Any decent email copywriter you talk to will ask you this: "Who is getting this email, and what do you want them to do after they read it?" If your answer is "my list" and "buy something," expect vague copy and a bill for revisions. This page works backwards from that question so you can answer it before you pay anyone.
Why that one question decides the quality of the copy
Email copy is short, so every sentence carries weight. A writer can polish a subject line all day, but they can't pick the right offer, audience or next step for you. Those are business decisions. When the owner skips them, the writer guesses, and you pay for the guess.
Name the reader in one plain sentence
"Past customers who bought once and haven't returned in a while" is a reader. "Everyone on our list" isn't. Split your list by what you already know: new subscribers, recent buyers, lapsed buyers, open quotes that never closed. Pick the one group that matters most this month and describe it the way you'd describe a regular customer to a new employee.
Pick one action and one way to measure it
Choose a single thing the email should cause: a booked call, a reorder, a reply, a visit to one page. Then decide where you'll see it. If your booking form, phone calls or checkout aren't tracked, you won't know whether the copy worked, and neither will the writer.
Gather the raw material a writer needs
| Hand over | Why the writer asks for it |
|---|---|
| Your best past emails and their results | Shows what your readers already respond to |
| Real customer reviews and questions | Gives them your customers' own words |
| The offer, price and any deadline | Copy can't invent terms you'll have to honor |
| Words and claims you never use | Keeps the voice yours and avoids legal trouble |
| Where the click lands | A strong email fails if the page behind it is confusing |
Freelancer, agency or doing it yourself
If you send one or two emails a month and know your customers well, writing them yourself with a clear brief is reasonable. A freelance copywriter fits when the writing is the bottleneck and the offer is already settled. A broader agency makes more sense when the emails depend on ad traffic, tracking or segmentation that someone else has to set up. Ask any candidate for samples in your industry and for how they report results.
How much people search for this, and what advertisers pay
Searches for this phrase are tiny. The whole cluster, across two distinct queries, adds up to about 20 searches a month. For the exact phrase "e mail marketing copywriter," the last year swung from a high of 40 a month in September 2025 to a low of 10 in October. That's a small market, so don't read much into one month's movement. It also means few people are hunting for this service by name, and many find writers through referrals or by browsing portfolios.
On the advertising side, the highest top-of-page bid advertisers pay for this kind of search is $78.95. Take that as a ceiling, not a typical price. It matters only if you plan to run ads to your own signup page, and with demand this small, it's a reason to be careful with paid clicks rather than a reason to avoid them.
Judge the first emails by what you can trace
Look at replies, bookings, orders and revenue tied to that send, not just opens. Privacy features on phones inflate open counts, so treat opens as a weak signal. Tag the links so your analytics can tell the email apart from other traffic. If you sell to car shoppers, the guide on auto dealer email marketing shows how another business sets up this kind of tracking.
Where outside help earns its fee
A writer fixes the words. They usually don't fix broken tracking, a landing page that loses people, or a list that was never segmented. If you can't tell which email produced which sale, an analytics specialist can sort that out in a short project, and then any writer you hire can be judged fairly. Hiring that help is an option, not a requirement, and you can decide after you've written your answer to the opening question.