Email Best Practices: Part 4 - Enticement

Posted by Adam Peck on 5 August 2009 | 2 Comments

Tags: email marketing

Welcome to the fourth post in our five-part series about maximizing email performance. In this post, we’ll focus on enticement: getting your recipients’ attention and interest to open your message.

GET THEIR ATTENTION: Entice Recipients to open your message

Here are the main factors that influence the open rate:

I. The “From line”

• People are most likely to open an email when they know and trust the sender, so make sure you’re using a consistent and expected “from” line for all subscribed email communications.
• If a sender’s name is not recognizable, it will be perceived as spam, and will either be deleted or ignored. As you can imagine, you’d be much more likely to open an email that was sent from a close friend than one sent from a stranger, (i.e. “[COMPANY NAME] e-newsletter” would be better than “[RANDOM NAME] e-newsletter”).

II. The “Subject line”

• Once a recipient recognizes the sender, they read the subject line to see if the email might be worth reading.
• Communicating the “what’s in it for me” is extremely important. If there is no compelling reason to open an email, it will be deleted. Make sure to be bold and perhaps even a little mysterious to help drive your open rate:
  • Ask a question. “What’s the best way to grow your business?” is a great subject line for business owners.
  • Be a tease. A company that sells high-definition TVs could use the subject line, “You’re not going to believe your eyes” as a teaser to introduce a new product line.
  • Tell it like it is. An example of this straightforward approach is, “Sale on all sweaters this weekend,”
  • Get personal. Make it personal by using the word “you”.

III. Timing

• Traditional thinking has long been that Tuesday is the best day for sending email, but if volume permits, perform day-of-week testing to ensure you know which day delivers the best results to help you maximize open rates in the future.
• Also consider how relevant your email message or offer is given certain seasonality factors or buying cycles. For example, knowing your audiences’ buying habits would be a huge advantage (like the tendency to buy more at the end of their fiscal year, etc.).
• Consider testing time of day (morning vs. afternoon). A recent Direct Marketing Association blog article claimed that [blasting in the] morning is better than afternoon, because “many users, myself included, start their day by rifling through their email inboxes. Mornings allow email users to spend uninterrupted time in their inbox.”

Check back for the last post in this series where we will cover strategies to improve email engagement, or click-through rates.