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10 Tips for Getting People to Read Your Emails

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It’s great that you send your emails to lots of people, but are they actually reading it? Here are 10 tips to get more people to read your emails.

1. Don’t Diss Deliverability

Email Deliverability is fairly technical and a little boring, but it’s extremely important to get email delivered to the inbox rather than the spam folder. It all starts with selecting a trusted email marketing or marketing automation vendor, who has strong policies against spam. You can get an estimate of a vendor’s reputation at Sender Score.org. It is also recommended to use Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF), two technologies designed to certify that emails come from a trusted source.

Is he really reading your email?

2. Stay Clear of The Spam Filter

In addition to going with a reliable vendor, you should also optimize the email itself. There are certain words, characters and designs that are known to trigger spam filters. For example, don’t use “free”, “order today” and “xxx” (see Robin Good’s list for more examples). Also, avoid using all-caps, multiple exclamation marks and other excessive punctuation. It helps if your HTML is valid, so ask your web developer to validate it. Keep the “from” address the same, because people may have added it to their address book or safe-sender list. Some email vendors offer integrated delivery testing, or you can use a simple tool like Litmus.

3. Reach Recipients at the Right Time

Assuming the message is delivered to the inbox, the next question is whether the recipient has time to read the message. Generally, business hours on Tuesday to Thursday are considered the best time to send emails, but I’ve also heard of campaigns that performed best on Saturdays.

The only way to find out is to split up your list and send each batch on a different day and time, and then compare open rates.

4. Use a Familiar “From” Address

Many recipients will decide to read an email based on who it’s from. If you have a generic “from” address, like “sales” or “support”, there is a big chance they will skip it. For new leads, use the company name in the “from” address, and for people with an assigned contact person, use that person’s name. Some marketing automation vendors have email marketing features that allow you to send email on behalf of the contact owner in the CRM system.

5. Segment Your List

Most likely, you have people with lots of different interests in your database. It’s impossible to write a single email that will be relevant for all of them. To increase open rates, segment your database according to interests, and write separate messages for each target group.

6. Write an Irresistible Subject Line

The subject line is probably the single most important variable to get your email opened. If you’ve segmented your list (see previous step) you can already make your subject line more targeted. Write a subject line that invokes curiosity and gives people a reason to read on. Let’s look at an email I received last holiday season: “Happy Holidays from Acme Corporation”. This pretty much says it all, and there is no reason to read the message. You’d see better open rates with a subject like this: “How to Make the Holidays Special?” and then provide some interesting content. Also keep the subject short, no more than 35 characters (see this email metrics report).

7. Use a Readable Email Design

Have you ever received an email that is blank, and you need to click “load images” to see the message? That’s obviously not making it any easier to read the email. Also, many modern email readers have a relatively narrow reading pane, so make sure your key message is on the left, and make the email template relatively narrow to avoid horizontal scrolling.

8. Make it Work on Mobile

Nielsen expects that US Smartphone market share will be over 50% in 2011. Every day more and more people are reading emails on their phone rather than their computer. Test whether your emails are displayed correctly on the popular smartphones, like BlackBerry, iPhone and Android. And to be sure, provide a link to a web version of your message on top of the email. If you link to a landing page or your website, don’t forget to test those too!

9. Stay Focused

People have a limited attention span, so if you really want to get a particular message across, stick to that message only. Don’t add additional topics that will distract from the main message. If you have one topic, it’s easy to add a headline to the body of the email. The headline should be compelling, and nudge people to read on.

10. Invest in Content

Well-written content can make a big difference in getting your email read. Good writers avoid jargon and use simple words and short sentences. You could hire a copywriter to write your content, or a copy editor to review and improve your own drafts. If you want to improve your own writing, see whether you can make sentences shorter and replace complex words with simpler variants (e.g. replace “leverage” with “use”). Also carefully check whether you’ve used any jargon that your audience may not be familiar with.

A Final Note on Testing & Measuring

If you’ve read some of my other posts, you probably know I’m a big fan of testing and measuring. The challenge with measuring whether emails are read is that “reading” itself is not measurable. You can measure the open rate, which measures how many people have loaded the images. If people read the message but don’t load the images, it is not counted. So although it gives an indication and it can be used for relative comparisons, it’s a very inaccurate metric. Click rates are more accurate, because people probably read your email before clicking on a link. Using both metrics together provides most insight, but just be aware of the limitations.


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