I have long been a proponent of email marketing, despite the many statements by ‘experts’ that Social Media would bring its death. Email is intimate, granted you can get the recipient to open, learn to trust, and open again and again. Email is a one to one conversation with your reader, if written properly. Strong email marketing is about trust and relationship building; good old fashioned one to one sales.

I’ve been a student of successful email newsletters for years, and my best focus group has always been my own inbox. What emails do I open, and why? Which ones cause an immediate ‘unsubscribe?’ Which feel like a gift, and have me making mental notes to look out for the next episode?

Getting a reader to open an email depends primarily on two things:

1.   Your email list: do your readers trust you, or are you truly spamming people unaware of who you are or what you do? If they trust you, they’ll probably open it.
2.   Your subject line: being clever is tricky; being interesting is even trickier. This is where an expert copywriter really helps.

Keeping a reader interested so that they open your next email is obviously based on content, and it is my very strong suggestion that you keep it sweet and to the point.  Unless your reader is depending upon a content heavy missive, focus on one valuable subject.  Ignore the temptation, especially difficult with all of the pretty templates available, to have right hand columns and left hand columns and boxes on top and below….. no one has time.

Here’s a sample of how powerful the combination of an opt in email list and a focused, interesting newsletter can be:

Granted, this is a very small, targeted email list of 98 recipients, but the 70% open rate is nothing to sneeze at.  The click through rate was impressive, but the calls inspired by this email to the client were even more important, since they are in a very trust dependent business.

You will find that your readers begin to look forward to your email, and your open rates will soar, if you make it simple, easy, and less time consuming for them.