It sounds like a lot of work – and it is! However, it’s well worth the effort
when the sales come pouring in.
Switch Up the Sender
Sending out emails from multiple people within your company or
organisation improves open rates, and therefore has a cascade effect on
sender scores and reputation overall improving your deliverability.
Such
as:
james@hotwaffles.com,
susie@hotwaffles.com,
david@hotwaffles.com.
Step 2: Getting It Opened
What was the subject line for the highest opened and highest earning email in
history?
‘Hey’.
Who sent it?
President Barack Obama.
Really, it’s true. It was that casual, straightforward, and highly
‘unprofessional’ greeting coming from the man who commanded arguably
the most powerful office in the world. Straight from the head honcho who
was (at the time) the president of the United States. So that explains a huge
part of its success. I mean, honestly... How often do you get an email from
the president, just saying ‘Hey’? And the better question is, who wouldn’t
open it?
That wasn’t the only unusual email that played an integral role in Obama
winning re-election. Other subject lines included, ‘Join me for dinner?’ ‘It’s
officially over’, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way’, or just ‘Wow’.
All very personal, and they relied heavily on curiosity and intrigue to get the
open. The Obama campaign raised $690 million online. The majority of it
came from the fundraising emails that peppered inboxes for a two-year
period. They employed a team of 20 writers and a sophisticated analytics
system to measure and improve their effectiveness.
The campaign would test multiple drafts and subject lines – often as many as
18 variations – before picking a winner to send out to tens of millions of
subscribers.
The lessons from Obama’s master email marketing campaigns aren’t just a
recipe for politics or making money, but for winning eyeballs in the brutal
death match to grab your attention in the inbox.
Compare that to all those commercial messages, coupons, and sales emails
you get. How many of those do you open? One out of every ten? Or worse,
do they just sit and rot in your spam folder?
What’s the difference? And how can you write emails that always get
opened? That’s what we’re covering in this section.
Think about your email inbox for a moment. When you fire it up for the first
time every day, what do you do?
Check, check, check, check, check... Delete!
You delete everything that appears to be promotional or commercial and that
you know is safe to delete. Why is it safe to delete those emails?
Because you know, from reading them in the past, that they are promotional,
commercial, and generally speaking, a complete waste of your time.
Based on years of experience, it’s my contention that everybody scans their
inbox categorising emails into two distinct groups:
A ‘P’ group and a ‘C’ group.
The ‘P’ group contains emails that are, or appear to be personal. Like emails
from friends, relatives, colleagues, business associates, and so on.
On the other hand, the ‘C’ group contains those emails that obviously contain
a promotional or commercial message.
Now, here’s the way it works: Everybody always opens all of their ‘P’ group
emails. This is for obvious reasons, as everybody wants to read their personal
emails and doesn’t want to miss a bit of news or a question from a friend or
family member.
What happens to the ‘C’ group emails? Do they always get opened? No, they
don’t. Most of the time they get archived or deleted immediately without ever
being opened – that is, if they’ve survived today’s sophisticated spam filters.
Sometimes, if it looks interesting enough, ‘C’ group emails will be left inside
the inbox to read ‘later’. And, of course, sometimes, if the email subject line
looks interesting enough, or if the person receiving it has some spare time, is
bored, and has nothing else to do but mindlessly hang around in their inbox,
then, maybe, just maybe, the ‘C’ group emails will be opened.
That’s the reality, my friend.
Obviously, people aren’t going to buy from you unless they read your emails
and see your offer. And they can’t read your email and see your offer unless
they open it.
And so, as we begin to craft our email, what is our first objective? You are
indeed right! Our first objective is to get our emails into the ‘P’ group.
How do we do this? We first have to make the email look personal. (Or at the
very least ensure it doesn’t look commercial.)
This starts with the sender’s name and the subject line.
Emails that you want to get opened should always come from an email that
appears to be personal.
That means no ‘sales@letmesellyou.com’.
Or if you are going to be using such an email address, at least change the
sender name associated with the email address to yours or a member of your
team, i.e., ‘Bryan Miles’.
The idea is that it doesn’t get ‘selected’ and thrown into the ‘C’ group and
deleted before it’s even opened!
How to Get Anybody to Open Your Emails
The next step in reaching our objective is getting our emails not only not
deleted but opened. And no, we’re not going to cover some ninja subject line
email hacks or scripts that force your emails to be opened.
I’m going to show you the single most important element to get anybody to
open your emails.
Every media, whether it’s Facebook, Google Ads, or email, comes with
context. Typically speaking, when it comes to email, nobody wants to be
emailed a commercial message from a business. They only want to hear from
their friends. Your task, then, is to sound as much like their trusted friend,
colleague, or family member… without using trickery or being gimmicky…
or worse, lame.
Because if you screw this up, you’ll lose their trust and your emails will
never be opened again. And as result, over time you’ll develop a bad sender
score, and even worse… email blindness.
Email blindness is when someone’s email is there in your inbox, but you’ve
mentally written them off as a waste of time. You’ve probably opened two or
three of their emails in the past and have gotten no real value from them or
they bored you to death. So, over time you don’t even see those emails
anymore when you scan your list. They become invisible.
The chances are good that your emails are likely causing email blindness for
your readers. How can you tell? Well, are you happy with your open rates?
Every time you send out an email, are you flooded with sales and eager to
buy leads? Or are your open rates, sales, and click-through rates not where
you want them to be?
If it’s the latter, you’re causing email blindness. And there is only one cure to
the money-murdering disease that is email blindness and that is to write
&n
bsp; emails that entertain, excite and engage your readers.
The number one thing I fear when I send out an email is that it will be boring.
People live boring lives. They are constantly scrolling through Facebook and
Instagram wanting to be entertained and inspired. They have ordinary friends,
with ordinary jobs and ordinary routines.
They are bored!
Don’t add to this by writing limp, boring and dull emails that put your readers
to sleep.
Be that person in their life who brings them some spice, some entertainment
and excitement to their dull vanilla lives. Do not be boring.
Make it so every time your readers see your name pop up in their inbox, they
get a tiny little hit of dopamine in their brain that makes them want to read
your emails.
Do this and they will be hanging out for your next email, looking forward to
receiving it; and when they do see your name appear in their inbox, they’ll
almost stumble over themselves in a rush to see what you have to say… and
to get a hit of that dopamine.
This becomes a positive anchor towards you, your name, and your business.
Once you’ve cured email blindness, here’s what happens:
Your open rates will sky-rocket. When you ask them to click a link, they
click a link. Your readers will follow you religiously on whatever adventure
you choose to take them on. (But it better be entertaining!)
If you master this, like really master this, you will create an email selling
machine that drags in not thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions or
even tens of millions of dollars; but rather, email copy that has the potential
of increasing sales for you (or your clients) that can add up to hundreds of
millions of dollars.
But this doesn’t happen by accident. It takes effort, and most people have no
idea how to secure this kind of relationship and friend-like bond.
The takeaway being, nothing will increase the amount of sales your emails
bring in more than writing exciting and entertaining copy that spices up the
dull life of your readers.
We’ll cover more of how exactly to do just that later.
How to Almost Force People to Open Your Emails with Your Subject
Lines
It’s no secret that one of the primary drivers of email open rates is your
subject line. Other than the sender name, it’s the element of an email that
usually stands out the most in your reader’s inbox.
We’ve battled hard to ensure maximum inbox deliverability with our sender
scores and reputation, and now is the time to practically force our readers to
open up our email once it’s arrived.
There’s lots of advice out there to help you write better subject lines. And
most of this advice has a lot in common. It’s mostly about subject line
‘hacks’ and formulas, i.e., ‘Use emojis in your subject lines, or use this magic
email subject line formula, blah, blah, blah…’
Instead of these ‘hacks’, I like to focus on the strategy more than the tactics.
And my primary objective with anything to do with email is to do everything
in my power to ensure my emails end up in the ‘P’ group. And therefore, the
prime objective when writing subject lines is that they appear to be personal.
Stop reading right now and take a look at your inbox. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
What did you see?
Let me guess…. You saw all, or most of, the following:
Emails from your friends / family.
Emails from colleagues.
Alerts and updates from social media sites, e.g., ‘Dave wants to join
your network’.
Emails from your manager or senior executive.
Emails from businesses and blogs.
Bills and electronic statements.
Software and tool notifications and update.
Some emails require an action. Others don’t.
Some emails have to be stored for your records, while others don’t.
Some of those emails you dread having to deal with. Others are easy.
But all of these categories of emails fall into two distinct groups. You
guessed it, the good ol’ ‘P’ and ‘C’ groups.
And you can bet your bottom dollar the ones assured to get opened and
actioned are the emails that appear to be personal.
Therefore: Your email subject line’s primary objective is to sound as much
like their trusted friend, family member, or colleague as you can… without
being tricky or gimmicky or lame.
The more you sound like a friend, the less you’ll scream, ‘I belong in the “C”
group! Delete me!’
Here are the subject lines of a few personal and work-related emails in my
inbox:
crazy check this out
can I chat to you about this in morning?
let’s buy this for Melia
Friday’s playgroup
Bali accommodation options
approval needed
What do those subject lines all have in common?
They:
Use lower-case or sentence case – not Title Case or, even worse, ALL
CAPS.
Lack almost all punctuation.
Keep it to four or five words, max.
Ask questions.
Tell you enough to want to open them, but not the whole story.
When crafting your email subject lines, you need be doing all of the above, in
order to make your subject lines look personal and in the ‘P’ group.
If you sit down to write your email and find yourself struggling to come up
with something, a great place to look for a bit of inspiration is at Native
get there, scroll down the page a little until you see this:
Notice the ‘AdChoices’ link on the top right and bottom left. These are native
ads served up by an ad network called Taboola. These headlines can be a
good source of inspiration.
Intrigue is a proven winner to draw in readers. But when using this style of
clickbait-y subject lines, you have to close the loop in the email. The subject
line creates burning intrigue and curiosity and the email needs to satisfy it.
This shows your readers that you can deliver , and that you’re not simply
tricking them to open your emails; this makes them more likely to take action
and keep opening up your emails in the future.
If you still can’t come up with anything, then there are templates and
formulas. However, as a general rule I’m not a fan because everyone uses
them and they can come across as generic if you’re not careful.
I mean how many times have you seen ‘7 secrets to losing weight’ or ‘10
ways to make more money’?
Subject lines like this work a few times, but after a while, seeing the same old
recycled subject line formulas just gets old. It trains your readers not to
engage with them and causes email blindness.
That’s why I personally try to avoid formulaic subject lines.
But let’s get real. Sometimes you need a template or formula to fall back on
when your creative juices aren’t flowing. They can help you get unstuck or
help you get you started with some fresh ideas.
So, as a last resort you can swipe and deploy this list of email subject line
formulas or use
them to get your creative juices flowing:
how to make {subject} that will {benefit}
21+ ways to grow your {subject}
do you think you can {benefit}?
The only way to achieve {desirable thing} without doing {undesirable
thing}
5 reasons why you should {subject}
{benefit} while you sleep
[template] 10 best {subject}
how {name/company} does {subject}
{name/company} can afford any {subject}, he uses {solution}
how {name/company} got {number/desirable outcome} in {number of
days}
real {audience} use {solution}
discover the {solution}
{subject}, {subject}, and {unrelated subject}?
stop {undesirable current state} now
copy and paste these {subject} [last chance]
discover the {solution} that will change your life today
Subject Line Length
Most email subject lines are between 41 and 50 characters. This is what I call
the ‘death zone’. Why? Because everything average is wrong, and research
shows this is the least effective character length for email subject lines. These
subject lines are often crafted by ‘email marketers’ who are trying to cram as
much info into 50 characters as possible.
According to data from Return Path, 65 characters seems to be a sweet spot
for email subject lines, which is about 15 characters more than the average
subject line. When subject lines are 61-70 characters long, they tend to get
read. However, I’ve personally found the best success from selling millions
through email, is that wherever possible, short and personal get the best
results.
For subject lines, from 1 to 20 characters is where the magic happens.
My own findings are backed up by recent research from Yes Lifecycle
Marketing. Their research also concluded that emails with shorter subject
lines tend to get significantly higher open rates and click rates.
The report was based on data from more than seven billion emails sent in the
second quarter of 2017 by Yes Lifecycle Marketing clients in a wide range of
industries.
They too found that emails with subject lines between 1 and 20 characters in
length have the highest average open rate (18.5%), unique click rate (2.4%),
and click-to-open rate (12.9%).
Compared with medium-length subject lines (21-60 characters), longer
subject lines (61+ characters) have slightly higher average open rates, unique