If People Don’t Open Your Emails, You Will Not Make Money. How To Skyrocket Opening-Rates
by Mark on 24/08/09 at 3:57 pm
Do you live in your own egocentric little world? Of course you do. I know I do, and why would you be any different? Awesome. Let’s team up and read this article together.
First, let’s review the facts. People are getting loads and loads of mail. You are competing. And you want your emails read. Again, thinking they are just waiting for us to send them another email is slightly egocentric.
Just imagine what would happen if twice the amount of people would open your emails? Exactly, you
will double your sales.
But here is the problem: Did you know that only 10 percent of the people on your list actually open
them? That’s kind of the average. If you want more, well, you gotta do more. You gotta be creative.
Try to look at the subject of your emails as being “headlines”. They are really sales-copy. They are
attention-grabbers.
Nobody really knows why some of these strategies work, but they do. Why not put them to the test?
Here are some examples that are proven to work. Again, these are subject-lines. Within Your aweber or getresponse, this is what you write into the subject-field (or whatever auto-responder you use).
1. RE: Your call?
This is of course a downright devious one. People will be under the impression that you are replying
to something they themselves wrote to you. Maybe you have seen it done to you. Use sparingly in order
not to tick people off. It’s a killer-tactic, though.
2. Google Takes Me For a Ride? - The message of this one: Question marks raise curiosity. Use them sometimes.
3. [New Video]: “[Video Blog Post] Make Your Lead Magnet Sexy” Yep. Parenthesis.
4. 99% of Online-Markters have no clue about this. Yep, Percentages.
5. YOU, YOUR. (fill in the rest). Yep. pronouns will get their attention.
Ok, more email-headers:
Curiosity/Shock/Emotions
Photos enclosed, do not bend
Why I like pool-bars?
Chuckle-head does $3.8M first two years online
Confession about last night
I cried over this
Negative Headlines
I quit
I’m outta here
Mark Tetzner retires?
Things are bad….
One word…”crazy”
Don’t take it personally, but…..
I hate technology
Jim became a millionaire fast
Ok, I leave you with that. Understand that the first paragraph of you email must have something to do with what the subject-line was about. You can’t just use it to get people’s attention and then not referr to it again. Chances are, you can turn it into a joke, or share a quick story. If there is no relationship between headline and content of your email, people will feel you deceived them. Example: Fotos enclosed Do Not Bend. Chances are, your email does not contain photos that can actually be bent, I know mine never do.
Another example: If you use the headline “Jim became a millionaire fast”, you may want to briefly explain who Jim is. I used this headline with outstanding success, and briefly shared a story about Jim Rohn.
If you use a head-line like “Things are bad”, obviously your mail should NOT have that very same message. In the main-body of your email, work around it. Things are good, of course! The message here: negative headlines will increase opening rates, it’s the voyeuristic part in humans.
What is the best time to to an email-broadcast? It seems, best time of the day is 4:30 a.m. CST.
People wake up, switch on their computer, and your mail will be sitting there “above the fold·”
Now, it’s likely they will open it.
Alrighty, and for your newbies out there wondering how do I actually find out how many people open your emails: Once you have signed up to an auto-responder service and sent out a so-called “broadcast” to your list (that’s when you send a mail to all your subscribers at the same time), the opening-percentages will be displayed throughout the day. Make sure you are making a note to yourself every time you have a “winner”, so that you can use it again (or a variation of it), at some later point.
But here is the key. Make a contribution. What is the best headline you have ever used, bringing you the best opening rates of all?
