31
Dec
2009
Fix Your Email Marketing Software Subject Line
Writing an email marketing program subject line is easy, right? If you said ‘yes’, for your own sake, keep reading. It’s far from an easy thing to accomplish grabbing your contacts attention, convincing them to take some action all within 50 characters. If you want to have success as an email marketer then learning how to write one is going to be the corner stone to your success.
So many people use the subject line to filter an email as junk or mark it as spam. Those 50 characters in the subject line have to be really well crafted, because a good subject line will get your email opened.
The first mission is coming up with something that will grab the attention of your contacts. What I mean by grabbing their attention is getting the person receiving the campaign to take some kind of action that can be tracked: Opening the email, clicking on a link or simply coming into your store and purchasing something.
Developing a trusting relationship with your contacts is the next thing to take into account. Your reader needs to know what to expect from your emails. The subject line has to appeal to the reader, so be as specific as possible. If you are generic in your subject line, it is likely you won’t get the reaction you want. Let your contacts know the subject of the email or how to take advantage of the offers in the email right in your subject line.
Remember that there are probably hundreds of emails that your contacts are constantly sifting through, and their time is valuable to them. Contacts will take the time to open your email as long as you remind them why they signed up for your email marketing software campaigns in the first place.
So now you need to figure out what the purpose is of your email. What is it that you want your contacts to do? Then make sure that you subject line properly expresses that. If you want to increase your sales by having contacts take advantage of a promotion, then your subject line shouldn’t say something about a new product line you have in. Your subject line should say something like “come in and get 50% off”.
Another great thing that will help you with your email marketing subject line success is looking back at your email marketing software reports and statistics. See which email campaigns elicited the greatest amount of conversion and then see what subject line you’ve used. Your subject line may have had something to do with why this particular email campaign found success with parts of your mailing list.
Take what you’ve learned from your stats and play around with the subject lines. Test them out on different portions of your contact list. You’ll get some incredible insight on the exact things that attract your contacts’ attention.
While planning your email campaign you should be determining the focus or purpose of that email. Once you’ve got that down, state that purpose in your subject line. This will make sure that your emails are more relevant to your contacts and can end up increasing the measurable action that contacts take as response to your emails.
Take writing your email marketing program subject line seriously. Don’t leave it as the “last thing” to do before sending out your email marketing program campaign. Email marketing program subject lines can be a handful, but adhering to some simple email marketing program principles will greatly improve your chances of success.
Rudy Barell is a Senior Business Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing program used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with complete email marketing. Try it free!
14
Nov
2009
Tip #3: Four ways of Keeping Email Marketing Solutions Contacts Active
Email marketing software success hinges on the quality of you contact list. However, based on email marketing software industry research, your contacts will begin to drop off approximately three months after they initially opted in to your emails. I’ve mentioned in previous articles that a drop off should be expected, but there are ways to ensure that this drop off is greatly reduced, therefore making certain that the volume of your quality contacts is much greater. Here are four strategies to help you accomplish this using email marketing software.
“Important Client” Incentives:
When selling a product, discounts can re-attract that un responsive contact so to open your emails. These offers should also give your contacts the opportunity to re-input their subscriber information. This information will tell you what their wants are and keep your records current.
Send an Email Asking Their Opinion:
The easiest way to find out the reason why a contact hasn’t been opening your emails is to ask them. Email marketing is great for sending out survey questions. Make sure that it is short and easy to fill out (you don’t want to scare them away!). Gathering feedback this way is very beneficial. Your contact will tell you directly what you should avoid doing, AND inform you on PRECISELY what they DO want. This will give you much better insight as to what it takes to maintain them as a contact. The survey email should include questions related to your services, but also make sure you add questions about their ‘preferred kind of message’ or ‘best time to be contacted by email’, and of course a ‘comments and suggestions’ portion.
Keep Closer Scrutiny on Your Contacts:
By looking a little closer at your contact list you will notice some similarities with certain of them. By identifying the commonality you might discern what it takes to get through to them. You might find they all belong to a specific demographic previously un-targeted through your past email marketing campaigns. They might all be in a different time zone, or all older males, or teenage girls. Scrutinizing more closely may trigger an idea of how to get through to this previously unresponsive group, and give you an easy solution for getting them back.
Test Your Email Marketing Tactics:
There is no harm in spending a little time testing-out different ways of sending to determine if it can attract a few more in-actives to the “good side”.
If you have made a routine of sending out your contacts at lunch (because that’s when you’ve found the time!) try varying blasting times. Keep track of if the different time of sending produces a change in reaction. Another suggestion is to modify how frequently you are sending out your email marketing solutions campaigns. If you’ve been sending once every two weeks, trying sending once every two months, or once a month.
Another way to go about changing things up would be to change your content a bit. In your analysis of your contacts, some of the similarities that you notice might require that you redesign your campaigns so that they are geared to those particular user. You can also re-work the kind of structure of your email marketing emails. Experiment with sending out differing versions of the same email: send out a more dynamic email, with links, images etc vs. a totally text based email.
A huge consideration is your subject line. Simply changing your subject line can solve a lot of your dormant-contact-issues. Some contacts won’t open an email because the subject is the same or almost the same as all the ones sent to them in the past. The idea here is that they are assuming that if the subject doesn’t change neither does the email.
Mixing it up by employing differing ways to send out your email marketing solutions campaigns can kick-start some inactives to active, but will also give you more info on what they really want.
Successful email marketing software users are spending time on the maintenance of their contact lists; it’s time to take full advantage of your email marketing software service by making that extra effort to ensure your contacts are still interested.
Rudy Barell is a Senior Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing used by businesses around the globe. Create eye-catching emails and track your success with detailed reports for your email marketing solutionsTry it free!