On a normal working day, how many emails flood your inbox?
10? 20? 50? In this day and age, people get absolutely hammered with emails, and if these people don’t see something that immediately hooks them, you can be sure that email is heading straight to the recycle bin.
So that means it’s all about your subject line. Or is it? Well, that’s not how Margaret Spencer of Business2Community see’s things, and I wholeheartedly agree with her. In my own experience of digital marketing, I have (over the course of 2 years) signed up to MANY different email lists, usually in order to download something or to get the latest insights into particular sub-niches. All these email lists are generally run by 1 or 2 people, so essentially, everyone is on a level playing field, so what makes me religiously open 1 persons email and instantly delete another’s?
#1: Engaging and Nurturing Your List
In my opinion, the difference between a 5% open rate and a 25% open rate is HOW you or your business treat your list. Do you email your list for a few weeks about a new product you have, and then neglect them for several months? Perhaps you only send them product related emails, and rarely send out 100% pure content to start building that relationship?
Remember, people love to buy but HATE being sold to. If your strategy going forward is a focus on pull marketing, then generating more content related emails is a great way to build that relationship and position yourself as an expert. If your list perceives you as an expert, and actually get something out of your emails, you’ll see your open rates climb and climb.
#2: What’s your frequency?
One of the best ways to improve your email open rates, is actually to train your list. Ever heard of Pavlov’s theory of conditioning? By timing your mails to arrive at a similar time each week, or every other week, your list will know to expect an email from you. Depending on the strength of your relationship, they’ll either be eager to open and digest your content, or ready to delete and unsubscribe, so stop selling to them and start providing helpful content!
#3: Time to Start Testing
Now we’ve seen the building blocks of relationship building with email marketing, it’s time to start getting geeky, and test aspects of the email. The MOST IMPORTANT part of the email (other than content) is, of course, the subject line. Here are some great headlines that would really make me want to click through:
100 Greatest Headlines of All-Time
I personally love subject lines that have a number in. For example, which headline would you rather read?
“Easily Streamline your Supply Chain Today”
or
“3 Quick Tips to Easily Streamline your Supply Chain Today”
A number gives the reader more idea of what they can personally “get out” of the email, and with all else constant, could result in a higher Open rate.
Also, keep your Subject Lines short. A great infographic released by mailermailer.com reveals that subject lines between 4-15 characters draw the most click-through, and the CTR got less and less as the characters increased. A reason for this could be that a lot of people’s email provider only cater’s for a certain amount of characters, before being chopped off as it does not fit into the space.
So there’s 3 easy ways to start building a relationship and getting more out of your email marketing campaigns. The popular myth that email marketing is dying is NOT true, so long as you go about your email marketing correctly!
Connect with me on LinkedIn!: Johnny Roberts
