From DEMC.com
Your Email Has 5 Seconds
By Abbie Drew
Oct 20, 2008, 17:40
The average reader takes 2 - 5 seconds to decide whether
to read or delete an email according to David Daniels,
Jupiter Research VP.
Your email is competing for attention against the 274
personal email messages and 304 work emails that the
average person receives each week. It is sitting in one
of 2 email accounts that 74% of users have.
How do you get your message saved when the user does
his inbox cleaning? That's when the user sifts through
their email inboxes at warp speed to eliminate junk
(both permission email as well as spam) before they start
to read and respond to what they've saved.
How can you get your email noticed in that 5 second
window so that the user will take time to actually read
your message and act upon it?
A recent email marketing metrics study from MailerMailer
reveals key factors to getting opens and clicks from your
email campaigns. I'll review their report as well as point
out some important findings from other recent case studies.
Below are 10 steps you can take to give your email a
fighting chance:
1) Brand Name
Make sure your email clearly shows who you are. Your
brand name should be in both your "From" line as well
as your subject line.
When users recognize who sent the email they are more
likely to open the email and respond.
2) Short Subject Lines
Subject lines under 35 characters are significantly more
likely to be opened. In addition, short subject lines
generate more click throughs after the message is opened.
Keep your subjects short and snappy!
3) Key Words in Subject
Get a 10% increase in opens just by using key words in
your subject line.
What are key words?
They're the key words for your site and offerings.
For example, our site - http://www.sendfree.com - is an
autoresponder, email list hosting service. Our emails to
our lists should contain one of our sites key words -
such as email, lists, leads, autoresponders.
An email that discusses business planning or goal setting
for 2008 is not going to grab our readers' attention. Our
list members signed up for information on email marketing.
The email subject lines we use therefore should contain
"email marketing" key words if we want the messages
opened.
Start using your key words in your subjects and you'll see
higher open rates.
4) Go Back to Text
If you send out mostly HTML emails to your readers, send
out some text messages. Try out a text-only email -- with
no coding, graphics or hyperlinks.
A simple text email letter injected into a campaign of
HTML emails can grab readers' attention and get them
to respond.
Similarly if you send out mostly text email, inject a few
HTML message into your campaigns. You too will grab
your readers' attention with the change and generate
more response.
5) The More Links the Merrier
The more links to your landing page or links to a variety
of different offerings in your email the higher your emails
click through rate will be.
6) Use Video Landing pages
Nearly half of Web users watched online videos last year.
And according to The Pew Internet and American Life
Project online video watching is only going to increase.
More and more case studies document that video is a
proven tool for generating leads and response.
What you need is a simple video that gives a visual
overview of the service or product you provide.
A video will generate more clicks from your emails
and it will make more sales on your site.
7) To Personalize or Not To Personalize
That is the question email marketers face these days. With
so much spam using personalization in email subjects, does
personalizing an email with a recipients first name make
your email look like spam?
Well yes and no . . .
When only the subject line is personalized both open and
click rates are lower than having no personalization in your
message at all. When both the subject line and message
are personalized the open rates are higher than no
personalization but the click through rates are lower than
having no personalization.
The best strategy is to personalize just the message and not
the subject. This will give you a higher open rate and the
highest click through rates.
8) 3 Weeks Of Response
That is how long it can take for some to respond to your
emails.
Yes, the majority of people (73%) will respond in the first
24 hours of you sending out an email message. And 83%
will have responded within 48 hours of receiving your
message. But that last 17% can take up to 3 weeks to
respond to your email.
Your email links, images and landing pages all need to
remain active for at least 3 weeks to ensure you get the
maximum return.
When placing ads in email newsletter a delayed response is
even more likely. Studies show nearly 25% respond 15-21
days after viewing an ad.
9) Mail at Least Once a Month
Mailing to your subscribers at least monthly ensures your
readers do not forget that they signed up for your list.
You not only improve your open and click rates you also
improve your deliverability.
Failing to mail monthly more than doubles the number of
messages that bounce as undeliverable.
10) Bigger is not Better
Across practically all industry types when a list grew over
1000 subscribers both open and click rates declined.
Why?
Lack of specificity. When you fail to segment your list
into smaller more specific topic groups, you loose your
edge. By keeping your lists' subject matter tightly focused
and staying on topic you generate the best response.
What can you do when you find your list growing?
Take a survey and ask your readers to select the topics
in which they are most interested. Then place them into
separate lists for each of those topics. And for those who
don't respond, create a specific list for non-responders
as well.
If you sell multiple products, rather than creating one big
customer list, place your customers into lists specific to
the product / service they bought. Nothing irks a customer
more than receiving a promotion for a product they already
purchased. It makes the customer think, you as a business
aren't paying attention and thus don't care about their
business.
Yes, it may take more time to create separate email
campaigns for each of your lists, but the results will
be well worth the extra effort.
There you have it 10 tactics that will keep your email out
of the trash and get your message read and clicked.
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Abbie Drew
DEMC Editor
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