3 Things That Make People Actually Buy From Email

Disclosure: this is a paid partnership with Flodesk, and they gave me early access to Studio. I only partner with tools I actually use in my own business, and I do use this one.

June was my brand’s best revenue month yet, and it came down to really good emails. It’s simpler than you think.

Most people treat email like a megaphone. They blast the whole catalog and hope someone buys. The brands that make money treat it like a doorway. Here are my three rules, plus a prompt that writes an email following all of them.

Sell the click, not the product

Your email has one job: get them to your website. The email doesn’t close the sale, your site does. So stop cramming the pitch, the reviews, the specs and the guarantee into the inbox.

Keep it short and make them curious. Give one clear reason to tap through and let the site do the heavy lifting. If your email reads like a landing page, it’s too long.

Sell one hero, not your whole catalog

Put thirty products in one email and you don’t give people thirty reasons to buy. You give them thirty tiny decisions, and a confused mind does nothing.

Pick one item or one collection that pulls people in emotionally and build the whole email around it. Once they’re on your site, they’ll find the rest on their own.

Quick Gut Check

If you removed every product except one, would the email still be compelling? If not, you’re leaning on variety instead of desire.

Win on design (the big one)

People judge an email by how it looks before they read a word. A beautiful, on-brand email gets read. A clunky one gets deleted, no matter how good the copy is.

Design used to be the slow, expensive part, and that’s what changed for me. The team at Flodesk gave me early access to Flodesk Studio. I dropped in everything about my brand, described what I wanted, and it built on-brand emails in seconds. It runs on Claude, and Flodesk says every design begins with real work from professional designers, so it doesn’t have that generic AI look.

It speeds up your creativity instead of replacing it. I built the designs for our entire summer sale in about ten minutes. You keep the taste and the strategy and hand off the slow part.

Good To Know

Flodesk Studio is a separate app from Flodesk’s email platform, and it’s free during beta with no credit card. Send in one click from Flodesk, or export the HTML to any email platform that accepts HTML email.

Win the open first. Keep subject lines short so they survive on a phone, and use the preview text as a second line that adds to the subject. Don’t grade yourself on open rate. Apple Mail’s privacy feature inflates opens, so watch clicks instead.
Let automations sell while you sleep. In Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmarks, automated flows drive nearly 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends. Nearly half of flow revenue comes from new buyers, which is why a welcome email and an abandoned-cart email are the first two to set up.
Email the people who want it. Gmail’s sender guidelines say to keep your spam rate under 0.1%, never hit 0.3%, and consider dropping people who never open. Bulk senders (over 5,000 a day to Gmail) must offer one-click unsubscribe. A smaller list that opens beats a huge one that doesn’t.
Send from a real human. A "no-reply" address tells people you don’t want to hear back. Send from your name, use a reply-to inbox you actually read, and answer people. That relationship makes the next sale easy.
Design for the thumb. Most people read on their phone. One column, big text, one fat button. Open the test on your own phone before you send. If you wouldn’t tap it, neither will they.

Here’s the prompt I use to draft a hero email that follows all three rules. Paste it into Claude, fill in the brackets, then take the copy into Flodesk Studio (or your own template) for the design.

Write A Hero Email That Sells The Click

You are my email copywriter. Write a short marketing email whose ONLY job is to get the reader to click through to my website. Do not try to close the sale in the email. MY BRAND - What I sell: [product / category] - Brand voice in 3 words: [e.g. warm, bold, playful] - Who's reading: [customer type] - 1 or 2 past emails or captions that sound like me: [paste, optional] THE ONE HERO FOR THIS EMAIL - The single product or collection this email is built around: [name it] - Why someone wants it emotionally (the feeling, not the features): [fill in] - The offer or reason to act now, if any: [sale / new drop / restock / none] - Link the button goes to: [URL] RULES (follow all of them) 1. Sell the CLICK, not the product. Build curiosity and desire, then send them to the site. Never dump specs, reviews or the full pitch into the email. 2. One hero only. Do not mention other products. 3. Keep it tight: subject line, preview line, 3 to 5 short body lines, one button label. No walls of text. 4. Subject lines under about 40 characters. The preview line adds to the subject instead of repeating it. 5. Match my voice. No corporate filler, no hype words like "unlock" or "elevate," no em dashes. 6. Don't invent discounts, deadlines, reviews or claims I didn't give you. GIVE ME - 3 subject lines (curiosity, benefit, urgency), each with a preview line - The full email body for the strongest one - 2 button label options - One sentence on what the landing page should show first so the click converts Then ask me the one question that would make this email hit harder, and revise.

The Real Win

Great email isn’t about sending more. It’s one clear, beautiful email built around one hero that sells one click.

3 Things That MakePeople Buy From Email

3 Things That Make
People Buy From Email