Email Copywriting: Are There Two Types, Customer vs. Prospect?
Part of your email marketing process has to be knowing your audience. After all, how can you have effective email copywriting if you don’t know whom you’re copywriting to? You have to know their pain points, worldviews, how they perceive the problem your product or service can help them solve, and their state of mind when they see your email.
As an email services provider, we give email copywriting a high priority because we understand the power of words in email best practices, from your From name to your email subject line to those first few words of text seen in the Preview Pane.
Recently when I saw a reference to something about doing email copywriting different for customers vs. prospects, I was intrigued. It has been in the back of my mind but I only just sat down to Google it. That wasn’t much help. But it did get me thinking…
Of course your email copywriting will be different for your customers than for your prospects. But I’m not sure it’s the copywriting itself as the delivery, and I don’t mean the email delivery that is the bane of every email marketer’s existence.
The email marketing directed at your existing customers should differ from the email marketing directed at your prospects, if you are segmenting and targeting at all. Remember that the customer already knows you, there is already a level of trust. Your email copywriting can skip that part of the email marketing process, trying to establish the relationship and trust. You have it already, assuming your product or service delivered on your email marketing promise.
But it can also be delivered differently: as transactional emails that confirm an order, as follow up emails asking for reviews, as email newsletters that nurture the relationship, as specials for existing customers.
The email marketing directed at your prospects can’t assume that level of trust. Your email copywriting and email marketing process must take that into account. Your email subject line has to work harder to entice the prospect to open your email. Your email copywriting has to work harder to entice the prospect to trust you enough to take an action. And you might have to send several email marketing messages to get any email marketing results where an existing customer might respond right away.
Email copywriting for customers vs. email copywriting for prospects: Yes, there’s a difference, but part of your email marketing process must be figuring out not just what is send but how it is delivered too.
