The carriers of first impression for business owners
When you draft an email, especially one to further your marketing, you are putting your virtual best foot forward. You want your email and your message to be taken seriously and not assigned to the ever increasing unread mails dump. A fair ask, you’d say.
However, let’s look at this from the email inbox owner’s perspective. Since he received your email out of the blue, it is not necessary that he is motivated to open it and read through the message and hear what you have to say. He might as well look at your email, go “Meh!” and move on the next mail in list. Worse still, he might just decide that it’s alright to delete your mail or horror of horrors, move it to Spam mailbox.
Unless! Unless there’s something that get him to be curious enough to open the mail, read through it and weep tears of joy learning whatever it is that you wanted him to learn. Let me tell you; it’s no mean feat getting this accomplished. This is the point where you go, “that’s all nice and peachy; but how do we do it?” Bear with me and let’s walk through a few pointers put together that will help.
- Subject matters, so do subject line:
Any email receiver will ignore an email, unless, unless there is something that motivates them to open that email to learn more about what the email, and in turn, you have to say to them. They get the first taste of what your message is all about from the Subject line. Keep your subject line interesting and to the point. Use it to pique your reader’s interest and get them to click open your mail.
- Keep it simple, silly!:
Unless the reader is someone who likes to read, analyze and reread long emails, a long and rambling email is going to put them off the task. A long winded email will give the feeling that you are beating about the bush. It goes without saying that it will also make the reader question the intent and motive behind the email. Always attempt to keep your email short, to the point and include a clear call of action.
- The hanging pyramid:
A good email marketer will ensure that the most important information to be transmitted is included in the first few lines. A reader’s interest will wane as he goes downward through the email. An inverse pyramid style email will help counter this and bring focus to the topic at hand right at the beginning.
- The chocolate cake, or not!:
You want your email to make the reader feel nice, warm and happy. Since your email’s no chocolate cake, you need to work on making your email feel as personalized as possible. Craft your email so that it caters to the reader’s specific requirement and you will see that you have a higher open and clickthrough rate.
- Set up the storefront:
You need to understand that your email is your storefront. Now that we’ve established that, how would you want your storefront to be? Dull, drab and grey with a few sale posters pasted randomly across the display case; or a spectacularly decorated display cases full of everything full of sugar, spice and everything nice! You have your answer don’t you? Always make your email interesting to read through. Put in a few gif’s, graphs or images that will help break the monotony and retain the reader’s interest in the content.
- 1,2,3…Clear!:
A storefront is all nice and dandy, but make sure it doesn’t crowd out your message. Your email and subject should always be clear and easy to understand. You don’t want your reader to feel tricked when he opens an email that doesn’t correspond to relate to the subject line used.
- Keep it real:
The reader should be able to glean something of importance once he has read through your email. You will be establishing a long term relationship with readers when you use your email to provide them information relevant to them. An email that caters to their specific needs help develop your reader’s trust and ensures better open and clickthrough rates for subsequent emails as well.
- Why, What, When, Where, How?:
Every time a reader opens an email, it is because they want to know the answer to these questions. If you manage to answer these questions and offer them information about the benefits they stand to get out of your email, you can call your email a success. Just make sure that it doesn’t go from “Why should I?” to “Why me?”
- Hearts and roses:
Humans love attention. Well, mostly! Use this to your benefit and make your reader feel heard, appreciated and understood. The chances of your reader sticking around and giving you and your product/services are high if you play nice. So, don’t be that guy!
- Call to action, like right now!:
When you draft that email, make sure to write in second person and use active voice. Use your email to reach through the virtual space and speak to them as individuals. Use more of “you” and “yours” than “we” or “I” so that they know that the focus is on them. Speak about your Call of Action in active voice rather than using the passive voice.
The best way to measure your email’s success is to step into the reader’s shoes and review your email critically. You might not like what you see occasionally. That’s alright as it means that there’s still potential for your email to go from Good to Best.
You need to remember that you are using your email as your voice. This means that you are using your email to present yourself and your services/products/information in the best way possible so that you leave a lasting impression in your readers’ minds. You will see that using these tips will help you take your open, clickthrough and follow through rates out of the roof and gain maximum readership and attention.
