With all the work that goes into writing bulk email, it’s a shame when your emails don’t perform as well as you’d like. Ideally, we’d all like to send emails to a list of people who love our brand, read all of our emails, and purchase our products or services often. Unfortunately, email marketing doesn’t work that way, and with all the changes we’ve seen in the industry over the last year, just getting recipients to read your emails can be hard work.
Here are our top tips on how to do it in today’s email environment:
GET INTO INBOXES
This is the first step in getting emails read: getting your emails into inboxes. Here’s how to do it:
1. Build a strong list – Never send to someone without their permission, and try to get directly permission twice (double opt-in) when sending emails. You’ll be less likely to end up marked as “spam” by disgruntled recipients.
2. Never send spam – Avoid spammy buzzwords, keep your emails simple, and never buy junky emails lists from third-party vendors.
3. Target better – Sending targeted emails that appeal to specific users based on their traits (25-year-old males, for example) or their purchase histories is a good way to send emails that people want to read. High-quality email blasting software will help you segment your lists in an organized way.
4. Try to get out of Gmail’s “promotional” tab – This new Gmail development sends most promotional emails to a special tab without showing your emails in people’s inboxes, and it’s throwing a wrench into a lot of great email campaigns. Prompting your most loyal users to move your emails to their regular inboxes is the best way to fix this, so sending high-quality emails that people trust and want to read will help you get over this problem.
GET OPENED
The second step, of course, is making sure users actually open and read your emails. Another few tips from us:
1. Send at a regular time – If a user signed up for your email at 6:00 pm, try sending your emails to that user at that time. You now have information that 6:00 pm is a good time for that user to read emails.
2. Research and test subject lines – There’s a lot of research out there on subject line best practices. Make sure you read it to see which subject lines are the best. Here’s a brief run-down: subject lines that are shorter, convey importance, and don’t seem like promotional spam are more likely to be opened. Personalized emails are also effective.
3. Adjust for Gmail’s changes – Some marketers used to be able to get away with being generic. Not anymore. Now that your emails will be ending up in Gmail’s promotional folder, they’ll be viewed at the same time as many other marketing emails and will need to stand out. Start doing your research now on what makes for better open rates in this format. Here’s a hint: it’s not about flash, it’s about trust. If you can constantly prove to users that your emails are useful and aren’t just generic advertising, you’ll be opened.
THE TAKEAWAY
Having your emails opened and read is growing harder by the day. While this is certainly making out jobs more difficult, it’s also making us better marketers and making us think about how to provide value to our customers. As with any time of change, there’s a lot of opportunity here to the marketers who act quickly and effectively. Use some of our above tips to be one of the winners.