Keep the hook at the top of your screen on a Post-It, in big bold type and keep looking at it.

Know what you, or your boss, wants from the copy. More importantly, know what the subscribers to your email marketing list want and target them.

Try to locate yourself somewhere quiet where interruptions will be few.

Appear excited. If you’re keen, let the subscribers know why.

Ensure accessibility of your vocabulary. Don’t patronise and especially don’t pose.

Emotion sells. Use words that will build it.

Essentials are few, but sincerity is one of them.

Systems breed bland. Choose words with care, and not the ones which come to mind first.

Vary the length of your paragraphs and sentences.

Ignore grammar if it is inconvenient, and especially if it reduces the flow of the text.

Once you’ve written all the text for the marketing email, read it out loud. This helps highlight anything which doesn’t read right, as well as highlighting the more obvious mistakes.

Ask yourself if it generates the emotion you want. Better still, give it to someone else to read and ask them the open question, ‘What emotion do you feel, if any, when reading it?’ If they come up with the antithesis of what you wanted, rewrite it.

Read it again. If you find it boring, then it probably is. Although emotion is an essential in a marketing email, all emotions are not equal and boring comes down there, right near the bottom.

If at all possible, and deadlines allow, put the copy away in a drawer for a few hours, even better, a couple of days, then bring it out and read it again and see if it still does what you want it to. Ask yourself if sincerity and emotion are present. Try and put yourself in the position of a subscriber to the particular segmented email marketing list this campaign is targeting, and ask yourself candidly if it will grab them. It’s better to know now, when you can make alterations, then later on when the returns come in and you have to start again.