One of the most common questions I get is, “How long should an email be?”
I’ll be completely honest. There are varying opinions on email length. Some people believe emails should be no more than 100-200 words. Some people believe they should be much longer.
My answer? It depends on what you’re writing about and who you’re writing to.
Allow me to explain…
Studies on Email Length
Yes, there are people who study this type of thing.
Why?
Because it matters when it comes to analytics and statistics.
Boomerang did a study in 2016 that showed emails between 50 and 125 words got a 50% or higher response rate. Longer and shorter emails showed a decline in response.
Another study from Constant Contact done in 2020 claims that 20 lines of text (approximately 200 words) is the ideal email length.
On the other extreme, I know of companies who send emails that can be anywhere from 700 to 2000 words long and get great open rates.
Which is why I stick to my answer of “It depends.”
When you sit down to write your email, you need to ask yourself 4 questions:
- Who am I writing to?
- What am I writing about?
- What do I want the reader to do?
- What does the reader get out of the deal?
Let’s start with the first question.
Who Am I Writing To?
Well, you’re writing to your subscribers, obviously.
What type of subscribers do you attract?
Are they people who want a quick update on whatever is going on with your company? Do they just want to know what’s on sale this week? Or are they into the nitty-gritty of what you do and how you do it, and therefore want every last gory detail?
You learn this as you write regular nurture emails to your list and see what gets opened and what doesn’t.
Another question is, are you writing to your entire list or are you writing to a specific segment?
Let’s say you’ve got a new product that relates to something you’ve sold for years.
If you use email segmentation to send a new product announcement to customers who bought your previous product, you can write a much shorter email, because they know what the previous product is and what it does.
You’d want to send a longer email to the folks who know nothing about the original product, so you can explain what the new product is and how it will benefit them.
You can learn a lot about who you’re writing to and what email length they’ll respond to just by looking at your email open rates.
For that matter, your subscribers will become accustomed to whatever length emails you send. They’ll learn to expect that short emails come on certain days and long emails come on others, if that’s what you do.
Next question…
What Am I Writing About?
I know, this can be an existential question, as well as one about email length. Bear with me.
If you just want to get someone to click on a link, so they can go on to whatever the next step is, your email can be short.
For example, the emails I send to my list to announce blog posts (like this one) tend to be around 100-200 words.
If you’re sending exclusive content that only goes to list subscribers, and they’re expecting something useful, cool, relevant, or whatever other adjective you’d like to add here, then your email should be longer.
Another example from my world are my Thursday emails. They only go to my email list, and they tend to deliver interesting content I think my subscribers will find useful. Typically, this is stuff I don’t put on the blog because it’s more esoteric or it wouldn’t make a good blog post.
Generally speaking, these emails are between 400 and 700 words, depending on how carried away I get.
I will say that I follow many other copywriters and I’m on their email lists, so I see how long their emails are.
Ben Settle, he of the grumpy exterior and excellent email copy (I recommend you subscribe to his list regardless of whether you buy his products), tends to write around 400-450 words per email. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. He sends emails every day.
Brian Kurtz, who used to run the publisher Boardroom, and now hosts the Titans Mastermind can write as many as 2000 words in his weekly emails. I confess, I don’t read every single one, but when I do, I read every word, because he’s a really good writer.
Ann Handley of MarketingProfs fame writes an enjoyable long email newsletter every two weeks, made up of short articles which are easy to digest.
When I was studying to become a copywriter myself, a common question was, “How long does a sales letter need to be?” The answer was always, “as long as it needs to be, and not a word more.”
Not terribly helpful, I know.
In this context it meant, you need to write as many words as someone needs to understand what you’re trying to tell them, what you want them to do and how it will benefit them.
Which leads me to our next question…
What Do I Want the Reader to Do?
Back to my earlier blog post email example.
I write short emails to announce my blog posts, because I want people to click through and read the blog post. I just spent hours writing the silly thing. Why would I tell my subscribers everything that’s in the blog post in the email?
On the other hand, if I’m making a soft sell of a product or service in a nurture email, or I’m offering a free consultation for my copywriting services, I’ll preface it with a good story or useful information, then relate it back to whatever I want my subscriber to do.
Another way to look at this is, how much information is on the other side of your Call to Action?
If you’re making a soft sell in a nurture email, are you linking to a detailed sales page that will convince someone to buy? Then your email can be shorter, because its job is just to get someone to click.
If your sales page is shorter and not as convincing, your email needs to work harder, so people arrive primed to click on the “buy now” button.
Which brings up our final question…
What Does the Reader Get Out of The Deal?
In my humble opinion, your subscribers should always get something out of the deal. Otherwise, they have no reason to open your emails.
You are building a relationship with these people. You need to give as much as you take, if not more.
What they get out of the deal will depend on what you’re selling.
If you’re an ecommerce company, your subscribers will expect product announcements, sales announcements and coupons.
If you’re an information company, like mine, your subscribers come to you looking for help with a certain topic. They’ll open emails that show them how to solve the problems they’re having and give them easy, quick wins, which will ultimately lead to them buying your products and services.
If you’re a one-to-one service company, like a therapist, accountant, or coach, your subscribers may want short emails with links to articles on subjects that will help them overcome their problems. Or they may want in-depth emails that show them how you practice and why they should work with you.
These are just a few examples. Ultimately, you know your audience, you know why they come to you. Your job is to make sure they benefit in some way every time they open one of your emails.
The more they benefit, the more trust and authority you will build with them. Which leads to more sales and more return customers for you. That is the whole point of your email list, after all.
Your next question will almost invariably be…
Now That I Know How Long an Email Should Be, How Do I Figure Out What to Write?
Great question! And it’s one I get a lot.
Which is why I created the 30-Minute Email Workshop.
This 2.5-hour minicourse walks you through the entire process of writing awesome nurture emails to keep your subscribers engaged and deliver some benefit to them in every email.
Even better it shows you how to write that email in 30 minutes. You’ll get a simple, repeatable process to send nurture emails to your list every week, (or however often you choose) and not have the task take over your life or drive you nuts trying to figure out what to say.
The 30-Minute Email Workshop includes everything from easy formulas for how to figure out what to say, to how to get them to open the email, to how to refine it and make it exactly what your subscribers want to read. And you’ll write your first email during the workshop itself.
And yes, we’ll discuss email length. But as you already know, it depends.
Click on the button below to find out how you can write awesome emails in just 30 minutes.