Ecommerce email copywriting: how to write emails that actually sell

What makes ecommerce email copywriting sell?

Three things, in this order: a reason to buy, a clear ask, and words that sound like a person.

Most brand emails I read get the third one right and miss the first two. They're well written, on-brand and pleasant. Then they end with a soft "shop now" button and no reason to click it today.

The fix isn't fancier writing. It's deciding, before you write a word, what this email is asking the reader to do and why they'd do it now.

Content warms. Someone has to ask for the sale.

This is the line I come back to more than any other. A sleep-focused wellness brand had a month where every campaign was educational, with no offer. Campaign revenue went from $3,146 to $110. That's a 96.5% drop.

Nothing was wrong with the writing. The emails just never asked. Helpful and profitable aren't the same thing.

I go deep on how to mix the two in content emails vs promotional emails. For copy, the rule is simple: if an email teaches something, the last third of it connects that lesson to a product and gives a reason to buy now.

Write to one person

Your list might be 40,000 people. Each of them reads the email alone, on a phone, probably in a line somewhere.

• Say "you," not "our customers." Write to the one person reading.
• Short sentences, short paragraphs. One to three sentences each. Phones make long paragraphs look like homework.
• Plain words. If you wouldn't say it out loud to a customer, cut it.
• Read it out loud before you send. Anywhere you stumble, rewrite.
• Sign it from a real person when the email is personal. Not "The Team."

Lead with news, not brand voice

Across 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns I pooled for subject lines, news beat brand voice. Vague questions were the worst-performing pattern.

That carries into the body copy too. If something is new, back, running low or ending, say it in the first line. "Peanut Butter is back" does more work than three clever sentences about how much you've missed your customers.

For a consumable brand, your best news is usually sitting in your inventory. When something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month. A snack brand doing about $650K a month made $48,771 from one restock email, "We're back baby!", sent to 30,498 people. Not poetry. Just news, said plainly. More on subject lines in email subject line best practices.

Write subject lines from your winners, not from scratch

I don't start subject lines from a blank page. I start from a brand's past winners in its campaign history and write new lines in the same patterns.

My pattern bank has eight: short curiosity, seasonal relevance, proof or testimonial, objection or question, practical utility, final urgency, comparison and product origin. Lines like "2 weeks later, she said this:", "Before you make a decision:" and "Pack this before you go" show the shape.

The rules: short, specific, lightly curious, not overly polished, tied to the email's angle, easy to read on a phone, and not too promotional unless it's a promo email. Note that an objection or question line isn't the same as a vague question. "Before you make a decision:" points at something specific. "Ready for summer?" doesn't.

Cut the phrases every brand uses

My test is simple: if a line could appear in any brand's email, cut it. It's not doing anything in yours.

In general, here's the kind of thing I'd cut on sight:

• Throat-clearing openers. "We're so excited to share..." Just share it.
• Empty superlatives. "Best ever," "revolutionary," "life-changing." Say what it does instead.
• Hype that promises a feeling. "You won't believe..." They usually won't.
• Corporate filler. "We value your loyalty." Show it with early access or a real perk.
• Fake urgency. "LAST CHANCE!!!" on a sale that comes back next week.

Swap each one for something specific: a flavor, a number, a date, a real reason.

Use urgency you can back up

Urgency works. Fake urgency works once.

Think of urgency in steps. Use the lightest reason to buy now that's true, and only go stronger when there's a real reason to.

In general, the honest reasons to buy now look something like this, from lightest to strongest:

• It's new. A launch or a new flavor.
• It's back. A restock people asked for.
• You're probably running low. Reorder timing for something people use up.
• It's actually running low. Real stock levels, not a made-up countdown.
• It actually ends. A sale with a real end date that you keep.

If you say a sale ends Sunday, it ends Sunday. The moment your list learns your deadlines aren't real, every future deadline stops working.

The same goes for how loud the offer is. My rule is that not every email should feel like a sale, even when a sale is live. Educational and product benefit emails mention the offer softly near the button. A promo email makes it the primary message, and a final reminder makes it the main message. The offer is a conversion layer, not always the main idea.

Brief first, copy second

Before anyone writes a word, every campaign on my calendars gets a brief: date, campaign type, name, primary and secondary product, offer, goal, core angle, key points, subject line options, preview text options, the main CTA and the email direction.

It sounds like overhead. It's the opposite. Most weak emails I read are weak because nobody decided the goal or the angle before writing, so the copy wanders. Fill in the brief and the email mostly writes itself. I walk through where briefs fit in the month in email campaign calendar.

A simple shape for an email that sells

Here's the shape I'd start with for most campaign emails. It works for plain-text and designed emails both.

1. Subject line from a winning pattern. Under 50 characters is my starting rule, with preview text of 80 to 100 characters. No fake "Re:" or "Fwd:".
2. First line says what's happening. No warm-up.
3. Why it matters to them. One or two sentences, written to one person.
4. The ask. One product or one page, and the reason to buy now.
5. One CTA destination. You can have more than one button. They all go to the same place.
6. A P.S. that repeats the ask. Plenty of people skip straight to the bottom.

In my tests, plain-text and designed emails have performed about the same, so I lean plain text for speed and focus and save design for emails that need to show a lot of product. More in plain text vs designed emails.

How do you know the copy worked?

Clicks and revenue per person. Not opens. Across 4 consumable brands I pooled data from, click rate tracked revenue at 0.65 and open rate at 0.32. Apple Mail auto-opens make opens look better than they are.

One more thing to watch:

• Clicks with no sales means something broke. A fitness gear brand's restock email got a 0.40% click rate, double its other sends, and made $0. Click every link before you hit send.

Where these numbers come from

The subject line patterns come from 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns. The click-versus-open findings come from 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. Both are small samples, so treat them as directional. The single-brand numbers each come from one brand I've worked with, described by category instead of name. That's a hard rule in everything I write: never mention client names, and never tie a brand name to results.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

Instagram @jackintheinbox LinkedIn