Email. We all get it, and whether you love it or you hate it, it is here to stay as a marketing tool. According to the Direct Marketing Association, there is a 4300% return on investment for email marketing (Shah, 2013) and emails produce a conversion rate that is three times greater than those from social media (Aufreiter, Boudet & Weng, 2014). Think about how much spending even just an extra dollar per email could mean for your bottom line! Whether you’re sending email out to 10 or 10,000,000 customers a day, it’s well worth it to invest some time and resources into creating the most effective email marketing campaigns.
This is the first in a series of posts about how you can optimize your email communications for more opens, more clicks and ultimately, more conversions. Below, three tips on how to make the most out of your email marketing efforts to get consumers to open your emails.
Start with an attention grabbing subject line.
“What’s in a subject line? That which we call an email by any other name would be opened as much.” -Shakespeare, probably
Hate to break it to Juliet, but it’s pretty important what you decide to name your email. It’s astounding how many emails I get a day with a boring subject line. This is how your email makes its first impression on the consumer! According to a study from Chadwick Martin Bailey, the subject line is the second most important factor is getting a recipient to open an email. The first is who the email is from, but I’m hoping/going on the assumption you’re only sending to people who want to receive your emails in the first place (Stahler, 2015). It’s okay to be straightforward if what you are saying is worth value to your customer – 50% off the entire site? $20 to leave a product review? I’d probably click on that (Van Meter, 2016). But for emails with less inherently clickable value, get your customers excited to see what you’re sending them. You can tease them, shock them, give them a valuable tip…the options are endless, and just as long as you don’t mislead your audience into clicking, this is a great exercise in creativity (Van Meter, 2016). There are plenty of resources to be found with a quick Google search if you aren’t sure where to start. But once you’ve started writing great copy for subject lines, how do you know which subject line is going to work best? That leads to my next tip…
Test everything…and I mean everything.
There are statistics all over the Internet about email best practices, and many of them hold up and can be used as a guideline for your sending habits. But do they work for your specific audience? The audience you have carefully collected email addresses from and who are integral to your business success? You won’t know until you test your strategies to see what it is that they like. A simple A/B split test can mean the difference between sending them exactly what they want to open and exactly what they want to send to their trash (Bradley, 2014). How many things can you test? Let me count the ways:
- Subject lines: What does your audience respond to? Straightforward or click bait?
- Sending name: Do you have a proper name and a more colloquial one? See what your customers prefer!
- Promotions: Is it better to offer percentage off or dollar off incentives for sales?
- Send time: Are your customers morning people or are they checking their inboxes in the evening after work?
- Send days: Are they more likely to convert on a weekday or weekend? Do they shop to feel better about Mondays or to start off the weekend on Fridays?
Can you think of any other things you might want to test to increase open rates? If so, find a way to test it and start sending! All these tests will help you with my next tip…
Segmentation: We’re getting personal.
Say you work for a sporting goods store, selling everything from watersports gear to snow apparel. You’ve got a great base of customers who live across the United States. Are you going to send your customers who live in the Midwest email after email with information on sales about surf equipment? Or 20% off snow jackets to your customers who haven’t experienced temperatures below 70 degrees in 6 months? Well, you might, but you probably shouldn’t. Segmenting your audience ensures that you are sending content that is relevant to the recipient as often as possible. They want to know that you care about their interests and are willing to go the extra mile to give them attention based on their personal preferences (Hexton, 2013). There are both simple and complicated segmentation approaches you can take, it just depends on your business and the goals of your email program. You can segment by location, gender, interests, and so on – whatever components you can break your content down into to make it more relevant for someone getting your emails. This is one small step toward personalization, which can make your customers feel more connected to your brand and be more likely to open your direct communications (Hexton, 2013). After all, it was hand picked to be sent to them, so why wouldn’t they want to take a peek at what you have to say?
Alright, so you’ve written the great subject line, you’ve tested every variable you can think of, and you are sending relevant content your audience segments want to read. What’s next? Getting your customers to click through the email to your website. Stay tuned for my next post with tips to boost your email click rates and get people to your business.
I hope these tips are helpful to you and lead to increased open rates for your direct communications. And if you aren’t in control of your company’s email program? Modify and incorporate some of these tactics into your personal emails, and see an increase in opens for any “quick favor” emails you might have to send. Have any questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer.
References:
Aufreiter, N., Boudet, J. & Weng, V. (2014). Why marketers should keep sending you emails. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/why_marketers_should_keep_sending_you_emails
Bradley, J. (2014). From timing to testing: How to create emails that get attention. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://myemma.com/blog/article/from-timing-to-testing-how-to-create-emails-that-get-attention
Hexton, C. (2013). The most overlooked email marketing strategy: segmentation. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://marketingland.com/the-most-overlooked-email-marketing-strategy-segmentation-63729
Shah, N. (2013). 18 Email Marketing Stats That’ll Make You Better at Your Job. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-stats-list
Stahler, M. (2015). 25 Stats Every Email Marketer Should Know. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://www.sensiblemarketing.com/blog/25-stats-every-email-marketing-pro-should-know
Van Meter, M. (2016). 7 irresistibly clickable email subject lines. Retrieved February 6, 2016 from http://myemma.com/content-hub#ufh-i-197174421-7-irresistibly-clickable-email-subject-lines
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