Step 1
Audit what sends now
Every automated message your system produces, received and read. This routinely finds several nobody knew were still going out.
Articles and written content · Email and newsletters · Sydney
Email and newsletter copy
Email is the only audience you own outright. No platform can change its reach overnight, no algorithm decides who sees it, and it is the channel most businesses neglect hardest while paying to rent attention elsewhere.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like your list.
1audience nobody can take away
5emails in a working sequence
One ideaper email, never five
Repliesthe metric that actually means something
The short answer
What is email copywriting, and what should it do?
Email copywriting covers two different jobs. A sequence is a fixed set of emails triggered by something a person did, doing one job in order. A newsletter is a recurring send whose job is to stay welcome in an inbox that would rather be empty.
They fail differently. Sequences fail by trying to do the whole sale in one email. Newsletters fail by having nothing to say and sending anyway, which teaches people to ignore you at exactly the moment you needed them not to.
We write both from what your audience actually asked for when they subscribed, and we treat replies rather than opens as the signal worth reading. It sits inside our wider content writing service, and because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into the writing.
The difference
Where does a sequence actually lose people?
Earlier than the email you are worried about. Almost every underperforming sequence is losing people at the subscribe step or the first send, and being diagnosed at the fourth.
What makes email work
- One idea per email, with the point in the first two lines
- A promise at subscribe that the first email keeps immediately
- Written as though from a person, because the reply is the goal
- A send rhythm the reader can predict and you can sustain
What makes it fail
- Sending because it is Tuesday rather than because there is something to say
- Five topics in one email, so none of them is acted on
- A subject line the email does not deliver on, which costs the next one too
- Optimising opens, which stopped being a reliable measure years ago
For the gated content that fills a list in the first place, our guide to webinars as gated content covers the mechanics.
The cost
What drives the price of email copy?
Whether it is a fixed sequence or a recurring send, and how much of the thinking is already done. A sequence is written once and works for years; a newsletter is a standing commitment.
A sequence
Fixed set
Welcome, onboarding, nurture or win-back, written once as a set that does one job in order. The highest return per word in email by a distance.
A newsletter
Recurring
A regular send with a shape people recognise, written from work you already produce so it does not become a weekly invention problem.
Lifecycle programme
The whole map
Every automated message a customer receives, reviewed and rewritten together, which usually reveals several nobody had read in years.
We quote per sequence or per month after a free consult and a look at what is currently sending. See content repurposing for where newsletter material comes from.
What moves the number, in order
- Sequence length, and how many branches it has
- Whether the audience is segmented, since each segment is a rewrite
- How much of the substance already exists to draw on
- Whether we are also writing the pages the emails link to
- Compliance review, in regulated industries
- Cadence, for anything recurring
Read the automated emails nobody has read
Almost every business has a set of automated messages written years ago by somebody who has left, still sending several times a day, that nobody in the building has read since.
Receipts, welcome messages, password resets, shipping notices. They have the highest open rates of anything you send, by a wide margin, and they are usually the worst-written thing the company produces.
Fixing those is cheaper than a new campaign and reaches more people. We start by asking to receive every automated email your system sends, which is a request most clients cannot immediately fulfil, and that is itself the finding.
The scope
What you receive
Written to your platform's blocks, with the subject lines treated as a real deliverable.
The emails
Written as a set that works in order, one idea each, with the point in the first two lines rather than after a greeting and a paragraph of throat-clearing.
Subject and preview lines
Two or three options each, written together, because the preview text is half the decision and is usually left as a stray sentence.
The sequence map
What triggers each email, what stops it, and what happens when somebody replies, which is the part that is usually undefined.
Compliance basics
Unsubscribe, sender identity and consent handled properly, because in Australia the rules are not optional and the penalties are real.
What to measure
Replies, clicks and unsubscribes rather than opens, with a note on why opens stopped being reliable.
A test plan
Which subject lines and openings to test first, in an order that produces an answer rather than a permanent experiment.
The return
What should you actually measure?
Not opens. Privacy changes made open tracking unreliable years ago, and a programme optimised against it is optimising against noise.
Replies are the metric worth chasing
A reply is unambiguous. Somebody read it, had a reaction, and spent effort. No other email metric is that hard to fake and that easy to interpret.
Which is why we write from a person rather than a brand, ask real questions, and make sure the reply address is one a human reads. A no-reply address on a newsletter is a decision to not hear from your own audience.
The second measure worth watching is the unsubscribe rate on a specific send, which tells you honestly when you sent something that was not worth the interruption.
The process
How email copy gets written
Two to four weeks for a sequence, then a rhythm for anything recurring.
Step 2
The promise
What somebody is told they will get when they subscribe, since that decides everything downstream and is usually vague.
Step 3
Map the sequence
Triggers, stops, branches and what happens on a reply, agreed before any email is written.
Step 4
Write the set
One idea per email, written in order so the set works as a set rather than as six separate pieces.
Step 5
Subject lines and tests
Options written together with the emails, and a test plan that will actually produce an answer.
Step 6
Build, send and read
Loaded into your platform, sent, and reviewed on replies and unsubscribes rather than on opens.
The brief
What to ask before you commission email copy
Email is the cheapest channel to improve and the one most often left to whoever set it up years ago.
Have you read our existing automated emails?
Ask the supplier to receive them all first. Most businesses cannot immediately produce the list, and that gap is usually where the fastest gains are.
What will you measure?
If the answer leads with open rate, that is a warning. Replies, clicks and unsubscribes are the measures that survived the privacy changes.
Who is this email from?
A named person outperforms a brand almost everywhere, and it decides the voice. Ask, because it is harder to change later than it sounds.
What happens when somebody replies?
If the answer is that nobody sees it, the copy is being written to prevent the most valuable outcome the channel can produce.
We are happy to answer all four and to audit what is sending now. On filling the list, see webinars as gated content.
Start here
Ready to use the list you own?
Forward us the last three emails you sent and tell us what somebody is promised when they subscribe. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- An audit of the automated emails you are already sending, including the ones you forgot about
- One email rewritten, with subject and preview options
- A fixed price per sequence or per month, with the measurement plan written down
Good questions
Email and newsletter FAQs
What is email copywriting?
It covers two jobs. A sequence is a fixed set of emails triggered by something a person did, doing one job in order. A newsletter is a recurring send whose job is to stay welcome in an inbox. They fail in different ways and are written differently.
How much does email copywriting cost?
We quote per sequence or per month. What moves it is the length and branching of the sequence, how many audience segments need their own version, how much substance already exists to draw on, and whether compliance review is required.
Should we measure open rate?
Not as a primary measure. Privacy protections mean a meaningful share of recorded opens are automatic rather than human, so the number partly measures software. Replies, clicks and unsubscribes were unaffected and are worth watching.
How often should we send a newsletter?
At a rhythm you can sustain and the reader can predict. Monthly that arrives reliably beats weekly that stops in March, and sending because it is Tuesday rather than because there is something to say is how a list learns to ignore you.
What is the highest-return email work?
Usually the automated messages nobody has read in years: welcome, receipts, shipping, password resets. They have by far the highest open rates and are frequently the worst-written thing a company produces.
Should emails come from a person or the company?
A named person, almost always. It outperforms a brand sender nearly everywhere, it decides the voice, and it makes a reply feel possible, which is the outcome worth designing for.
What about spam rules in Australia?
Consent, clear sender identification and a working unsubscribe are legal requirements here, not best practice, and the penalties are real. We write to those rules and flag anything in an existing programme that does not meet them.
How long is a good welcome sequence?
Usually three to five emails. The first should keep the promise made at subscribe immediately, and each one after it should do a single job. Longer sequences almost always contain emails that exist because the plan said five.