Craft
Someone Else's Voice: How to Write Emails That Sound Like the Brand
Every DTC brand has a voice. The problem is most of them haven't written it down anywhere. When someone else needs to write in that voice - whether it's an agency, a contractor, or a new hire - the result usually sounds like a reasonable approximation of the brand, which is another way of saying it sounds off. Here's how to close that gap.
There's a version of this problem that every operator who writes for other brands knows well. You read through a client's existing emails, their website, their Instagram captions. You get a feel for things. Then you write a draft and send it over, and the feedback comes back: 'It's close, but it doesn't quite sound like us.' No further explanation. Just - not quite right. That note is frustrating because it's accurate. 'Not quite right' is the exact problem, and it's the hardest one to solve by feel alone.
The Voice Is Already There - You Have to Find It
Most founders built their brand voice without thinking about it. They wrote the first product descriptions, sent the early newsletters, typed out Instagram bios at midnight. What came out was them - their cadence, their sense of humor, their tolerance for seriousness. The problem is that organic voice usually lives in scattered places and has never been codified. Your job before you write a single email is to be a detective, not a copywriter.
Pull at least 10 to 15 pieces of existing copy across different formats: product pages, about pages, email subject lines, email body copy, social captions, ad headlines, review responses if there are any. Read them out loud. You're listening for rhythm as much as word choice. Does the brand write in short punchy bursts or does it let sentences breathe? Does it use first person plural ('we believe...') or does it speak directly to the reader? Does it ever use humor, and if so - dry, warm, or self-deprecating? Does it explain things or does it assume the reader already gets it?
Build a Reference Sheet Before You Write Anything
Once you've read through enough source material, turn what you found into a short working document. Not a brand bible - those end up 40 pages long and nobody reads them. A practical cheat sheet you can have open in a second window while you write.
- Sentence length tendency: Does the brand lean short, long, or mixed? Note it explicitly.
- Vocabulary flags: Words or phrases the brand uses often (capture these verbatim). Words it never uses - stiff corporate language, superlatives, cliches.
- Punctuation patterns: Some brands love a sentence fragment. Others never use one. Some use parentheses constantly; others never do. This matters more than most people think.
- Tone temperature: Pick a position on a scale from clinical to warm to playful. Most brands are somewhere in the middle, but they tip one way.
- What they talk about vs. what they avoid: A minimalist brand probably doesn't stack feature lists. A values-driven brand probably doesn't lead with price.
- Three to five 'this sounds like them' lines pulled directly from existing copy. These are your calibration anchors.
This document doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be honest and specific. Vague notes like 'conversational but professional' are nearly useless. Specific notes like 'uses "you" more than "your customers"' or 'never ends a sentence with a preposition' are what actually change your output.
The First Draft Is a Calibration Draft
Treat your first email for any brand as a calibration exercise, not a finished product. Write it fully - don't half-draft it - but send it knowing that the feedback you get is data, not a grade. The specific things a founder flags as wrong are often more valuable than any brand guide they could have handed you up front. People can't always articulate what their voice is, but they can recognize immediately what it isn't.
When feedback comes in, don't just fix the flagged lines. Ask yourself why those lines felt off and update your reference sheet. If a founder says 'we'd never say it this way' - ask them how they would say it. Get the alternate phrasing. That exchange, done once or twice, is worth more than hours of solo analysis.
Specific Traps That Cause Voice Drift in Email
Email has a few format-specific pressure points where voice tends to slip, even when you know the brand reasonably well.
Subject lines get written last and quickly, which means they often revert to generic. A brand with a dry, understated voice will get subject lines that sound like a discount retailer if the writer isn't careful. Your cheat sheet should include two or three subject line examples that actually landed for the brand.
'Shop now' and 'learn more' are the khakis of email copy. Most brands have a more specific way to phrase a call to action - or at least a way they'd never phrase it. Pin that down early.
The opening line is where writers fall back on filler: 'We're excited to share...', 'It's that time of year again...', 'You asked and we listened...' If a brand's existing emails never open that way, yours shouldn't either. Use one of your anchor lines as a model for the opening structure.
Promotional copy is the last trap. The moment a discount or sale enters the picture, copy tends to get louder and more generic. Brands with a restrained voice often hate their own sale emails because whoever wrote them shifted registers. A 20% off message can still sound like the brand - it just requires more care, not less.
One Writer Can Hold the Voice. A Team Needs a System.
Even the most attuned writer drifts over time if there's no system holding things in place. The cheat sheet helps for solo writing, but when a team is involved - when multiple people are writing campaigns, flows, and sequences across the same account - drift happens fast. The fix isn't to hire people with better ears. It's to make the reference material good enough that good judgment can be applied consistently.
That means updating the reference sheet when a brand evolves. It means reviewing older emails periodically and asking whether they still sound right. And it means building an approval process where the brand's own team reads copy before it sends - not as a bureaucratic checkpoint, but as genuine quality control by the people who know the voice from the inside.
How This Works at Kaydence
Here's how we've put this into practice on real Klaviyo accounts. When our team takes on a program - flows, campaigns, and sequences - we go through exactly this process before we write the first send. We study the brand's existing copy, build a working voice document, and treat the early drafts as calibration rounds. The client approves everything before it ships: not as a formality, but because that feedback loop is part of how we get the voice right. Over time the back-and-forth gets shorter because the reference material gets sharper. The goal is simple: the emails should sound like the brand, not like the agency that wrote them.
If you're not sure whether your current Klaviyo emails actually sound like you - or whether whoever's writing them has the tools to get it right - a free Klaviyo teardown is a good place to start. We'll tell you what we see, honestly.