Email marketing tips, tricks, news and more.
Questions make readers think. That’s a really good thing. Questions even make someone scanning their inbox to momentarily pause. This is another good thing.
You can also follow a question with a few words that hint that the answer is in the email.
The idea is to draw the reader’s attention to your email and get them to open it. So why not give it a try?
Ask yourself the following question. How will the reader benefit by opening and reading this email? List all the benefits you can think of.
Now select the most powerful benefit from the list you created and use it in your email subject line.
Most people are scanners. Especially when going through their emails. So, keep your emails short, to the point and very easy to scan.
Use small paragraphs, bullet points, and limited word emphasis. Highlight the important words or phrases. Draw the scanners eyes to what is the most important.
When talking emails, many times the old saying “less is more” rings true.
I’m sure you have seen the good old exclamation mark in email many times. Sometimes even multiple times in a row.
Now think about it. Exclamation marks are at the END of the sentence. You have already read the sentence before you even knew that it was supposed to be read with emphasis.
Here is a better idea. Emphasize with WORDS. Want something in a sentence or paragraph to have emphasis when it’s read? Capitalize the word or phrase instead of using an exclamation mark.
Urgency, when used appropriately, can increase your email open rates. Using it inappropriately can increase your unsubscribes and spam complaints. So when you do use it, make sure it is appropriate to do so.
Urgency subject lines like “24 hours only”, “today only”, “only hours left”, etc. Help to encourage the reader to open the email now instead of saving it for later or just deleting it.
So when appropriate, inject a little urgency into your email subject lines.
I’m sure you have received emails from others that did not format correctly in your email viewer or went straight to your spam folder. Here is how to test your emails before sending them to your main list.
Get email accounts with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/Live/MSN. Also make sure you have Thunderbird and Outlook email readers.
Now take all the email accounts you created and add them to a list named test or something similar.
Now each time you have an email to send out, send it to this test list first. Then check each email account to see if it went to the spam folder or if the formatting looks wrong.
This will keep you looking professional to your list subscribers.
More and more people are reading their emails on their mobile phone. Make sure you are giving these people a pleasant experience.
Take the extra time to optimize the emails you send to your list subscribers so they look great on mobile devices.
Many people even delete emails that are not optimized for the devices they are using to read them.
The percentage of people reading emails on mobile devices will continue to climb even higher over the years to come.
Make it as easy as possible for people to join you mailing list. Put an opt-in box on every page of your site.
Most sites are NOT single page sites. They consist of multiple page. Not all of your site visitors are going to land on your front page. Many will enter through one of your other site pages.
The visitors arriving through your other pages may never even see your main page. So, make it easy for them to opt-in by putting a opt-in box on every page of your site.
People tend to not check their emails as much over the holidays. They let it pile up and then quickly go through the old emails and go on a deleting frenzy. The odds of your marketing emails getting caught up in a deleting frenzy are high.
Bottom line, plan your email campaigns around the holidays, not during them.
Don’t you hate it when you get an email about something you may be interested in and the link to read more information does not work? Now you are disappointed and start thinking how the person that sent you the email is a dumb ass.
It’s really simple to not be the dumb ass when you send out emails with links. Simply do the following.
Once your email is ready to be sent out to your list, first send a test email to one of your email addresses.
Now go read that email and click every link in it. Did they work? If one is an affiliate link, was the affiliate ID correct?
If all the links worked correctly, it’s time to send the email to your list.
During the initial email campaign, continue to check the links frequently to make sure they are still working.
It’s very hard to make money and build trust with your readers if the links you are telling them to click do not work.