Romancing your readers into opening your newsletters is an art form. Here are 20 essential tips breaking down this mysterious art of seduction. Opening your inbox to a barrage of emails is a horrible way to start your day. Even the thought of working your way through them is draining. So filing as many as you can under T for Trash is one of the quickest and easiest ways to cut the fat. But which emails get cut first? Simple. It’s the emails that have no connection to us and are clearly just generic, ‘send-to-all’ spam. From the sender’s perspective, this is a real problem. You’ve got a newsletter or an eDM you want every single person on your distribution list to see, read, and ideally respond to. You can’t physically make them read your email… but you can tempt them in emotionally.
Here’s a checklist to help you win at the email dating game:
Address line:
- Send your emails from a real person, not an info@ address.
- BCC everyone you’re emailing in a mass mailout. Respect others’ email privacy.
Subject line:
- Treat your subject line like the headline of a news article – and make sure it’s attention-grabbing, or intriguing. Try not to give too much away up front – if you don’t have a hook from heaven, no one will open your email.
- Make your subject line about your reader, or at least not all about you. Think about what the reader will take away from opening your email and make that the subject line.
- Keep the subject short. 50 characters or fewer is ideal.
- Try asking questions or include the call to action.
- Test different subject lines and see which ones work for your audience.
Test different subject lines and see which ones work for your audience.
Main body text:
- Make your opening line a winner. Most people check their emails on their phones now, and they have the first two or three lines visible for each email.
- Be aware of spam triggers in your subject line or first paragraph. Phrases like ‘urgent’, ‘free’ or ‘act now’ can be picked up by spam filters. If you need to use them, beta test.
- Personalise with your addressee’s names if you have it.
- Tell a great story to lure people in.
- As you compose your email, ask yourself: What is the need? Who will benefit? What impact will their involvement have?
- Be sincere, heartfelt and personal if possible. A business-like approach connects with people on an intellectual level but a personal approach gets to people’s emotions and is much more powerful.
- Keep your message to the point – people don’t like long, rambling emails.
- Write in short paragraphs of two or three sentences. Block text does not read well online.
- Make the call to action (CTA) clear and repeat it, and finish your email with it.
- Put links in the copy to your website or wherever the reader can go to answer your CTA.
- Promise (and deliver) a follow-up. Either via email or on other platforms like your website or social media.
- Make your emails look good. Include pictures (with clickable links), embed video, work on layout, think about fonts (san serif is best).
- Stay in touch – send regular follow-up emails and newsletter with progress reports etc.
Now go back to the last newsletter you sent your clients. How did you do against this checklist? Implementing a few simple changes can have a dramatic effect on your open rate and click through. Remember to keep testing what works for your clients so you can make sure you get that second date.
