8 Tried and Tested Methods to get your Emails Opened and Read

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTFor every email you’re putting out there, think of a wide range of different email subject lines you use. They need to either peak someone’s interest or provide a question or statement that will make people want to read on, or that they can relate to. Try to avoid using clickbait.Think about how you capture your data and do a regular check to see if you can correct any errors you see - once you have done this you can personalise subject lines to grab attention. Consider using emojis to make your email’s subject line stand out in someone’s inbox.Preheaders give you a chance to add a little bit more detail to your header to draw people in and encourage them to open your email. Your customers don’t want to know about what you’re doing, they want to know how you can help them so focus on that in your emails. This can be done using questions, by identifying with them and by addressing a problem they might be having.Rather than worrying about the length of your email, instead consider highlighting the stuff in your emails that are important. Whether this is by bullet points, bold text or by sectioning it off – draw people’s attention to the most important bits is vital.All emails should have a call to action as each and every email you send should have a overall purpose. Try to limit it to one CTA per email, as it’s easier to track when it comes to looking at click throughs.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Although it’s impossible to say what will work for one person or the other, testing these methods is a great way to find out find out what is best for you and your email marketing strategy. Test each method, carry out AB testing and create a strategy that best suits you.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSMethod #1: Your Subject Line - 02:56Method #2: Get personal – 05:25Method #3: Use emojis - 06:36Method #4: Add a preheader to your email – 07:27Method #5: Focus on them and not on you – 09:57Method #6: Think about the length of your email – 11:28Method #7: Calls to actions – 12:45Method #8: Have a PS. on your Email – 14:18LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODESocial Media Marketing Made Simple Episode 32 Transcript below Hello and a very warm welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. I’ve spent the last few hours batching content for the podcast and trying to get ahead. I always say this I don’t always manage getting ahead but I have to now because I have changed my process a little bit. Not that it will affect you as a listener. It just it affects us internally in terms of who does what and who is managing what part and therefore it means I have to become more organized which is a good thing. So I will try my hardest because I know I’m sometimes not so great at being organized in this department. This week. It’s the same episode and as with all the solo episodes I have crammed it full of great tools and tips and strategies for you to use in your business. And actually this is almost like a part too if you remember back in Episode 32 just a few weeks ago I talked about the tips and tricks with email marketing. But it was mainly focused around what systems to use how consistent you should be. What’s the difference. Between HTML and text only emails so if you haven’t listened to that episode it’s well worth going back because it’s a real kind of helps you either review where you are. Gives you some options or if you’re getting started then it kind of is a great place to start. But today’s episode was going to be kind of following on from that episode. Were still talking about email marketing but today I’m going to walk you through my 8 tried and tested methods to get your emails opened and then read. Because let’s face it that is the whole point of doing email marketing. You spend your time crafting the email coming up with the content only to send aid and get an abysmal 20 percent open rate and an even more abysmal 1 or 2 percent clickthrough rate so anything that we can do to a first get people to open their email and then once they’ve opened it to actually read and take action on the content has got to be a good thing. In the first part of this podcast. I’m going to show you four ways in which you can get your emails opened and then in the second part of the podcast I’m going to be showing you four ways in which you can engage your readers to actually read and hopefully take action on your email. So let’s get started opening your emails. One of the first things that you should really pay great attention to is your subject line. This is so important because actually this is kind of the thing that’s going to determine whether someone really does open that email or not. And I’ve got a few kind of hints and tips as to how you can use the subject line in order to then get people to actually open your email. So one of the first things you can do is give your line a really good thing. Now I was watching something the other day by Marie Forleo talking about copywriting and she said for every bit of copy that she writes she does 20 headlines. So if you take that act epic it was five. So if you think of that from an email point of view let’s say for every e-mail you’re putting out there you think of 25 email subject lines then that’s how seriously she was trying to say you need to take this because often I don’t know about you but often we know the rough idea of the content we want in the email and then we kind of just pull out the subject at the end when really the subject is probably one of the most important things for me a good subject line will have one of the following It will either surprise or intrigue or pique someone’s interest or provide a question or a statement. That’s something I want to read on or they can relate to. Now I’ve put together some examples throughout this whole podcast for you so that you can have a really good idea of what I mean by this. So some examples of good subject lines might be you won’t believe the one thing that made the biggest difference in my business. Or if you were talking about a product or you sold a product you could put something like you knew it could do that. And then something like Have you ever done this? Now the one thing you need to be careful of is it doesn’t sound click baity Now if you don’t know what that means. It’s basically where your attracting someone into your content when you’re not really fulfilling the content that you’re offering. So if you are talking about one thing that made the biggest difference to your business and your subject heading. You really have to go on and tell them that one thing in the email. So as long as it matches what you’re saying then you can still create that intrigue and surprise an interest try something a little bit out of the box with this one. So my second tip on getting things opened is get personal. Now if you’re using a modern day system like Mail Chimp or drip or infusionsoft you’re going to be able to put someone’s name not only in the body of the email but also in the subject line. Of course the other major consideration you have when thinking about doing this is how is your data. Do you actually hold people’s first names and how clean is it. So sometimes people spell their first names wrong sometimes they put their first name and surname in a first name box. Sometimes they don’t capitalize it. So you might want to do a regular check of your data to ensure that you can correct any errors that you can see. And then once you can do this and once you’ve got the facility in the system that you’re using to do this you can create subject lines such as Teresa. I hope you can join us or how can I help you Teresa. It just has a lot more impact in terms of grabbing my attention when I see it in my inbox. Tip number three to get your e-mails opened is Have you ever thought about adding a emojis again. One of the main tricks about getting your email opened. Well it’s not really a trick but one of the main things you need to consider is attracting them to that subject or getting that email to standout. We all know what it’s like. We have hundreds of e-mails coming in. You can scan through them to see what’s rubbish and what might be useful. So anything that helps it stand out and makes my eye draw to it has got to be a good thing. Your consideration on this one is make sure that it fits with your brand. If your brand doesn’t use images then you might want to think about maybe it’s not going to work for your business. However if you do use emojis them why not experiment. Why not per an emoji or two in your next subject line and see what open rate you get and then the last tip in this section in terms of how to get people to actually open your e-mails is in adding a pre header now a pre header is a short summary text that follows the subject line when the email is being viewed in your inboxi.e. the email isn’t open and it kind of gives you a preamble or a bit more detail or something that hopefully should draw you into opening that email and often it comes after the subject line so you need to make sure that it follows on from your subject line. So again I’ve got some examples and what I’ve done is the subject lines I gave you in the first part of this podcast. I’m going to add the subheadings into that. So if you remember the first one it was. You won’t believe the one thing that made the biggest difference to my business. So you’re pre header on this one could be and its so simple so you’re...