(This tip is provided to you from the e-book, “5 Steps to Successful E-mail Marketing,” available for download now.)
Our E-Mail Marketing service is a smart, savvy way to create and send e-mail promotions and newsletters. However, one thing it can’t do is make recipients open your e-mails and read them. That will require some creative thinking and experimentation on your part—particularly in an age when e-mail users suffer from inbox overload and unscrupulous spammers.
Let me share three good tips I came across that can help you can improve e-mail open rates. I found these in our free e-book, “5 Steps to Successful E-mail Marketing.”
1. Test your message. Before investing in an e-mail campaign that may end up putting off prospects, test it. First, send it to yourself as a test to ensure everything works. Then send it to a test sample of customers. Not only will this get you feedback on content and offers, but you’ll also learn how well your messages fare on different operating systems, different e-mail clients and different spam filters.
2. Customize your “From” field. The “From” field can be customized in most e-mail delivery systems. For example, if your company is called Contoso, you can use a branded e-mail alias like info@contoso.com as your “From” address. Recipients and their e-mail filters will begin to recognize the name, increasing the odds it will stay in their inbox.
3. Write a winning Subject line. What you enter in the “Subject” field is critical to achieving good open rates. In one study, subject lines of 35 characters or less had a 24% open rate, while longer ones averaged only a 17% open rate.
Download the e-book for a full discussion of these and other ideas for boosting open rates. And if you have any open-rate tricks or Subject line secrets you can share, please post a comment!
Want to learn more about our E-Mail Marketing service? Existing Office Live Small Business customers will find more information here.
David Alexander