that gets the click.

This Strava email was sent after a morning bike ride. The short, flattering subject is enticing, and I’m immediately interested in my ride details. I open the email because I know I’ll receive a dopamine hit with a notification and positive data about my ride.

Freehand Hotels sent this email before a long holiday weekend. The subject is concise, and they quickly flash a deal: 30% off. If I’m at all considering a long trip, the 30% discount in the subject is enough to get me to open the email.

Here’s another simple, self-evident subject line from Point. 5x points on purchases at Apple until October 22nd. I click because I know exactly what’s inside.

Design

Once people open your email, they’ll reflexively decide if they’re going to read it, skim it, or bounce (and archive).

Your design needs to be simple, elegant, and clear. Use a clean design that includes plenty of negative space. Use a standard typeface with large-ish typography and make it easy on the eyes.

Every now and then, run outlier experiments. Break these rules and see if you can find something that’s out of the box and gets people to lean in because it looks like nothing else in their inbox:

GDFA gets away with experimenting with a unique design (no images, harsh language) because it leans heavily into their counter-culture brand.

The best outlier marketing is always brand consistent—otherwise it feels desperate.

Body copy

Your email’s body copy serves a specific purpose: drive people to take action on your CTA.

Here’s what typically works best:

• Be aggressively concise. Don’t waste your subscribers’ time with unwarranted fluff.
• Fulfill the expectation you set in your subject line: deliver on your promise.
• Promise even more value that is only delivered when subscribers click your CTA.
• Show social proof so that subscribers see the huge value that their peers got from you.

Here’s an example.

Subject line: “Welcome to Casper”

What Casper nails:

• Subject dictates that it is a welcome email. The body fulfills that promise.
• Concise single paragraph—no fluff.
• Social proof highlights a community of 1 million well-rested sleepers.
• “Let’s get sleepy” CTA promises that Casper solves for a better night’s sleep.

What Casper can improve:

• Offer a more specific value prop that would motivate users to click more.

By default, focus on one goal per email

Most of your emails should only include one CTA. If you include more than one CTA, you run the risk of distracting subscribers from the goal of your email.

• Marketing emails with a promotion should drive people to purchase.
• Nurture emails should get people to read a single blog post about a relevant topic.

The CTA(s) in your emails should drive people to that goal.

But, for certain welcome emails, it’s okay to break this rule and include multiple CTAs to give people a “Choose your own adventure” experience. For example, our Demand Curve email drip contains a nurture email that includes multiple CTAs:

• Watch our masterclasses
• Hire an agency
• Get discounts on tools, etc.

That’s okay because the single goal of the email is to allow subscribers to self-select what they’re most interested in (which we use for segmentation). We need to introduce people to the Demand Curve ecosystem.

Legal Stuff

Lastly, don’t forget the legal considerations.

You’re legally required to include an unsubscribe button on every email. You’ll also need to send email from a valid email address attached to your domain name.

Don’t overlook this. Aside from ensuring that you don’t break the law, legal best practices improve email deliverability—meaning your emails wind up in more inboxes. We’ll cover this later in the Deliverability Best Practices chapter.