Let me guess: You wish your email open rates were higher.
You worked for days to carefully craft fresh content, building anticipation like a symphony crescendo into a tantalizing invitation your target audience simply couldn’t resist. Crickets. Unopened emails hurt your ego, but they also waste your time. It feels like giving a speech while the important people on the front row are taking calls.
Remember the first time you saw a sign shaker? Yeah, the guys next to the stoplight with earbuds being paid to spin a sign like a ninja and vertically breakdance occasionally. As ridiculous as it seemed, it might not have been a half-bad marketing idea after all. We’re constantly fighting for peoples attention. Marketing thought leaders like Gary Vanynerchuk are calling it “the attention economy”. Every organization today is a sign shaker fighting for precious attention, luckily no dance moves are required.
Our lives are moving at warp speed and our inboxes are piling up. Email can be a great tool for inviting people to be part of what you do, but you need to develop an intentional strategy for utilizing it. I don’t want to mince words; you have to get a human interested enough to open it. Change these four things about your emails and watch your open rates climb.
Nail the subject line. Consider the context of your customer’s life when they receive your email. “40% of emails are being read on cell phones” which means subject lines and content need to pack a punch. Imagine your client getting into their car at the grocery store, not sitting behind their computer with their morning coffee. Marketing guru Dean Jackson says the subject line is the only thing determining whether they open it. The only thing! Customers are thinking about themselves, not your organization. If you recognize a problem they’re facing and say you have a solution you’ve piqued their curiosity. You can even use Subject Line Grader to test how potent your subject line is.
Don’t forget you’re writing to a human. A friend with a highly successful marketing agency experiences his best open rates when he talks casually and thinks specifically about the person he’s emailing. In other words; he makes it personal. Don Miller backed this up on the Storybrand Podcast when he recently said the leading subject line right now is “you are not alone!”. People are scanning their emails for a personal encounter, not a transactional sale.
Create urgency… and do it now! Plenty of people are drowning in a sea of email overwhelm and playing email triage. On the whole, people are simply scanning emails to see what’s most urgent. Nothing creates urgency like a call to action. A friend in the mortgage business experiences her best open rates on emails with curious calls to action like, “Is now the right time to save money?!?” or “Are you paying too much?” Another friend at a marketing agency has sent thousands of emails for clients and has a 79% open rate with the subject line, “Hey ______, let’s connect soon and…” accompanied with a call to action.
Utilize video email. Words and text are crucial, but video emails are blowing open rates out of the water right now. If you’re part of a bigger mission than yourself you’re a communicator. Video email generates a 200-300% increase in click-through rates. Businesses and non-profits are discovering the magic of video email, and you can’t afford to get left behind on this one. I’ve been using BombBomb video email to engage with comrades as well as coaching and consulting clients, and I’m loving the personal touch! Get your free BombBomb trial.
Solve a problem. Once you’ve identified the problem and assured them you can solve it, make sure you deliver a solid solution. Helping people fix their problem provides value. One friend in our mastermind group is leading their industry with email open rates. When I asked him the secret he said just one word; value. His business keeps providing pure value by giving practical solutions in their emails, and the word is getting out. At the end of the day if you’re asking a client to stop what they’re doing and give you their eyeballs for a few minutes make sure you have something to say that can change their life. Then say it well. We’re all in the business of adding value, and wasting someone’s time is the ultimate value loss.
Remember you’re not writing to a robot; you’re writing your email to a living, breathing human being. Don’t let your next email dip to the bottom of their inbox never be seen again!