How do you get your marketing emails read?
A good relationship goes a long way, says direct response copywriter Jeffrey Thomas.
And relationships are built with easy-to-read emails that entertain your reader, giving them a chance to become invested in your message and its impact.
Jeffrey presented these ideas at B2B Forum in 2024, encouraging attendees to move away from blatant promotions, and instead look at email from a recipient’s point of view.
Watch a video clip of Jeffrey’s email copywriting ideas, or read the transcript below.
And if you’re a copywriter—email, ads, content—this year’s B2B Forum has at least 15 sessions to grow your expertise with new ways to approach your craft.
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Look here: spot the marketing message.
These are two separate emails I’ve read. Is the one on the left marketing? Is the one on the right marketing?
They’re both marketing.
But the one on the right is evident. It’s about travel. It’s a B2C email, maybe businesses also get flight deal information.
But the minute you open it—if you’re hitting next-next-next—the minute you open it and you see an image like that, you’re like, “well, they’re trying to sell me something and I don’t have time for vacation,” or whatever it is.
Right away.
The one on the left, rather, is telling a story and then eventually it’s going to get down to, “and if you’re interested in…” This is about copywriting. “If you’re interested in becoming a better copywriter or learning about this offer I’m giving, click below.”
So if you have a hero image at the very top, you’re almost certainly giving away that it’s a sales message.
But wait, there’s less!
So what I’m trying to say is, yes, you can use images. Especially for product marketing, if you have something that you need to show.
But for the most part: your message, your from line, and what you’re bringing—the value you’re bringing—is the reason people want to open an email.
And images can’t replace that.
Images aren’t going to, and I shouldn’t say they can’t, but they’re not going to be able to tell the story or give the value that your words can.
So beware of the “Red X of Doom.”
I don’t know if anyone does this on their phone. I have images turned off on my phone just to see how messages look when images are turned off.
They are just filled with unreadable alt texts such as LIK, COR, FB, FT. I’m guessing they’re Facebook and things.
In 2014, Litmus said 43% of email accounts were blocking images.
Now, that’s old data of course.
But a lot of corporate accounts still block data and it still happens.
Here’s something—again, B2C—but Banana Republic, this is an email I got.
What are they selling? No idea.
You can of course “show pictures,” at least in my situation.
But not everybody has that option, if it’s a corporate account and it’s blocking images.
So your story has to be at least within the copy, your information has to be at least within the copy.
It can also be in the image, especially if you’re forced to use a hero image, but that should not be the only place to have your important information, right?
So control what you can control. (Again, another opportunity for selected bold.)
In a 2023 case study, emails that put relevant info in the text drove 64% higher revenue than the same information presented just as an image.
So if you need to use an image—again, I would say it’s okay to do both—but make sure your important information is in the text itself.
“Put something swirly in there!” A lot of times people think, oh, we have to make this beautiful graphic design.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a beautiful graphic design.
It’s more important that your images are relevant to the message, that you show people, or products, or pets.
Anytime you can show people or pets, especially if they’re looking at the camera, that draws people in, they love that. And again, your images should not be the only source of your information.
Alright, so rules we’ve established again are: Do not be boring. Return focus to your reader. And the images that you use must vibe with your message.
Alright, so we are going to go through what we just did, the seven ways to improve your email response.
Value is “entertain the reader.” And again, I spell value that way because it’s not necessarily what we in B2B think is valuable. There’s a whole pyramid of value and I again suggest you check the HBR value pyramid. Just Google for it.
Sunk costs. You want to get them to at least read half your message with something interesting.
Personality. Embrace your quirks. I’ll be honest, I waited until just about half hour before my presentation to iron my shirt. And it turns out there’s no iron in the room. So I’m just up here with a wrinkly shirt and I’m going to own that. That’s all right. It’s a quirk I got, today at least.
Impact. You want to ask, “what’s in it for me?” Not me, the writer. “What’s in it for me, the reader? What am I going to get out of this message? Why am I reading this?”
How is the author—how are you—turning this story, turning this value into something that’s going to matter in their life, in their business, in their personal life even?
Formatting. We want to make it easy reading. Select a bold, plenty of white space, not too dense of paragraphs. Simple words.
When I say short sentences, they don’t all have to be that way.
Writing is kind of a music. Writing has lulls and tension and some of it needs to be long and some of it should be short. Much of it should be short.
But if every sentence is four words long, it gets really repetitive and really boring really fast. But make your reading easy and enjoyable to read.
Reason why. You want to give a “reason why” for everything that you’re spending time writing about.
And frequency.
People crave entertainment. Who goes home and reads B2B product manuals? Any of you? Or do you go home at the end of the day and watch Seinfeld reruns or Ted Lasso or something like that, right?
So give them the entertainment they crave. Make your emails the most interesting thing that they can receive in their inbox that day, or that week.
And then number eight: numbers are trusted most, so I got a whole bunch of numbers in here for you, and testimonials are also trusted most.
Anything you say about your product may or may not be true.
But anything your customers say about your product is going to be believed a whole lot more.
And if you have numbers to back that up as well, definitely worth doing.
Published June 18, 2025
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