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Writing on email that doesn't suck
Design, deliverability, and the occasional statistic. No listicles about "10 email marketing tips" unless the tips are actually good.
How to Write a Product Launch Email (and the Three-Email Sequence Around It)
One announcement email rarely carries a launch. A short sequence that builds anticipation, opens the doors, and follows up does better. Here is what each email needs, with no big-company budget required.
Reply Rate: The Email Metric Most Small Businesses Never Look At
Opens are fuzzy and clicks only tell you about links. Replies are the clearest sign that a real person read your email and cared enough to answer. Here is why they matter and how to write an email that invites one.
Why AI-Written Marketing Emails All Sound the Same (and the Edits That Fix It)
More small businesses are drafting emails with AI, and inboxes are filling up with the same rhythm, the same openers, and the same vague enthusiasm. Here is why it happens and the specific edits that make a draft sound like you.
The P.S. Line: An Old Direct-Mail Trick, Does It Still Work in Email?
Direct-mail copywriters leaned on the postscript for decades because readers skip straight to it. The mechanism behind that habit is still true in an inbox, it just shows up in a slightly different place.
Personalization Beyond {First Name}: What Actually Moves the Needle
Inserting a name token stopped being novel a long time ago, and a broken merge tag does more damage than the generic version ever would have. Real personalization is a different thing entirely, and it's usually simpler than people assume.
How to Write Like a Person, Not a Brand
A study that fed people two versions of the same memo, one plain, one full of corporate-speak, found the jargon version tanked comprehension and recall. Here's why that matters for email, and what an actually useful voice guide looks like.
Writing for Skimmers: How People Actually Read Your Email
Eye-tracking research says nobody reads your email top to bottom. They scan it in a predictable pattern, looking for a handful of anchors. Here's what those anchors are and how to write for them.
How to Write a CTA Button That Isn't "Learn More"
"Learn More" isn't wrong, it's just doing zero work. A single pronoun swap produced a 90% clickthrough lift in one of the most cited button-copy tests ever run. Here's the mechanism behind it, and what else actually moves the number.
Subject Line "Hacks" That Work vs. the Ones That Don't (Mythbusting)
Add an emoji. Keep it under 50 characters. Never write "free." Every one of these gets repeated as settled fact, and every one of them has a study contradicting it. Here's what actually holds up across the research and what doesn't.
Preview Text: The 40 Characters Most Senders Leave to Chance
The line of text sitting next to your subject line in the inbox is either doing work or leaking your logo's alt text. How preview text actually gets pulled, the character limits by client, and the hidden-preheader trick that fixes it.
AIDA, PAS, and BAB: Do Copywriting Frameworks Actually Help, or Are They Crutches?
Every marketing blog teaches these three formulas like settled wisdom. The more useful question is when each one actually fits, and when it just makes your copy sound like a template.
Comparing tools? See how Emlet stacks up against Mailchimp, Canva, and ChatGPT →