Five Ways To Make Your Email Marketing Copy More Consistent

As an email marketer, you want your recipients to open your emails and immediately know that they came from you. Building this familiarity through your email copy truly encourages customer loyalty. But it also requires planning. You should use the same style and “voice” for every single campaign.

To keep your email marketing copy the same every time, follow these suggestions:

• Build your own style guide

Think of a style guide as a sort of reference book and bible for your email marketing campaign copy. When you struggle over whether to use “percent” or “%”, you can pop open this guide (or word file) and see exactly what you chose to be your ongoing style. This ever-growing tome should function as your “go-to” reference for each and every email marketing campaign.

• Seek out the most popular word spellings and uses

Do a simple search on Google to see which spelling of a word brings up the most links. For instance, if you’re not sure whether to use the word “email” or “e-mail” in your campaigns, you’ll find that even though e-mail is the proper spelling, far more sites – and people – have adopted the word email. Don’t forget to research industry terms as well. For example, through the years, we’ve gone from air hostess to stewardess to flight attendant. Investigate proper terminology for goods and services and use them in your email or newsletter copy.

• Create boilerplate copy and use it for each and every campaign

Things like your contact information, a description of what your business does, or a quickie version of your company’s philosophy should all be made into a boilerplate paragraph or sentence that’s used every single time. Create and save a file containing this boilerplate info. For example, instead of retyping in your contact info each time, possibly using varying phone number formats, just copy the file from your boilerplate reference book and paste it into your layout. Even better, make it a part of your template.

• Be conscious of cross-cultural spellings and phrases

In the United States, we love the letter “z”. We like the word “categorize” rather than the U.K. fave, “categorise”. If you have a multi-cultural staff that works on your email copy, and they tend to use their own native spellings, be extra careful that you stick to one style. The same goes for common sayings. Certain word uses, phrases and sayings simply do not cross borders. Think about who you’re writing for when you create your email copy and edit it accordingly.

• Create a writing style – and stick with it

Whether your writing style is ultra-formal or witty, stick with the same “voice” when you craft all of your email marketing campaigns. The most recognizable email campaigns follow the same writing style in every single issue. If you stray from your formula, cracking jokes when you usually follow a serious, ultra-professional style, you will not only confuse your customers, but change the way they look at your business. You want your customers to immediately recognize your emails. If you constantly skip around from writing style to writing style, you’ll lose that immediate recognition.