Long vs Short Email – The Ideal Email Length And Best Practices (10 Tips To Master)

Are you looking to know if either a long or short email is more effective? Here we’ll guide you through an end-to-end discussion to choose the better email writing format for your next campaign.

Email marketing is undoubtedly the most effective marketing channel that you can rely upon. Keeping a precise strategy in hand, and perfect execution could bring the expected outcomes for your business.

Email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available

HubSpot

From plan execution to writing compelling copies, you have to stay in line and focus on your audience’s needs. Whether you’re wiring a short email copy or a long one, you have to know the basics first. Thus you can expect to increase your email open rate, overall CTR, and finally revenue.

By the way, both these writing formats have individual perspectives & consequences. So which one you should apply or include in your email marketing strategy?

In this article, we’ll answer all the questions one by one by comparing these two writing formats and their benefits. Lastly, we’ll share effective tips that can help you to choose the right email writing format.

Keep reading.

A Brief Comparison Between Long vs Short Email Copy

Marketing is all about testing different strategies in terms of getting the best results. Hence, you can’t assure yourself of just applying a single strategy. You need to constantly test them to find out which one is bringing the best outcome.

The same thing goes for while writing a long or short email copy. Whether you’re doing it, you need to continuously check the best approach that performs best for your business.

Well, both writing format has advantages and disadvantages. Where the long copy could bring an astonishing result, the short one may get a low click-through rate. Again, the scenario could be the opposite.

For instance, the below comparison could help you to know the basic variations of these two writing formats. Let’s see –

	Long Email Copy	Short Email Copy
01	Includes lots of information	It’s precise
02	It May look boring for its length	Easy to digest
03	Produces a way of speaking to audiences	Creates curiosity
04	It represents the information in a detailed way	It may not be as impactful if the email copy is weak
05	Best for proposal, promotion, or partnership cases	Best for outreach, follow-up, etc
06	It has many segments. Intro, main body, purpose and CTA	Has two parts; intro and CTA
06	Example: Charity, Fundraisers, or sometimes Brands usually go for long email copy	Example: Celebrity, public figures, and bloggers use this writing format

Also read: 7 Email Marketing Ideas To Boost Up Your Sales

Benefits of Short Emails

Short emails are all about keeping your message active and compact. Within a single page, you can express your thoughts and share your purpose. Usually, a short email has two key parts – a concise description of the content and a CTA portion.

Let’s see what else you can get if you use a short email copy:

• It’s easy to understand & go through
• Describes the whole purpose in a shorter way
• Drives curiosity
• Increase engagement & interaction
• It’s straightforward
• Effective for proposals, outreach, and personalized email marketing
• Plain text generates authority

Benefits of Long Emails

Where short emails generate curiosities, long emails include all the essential information that receivers might want to have. A long email has different parts. Intro, main body, purpose, and a CTA part. So there is a high chance for you to insert your main ideas about the products/services/blog content/videos, etc.

Let’s have a look, at what else you can get using a long email copy for your email campaign:

• It’s a self-introductory
• Long emails give an in-depth idea about the products and services
• You can use attachments like – images/videos/links/photos, etc
• Helps to describe yourself
• Best for promotions, cross-promotion, and partnership marketing
• Effective for branding

Read more: 5 Simple Tips To Reinvent Your Digital Marketing Strategies

The Art of Writing Short Emails- 5 Tips For Mastering The Short Emails

As mentioned above, short emails are effective in terms of getting a quick response from the recipients. Now it’s time to talk and share some tips to utilize short email copies for your next email campaign successfully.

The key benefit of keeping your email short (in 125 words or less) is generating readers curiousity

Norbert, Email marketer, blogger at Voilanor Bert

Try to follow the following tips carefully. Don’t panic! in case you don’t get success at an initial stage. Have patience and constantly run your A/B test until you get the final result.

Let’s begin:

01. Identify yourself clearly

The first and foremost tip to write a short email is – clearly identify yourself on your email copy. If you’re working on an agency or providing your services/ selling products, just simply introduce yourself at the beginning of your email copy.

Here is an example below:

From the example, you can see there is a cold greeting at the top, then the author just gives information about herself/himself. And lastly, s/he adds the CTA portion where the main perspective of the email.

If you want to A/B test your email to know whether it’s performing well or not, you can have a look at the guide below:

Learn Everything You Should Concern About Email Marketing A/B Testing

02. Stick to 5-7 sentences

Next up, after you clearly identify yourself through the email copy, now you need to keep your email copy as short as possible. You can keep it up to 5 to 7 sentences. For instance, you can break down your email copy into the following segments:

• Introduction: In this part, you should the sentences in 2 or 3 sentences. Just a greeting part, and some words about yourself.
• Clarify your reasons: To clarify your purpose, 3 or 4 sentences are the best option. In this part, you can ask a specific question about a product, or attach documents for review/comment.
• Context. This is where you can include any relevant background or context. Here is where I give examples of other folks who have been on the podcast and the number of listeners we reach on a monthly basis.
• Close. A quick wrap-up is all you need here: “Thank you for the time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.” 

03. Have One Goal Per Email

You may think it’s efficient to include every single detail in one email, but the more questions and requests you cram in, the longer and more confusing your message becomes

Grammarly

You must have a proper reason to send an email to your prospects. It’s not wise to send random emails without knowing the real purpose. Therefore, it may create a bad impact and the email open rate will remain zero.

From sending proposals to the outreach programs, try to mention that. It will be best if you can add that at the beginning of your email copy. Let’s have a look at the example below shared by Grammarly.

Focus on having one clearly stated goal for each email. This will increase the likelihood that your recipient will read and respond to your message.

04. Show Respect and Restraint within Your Copy

Showing respect while sending personalized emails is a professional practice. Out of nowhere, you just send an email, even if the receiver isn’t aware of it – is not a wise thing to do. The receiver may not get it as a positive approach.

So you should first give a greeting message just saying that you want to connect with him/her. It will make them feel more special and so connected.

In case any recipient shares anything unusual like they don’t like your approach or message. Ask him/her this way – If you think you’ve been insulted, quote the line back to your sender and add a neutral comment such as, ‘I’m not sure how to interpret this… could you elaborate?’

05. Proofread

The most important task before pressing the sending button is – proofread. You must proofread your copy to find out grammatical errors and typos. There are different online tools available in the market. You can use them to find out the grammatical errors of your copy. For example, Grammarly. Though it may not fully find out every mistake. At least, it can help you to catch general typos.

Take an extra minute or two before you hit “send”. In that case, you can show the copy to your close ones whether s/he can furnish your write-up. So take the time to make your message look professional.

The Art of Writing Long Emails – 5 Tips You Can Follow

Long-form emails are most effective for a brand-new product or service. To deliver your product/service details, you need to write a long email copy to explain educationally. So thus it impacts your brand yet adds value to the audience.

So what are the basic rules that you can follow to refine your long copy to make it more interesting & appealing? Apart from adding your product details, relevant headings, and attachments, you need to follow a basic composition of your long email write-up.

Let’s find out below:

01. Use a Catchy Subject Line

The first impression is the last. A subject line does the same thing for an email, especially for a long email. Including the recipient’s name on the subject line is a good practice to get more email open rates & impressions.

Emails that include the first name of the recipient in their subject line had a higher CTR than those that don’t

HubSpot

Get up to 13 Best Email Subject Line Tips to Increase Your Open Rates & Engagements

So while writing a long email copy, try to apply this trick and see the progress of your email.

02. Include a Bulleted List to Your Write-Up

Long copies with plain text could be boring and hard for readers to go through the entire email. To increase the readability of your email copy, you need to apply some tricks to make it more appealing.

Once you’re done with your introduction part and delivering the purpose of your email, you can use a bullet list to concise your information in a shorter version.

Let’s have a look at the below example:

It’s an email from Google Analytics. As you can see it’s a long email copy. Plus, they included a bulleted list to precise the information. Overall, the email looks so good and easy to understand. So whenever you write a long copy, you can use a bulleted section to add more eligibility to your email copy.

Read more to learn How to Write a Friendly Email for Email Marketing

03. Use Headings Where It Requires

The way we recommend you include a bulleted list in your email, the same way you should use Headings for your long copy. Using headings in between a long will break down the full part into smaller chunks. This way the prospect will not be bored to understand the entire message.

Let’s have a look at the example below:

It’s a promotional email from Dribble that gives freelancer tips & tricks. They included a heading at the top of the email copy and then in between the paragraphs. This type of heading creates an urgency about the topic. Plus, encourages users to read the rest of the message.

Also, read to get up to a 10-Point Checklist for Writing Amazing Email (A Complete Guide)

04. Provide Relevant Attachments (images/links/videos)

Here comes the main interesting part. Attaching media files like photos, relevant article links or videos is more effective than a plain text email.

Attachments are often used by marketers when writing a professional email as a way to incentivize the user to open an email

Snov Io

The important fact of using relevant attachments to an email is that – increases the email open rate and makes it more lucrative which helps the receiver to grasp the message. For instance, you can use a hero banner, then add a video, and relevant external links to help users get their solution easily.

But remember to use the attachment carefully. Don’t add too many media files, and try to keep the file size as small as you can. Otherwise, it may not load properly and users won’t get in time. Also, users may mark it as a spam email.

Get up to 16+ Effective Ways to Prevent Newsletter Spam Sign Up

05. Focus On Your Conclusion

Last but not least – do give a 100% focus on your closing lines. Because you’re going to push your final proposal at this stage. Whether you’re writing a long email copy or a short one, this section of an email is so much crucial.

Let’s clarify from the example below:

As you can see from the example, the sender pushes the proposal words at the conclusion part. She is saying that the post she talked about can help the receiver get more insights about CPC on Facebook. This is a smart tactic if you want to get more clicks & expected outcomes.

Consider Thinking Which One is Better and When To Apply

From this elaborate discussion, you may understand the value of both long & short email copies. Now the decision is in your hands. Before making any decision, do research your industry, and study your audience overview and your niche. After that, you can come to the conclusion about which email format you should use for your users that engages & interact the most.

Let’s have a look what are the common email List email-building mistakes You Should Avoid to get the maximum benefits

How weMail Helps To Keep Your Emails Concise and To The Point

Online marketing is an immense platform. There are lots of tools out there to help businesses grow & develop their online preferences.

Following the manual process requires hard work and effort. But you can complete these tasks, especially email marketing activities using the available marketing automation tools like – weMail.

But how? Let’s clarify:

Suppose you want to use both long and short email writing formats. For instance, using weMail you can create a separate email list for those who love long emails and another one for those who love short emails.

Also, read to learn how weMail can help you with effective email marketing in 2024

Apart from these, you can also, segment your email list, connect your WooCommerce store, and create an email campaign for your prospects.

So, what else you can do with weMail to concise your email?

• Email listing & management
• Embed & opt-in forms for an email marketing tool
• Campaign Reports for more customer insights
• Available contact forms to collect customer data
• Multiple API options
• Easy campaign setups
• And more…

FAQ About Writing Long and Short Email Copy

Wrapping Up

In this digital age, no one wants to spend their time reading a long write-up than a shorter one. If your emails have a nice punch and are briefly covered, your recipients will be more like to like your emails

For instance, you need to continuously A/B test your strategies and find the best one that actually works.

Brands that always include an A/B test in their emails generate an ROI of 48:1

Litmus

So follow the procedures we discussed above and apply them step-by-step. Surely, these will help you create smart emails. Once you master writing the right form of emails, your email marketing campaign will create the best outcomes in a quick time.

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