How To Get Your Emails Opened

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to see ROI and reach your customers. But, the landscape of email marketing is changing. With so many businesses “attempting” this practice, and many doing it wrong, it’s easy to think email marketing isn’t working anymore and thinking it has a bad reputation.

But that just isn’t the case! Our biggest profit maker for our clients is EMAIL! It outperforms all other mediums time and time again….when done right!

Let’s go over the BEST ways to get your emails opened and do email marketing the RIGHT way.

Way #1: Personalize your emails. 

Emails are far more likely to be opened when you personalize them for your prospect. Simple tactics, like putting their name in the subject line, can yield up to 26% higher open rates. That’s huge! We often see even higher open rates when using our strategies and tactics here.

In addition to including their name and info as often as you can, make sure your emails come from someone as well. Emails that come from “marketing@companyname.com” are far less likely to be opened than ones coming from “jessica@companyname.com.” You can even personalize that a bit more in the “Name” field like “Jessica – Your Success Coach” which helps add that identity and trust so they are more likely to engage.

Way #2: Use great subject lines.

This is where many go wrong. Their subject lines stick. They are boring or they are too “sales-looking” and people automatically delete them.

So, what are the best email subject lines? Well that largely depends on your business and what you’re selling or offering. Stories perform very well, but so do urgent and scarce sales and offers. Again, it just depends on what and why and we are happy to help you create some awesome ones for your business!

Let’s look are a few examples to get your head in the game:

Stories
Example 1: “First Name, here is why my business failed.”
Example 2: “I woke up one morning and knew instantly…”
Example 3: “23,532 – that is the lucky number and I’ll tell you why.”
Example 4: “First Name, I fell to my knees when they told me.”

The above examples all contribute to a “Story” which can be a single email, or a series of emails that paint a picture and plant the seed for what’s to come.

Promotions
Example 1: “First Name, you need to hurry. It’s ending soon!”
Example 2: “First Name, this would just FIT you perfectly.”
Example 3: “40% off is going….going….going……”
Example 4: “First Name, REALLY? Come on…you know you want it!”

These examples above are great for promotions and more urgent emails you want them to open. They have given us higher open rates each time.

Way #3 – Optimize for Mobile

We know this sounds crazy but many emails STILL are not optimized for mobile. You should know what devices your customers use the most and be able to optimize your content for them. Mobile is one of the biggest so make sure your emails look great on a desktop, laptop, and mobile device (this includes tablets as well)!

Many CRM systems do this by default with their email builders, but you’re also able to custom style your emails if you need a bit more “umph” behind them. Once you’ve created the email, make sure to test on ALL devices you can so you ensure that it will read and display properly.

Way #4 – Send to Confirmed Emails

This practice has become less frequent in recent years and that needs to stop. Many companies no longer require an “Email Confirmation Sequence” but they SHOULD! Plenty of marketers out there think that this adds too much friction which leads to less people fully signing up. That is 100% TRUE but it’s for good reason.

Using an email confirmation process you can weed out the people who just want free stuff. Not only that, but when they confirm their email, next time you send to them, your emails will come from a different server (in many cases) that has a better sender reputation, therefore increasing it lands in their inbox. So stop thinking “quantity” and start thinking “quality” when it comes to your leads and sign ups. After all, why pay money to keep a big list when only 10% ever see your emails?

Way #5 – Segment Your Audience

This is probably the most important thing to do. Sure, it takes more time to set up, but it’s crucial to your success. Doing this right will mean more opens, better engagement, and more sales. It’s simple as that and trust us, IT WORKS! We created more segmented lists for a client and their sales increase by 38% the next month. It was HUGE!

There are many ways to do this, and you should really chat with us first so we can help map it out. We put together some tricks to help get you going with proper segmenting.

Trick #1: Use Google Analytics to check your website data. When you see spikes in traffic, that is a good indicator that you should be scheduling and sending your emails then. 7AM is becoming a pretty crowded time for emails, yet companies continue to try and stand out instead of figuring out when the best times are.

Trick #2: Software, like iTracker360 if you’re using Infusionsoft (get a free trial here), can really help give you more data for your customer or prospect. You can use this data to personalize their experience in many awesome ways.

Trick #3: Don’t just think about segmenting in simple terms. Sure, finding out if your customers is a male or female is great, but you need to dive deeper, and it’s not hard to do. By tracking links and behavior on your site and platforms, you can learn great stuff about your customers and prospects that will help you deliver the BEST experience possible. If you know someone is interested in Product A, and they live on the west coast and typically open their emails in the morning, they can be in “Bucket A” with similar people. This way they get emails about what is important to them, when it matters.