Say Goodbye to the Who, What, Where, When and How!

Say Goodbye to the Who, What, Where, When and How!

In this email, John explains how to make writing punchy email copy quicker and easier than ever before...

In this email, John explains how to make writing punchy email copy quicker and easier than ever before...

John Smith
Author
John Smith
Published: 16th May 2019

marketing to schools image

When I started at Sprint as a humble junior copywriter six years ago, I used to think that I'd had a great day if I managed to complete the copy for four client emails. I even remember one day, when I completed six client emails, feeling so euphoric that I insisted upon every single member of the office giving me a high five!

In recent years I've moved away from copywriting and become more involved in the strategic planning for our clients' marketing to schools. However, just recently, I've been dipping my toe back into the copywriting world and do you know what I've found?

I can easily write 8-10 marketing emails for clients in a single day.

Why is that? Well, I can assure you it's not because I'm taking any less care over the copy! It has to do with what I'm leaving out of emails.

Let me explain, when I started as a copywriter, I was constantly battling with how to include all the important bits of information (the who, what, where, when, how, and why) without it becoming flabby and overlong. It was a frankly exhausting process with several revisions and edits required before I ended up with something punchy enough to meet Sprint's exacting standards.

Fast-forward to today, and with 4 years' experience of planning clients' education marketing strategies behind me, I've learned that the following can – and usually should – be left out of a client's email to teachers:

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

How?

When a teacher reads your marketing email they don't really care who you are, what exactly your product does, how it works, or where and when your event is happening. They're only looking for one thing:

Why?

Why should they care? Why should they click through to your website? Why should they pick up the phone and call you? These are the things that matter in a marketing email; the who, what, where, when and how can wait for later.

Learning this has made copywriting for Sprint's clients so much easier. I'm no longer saddled the responsibility to convey the minute details of how a client's product or service works, or what exactly it does. Instead, I can just focus on painting a vivid picture of how the teacher's life is going to be transformed by utilising it in their school (the why part of the email).

All that other information (the who, what, where, when and how) is important for sure, but not right now. That can stay on the landing page of the client's website, accessible with just a single click but not cluttering up my email.

My job as a copywriter is to get teachers to click through to the landing page, and that's all about the why.

Try thinking about this when you're writing your next marketing email. I think you'll be amazed at how concise, engaging, and enticing your email becomes.

Tags
Education Marketing Email Teachers Emailing Teachers Marketing to Schools

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