With the advent of 24/7 social media and viral communication, how do you make your emails count? How do you craft them to stand out amongst the hundreds—and sometimes thousands—of emails your target audience members receive every day? Sure, you can entice readers with catchy subject lines, but you’ve got to deliver more than that. Here are three tips to capture readers’ interest and keep it.
1. Make sure to optimize your email for smartphones and other mobile devices.
This optimization is known as responsive email design; it’s meant to adapt to many different devices as well as a myriad of different screen sizes. If your email looks good and is easy to read on a phone or portable device, it’ll look fine on a laptop or desktop computer but not the other way around. Considering most people have portable devices with them at all times, focusing on emails that target those devices is a crucial step to assure readers open your emails.
2. Give readers a Call-to-Action (CTA) and incentives.
In your subject line, add a deadline or other calls to action, such as space or sale limits and try to work incentives into it. For example “Just 30 spaces left for the Marketing lecture! Sign up before June 30 for 20% off!” If you want a shorter subject line, add the incentive or the deadline in the first line of body copy.
3. Send out regular emails with useful content and select freebies.
You may initially balk at this because you don’t want to inundate your readers with emails they might immediately delete. But regular notifications will keep them engaged and interested as opposed to annoyed if all they ever receive from you are one-sided emails alerting them about your latest sales. They’ll be accustomed to opening all your email notifications and have a happy surprise when they’re informed of sales discounts or special “members only” benefits.
There’s one last thing – keep emails short and sweet. Copy-heavy emails can negate all your other marketing efforts because people have no time or patience to scour through paragraphs to reach a key link or offer. Use bullet point lists and keep longer paragraphs to 2-3 short sentences. If you have more information to share, do so in multiple emails. Follow these pointers, and you’ll soon become a welcome contact for your readers, not a dreaded, instantly deleted one.
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