Wednesday, May 29, 2013

2 Easy Techniques For Boosting Your Email Open Rate

By James Kupe


Promoting your products and services using email marketing is one of the most effective strategies available to us as business owners. But if you want to be successful using email, you need to get as many people as possible to open your messages. That's the job of your email's subject line, but unfortunately, many people don't have a clue about how to write the kind of subject lines that virtually force people to read their messages.

That's why your subject line is probably the most important part of your email message to get right. It's just like a headline in any ad, and if that subject line doesn't pique your readers' interest, you're just wasting your time trying to market with email.

Using subject lines that openly promise your reader a benefit or a desirable result are the secret weapon good copywriters use every day to sell more stuff. And if curiosity and controversy are added into the mix, that's going to increase your open rate even more.

Let's look at an example. Imagine you've used a subject line such as, "Is this the worst movie ever shown to a live audience?". It would probably get people curious so they would at least open your message. And when they do, you could talk about a really bad movie that's somehow related to your niche market, or has something to do with your product or service. You could show how the movie relates to solving a problem your reader has, and then make them an offer based on that.

In fact, you could go even further by adding drama, or promise a result or benefit in your subject line. Then in your message, tie it together so it all makes sense. If you use stories throughout your messages, and end each one with a 'cliffhanger' like they did in Lost and some of those popular soap operas, you'll have your readers begging you for more, because they will want to know what happens next in the saga.

Another great idea is to use two different subject lines and split test the results. You are looking for the one converts the best, because in most autoresponders like Aweber, you can resend the same message (with the best subject line) to anybody who didn't click on the original message. By doing that, you'll get even more people to click the link, open and read your message, and take the action you'd like them to take.

One last strategy that works really well is to covertly spy on the other businesses in your niche to see what they are up to. Open a new Gmail account to do this to stop your main email account getting overwhelmed with messages. Then join as many of your competitors lists as you can. Watch out for good subject lines that get your attention, especially if they use them over and over again. This will let you see how your competitors are talking to your customers, and how they are trying to get people to open their emails.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment