A good email isn’t the one you spent the most time writing. It’s the one that actually works.
In a crowded inbox, every email has to earn its place. If it doesn’t reach the recipient, get opened, hold attention, and lead to a clear next step, it’s noise — no matter how well written it is. And this applies to every context: internal emails, customer updates, cold outreach, sales campaigns, or a quick note to your manager.
The challenge is that most emails fail long before the first sentence is written. They lack a clear purpose, deliver little value, or ask the reader to do something without explaining why. The result? Low opens, no replies, and missed opportunities.
This guide breaks down what actually makes an email effective, from strategy and intent to structure and execution. You’ll learn how to design emails that respect your recipient’s time, communicate clearly, and consistently drive action, whether you’re writing one message or scaling an entire campaign.
What is a good email? There are many different answers, but we’ll stick to the following: “A good email reaches the intended recipient, gets them to open it, captures their attention with relevant content, and encourages them to take action.”
Regardless of whether you’re writing to a colleague, customer, prospect, someone from LinkedIn, or your boss, you need to follow the best practices that are mostly universal to all types of emails and business situations.
Crafting an irresistible email starts long before you even put your fingers on the keyboard and start typing. You need to lay the groundwork first. Here are some important steps you should take to create a good email per the above definition.
Getting clear about the purpose of your campaign is critical. Understanding the intent behind an email campaign helps define your goals. It guides your content creation and enables you to measure success.
Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with your email — promote your brand, educate your audience, sell something, stay top of mind with the existing customers, or warm up new prospects. You can also create a call to action based on the “why” behind your email.
Email templates can be a boon in driving these objectives. They speed up email creation and ensure consistent messaging that’s aligned with your campaign goals.
All high-converting emails provide value to recipients.
Rather than focusing exclusively on pitching your product or service, your email copy should offer helpful and relevant resources, data, insights, or solutions to address the recipients’ pain points, needs, and interests.
It’s about striking the right balance between promoting your offerings and giving the recipients something useful for free. Essentially, you’re building a relationship rooted in trust and reciprocation. This leads to increased engagement and loyalty over time.
Writing an email that resonates with the recipient requires a good understanding of its structure. Let’s discuss the key components that constitute an effective email:
The “From” field is the first touchpoint with your recipient.
It’s a micro-decision point where prospects decide if the email is trustworthy or not. Make sure to clearly indicate the sender, be it your brand name or a representative whose name they could see on LinkedIn or the company website. This detail will add another layer of credibility to your emails and boost your open rates.
🚩A lack of a “From” field can significantly slim your chances of getting your email opened.
The subject line functions as the headline of your email. Concise, intriguing, and relevant subject lines are far more likely to pique your audience’s curiosity and prompt them to open the email.
While there’s room for creativity, the subject line should always match the content of your email. Avoid misleading or clickbait subject lines. While those emails might get opened, they also create mistrust and disappointment, tarnishing your reputation.
That’s why setting the right expectations with your subject line is the best tactic.
🚩Not having a subject line will make the emails in your recipients’ inboxes almost completely invisible. Even if they notice it, why would they open it when you don’t give them any reason or incentive to do so? A subject line is a powerful WIIFM tool, and it can make or break your entire email campaign.
Similarly, having a bad subject line may be even worse than being invisible. A poorly written subject line may make your audience ignore it, delete it, unsubscribe, or worse, report you as spam. A good subject line is a gateway to your email performing well.
Often overlooked, preview text, also known as pre-header text, is like a sneak peek into your email.
This snippet amplifies the intrigue generated by the subject line and encourages your audience to read further. It goes beyond simply following and accompanying the subject line. It provides additional details or highlights the key benefit of your message, illustrating the relevance of your email to the recipient.
When crafting your preview text, it’s vital to keep it concise and intriguing. Just like the subject line, it needs to balance brevity and impact. With only a handful of characters to work with, each word counts.
🚩Not having a preview text is a wasted opportunity to entice and persuade your prospects to open the email. This section adds more word count to your subject line, allowing you to expand on your value proposition and spark more curiosity. Poorly written preview text may turn your recipient off, prompting them to ignore, unsubscribe, or report you as spam.
The opening of your email sets the stage for your message. Make it strong, engaging, and focused on the recipient’s needs or interests to foster a connection right off the bat.
These few greeting lines should secure and maintain the reader’s attention.
A compelling opening line should extend the intrigue initiated by the subject line, drawing readers into the core of your message. Make it personalized, so it feels like the start of a meaningful conversation rather than a sales script. Reference the recipient’s name, specific pain point, or recent activity to increase engagement.
Whether you opt for an authoritative, friendly, professional, or casual tone, you should ensure it’s authentic and aligned with your brand voice. An opening that resonates with the reader boosts the chances that they will continue reading and ultimately click on your call to action.
🚩If you start your email with a whimper instead of a bang, you risk losing your prospect’s interest. While “I hope this email finds you well.” may be suitable for your average work or personal emails, it’s too generic for cold outreach.
The email body is the central part of your message that conveys the main idea and delivers on the promise you made in the subject line and opening.
An effective email body is clear and concise, with a focus on a single goal of minimizing potential distractions. To achieve this, you should identify the key points you want to communicate, build a coherent narrative around them, and stick to what’s relevant.
Although your email should provide all the relevant information, you don’t want to overwhelm them with too many details. For the sake of readability, break down any walls of text. Organize your content into digestible paragraphs, use bullet points, and incorporate visuals whenever possible.
Don’t forget about the hook that nudges the reader towards the CTA. It could be mentioning a particular benefit, sparking curiosity, or creating urgency.
🚩The body is where you should clearly communicate your core message, benefits, and unique selling point. If you dilute it with irrelevant or redundant information, your recipients will lose interest in your proposal.
A call to action is the pivotal element of every email. It’s where you urge the reader to take a specific action based on what you want them to do. This could be anything from visiting a webpage, purchasing a product or service, downloading a whitepaper, signing up for a webinar, or subscribing to a newsletter.
An effective CTA is clear and compelling. It should explicitly tell the reader what they should do next and why. If the benefit isn’t immediately obvious, highlight it, and make sure your audience knows what’s in it for them.
Some of the best practices for creating high-converting CTAs are:
Don’t include more than one CTA in your email because this can take away from your main goal and confuse your audience as to what exactly they should do.
🚩The worst mistake you can make with your CTA is to not have one. Without a CTA, you’ll leave your recipients scratching their heads, wondering what exactly you want them to do and what the next step is.
An email sign-off wraps up your message and is a great way to reiterate a positive tone and strengthen your connection with the recipient.
Aim for a professional, personable, and friendly tone while nodding subtly toward the goal of your email.
It’s a good idea to align it with the CTA and remind your prospect to take action. For example, saying something like “Looking forward to seeing you at the conference.” serves as an extension of the main call to action.
However, your sign-off could be as simple as “Best,” “Kind Regards,” or “Cordially.”
🚩Would you leave a meeting without saying goodbye to your client or business associate? Skipping a sign-off is like doing the same in the digital world. Besides breaching the business email etiquette, not including a sign-off means losing another opportunity to show appreciation, reinforce your message, and make a memorable impression.
Your email signature offers essential contact information and reinforces your brand. You can use it to share your website, social handles, or phone number, making it easier for a prospect to connect with you.
Think of it as a digital business card that the recipient can use to learn more about you or your business.
Here are some common pieces of information to include in your email signature:
Using a standardized format across all your business emails will ensure your signature appears professional and neat. It will also help maintain brand consistency. Be careful when it comes to adding logos or social media icons. Even though they add a visual appeal, they can clutter the space.
Don’t forget to update your signature whenever you change your position or contact information.
🚩Your email signature is valuable real estate you should leverage to maximize your professional presence and share more information about your company without distracting prospects from your primary message.
Besides the essential elements of a good email, such as the subject line, CTA, signature, and preview text, other factors can affect the appearance and impression of your email. Here’s what you should also pay attention to when crafting a professional, engaging, and visually appealing email.
According to a study, the ideal email length is between 50 and 125 words.
Since long emails can overwhelm or bore the readers, short emails are more likely to get a response. Our attention spans have been shrinking dramatically over the past two decades, plummeting to an average of 47 seconds, so you don’t want to force your recipients to read long emails. When faced with a massive wall of text, they will simply close your email and move on to the next one.
However, the 125-word limit isn’t set in stone, and the optimal length may vary depending on your audience, purpose, and tone of your email. You should aim for clarity and conciseness and avoid unnecessary filler words, repetition, or sharing too many irrelevant details.
The choice of fonts can affect the readability and impression of your email.
You should use a web-safe font that is compatible with most email clients and devices, such as Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, or Times New Roman.
These typefaces are also reader-friendly and easy on the eyes. Too many different fonts, sizes, or colors can make your email look messy or unprofessional, so less is more in this case.
As for the font size, stick to the one that’s easy to read, which is usually around 12 points for the body text.
Embrace negative space and minimalism to avoid cluttering your email layout with unnecessary elements that work only to alienate your audience.
Although images and emojis can add some visual appeal and personality to your email, they should generally be avoided in professional outreach.
You can use an image, but only in cases when that’s relevant to the topic you’re discussing — not as an aesthetic element.
Before you hit send, make sure to check your email for any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors.
You can use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to make sure your emails don’t look sloppy. It’s a good idea to read your email aloud to see how it sounds and if it flows smoothly.
A well-written email will demonstrate your professionalism and attention to detail.
On the other hand, an email riddled with typos will definitely erode your credibility. Would you hire someone who wrote the previous sentence and trust them with your business, money, marketing, or reputation? Probably not, so put your best foot forward and try to make a stellar first impression with your cold outreach.
Don’t forget to check what your email looks like on different devices and email clients.
Almost 50% of people open their emails on mobile devices, so the odds are they will stop engaging with your email if it doesn’t display well on smaller screens. Plus, remember that you want them to click on a link or CTA. Don’t make them pinch and zoom or fumble around because that will most certainly frustrate them.
Sometimes, you may not get a response to your first email. To be more precise, it takes between five and eight attempts
to reach a prospect.
However, all this doesn’t mean that the recipient isn’t interested or that you should give up. It simply may mean that they are busy, forgot, or missed your email.
You should send a follow-up email after a few days to remind them of your message and restate your value proposition.
In case there’s still no response after the first follow-up, create an email sequence, but make sure you don’t come across as pushy or spammy. A good rule of thumb is to follow up no more than three times, with at least three days between each email.
By giving up on reaching your prospects after the first or second attempt, you’ll miss out on numerous business opportunities and leave lots of money on the table. Build a clever email follow-up sequence that will maximize your outreach and increase your chances of getting a click or response.
Don’t put too many links in the body of your cold emails because it will distract your recipients and confuse them as to what you want them to do next.
Limit yourself to one or two links, and make sure they are relevant to the topic you’re discussing.
You can always include a more general link in your email signature.
Okay, now we know how to craft click-worthy emails from scratch, but there’s another dilemma to solve.
In this section, we’ll discuss who should be in charge of writing sales emails and help you find the one that best fits your needs and budget.
Equipped with a deep understanding of the solution, customer pain points, and sales objections, sales reps are often those who craft emails, mainly for direct outreach.
Pros
Even though they’re not expert copywriters, they surely have their way with words. After all, they spend their days delivering convincing and powerful sales pitches and talking prospects into making a purchase.
This means they’re more than capable of delivering highly personalized and persuasive emails.
Cons
Writing is not their main strength as it’s less conversational and interactive than they’re accustomed to.
Furthermore, they have to balance content creation with their primary sales duties. This challenge often leads to hurried emails that lack finesse or a compelling structure.
Writing is a time-consuming task that overwhelms their already busy schedules. Let’s not forget that sales reps already have too much on their plate, which is why they spend only 30% of their time selling.
You can crunch the numbers and see how much time your sales reps spend creating sales emails and how much that costs.
Based on everything we’ve concluded about tasking sales reps with crafting emails, it’s safe to say that copywriters are a much better option. Or are they?
Pros
Skilled in digesting complex ideas, proficient in grammar and punctuation, and well-versed in audience psychology, these professionals can construct crisp and engaging email copy.
Cons
They usually require detailed briefings and considerable time to learn about the unique features, benefits, and overall value of your product, as well as to familiarize themselves with the needs and preferences of your audience.
You should expect a series of rounds of feedback and revisions before you get what you’re looking for. A copywriter is likely working on multiple projects at any time, so it could take weeks to complete a project.
In addition, hiring external copywriters can add a significant cost factor to your campaigns.
Resorting to modern technology is your next option.
Pros
Thanks to AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, it’s now possible to quickly and easily generate human-like content based on your prompts, including emails. These platforms are efficient assistants in creating engaging emails.
AI can help you save plenty of time and resources in the email crafting process. These tools can also produce consistent and high-quality content at a fast pace. They may seem like the perfect solution for companies that need to churn out many emails regularly.
Cons
However, while AI has huge potential to the extent that we can consider it a game changer, it also has its challenges
and drawbacks.
You need to be tech-savvy to use these tools effectively — adjusting settings, crafting prompts, testing, and iterating. Since this revolutionary technology is still new to many of us, getting the hang of it will take a lot of time and patience. In other words, it’s not an out-of-the-box solution you can simply plug and play.
Relying too heavily on ChatGPT might make your emails sound robotic. You may miss the mark regarding the tone of voice and avoid including all the necessary email elements. You can easily end up with generic emails bordering on the uncanny valley that lack a CTA or clear value proposition.
Another thing you should also bear in mind is that AI tools create content based on the data they’ve been trained on and the input you provide. Your brand voice, cultural references, or sensitive issues may require a human touch.
If you think that all this is challenging, you’re not wrong. Luckily, some tools go beyond ChatGPT and its raw variants. The ChatGPT API allows developers to implement the model into their apps and platforms and make various ChatGPT integrations, which results in many different custom-made tools specialized for creating different types of content, including long-form articles, short copy, and emails.
A good email is intentional. It’s written with a clear objective, shaped around the recipient’s needs, and built to move the conversation forward. When each element, from the subject line to the CTA, serves a specific purpose, emails stop getting ignored and start generating replies, clicks, and decisions. Focus on clarity over cleverness and value over volume, and your emails will consistently perform better across any audience or use case.