Top Email Copywriting Strategies for Klaviyo Success

Your email copy is the voice of your brand. It’s what captures the attention of your audience, builds relationships and trust, and persuades them to buy.

In this post we’re going to share some of the top email copywriting strategies for email, to help you make the most of Klaviyo’s features and write emails that not only get opened but also convert. Let’s dive in.

Great email copywriting starts long before you begin to write your emails. You need to know who you are speaking to and understand their motivations if you want to communicate effectively.

This starts with identifying your audience. The best way to do that is to create customer personas. These are fictional profiles of your ideal customer, based on your marketing and audience research. These imaginary characters will have the most important characteristics of your current audience or the audience you want to engage with.

We create personas that include:

• Age

• Gender

• Level of education

• Location

• Occupation

• Marital status

We also identify a range of motivations and goals for each character we create.

Knowing who you want to talk to and how to talk to them is a great start. But it doesn’t matter how good your emails are if no one reads them!

This is why subject lines are so important.

The subject line of an email is the introduction, the first impression. It is the first chance you get to speak to your customers, and it needs to make them want to hear more.

So how do you craft a compelling subject line? Something that stops your customers in their tracks and DEMANDS to be opened and read?

• Keep it short: 6-9 words are all you need, and longer subject lines will get cut off on certain devices and email platforms.

• Personalize: Using names and locations can be a great way to optimize open rates.

• Create a sense of urgency: Make your audience feel that time is of the essence or that they are at risk of missing out.

• Asking questions: Teasing your audience with a question hooks them in and encourages them to open the email to find out the answer.

• Using numbers and lists: This is another way to build anticipation of what might be in the body of the email.

• A/B testing: It is always a good idea to run A/B tests on subject lines in Klaviyo. This gives you immediate insight into what works and what doesn’t.

It is also worth spending some time thinking about your preview text. This is often overlooked, but it is a great way to add extra intrigue to your subject lines and gives you more scope to speak to your customers before they open your emails.

Personalization comes in a few different flavors, but it is important because it helps you engage with your customers on a deeper, more personal level.

Speaking to your customers like a friend writing to another friend is a great way to start. It helps your brand sound more relatable, less automated, and far less boring. This means no jargon and using simple, easy-to-understand language.

It also means using Klaviyo’s personalization features to customize each email. These features let you insert customer names, locations, and info about past purchases into your emails. This helps you to speak directly to each recipient and address their specific needs and desires.

You can also use dynamic content, showing different products or content blocks to different segments of your audience. Once again, this makes each email far more relevant and useful, as well as making your customers feel more seen and understood.

Ultimately, writing good email copy is about good writing. There are a few main things to consider when crafting the body of your email.

Clarity and brevity are vital. Emails are not long-form essays, so shorter is almost always sweeter. You want to say what you have to say clearly and concisely, so you get your point across before your audience loses interest.

It is important to avoid cliches, particularly folksy, metaphor-style sayings that take up extra words.

Be benefit-focused and clear about what you are offering. Don’t be tempted to be ambiguous or vague - specificity and directness are always more effective.

Try to write in short sentences. This helps keep your emails snappier and sharper. It also helps keep copy to a minimum.

Finally, get rid of any redundancy. Laura Belgray offers a great example of two sentences that say the same thing:

Here is an example of the kind of sentence, which is seen to contain a few too many extra words.

This sentence has extra words.

The second sentence is what you want to aim for.

Once you’ve persuaded your customers that your product is great, you need to get them over the line and into your store.

This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come in.

CTAs in email marketing are buttons or prominent links that drive customers to take action. This might be signing up to a newsletter, reading a blog, or buying a product.

CTAs should be visible, clear, and direct. They should be concise and use action words that encourage recipients to click.

CTAs in the first person are often very effective - ‘Sign Me Up’ rather than ‘Sign Up Now’. CTAs can also be creative and fun, an opportunity to go beyond just ‘Shop Now’ or ‘Buy Now’ (although directness also has its place).

Thinking about the placement of your CTAs is also important. It is worth including one close to the beginning of your email - under the header or after the first paragraph. This gives your customers the chance to take action even if they don’t want to read the entire email. Another CTA after your body copy is a good idea. Ideally your writing will be so persuasive they will be driven to take immediate action.

Sometimes the best way to write copy for your emails is to let other people write it for you. Specifically, previously satisfied customers.

Social proof and testimonials can be incredibly powerful tools in building trust. By including reviews, comments on social media, or other testimonials you show your audience that their peers like your brand. You demonstrate the quality of what you are selling and you encourage them to join others in their enjoyment of your products.

Finishing your email copy isn’t the end of the process. Once you’ve written everything you want to say and created your email, it is vital that you test what you’ve created.

Continuous testing gives you the chance to find out what is effective (and what isn’t) and to optimize your email design and copy.

Klaviyo’s A/B testing functions let you test every aspect of your email copy, from subject lines and CTAs to headers and body content.

Remember that when you are A/B testing it is important to only change one element of your email, so you can see the impact clearly.

Testing lets you discover how to get the best open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, and optimize your emails for each of these.

Great copy is an essential part of any Klaviyo strategy. It is one of the most effective ways of maximizing the potential of your email campaigns.

Knowing, understanding, and writing for your audience is the most important part of the copywriting process. You want to write copy that resonates with your customers and speaks to their needs, clearly and directly.

Always remember that testing your emails helps you improve your strategy as you go, leading to better performance over time. This is just as true for copy as it is for design or implementation. Keep experimenting and refining and you’ll develop a deeper connection with your audience, which will help your email marketing efforts pay off in more meaningful ways.