10 Strategies That Make Emails Opened, Clicked On And Convert
Email marketing, in a way, is a competition.
Every email you send has to fight through spam filters and inbox placement triggers, not to mention hundreds and thousands of unopened emails.
Even if your email does go through the inbox, and they read and opened, the final challenge is to get your customer to click and make a purchase.
Here are some ideas and tips that you can implement in your email marketing to achieve better conversion!
1) Find Out More About Your Readers
Before anything else, finding out what demographic your readers are from – their age, location, and gender. This significantly helps you craft what kind of theme or tone you have to take.
When used properly, this information should allow you to create a connection with your customers.
2) It All Starts With The Subject Line
Being able to churn out excellent subject lines is where it all begins. This can define whether your recipients open, delete, or at worst, mark your email as spam.
What makes people open emails? If they feel like they will learn something relevant, if they think it’s beneficial to them, if they’re feeling the fear of missing out (FOMO), or if they feel that it’s interesting. Again, it’s a matter of being able to connect to your readers.
It may seem to be a tall order for a line with 5-8 words more or less, but it is what it is. Here are a few subject lines that worked best for us.
Informative And Relevant Subject Line:
– 5 Tips to improve your phone’s battery life –
This was used for a long content email that details how modern phone batteries work and how a user can make the most out of them. Open rates reached as high as 40%.
– How to help your pet adjust post-pandemic
This was sent during a time when lockdowns were being eased, this timely email addressed legitimate concerns of pet owners.
F.O.M.O Subject Line:
– Last day to claim your gift…
This is a straightforward subject line about a freebie bundled with an item on sale.
– Last call for Labor Day!
Also straightforward, this subject line seems simple enough, but it had as much as a 63.6% open rate!
3) Maximize Email Preview Lines
Some Email Service Providers (ESPs) allow you to customize your email’s preview lines. For the others that don’t, you’ll have to work around it by adding some small, invisible text at the top of your email to serve as the preview.
The preview line works as a secondary subject line that allows you to add tidbits about your email such as the discount, a specific date or time when the promo ends. Simply put, preview lines can be used to expand on your subject lines, essentially doubling your text estate.
Here are some samples connected to the subject lines above.
– Save your battery for longer daily use…
– Reduce your pet’s anxiety with these tips…
– You’re losing out on this game-changer…
– Huge savings on (insert product) Products…
4) Check For No-No Words!
As you may have noticed with the samples we gave you above, none of the subject and preview lines had “spammy” words or words that are outright sales-y.
Email providers have come a long way with their filters to protecting their users and sifting through spam or promotional emails. Gmail, for example, has Main, Social, and Promotional inboxes.
One way to find out if your emails will land in the inbox instead of spam is to test send it to your Gmail account. Check if your email lands in the Main inbox or the Promotional inbox – if it lands in the Main inbox, you’re safe.
Here are some samples of words to avoid:
Free
Sale
Cash
Discount
Chance
Limited
$$$
As business marketers, we know that these symbols are commonly used. However, try to find alternatives if you want to avoid ending up in the Promotional inbox filter.
5) Short, Sweet, And Punchy
So, you got people to open. What’s next?
People nowadays are busy – not many people have time to read through walls of text. While informative emails can be long, keep your sale/promotional emails punchy (direct to the point) and concise. This way, people can immediately make a decision, one that you would want them to make.
6) Give Readers A Clear Call-To-Action (CTA)
The CTA, or call-to-action, is an integral part of every email. After all, the goal is to get your readers to click and purchase.
The less a person has to do before making a purchase, the fewer obstructions they have. In that sense, one of the best ways to use a CTA is to sprinkle it all over your email. At any point they decide to take action, they don’t have to scroll elsewhere.
CTAs also have to be concise – telling them the action they must take without further ado. Here are some samples of CTA buttons that had as much as 5% click rates:
- ORDER BAGS TODAY
- GET 10% SAVINGS NOW
- SHOP (BRAND NAME) HERE
7) Swipe Emails That Worked
One way to determine how to move forward with your email marketing is to find out what and how your best competitors do their email marketing. While you can’t immediately implement everything they do, you can test things out one by one until you can determine peak results.
Places like Pinterest and Digital Marketer have samples of emails that you can freely swipe, so don’t be afraid to do your research!
Speaking of testing things…
8) Test, Test, And Test
A/B Testing or split testing is one of the things that email marketing experts continuously do. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for every brand, and email marketing can sometimes mean feeling out things in the dark.
Here are a few things to test:
Variations Of Subject Lines – You can try adding emojis, acronyms, open-ended questions. See what gets opened more.
Email Sending Times – Different people open their emails at different times and days. Finding this out can optimize the way you do email marketing.
Variations Of Content – This works for measuring click rates and seeing which kind of copy your customers will respond to more. You can try longer copy vs shorter copy, etc.
Just remember to test only one thing at a time, or you’ll miss the point of A/B testing!
There are far more factors that go into email marketing that produces results. Email marketing is highly volatile and constantly innovating. We could probably write a whole book about it, and it still might not be enough.
Don’t feel daunted – we’re here to help you out.
