How many of your emails are being opened by your readers? And out of those emails, how many of them are actually being read?
Are you sure?
Here are some email marketing tips that will increase your open rates and skyrocket your conversions.
Why Is Email Marketing So Important?
If you don’t believe email is one of the most viable marketing sources available to you, consider these statistics.
- About 205 billion emails are sent every day.
- For every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is approximately $38.
- Around 80 percent of all professionals state that email marketing is what drives their customer acquisition and retention.
- Nothing can compete with email marketing, including Facebook and other social media channels.
- More than 80 percent of all smartphone users actively check their email throughout the day (and some throughout the night) on their phones.
- When asked, 72 percent of all consumers said they prefer email as their main source of business communication.
Subject Lines Are Just as Important (If Not More So) Than the Content
People are busy and have a tendency to scan the information they receive to determine whether it’s important enough to open and read. That means you have to grab their attention with your subject line if you want your emails to be opened.
Here are some subject line tactics you can use to make sure your emails are opened.
1. Curiosity
People are inherently curious, so give them a little teaser in your subject line. Give just enough information to make them curious enough to open your email to learn more.
2. Keep it Short and Sweet
When looking at data from the 2016 holiday season, subject lines that received the highest open rates were only about seven words long. And during 2017 the subject lines with the highest open rates were only around four words long. Yep! Fascinating isn’t it?
3. What Works and What Doesn’t
Short, accurate subject lines that make a unique offer typically work. For example, using the words “Same-Day Delivery.” It has also been studied and noted that emojis don’t perform very well in subject lines at all. In fact, emoji-laden subject lines showed to perform 5 percent worse than subject lines that didn’t use emojis…who knew? Another tactic that no longer works is including commonly overused marketing terms such as “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday.” So it’s best to avoid all commonly (and overused) holiday clichés.
Respect the Reader’s Time
Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Picture what their inbox looks like and the barrage of offers they receive every single day. That’s why it’s best to avoid sending high-volume, high-frequency emails to your list. Doing so will damage your brand’s reputation with your readers and your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Ask your readers what type of engagement they prefer, then give them what they want.
Keep Your Lists Up-To-Date
Make it a habit to identify and remove all low-quality leads like subscribers who have never interacted with any of your emails. Look for subscribers with a high level of engagement. Then ask them if they would be interested in receiving specialized deals, etc. This will not only continue to help with your engagement rates, but it will also boost your sales conversions as well.
Start Preparing for the New Year
Analyzing your data at the end of the year to determine what’s working and what’s not will help you prepare for the upcoming year. You might also look at previous years as well to see if you find any interesting trends among your active subscribers. Then you can take what you’ve learned and experiment with that data to try and achieve even better results than the years prior.
