Most of us grew up checking out our clunky old emails on our clunky old desktops. AOL would prompt us with a “you’ve got mail” and we would dive right in. Back then email was anyone’s game, including several Nigerian princes. Today, these tricks of the past rarely work as people have grown jaded by the ploys found within the 183 billion emails spit out each day. According to the Radicati group
“This year, about 84% of all email traffic will be spam.”
So if you are one of these “spammers” or “mass mailers” you better change up your act and start following these “stop being spammy” tips:
1. Personalize
In the shower, on the toilet, in between traffic, if I am reading your email it better be well suited to my needs. This means sending emails that are relevant to your targeted demographic. If you are a soap company, and I am living in Seattle, I want an email addressing me by name, telling me about why your soaps are strong enough to retain scent throughout Seattle rainstorms. Ok maybe this is too much info, but a guide to the closest shops that carry your soaps would be a great start. People want to be acknowledged!
2. Subject Line
Make sure your subject line works. What do I mean by that? What I mean is A/B test the heck out of it. You should always be testing multiple subject lines to make sure that it resonates with your targeted customers. Your customer should stop in their tracks and click. What is the secret potion?
The potion is maintaining relevance to the viewer and relevance to your product. Don’t use a gimmicky subject line. It may work once, it may even work twice, but once the recipient catches on you’ll be gone for good.Finally, do not add multiple exclamations or question marks to your subject lines. This is the easiest way of getting your content blocked by a spam filter.
3. Engage
I do not want to hear about your promotion or sale via plain text. I need to be able to visualize it. Use pictures to capture my interest and follow that up with a strong call to action. Want to bump it up a notch and really get me going? Then implement some cool tools like a poll or a Scratch-it (shameless plug). Anything that gets me interested in interacting with your product will surely help your cause. Before sitting down and writing try to empathize with your reader and think about what would knock them off their chair.
Important! Do not add too many images. Image overload will make the reader tune out and confuse them on the call to action. Quality over quantity, one or two quality images can be more effective than 10 random images.
4. Email Client Testing
Always test what your email will look like. Nobody wants to find out his or her email came out all jumbled up.
There is no excuse for not testing your email in all clients when it is so easy and cheap to do with tools such as Litmus or Email on Acid.
With your newfound knowledge your emails will be far more enjoyable. Now go forth and be admired.
