What You Can Do To Make Sure Your Email Is Read
How can you get your emails opened
Sending emails is not enough, they must be read to be of any value to your business. But getting them read by your audience can be challenging. There are so many emails delivered to your audience’s inbox every day that yours could be overlooked if it doesn’t grab their attention straight away.
So how can you ensure your emails are read and get your audience to take the next step in your purchasing path?
1. Make Your Subject Intriguing But Specific
Audiences don’t like too big a surprise – they want to be sure that what they are opening has relevance to their needs or wants. At the same time, you don’t want to give the whole game away. Otherwise, they won’t read the email because there is going to be no new information for them to gleam.
2. Be Provocative
Sometimes, you need to try to get the audience to react strongly to your email. If they feel strongly about an email subject, they are more likely to open it to see if your views match. It’s the same kind of reaction that humans get about hearing of a secret, they instinctively want to know what the central message is.
3. Be Negative
Titles with negative words have higher open rates than those with positive titles. Why? Because as humans, we like to know we are better than someone else. So, you might create a title about the worst website design principles or terrible accounting practices because people want to know that they aren’t doing them to make them feel better about themselves.
Use words like:
- The worst
- Absolutely wrong
- No fewer
- Diabolical
4. Offer Exclusivity
People want to feel special about what they are reading. So, you should use words like VIP, special, exclusive etc. These are words that make people think they are part of a small community or that the offer is only for them. It increases their buy-in and their need to read the content to not miss out on whatever’s in the central message.
5. No Capital Letters
In email etiquette, words written entirely in capital letters are considered to be shouting at the audience. This is something that most people don’t enjoy so it’s best to avoid it whenever possible. Also, email filters are looking out for words in capitals and will block emails that contain a title without any lower-case letters.
5. Be Controversial
Don’t have a mainstream opinion about a current, trending story. That’s boring, and the audience has probably read the same arguments about a dozen times. So, what makes you different from them? Nothing.
Instead, take the opposite approach and be a little controversial. You could gain a little virality and be seen as someone with an original point of view.
6. Send Your Email At The Right Time
While people know that email messages don’t disappear, the evidence does suggest that emails have higher open rates at different times of the day. For many B2C organisations, the best time to send an email is often between 8 pm and midnight. But that doesn’t mean that’s right for your audience; you need to do A/B testing for your business’ audience before settling on the best time.
You should also look at what day to send emails. Some evidence suggests Tuesday to Thursday, but other evidence states that the weekend is a good time for sending emails.
7. Don’t Use A Brand Name For Sender Details
Just using a brand name for your sender details is going to reduce your open rate. Instead, you need to look at using an individual as the spokesperson for the organisation.
Conclusion
Getting your emails opened is important. It helps improve sales and can grow your business without too much expense. You can improve your open rates, and therefore your sales by using some of our tips above.
How do you maximise open rates? What time and day do you send your emails?
Let us know in the comments below.
Tagged in: Email Strategy, open rate