Are Your Marketing Emails Even Read?

In 2016 many people told me that email marketing was dead but when I tell them that 2.5 billion people have email accounts as oppose to only 1.79 billion on Facebook it is easy for them to see why relegating email to the archives is short sited.

It is true that the market has been saturated, even my own inbox is full of unopened emails, the reason they remain that way is I have very little time and most of them don’t grab me enough to make me click and read further.

So how can your business stand out in someone’s inbox?  Here are my top 3 tips.

1.      Jump the spam hurdle

100 billion emails are sent straight to spam folders every day. Some contain viruses or scams that are filtered by your provider, some though might be legitimate emails that the user has signed up to receive. They get put there by mistake because the wording used by the company has been identified as ‘spammy.’ Avoid words and phrases like; free money, no credit check, earn XXXX, MLM and unlimited cash. There is no point writing an engaging email that ends up in the spam folder and no-one even has a chance to read it.

2.      The subject line is the bottom line

You might spend the same amount of time getting the subject line right as you do writing the email itself. If you don’t intrigue the reader enough, your email will end up like the thousands in my inbox – unread. Your subject line should be simple and clear but you could either go down the funny or shocking route, you could ask the reader a question or personalise it. The most important thing for me though is that the title is representative of what the email contains. There is nothing worse than feeling like you have been duped by the title of an email which meets none of its promises.  If this happens I never open an email from that particular sender again.

3.      Cut the bull

As consumers we are overwhelmed with information, our lives are hectic and our time is short. Your email has to be more interesting to read than watching a dog on a treadmill on their Facebook feed. With our fast moving lives we have short attention spans so don’t take 10 paragraphs to get to the point, your reader will be back to the dog video before they even know what you are trying to say. Decide on what message you want to deliver and do it, each email you write should have a purpose and it should give your reader something valuable whether it be a practical piece of advice or an offer, the reader should be easily able to ascertain what the email will be about and that it is worth their time reading it.

I write a variety of content for my clients supporting their businesses to grow through the power of words. If you want support to get the best email marketing content for your ideal customer then drop me a line.