The Perfect Email: How to Get Opened, Read & Responded
You take so much effort to craft an email, only to find out that the recipients have not even opened, read or responded. Isn’t it frustrating? Did you know that 40% of adults never read marketing emails?
That they don’t like to be bombarded with unsolicited emails is one side of the coin. There are several other reasons why they simply press the Delete button to dump their emails in the spam or junk folder. Your timing of sending the email could be wrong, it could too text-heavy, the subject line isn’t effective or there is no personalization.
Instead of being disappointed, you need to adopt an email strategy that ticks all boxes that get your emails opened, read and responded. Here are the best practices that make your email perfect.
- Know Your Target Audience
You can’t send emails to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Define your target recipients in terms of their demographics. For example, if you are in the business of HR consultancy, your customers are likely to be the companies with at least 10-20 employees. Startups, sole proprietor firms or partnership ventures with less than five employees will not require HR services. Similarly, if you provide consultancy only in specific locations, the audience size becomes more definite. According to an extensive report on email marketing, Segmented and targeted emails can generate 58% of all revenue.
- Send with a Clear Marketing Goal
What is the purpose of an email campaign? It could be to create brand awareness, offer discounts, generate more leads or fuel repeat purchases. The marketing goals will ensure that you write a specific mail.
- Personalize the Emails
Statistics reveal that:
- Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
- Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% times more likely to be opened.
Your email should address the target customer by name instead of a generic style ‘Dear Customer’. It is also advisable to write the emails in conversational and 2
nd person narrative ‘You’ – it adds a more personal touch. They should be able to find a motivation to read the emails and know what’s there for them. If possible, you should include the details of their previous purchases for a subtle reminder that you value them as your existing customers.
- Focus on Every Element of Emails
Whether it is the sender name, subject line or the body of the email, every element matters in making it perfect. Ideally, the email size should be such that customer can see in a single preview from their desktop or mobile phones. Let’s take a look at each of these elements:
- Sender Name: Obviously this is the first thing that the recipient notices in an email. So, make sure that your email id includes either your name or the business name. The more specific the email id address is, the more credibility it will establish. An email id like [email protected] is likely to receive more response than [email protected]!
- Subject Line: It should be enticing without sounding predictable, urgent without being uncanny, crisp without being cryptic and action-driven without being unemotional. In a survey of the top performing email subject lines, there were eight common factors:
- Self-interest
- Curiosity
- Offer
- Urgency/Scarcity
- Humanity
- News
- Social Proof
- Story
- First Line: The starting line of the email should focus on ‘You’ instead of ‘I’. Make the customer central point of the conversation right from the beginning.
- Copy: The body of the emails should also be short and sweet, ideally around 150 words and less than 5 sentences. If your product is such that you need to explain more, then you could insert a link that will take them to a web page for further information. Include urgency triggers such as final, last day, limited period, today, tomorrow, now and only 24 hours left. A call-to-action button such as ‘Start the free trial’ or ‘Click here to know more’ also make a good element of the copy.
- Time it Right
Did your
digital marketing certification teach you that there is a perfect time to shoot your emails? For example, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are the best open days while the weekends are considered the worst days. Similarly, 11 am works fine to send emails from Monday to Saturday and on Sunday, its 9 pm!
- Don’t Spam
Stick sending the emails to the subscriber list because they have given their consent to receive emails. However, it does not mean that you keep spamming their mailboxes. The frequency of emails should be ideally 1-3 emails a week. Any more than that will have them opt-out.
With the above tips, you should start seeing the results immediately. If you want to get an elaborate insight into what and how of emails, it is advisable to enrol in
courses in digital marketing that have a special focus on email marketing.
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