The following post was written by Zach Heller of www.zachhellermarketing.com. Zach is a marketer and marketing consultant who recently released his first book, The Fundamentals of Email Marketing: 7 Things You Need to Know to Achieve Success.
Let’s be honest. The average consumer uses email more now than ever before. They use email to communicate with friends, coworkers, and companies. So if your company relies on email marketing campaigns to attract new customers and increase sales from existing customers, you need to know how to make your email stand out from the tens, hundreds, or thousands of others that wind up in our inboxes every single day.
“247 billion emails were sent each day in 2009. That’s an email every 0.00000035 seconds.” – e-Dialog “Manifesto for E-mail Marketers: Consumers Demand Relevance” (2010)
But in a world with so much email, how is standing out even possible? A combination of good timing and strong messaging is a great start.
Timing
The time your email goes out may be dependent on a specific deal or deadline that is approaching. But if you can spare a day or even a few hours here and there, you may be able to avoid “peak” times and overly crowded inboxes.
Since the majority of people you’re marketing to will either work full time or attend school, weekends are generally lower on the list of busy email days. But steer clear of sending out marketing emails on weekends because most people are not checking email often and will most likely be unresponsive to any sales or promotional messages.
Mondays are busy days with lots of email for people to catch up on from the weekend, which means you’re fighting with more emails for attention. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are probably the best days to send marketing emails because people have had time to clean out their inbox and get readjusted to the week.
Time of day can also be important. Send your email too early and you’ll get put into a pile of unread emails first thing in the morning. Send it too late and people are wrapping up their days and will likely avoid your email unless it’s something they’re waiting for. Aim for the middle of the day, the hour or two before and after lunch, to get the most attentive readers.
Messaging
There are usually 2 pieces of your email which are seen first – and seen alongside those same 2 pieces of every other email in someone’s inbox. For that reason, they are the most important aspects of your email if you’re fighting for opens. Those are the Sender Name and Subject Line.
The Sender Name should clearly identify who you are. The name of your company, the name of the department in your company, or the name of the mailing list (as long as it’s descriptive and tells people why they are getting this email). Things like “NoReply” or “Info” will do nothing but look like spam and blend in with the crowd.
The Subject Line should clearly identify the reason for the email and why people should open it in as few characters as possible. Be specific, but brief. If your subject line is too long it will get cut off and lose all meaning. If it’s a special promotion, use numbers and percentages, as those will stand out. But be sure to avoid the word “Free” or Dollar Signs ($) as much as possible as spam filters are looking for those specifically in the subject line.
We are all so used to getting promotional emails from companies that our first instinct is to hit the delete button. Your job, as a marketer, is to approach each email you send out thinking “What will make people not delete this?”
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