Many of us are taught by our parents to not judge a book by its cover. But in reality, we actually do. If the cover grabs our attention or looks interesting to us, we will take the extra time to read the summary to get more information about the book.
In the same way, people also judge an email by its subject line. As a matter of fact, 47% of email recipients take the subject line into consideration before deciding whether or not to open the email.
Increase Open Rates to Increase Sales
Most businesses today already understand the importance of email marketing to build a list, increase website traffic, and build a relationship with their target market.
Email marketing allows you to nurture your relationship with your prospects in order to increase sales. It is important that companies understand how to do email marketing the right and most effective way.
For instance, you must get a lead’s permission for you to send them emails. As far as utilizing email marketing most effectively, automating as much of the process as possible with email marketing software is a tremendous help to busy business owners.
While the software does most of the work for them, business owners are better served by spending their valuable time on other areas that will increase their bottom line.
Use a Listicle
Deborah Sweeney is a CEO who recommends using what she refers to as a listicle in your title. A listicle is a combination of two words, “article” and “list”. It provides a short and helpful snippet of information aimed at grabbing a reader’s attention quickly.
A few examples of listicle titles are:
- 7 Innovative Steps You Can Take to Increase Your Website Traffic
- 25 Ways to Become Your Own Boss
- 9 Ideas on How to Keep Your Customers Happy
Keep your email titles short and simple. Let them tell a small part of the message you are sending so that the recipient will open the email to learn more.
Pique Their Curiosity
George Loewenstein is a professor of Psychology and Economics who coined the phrase “the curiosity gap” to refer to the gap between what we want to know and what we know.
This refers to the feeling of deprivation we get when we want more information than we have. This feeling compels us to find that missing information.
Keep in mind that in order for us to be curious about something, we need to have some initial knowledge. We can’t be curious about something we don’t know anything about so make sure your email subject line is relevant to your prospective customers.
Here are a few examples:
- 7 Out of 9 Business Owners Are Doing This Completely Wrong
- This Amazing Tool Increased My Email Open Rate
- Do NOT Make These Social Media Mistakes
Write to Your Audience
Make sure you are using the type of language your audience can relate to and understand. Pay attention to the tone as well to be sure you are not writing anything that could be deemed offensive.
The last thing you want is to have your email deleted before it is read. Remember who your audience is and keep your message and subject line enticing, informative, and relevant to increase open rates.
How-To Increase Open Rates
The last thing most people want is more information. Most of us are bombarded every minute of every day with too much and experience information overload.
What most people want is a sense of order, control, and predictability in their lives. When we are offered tips, hints, systems, and secrets that will make our lives easier, we are more likely to pay attention and want to learn more.
A subject line that starts with “How to” is appealing to most people who want to improve their lives. Be sure to focus on the needs of your target market and highlight the final result or the benefit of your suggested solution.
Some examples are How to…
- lose weight following these 10 tips
- have an awesome family vacation for only $20 a day
- increase your revenue with these 5 user-friendly and cost-effective tools
Think about your email subject lines like a gatekeeper that stands in between a salesperson and the decision maker in a company.
It is the first impression your email will make in your recipient’s very crowded inbox. You want it to be informative, creative, compelling, and provoke enough interest to be read.
NOTE: Originally published June 20, 2018; edited to add the custom video and SlideShare.
Julie Weishaar
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Hi Julie, I was new to email marketing and your article helped me a lot to setting up my campaigns.
Amit would love you to read ..[Step-by-Step] A Beginner’s Guide to Trading Futures
Hi Julie,
one more technique to write compelling tittle is to end the sentence as a question. “?” always generates interest
Sahana would love you to read ..9 Best Demat Account in India 2019
Great content for new budding digital marketers! Thank you for sharing such insightful and useful details! Appreciate it!
Great content! Thank you for sharing such insightful and useful details! Appreciate it!
hey Julie Weishaar,
Its great content share with us.
In the digital world Email marketing doing a great job to advertise your product.
Thank you for sharing. Your blog posts are more interesting and impressive.
It’s great to share information about the emailing topic. It’s great learning to a fresher and a newcomer in digital marketing.
Great information sharing with us.
Thank you
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I use A/B testing for my subject lines and that has led to a boost in my open rate. Thanks for this in depth article.
Hello,
That’s true, people want to read the articles starting with “how to” or “lists”. So the people who can really solve others problems have greater chances to get responded. As I have aim to help people to improve their lives so I usually share articles which can solve people’s daily life problems or help them improve their lives by any means.
Thank you for your information.
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hai,
This is a great post i really loved it since am new to a email marketing. Email marketing is a easiest way to manage with direct customer relationship . By bringing unique headline people will be engaged with your content. Keep rocking…..
Hi John,
Glad you found it helpful. Getting people to open your email is the first step in getting more business and keeping current customers happy.
Great article! this post is really nice and very important for those who want to take more advantage of email marketing. email marketing is the easiest way to manage your direct customer relationships for your small business. while doing email marketing focus on the benefits of your product. create a unique subject line, you have to grab the reader’s attention. here i have seen some really new things to do that we can more relevant traffic on our website.
Hi John,
It also helps to test different subject lines to see what works best for your subscribers.
This is really helpful, Lisa. Many email subscribers doesn’t mean a successful email marketing, because not ALL subscribers open the email in the first place. This is really helpful, not jut in email marketing but also to those who do email outreach. Thanks for sharing the tips! 🙂
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Hi Mandy,
You are definitely right. Having a long list of subscribers who aren’t opening your emails is not helpful. It’s not the length of the list, but rather the responsiveness of those on it.
Hi Julie,
This is a great list of tips. I definitely agree that writing email content the same way you’d engage your audience in any other way is the best way to go. If they read your content and they feel something is off, they immediately turn off. They think “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore”. It becomes a trust issue. So, once you establish a voice and style of writing, you should stick to it.
Thank you for this article!
Hi Stefan,
Establishing trust with your customers and prospective customers is key, you are right. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust.
These are really most advanced techniques one can adapt to increase open rate beyond imagination.
Thanks for sharing some awesome tips for us.
Hiiii,
I am new to Digital Marketing field. Email marketing is also new stragey for interacting with Audiences ,the tips you mentioned Julie in this article is very useful for me.thanks for sharing with us.
Good work.
Hi Saranya, Email Marketing is critical in the Digital Marketing field. I am glad you found the article useful.
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Hi Julie,
Great post. I’ve been looking for some suggestions to increase email open rates and found some good strategies here. I believe- Listicle is a good approach. Thank you for sharing. Cheers!!
Kritesh
Hi Kritesh, yes Listicles are helpful because they provide relevant and helpful information in an easy-to-read format.
Julie Weishaar would love you to read ..Video Marketing 101
Thank you for providing such details about email marketing. After reading this article i have accounted myself, the mistakes i have been making keeping a bane for my business. However, now i will use Listicles more and will try to enhance the curiosity of the audience.
As an audience , we don’t even see emails that is not able to impress us , they must follow your suggestions for sure.
Thank you Julie
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Hi Abraham, glad you found the suggestions helpful 🙂
Julie Weishaar would love you to read ..Video Marketing 101
I really appreciate this. It’s so difficult sometimes coming up with the right subject headings. There are so experiences where emails get ignored due to this one factor.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Camilla, we have to do whatever we can to get “them” to read our emails, right?
Julie Weishaar would love you to read ..Video Marketing 101
Hi,
Wonderful experience through even reading! I haven’t tried ever email marketing for our finance firm! but the informative post makes me push to do email marketing with beautifully. I am going to try with this above tips!
Many thanks for this indeed post!
Cheryl would love you to read ..Hello world!
Email marketing is big lead generation then SEO.
I am the fresher of email marketing.
you have shared a lot of valuable information. I hope it will definitely helps to me
thanks
Email marketing is cost-effective option to promote any business. You have brilliantly pointed that Emails with a numbered list in the subject, get have a very high opening rate & readership. Thank you for sharing these powerful points to create a potent marketing email.
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Email Marketing is still having a big role for the Digital marketing, But Literally, I don’t know how to frame a good email to attract the audience or the people we are targeting, You have shared good points in this blog.
I appreciate this.
Thanks for sharing This.
Regards
hi Julie it was really interesting article to read i have been running a playschool can give me suggestion about how do i write it for my play school promotion
Hi Julie,
I do not know much about writing Good lines for the email. But this post of your makes it really easy for me.
I appreciate your work in crafting this post.
Have a good week ahead.
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Thank you very much for this helpful article. It is true that everyday we got tons of email, and only a few grabs our attention. And that is subject that inspires to dive into the body. You have gone through with nice detailing.
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Thank you for tips. They are great! Here are some I liked as well https://remail.io/10-best-subject-lines-for-cold-emails/
Hi Julie,
Thank you for these tips. I don’t spend as much time as a I should on the email title as I do a blog post title and I should.
These are great ideas for me going forward.
I often toss a lot of emails that I don’t know where they are from but if I do see a great title I may open them.
Great suggestions!
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Hi Lisa, blog post titles and email subject lines serve the same purpose don’t you think? Your blog post titles are great. I know as I follow you on twitter and then read your posts 🙂
Julie Weishaar would love you to read ..Video Marketing 101
Hi Julie, I think they do serve the same purpose. I try to mix them up and make them both compelling so they will read them.
Aww, thank you Julie.
I hope you have a nice week ahead!
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