The First Rule of Writing a Great Email: Know Thyself
Think great email copy starts with knowing your audience? Not quite. There’s one thing I need to understand first—and it shapes the entire email.
by Marie Caraig
When I write an email for a brand for the first time, I don’t start with the subject line.
I don’t start with the offer.
I don’t even start with the audience.
I start with the brand itself.
Because before I can figure out what a company should say in an email, I need to understand who is doing the talking.
Call it brand research. Call it understanding brand voice. I prefer the much older advice:
Know thyself.
And for me, this is one of the most important first steps in writing effective email marketing copy.
Your Emails Should Sound Like You
Imagine receiving an email from a financial services company that opens with:
Hey bestie! Ready to make some money moves? 🤑
Maybe that works for a fintech brand deliberately built around being young, casual, and irreverent.
Coming from a traditional financial institution? Probably not.
Now imagine a children’s party company sending this:
We are pleased to inform you that our balloon decoration packages are now available for your upcoming celebration.
Technically, there is nothing wrong with it.
But where is the fun? Where is the excitement? Where is the company you thought you were hiring to make a room feel like a celebration?
This is why good email copywriting isn’t simply about writing well. The same sentence can be perfect for one company and completely wrong for another.
Before writing an email draft, I need to find the company’s voice.
So, Who Are You?
When I work with a company for the first time, I spend time looking at how it presents itself.
I read the website. I look through its social media. I study its products or services. I pay attention to its existing marketing materials.
But I’m looking beyond the information.
I’m looking for personality.
Is this company serious or playful?
Professional or conversational?
Bold or understated?
Technical or approachable?
Premium or practical?
Does it teach? Entertain? Reassure? Challenge?
Even the words a company repeatedly uses tell me something. So do its colors, graphics, photographs, headlines, offers, and calls to action.
Together, these things create a brand identity. And the emails I write shouldn’t feel separate from that identity.
Someone should be able to move from a company’s website to its social media to its email inbox without feeling as though three different people are talking to them.
That’s brand consistency, and it matters more than simply making an email “sound good.”
Brand Voice Is More Than a List of Adjectives
Brand voice is often reduced to three or four words in a style guide:
Friendly. Professional. Helpful. Confident.
That’s useful. But it isn’t enough.
What does “friendly” actually sound like for this company?
Does professional mean polished and authoritative, or knowledgeable but conversational?
Can the brand make jokes?
Does it use industry terminology freely, or explain everything in plain English?
Would it say “Get started,” “Let’s do this,” or “Schedule a consultation”?
Those are small differences, but they’re exactly the differences that make email marketing content sound like it actually belongs to a brand.
This is why I don’t want to simply know what tone a company says it has. I want to see how that personality behaves in the real world.
Then I Look for the Bigger Question: What Is This Company Really For?
This goes beyond:
What do you sell?
Two companies can sell almost exactly the same product and still need completely different email marketing strategies.
Take a signage company.
Technically, it sells signs.
But perhaps its real message is visibility—helping businesses get noticed.
Another signage company might focus on craftsmanship and beautiful spaces. Another might compete on speed, reliability, and making the entire signage process easier for business owners.
Same general service.
Different identity.
Different promise.
Different email.
Understanding that difference helps me decide what deserves emphasis when I’m developing email content for a business. It also stops the copy from becoming generic.
Because if I only know what you sell, I can write an email that could have come from almost any company in your industry.
If I understand why people should choose you, I can start writing an email that sounds like it could only have come from you.
“But Shouldn’t You Start With the Target Audience?”
Understanding the audience is essential.
Who are we talking to?
What do they want?
What problem are they trying to solve?
What objections might they have?
What would make them open, read, click, or reply?
All of that matters.
But there’s another side of that conversation that is easy to overlook:
Who is talking to them?
Email marketing is communication between a brand and a person. If I study only the person receiving the message, I’m missing half the conversation.
Before deciding how you should talk to them, I need to understand you.
That’s where knowing the brand first becomes surprisingly useful.
Once I understand the company, I can look at the audience through the right lens.
Not simply:
What does this audience want?
But:
What does this audience want from this particular company?
That is a much more useful question.
This Is Where Better Email Ideas Start
Knowing the brand doesn’t only affect tone. It affects the entire email.
It can influence the subject line, the angle, the story, the imagery, the call to action, and even which topics are worth emailing about in the first place.
A playful brand may turn a routine promotion into something entertaining.
An expert-led brand may be better served by an educational email that demonstrates knowledge before asking for a sale.
A company built around simplicity shouldn’t suddenly send an email packed with jargon.
A premium brand probably shouldn’t sound desperate every time it runs a promotion.
When you understand the identity behind the business, email campaign ideas become easier to evaluate.
The question stops being:
Is this a good email idea?
And becomes:
Is this a good email idea for this brand?
There’s a big difference.
The Test I Keep Coming Back To
After writing an email draft, there’s a simple question I like to ask:
If I removed the company logo and name, could this email have come from any of its competitors?
If the answer is yes, something is probably missing.
Maybe the language is too generic. Maybe the angle doesn’t reflect what makes the business different. Maybe I’ve concentrated so heavily on conversion that I’ve stripped the personality out of the copy.
Effective email marketing for businesses shouldn’t require a logo at the top to remind readers who is speaking.
Over time, the voice itself should become recognizable.
Know Thyself. Then Know Your Audience.
Think great email copy starts with knowing your audience? Not quite. There’s one thing I need to understand first—and it shapes the entire email.
There is plenty of work that comes after this: audience research, email strategy, subject lines, hooks, offers, calls to action, layout, design, and testing.
But when I’m writing for a new company, I don’t want to rush into any of it before I understand the brand behind the email.
So I start there.
Who are you?
What do you stand for?
What do you sound like?
What makes you different?
What should someone feel when your name appears in their inbox?
Once I know that, I can start figuring out the other half of the conversation:
Who are we talking to, and what do they need to hear from you?
And that’s where the next email begins.