Share this:

Email marketing is a fantastic way of engaging your customers and building relationships with your prospects.  Though it has great potential for many businesses, most people don’t know how to use emails for internet marketing. And if they do, their email open rates will always be dismal.  Just so that you don’t make the mistakes that most people make in online lead generation, let’s look at some simple but powerful ways to increase the open rate of your emails.

 

 

Email Open Rate

Image Credit: Flickr

1) Segment and Personalize Your Messages

The first thing that you should do is to segment and personalize your email marketing messages to the right audience. You can segment by creating an email database according to their interests, demographic information and industry.  Don’t just assume that the same message will trigger the intended effects on all your customers. No, customers respond differently to different messages. So, you have to segment them first and create personal messages for each of them.

 

Don’t overlook segmentation in email marketing because it will determine the success of your marketing campaigns. Fortunately, some email marketing services provide features that will help you segment your audience and craft relevant messages for each of them. So, whether you are using your emails for network marketing or for online video marketing, you have to make sure that you address a real person in your emails.

 

2) Send Emails that Tick with Your Audience

The second thing that will guarantee a high open rate in your email marketing is to craft messages that your readers would love to read.   You have to know your target audience and what kind of message ticks with them.  To do this, you may start by conducting a survey so that you can understand their needs and concerns. This will have a two-fold effect. First, it will help you create the right message for attraction marketing and secondly, it will improve the email open and conversion rates.

 

3) Create a Powerful Subject Line

Your subject line is the first part of your email that your readers see when they log into their inbox. The way you craft it determines whether your audience will open and read your emails or just delete them.  The majority of readers are quite choosy about what they read. Others just don’t care what you send to their inboxes. So, you have to personalize your subject lines by including an invitation or announcement that is specific to their needs.

 

Regretfully, many people use spam trigger words in the subject lines of their email marketing campaigns.  Words such as “FREE”, “Reminder”, “Help” will certainly decrease your email open rate and the value of your content marketing. Trust me, more people will read your emails if you avoid all such words.  Take time to know the powerful words that will help you draw the attention and interest of your audience.

 

4) Write and Send Timely Emails

It’s not enough to create a powerful subject line, you also have to write and send timely emails to your audience.  Apart from that, you also have to be aware of seasons.  Don’t write and send the same emails from January through December.   You have to craft and send emails with different tones and messages to correspond to the needs and concerns of your audience in different seasons.

 

The truth is your audience won’t be thinking of the same things year in year out.  Your customers and prospects will have different concerns and needs throughout the year.  So, you have to send emails that reflect the activities and thoughts of your audience in a particular season.

 

5) Write Short-to-Moderate Length Emails

When it comes to email marketing, you should also know that short-to-moderate messages provide the best results. Just like social media marketing, customers and audience are more attracted to short, clear, and relevant messages. Don’t write lengthy emails or ramble, keep your emails short and simple. This way, you won’t kill the desire of prospects who want to read the content of your emails.

 

6) Conduct A/B Testing of Emails

It’s not enough to craft your emails, you have to test them to see how customers will respond to your email marketing campaigns. Sadly, many people don’t conduct A/B testing before sending out emails and that’s why they aren’t making money online. If you don’t test emails, how are you going to know the performance of your email messages? A/B testing shows you which emails have a better email open rate and which ones do not. It also reveals design mistakes before you blast out your emails and it determines whether or not your campaign will be caught in the spam filter.

 

There are two ways to conduct A/B testing for email marketing. You can start by sending test emails to colleagues. Alternatively, you can use an A/B testing program that reveals how your emails will be displayed in small and big screens.  It’s always good to set up different email accounts with various email services for testing purposes.  Whether you have a small or big campaign, you should not forget to provide a plain-text option for your audience.

 

7) Make Your Emails Mobile-friendly

Finally, you should make every effort to make your emails friendly to mobile users. The reason is simple- more and more people are using their mobile phones to access and read their emails on the go.   A survey by Return Path shows that email open rates in mobile devices have increased by more than 34% since April 2011.  Another survey by Markle also showed that people with mobile devices check their emails up to 4 times in a day.

 

So, if you want to target and engage this group of people, then you have to make your email marketing messages mobile friendly.  You should optimize your emails for portable devices and provide options for reading or accessing the emails. It’s just a matter of time before mobile email marketing becomes the leading channel for online marketing.

 

Email marketing is an integral aspect of online marketing. It has the potential to generate more sales and the capacity to turn visitors into buyers. To increase the email open rate, you should segment your audience, segment your audience and personalize your messages. You should also create powerful subject lines and send your emails in a timely manner. When you do all these, you can rest assured that your email open rates will improve tremendously.

Persuasion

Share this: