Email copywriting: Engagement strategies to creative executions
I’ve been writing email copy for well over a decade, collecting best practices along the way to share, test, iterate, and optimize with my team. From being in the writing trenches myself to coding and launching emails, to working on higher-level engagement strategies and providing editorial and creative direction to writers creating under the broader brand umbrella, I’ve gotten to know email as a channel quite intimately over the years.
At Turo, I strategized and executed our email engagement strategy for several years, creating monthly serials as well as seasonal one-off campaigns to drive demand. Prior to Turo, I worked with several B2B brands to create high-performing demand generation email campaigns, where my clients included Intel, Brocade, Autodesk, and Medtronic.
Turo — The evening edition
A monthly content digest aimed at building brand affinity and user engagement, the so-called “Evening edition” launches monthly late in the afternoon, targeting optimized email send times. It often curates auto-related content for the gearhead audience, while also amplifying any brand campaigns and community stories to humanize the marketplace.
Turo — Inventory merchandising
Meant to spur demand where it might not exist, this monthly serial email campaign has been running for over four years and showcases appealing, well photographed, standout merchandise to inspire adventure and drum up demand for a service that has previously been couched in utilitarianism.
Turo — Seasonal demand gen
To stay top of mind in people’s inboxes, we regularly create one to three “seasonal” email campaigns per month, where we curate thematic inventory with clever seasonal messaging. Since Turo is effectively a travel company that surges on holidays, leaning on cultural travel moments, or creating our own travel moments by inspiring adventure, empowers the brand to delight our audience, stay relevant, and continually drive demand.
Turo — “Marketplace metrics”
Since Turo is a two-sided marketplace, engaging with both “guests” (demand-side consumer messaging — more B2C) and “hosts” (supply-side, consumer-ish messaging, but erring a bit more business-driven and B2B), we need to communicate with the crucial supply-side segment as well. The monthly “Marketplace metrics” serial gamifies the financial earning potential for hosts by serving marketplace averages and the aspirational upper echelon of top earners. Additionally, we can use this engaging content that enjoys lofty open rates to insert seasonal or product messaging — amplifying educational messages, elevating product launches, or just driving specific actions with strategic significance.
Brocade — B2B demand generation
Brocade is a server manufacturer with a business/IT audience, so their strategy was to create top-of-funnel content to entice prospective buyers into their sales funnel. One of the conundrums with B2B marketing content, however, is how to create relevant, interesting content that’s also approachable and human — looking beyond the job title and into the real person behind the screen. I worked closely with the Brocade client to create sales-forward yet on-brand and provocative email content to elevate their engagement rates and generate MQLs.
