ALEX ID communications

Email copy

Best practices for email copy

In this document, you’ll find cross-industry best practices for crafting email copy. There are many excellent guides out there, and this serves as a quick refresh on the four main elements of an email draft for the Jellyvision UX writing team:

  1. Subject line
  2. Preview text (or preheader)
  3. Body text
  4. Call to action (CTA)

This document is not intended to be comprehensive; the goal is that this will help us all get on the same page. You may also find these guides on email marketing to be helpful reference documents:

1. Subject line

Subject lines (SL) should be compelling and concise. They should incentivize readers to open with an offer, a question, or by piquing the reader’s curiosity.

Use this text to create a sense of urgency that motivates a reader to click through.

“Let readers know what’s ahead. Don’t be coy. Let subscribers know what awaits them in opening your email.” – HubSpot

In other words, provide a clear sense of what action this email will help the reader take by making that the focus of the SL/PH.

Both SLs and PHs should be:

  • 3-5 words
  • 30-50 characters (including spaces)

When it comes to style:

  • Use emojis only if they’re relevant
  • Use contractions
  • Avoid complex grammatical structures and punctuation
  • Use sentence case

2. Preview text

The preview text (aka the preheader or PH) is a supplement to the subject line that adds details that capture the reader’s attention and compels them to open the email.

Think of your subject line as a title and the preview text as its subtitle. These two lines are complementary. Here are a few examples provided by Twilio:

  • Company: CB2
  • Subject line: FLASH SALE: 20% OFF
  • Preview text: 2 days only.
  • Company: Fable
  • Subject line: Show us your best #FableShelfie 
  • Preview text: The winner gets $500 to Fable.
  • Company: Warby Parker
  • Subject line: Want a peek at our next collection?
  • Preview text: Warby Parker Right this way

Examples from recent ALEX ID emails that use questions to engage users and apply your favorite behavioral science principles to transform these elements into effective nudges:

  • SL: How are you holding up?
  • PH: Take time to make a self-care plan
  • SL: Can you boost your HSA contribution? 
  • PH: You might be missing out on tax benefits
  • SL: Need a reminder to use your benefits? 📲
  • PH: Let me take one thing off your to-do list

3. Body text

There is no hard character limit on the body text, but shorter is better.

  • Emails should be 50-300 words long.
  • Paragraphs should be no more than 2-3 lines long when formatted in Google Docs.
  • Sentences should be no longer than 2 lines in length when formatted in Google Docs (although they may sometimes run over onto the next line).

There’s a lot of information available online re best practices for email copy, so I’ve copied a few key points over from this Shopify article for easy digestion:

“According to Campaign Monitor, the ideal email copy length is between 50 to 125 words. This is just a guideline and you should experiment with the length that works for your company’s audience.” [At JV, we can go a bit longer, especially if we’re providing educational info, but again, our emails should generally be under 300 words long. – JH]

“Make emails easy to skim. People generally don’t read every word of an email, at least to start. Instead, while reading online, people often adopt an F-shaped reading pattern that is optimized for efficiency, initially focusing on the upper portion of a text, before scrolling vertically. A reader’s eyes skim for important details to get a broad idea of what a newsletter sendout is saying.” [Emphasis mine – JH] 

“Structure your emails to help readers quickly take in as much information as possible. Here are a few tips for avoiding giant blocks of text in favor of skimmable content:

  • Keep your paragraphs short. Use the ‘one idea per paragraph’ rule and keep your message clear, concise, and to the point. 
  • Use bullet points and lists. Breaking down information in bullet points and lists (like this one) is more skimmable than sentences in a block of text. 
  • Throw in headers. For longer emails, use catchy and informative headers to divide up your email. [This doesn’t apply to ALEX ID emails, but it’s good to know. – JH]
  • Add in graphics. Add in relevant graphics or photographs, like snapshots of your products, to break up text and draw the reader’s eye.
  • Bold important information. If your email has a central message, like prompting readers to answer a survey or announcing a collaboration, put that message in bold. 
  • Use CTA buttons. Make the action you want the reader to take obvious with a colored CTA box and clear CTA text that stands out. 
  • Leave some white space. Skimming is harder without breathing room between lines of text; use white space strategically to make your email flow.”

4. Call to action

Your call to action (CTA) must make it explicitly clear what the reader should do. It should also be… 

  • 1-5 words long
  • As concise as possible.
  • Grounded in an action verb.
  • Aligned with the expectation created in the SL, PH, and body of the email.
  • Clearly visible to the reader/visually distinct from the rest of the email (prefer a button over embedded text).

There are many great examples of compelling CTAs in the articles referenced above, and I encourage you to check those out!

ALEX voice in email

When most of us think about ALEX voice, we hear Brandon’s BC performance in our heads. The voice is helpful and conversational, and the text on the screen doesn’t always match exactly what it says.

In email copy, concision matters. Users may read them on mobile or desktop, on the train or while cooking dinner.  This means we have very little room to capture someone’s attention and move them to act (probably by clicking a CTA button).

So, ALEX voice isn’t as prominent in emails, even though most of them are signed, “Love, ALEX.”

Principles to follow for ALEX voice in emails:

  1. Content comes first, style second.
  2. Less wit and humor, more clarity. (Otherwise stated: less is more.)

A note on personalization

Personalized emails outperform general emails by huge margins in all industries. For the purposes of ALEX ID emails, we will always address users by their first name. As we collect more data and get access to more user data, we will delve deeper into how we can personalize our email messaging during email ideation sessions.

Note: We cannot currently pull in user names to personalize HSA communication.

Content page copy

Headlines

Headlines should be short and to the point, with a clear enticement to read more. Using a personalized number or data point is a good tactic for this. Tell them what they’re missing out on, how much money they’re losing, how much time they have left to act, etc. 

Assume that some people will ONLY read the headline. MAYBE your button copy. Try to get your point across as much as possible in only those spaces.

Headlines should take up no more than two lines in the standard layout of the space you’re writing in. One line is better. 

Headlines are written in sentence case. So only the first word and proper nouns are capped.

Buttons/Primary Links

Button labels should be as concise as possible. They should be written in sentence case and do not need punctuation. 

Inline Links

Be careful where you’re linking. If you’re linking to a non-Jellyvision resource, make sure it’s well-vetted and that product/legal/whoever are aware that we’re doing that. If you’re just linking within a JV product or application, we can be more liberal in using them.

Don’t “write for the link.” In other words, don’t say things like “click here” or “go here to read this.” Just write a normal sentence, and link the relevant keywords within it.