How To Get Your Emails Opened, Over and Over Again.
One of the main questions in email marketing is: How Do I Get My Readers To Open My Emails?
Ah, great question.
And the answer is: write a great subject line.
Now, how do you do that?
It’s simple, make them curious.
Curiosity is something the mind can’t resist. It’s human nature! They want to know the answer.
So, a subject line like ‘Have You Seen This?’ entices them to open that message, just to learn WHAT they should have seen.
Including the readers first name to that adds a touch of personalization as if you were talking to that person only. But it has to fit in well, otherwise you’d better leave it out and put it somewhere inside.
Here are some others:
Come And Get It {!firstname} …
Yes, {!firstname} it’s true …
You asked for it {!firstname} …
A lesson well learned …
Answers To Questions About _______ …
You’ve got to hear this, if…
( {!firstname} is the variable used by Aweber to be replaced by the subscribers first name)
These subject lines work like magic.
Of course you have to realize the following when sending emails:
- At the time of sending your emails, not everyone has the time or interest to open them. You just can’t control the state of mind of your recipients at the time of sending an email. They may be too busy, they may be down, they may be fighting (their boss or spouse), they may be ill, in short, you just don’t know what happens at the other side. So your email may not get opened.
- Although great autoresponder services shall do their utmost to get every message delivered, there are many, sometimes unknown, circumstances that makes it impossible to do so.
For instance, ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) use “content filtering”. This looks at the words, website links, and images that appear in messages and thus determinate if that message is probably spam. If they believe it is, that ISP blocks the message from being delivered to the subscriber.
Incorrectly filtered messages are called a “false positives”. This occurs when a subscriber has specifically requested this information but the ISP’s filtering program mistakenly classifies it as spam.
It is out of the scope of this series to go into depth about this topic, but helas, not all of your message will arrive at their destination. - Some people do not even look into their (throw away) email box that they’ve used to subscribe to your autoresponder. As a result, their email accounts are full and don’t accept any other email. Your message may get lost this way. A great autoresponder service deletes these email addresses after a few tries. That’s because the ISP doesn’t like emails to be send over and over again to an address that can’t be delivered too. And YOU don’t want these subscribers, because they will NEVER turn into a customer, right? All they do is eat up your autoresponder capacities.
- Some people install or use a so called ‘challenge response system’. That’s a feature that doesn’t accept your emails, unless you go to a certain website and type in some code to ensure that you are a human being that wants to deliver a valuable message.
I’ll leave it up to you to either do that or delete such subscribers. Personally, I delete them immediately, because separating spam emails from legal ones is THEIR problem and I don’t like to be used to solve their problems. - And, unfortunately, there are still people who are too lazy to unsubscribe and just hit the ‘Spam’-button in their email account whenever they see an unknown, or unwanted email coming in. AOL, Hotmail, Earthlink, Outblaze, Road Runner and Excite.com members have the ability to push a button identifying messages as “spam” that they wish to no longer receive. If the number of complaints generated from your lists gets too high, ISPs may block your messages. That’s why most great autoresponder services delete these email addresses from your list automatically. Aweber even provides you with these addresses, so you can delete them anywhere else you’re using them.
Now, all these facts mentioned above are reason for some marketers to declare the death of email marketing.
Guess what?
THEY’RE WRONG!
Just have a look at what they’re selling. Most of the time it’s an alternative for email marketing. If that is the case, you know enough, don’t you?
Email marketing is alive and kicking. If you just know what you’re doing. This series will help you with that.
Sending emails with great subject lines is a great start. Please, do NOT use scam subject lines, like ‘Notification of Payment Received’ or people will unsubscribe faster than a well oiled fart (excuse my Spanish). Always be honest.
Remember this: the sole purpose of a subject line is to get your message opened. Period!
Try it!
And come back for the next issue, where will will discuss some advanced autoresponder marketing tactics.
Related Articles:
- Advanced Autoresponder Marketing Part 2
- Advanced Autoresponder Marketing
- How To Market With Autoresponders
- Autoresponders - Email Marketing On Autopilot
- Email Marketing - 5,725% Return Of Investment!
- Introduction to Email Marketing
- Internet Marketing Articles - Tutorials
- Email Marketing Exposed
2. Then, you can RETWEET this Post
3. Share this post by clicking the button:
Excellent article. I’m wondering if I’m rather jaundiced about unsolicited email. Even with the subject lines that you listed above, which, by the way are great, I simply still would delete those items as I would rather not waste the time to open them – unless I recognize from whom it’s coming. Of course, I might have missed the one where someone was offering me money – no strings attached – but really, how likely is that. (Don’t tell me you sent me one of those – aarrgh!) I, too, detest those that you mentioned in item #2. There must be others out there that feel like I do. What is your magic bullet to get these people to open your email? Or would you just say – screw it (pardon my japanese) there’s plenty that will respond? Thanks.
The reality is a bit of both option you mention Morgan, but the intention should be to write to only 1 person and tell it in your own words.
The only goal of the subject line is to get them to open the mail, so you can test whatever you like and see what works for yourself.
You also mention recognizing the sender and that’s another important piece to get emails opened. If you see an email coming from someone you trust or like, you’ll open it. True!
But how did the sender reach that status with you? Huh?
Test your subject lines and see what works.
I’m just starting out with affiliate marketing so coming across information like this is great! Its amazing the process you go through to get your message out. Finding a list of people who might listen, writing a headline/subject line so they open the email, having the right copy so they go to your website where the process starts all over again. Thanks for your insight
Thanks Jamie, glad this was of help to you.
Next time, be sure to include a link to your own website.
Great Website! It helps me a lot with my tough homework. I’m not so hot in that class
Thanks for the hard work, keep it up!