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 – 14:18
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

Social Media Marketing Made Simple Episode 32

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...

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 – 14:18
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

Social Media Marketing Made Simple Episode 32

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 really intriguing the reader to open the email because not only be told them something that is made such a difference to your business. But you’re telling them it’s simple as well. The subject line. That said who knew it could do that. Your pre header could say and other amazing uses if you are talking about a product and different things that it does. And the last one. Have you ever done this. You might just follow up with or is it just me?

Before we move on to once the emails open and how to get people to read it. One thing I want to mention is this is always a test. Now it’s impossible to say at this point what is exactly going to work for one person or another.

So the way I do these things is I will send out an email and I look to see what response it gets. So maybe the first three emails are I don’t know who’s an emoji and the next three are use an emoji or I test different subject headings and maybe do some split testing of subject headings. It’s always worth paying attention to what’s worked what hasn’t. And then using what works. Just because I suggest using a emojis let’s say for instance actually for your audience they might not engage with it as well so it’s always worth just testing and then going with whatever works. So now onto your emails are opened. How do we grab their attention so they actually read what we’ve written. Again going back to the Web another I did Marie Forleo the other day. She focused on this point. My point number one which is focus on them and not on you. This is not about you. Whenever you speak to your customer it’s about them. Their number one thing that they have in mind is them not you. They don’t want to know what you’ve done or what brilliant business you’ve got or how you’ve done something they want to know whether you understand what they’re going through and how you can help them be better grow bigger businesses find the product that they need use a service whatever it might be so you can do this by asking a question or demonstrating that you understand an issue that they are facing. Now an example is let’s say for instance you were going to be trying to promote a time management course or a time management book or something around time management. You could always start your email with something like this.

Let me guess you were in the middle of something important and you heard your email ping and you have just popped over to see what it is and you are distracted again this happens a lot right?

As you can see I’ve tried to identify with the person opening the email. I’ve tried to address a problem and engage them into something that is demonstrating their story not mine. So have a think about what your customers biggest concerns are and see how you can help solve those in your emails or how you can address them so that they know you understand them and what they’re going through. Now to number two for getting them to read is think about the length of your email. I’m afraid this answers can be a little bit vague because the length of the email depends on so many things. A It depends on what you want to actually say. Now there is a rule of thumb that says short and snappy is best but then some of the best emails I’ve seen are really long. So for me there’s one thing that’s more critical than necessarily trying to have a perfect length. It’s highlight the stuff that is really important.

So for instance if you’ve got a particular part of the email that you really want to make sure they see some salient points that you want to make sure they read them bullet point them or put them in bold or underlying them. So look at the Imao and break it up by doing things like that. So it is a long email. You definitely want to do stuff like that because otherwise it literally is going to look like a page of text short paragraphs are best and keep it kind of snappy even if there is a lot of content on there. But like I said you want to grab their attention in the places that you want them to do something or the most key things. So if you know there’s something that if they read this that’s that you’ve got him works put that thing in bold. Tip number three calls to actions. Now every email that you send should have a call to action of some sort. You obviously are sending that email for a purpose. You’re not just the emailing them to have a chat with them. And ordinarily calls to action can include things like you won’t be able to go to the Web site and look at something maybe a blog or podcast. You want people to download something or maybe book a call or another really good call to action is to e-mail you back. No I think I might have said in the episode where I talked about the top tips and tricks for email that actually if they email you back it’s a really good way of making sure your email is on this safe Senders List and therefore your deliverable rates for that person will go up and the email that you send them is more likely to go through. So having a call to action that says email me and let me know I’d love to know is a really good call to action. Now my advice with Call to actions would be that you try your hardest to have one main one in there and really if you can get away with just one then great. Don’t try and do loads of calls to action and loads of different clicks because otherwise you’re not going to be able to know which one they click and you’re going to confuse them. So think about having one call to action one aim of that email and making that call to action really strong and really obvious and then the last tip in terms of getting your emails read is have a P S now.

Next time you get an email with a ps on it I want you to see what you do because I can pretty much guarantee your eyes are going to be drawn straight to that PS. You’re going to go straight back and read what it says. It’s like I don’t know it’s like some strange human nature that is that we know we should wait for that but that’s obviously really important so we do it. So PS are really good. Again that call to action that we just talked about that one thing that you want them to do in your email. Put that and reiterate it in your PS and in my emails. I try and act human so I might even put. Now I know you’re going to jump to the press and read this straight away so I’ve summed it up for you. Or something like that. So you’re acknowledging the fact that they’ve looked down that P.S. But like I said Make sure you use that. I’ve seen emails where they’ve got like a PS PSS PSSS or whatever it is and I think that’s too much. I would probably just stick with 1 PS and make sure that that key information is being reiterated within that PS. Okay said they have it my 8 ways in which you can only get your emails opened but also read and hopefully they act upon it. I’d love to hear your tips that you have and what successes you’ve had. So if you have a really good open rate or you do something and it made a huge difference I would love to hear about it. So my call to action for you today on this podcast is going to be for you to come and connect with me on a social media platform of your choice. As you can imagine I’m on pretty much all of them. Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Twitter and Pinterest you’ll find me more often on Instagram than anything else. I do Instagram stories there all the time. I’m currently doing an Instagram story a day on a trip or a trick so getting some great advice over there but please come and find me. Please talk to me. I love talking to people. That’s my favorite thing to do. I love meeting new people hearing new things so I would love for you to come and connect with me on social media and come and tell me what successes you’ve had with your email marketing. Anyway next week we have a grey interview with the amazing Brian Fanzo which is going to be phenomenal. It’s already recorded. It’s a great episode. He gives some great tips so make sure you don’t miss that line. And I will see you next week.