Email Blast? Here’s How to Get Your List Read

Email blasts will always be a marketer’s best friend. For starters, the ROI it delivers is massive, with every $1 spent on email marketing reported to return $38.

But of course, you can’t just “blast away.” Your emails must be optimized to the brim if you are to see such returns.

And if you think your marketing campaigns can use a small boost or two, read through this guide to discover how you can add more firepower to your email blasts.

Get Better Open Rates By Personalizing The Email Blast

Open rates measure the number of people in a list who viewed a particular email campaign. It is a vital email marketing metric and the benchmarks vary from one industry to another.

If you’re in the online business sector, an open rate of 12.38 percent puts you neck-to-neck with your peers. On the other hand, the finance, banking, and insurance industries have a much lower benchmark, sitting at 8.29 percent.

The overall success of a campaign is measured using various metrics. But we can all agree that a higher open rate is a step in the right direction.

And if you want to succeed on that end, optimizing the “From” address is a top priority.

People are used to seeing a name in that field. Using just an email as a “From” address may lose the trust of subscribers.

Think about it:

Which message are subscribers more inclined to click and read - one from info@acme.com or an email from “William From Acme”?

Perhaps you’d agree that the second “From” address doesn’t just look better and sound more personal than the anonymous email address, the latter is also likely to translate to better open rates.

And as a side benefit, the personalized address enforces better brand recognition in a subscriber’s inbox.

Another important personalization tip: use the subscriber’s first name when addressing them. Nobody wants to be addressed “Dear Customer” or “Dear Subscriber.” It’s a “great” way to make someone feel they’re just another face in your list. So instead, go for something like “Hi Edward” or “Hey Jennifer.” And use their name in the first sentence, which is often shown in the inbox.

Be one of the email marketers who personalize their email blasts - and you’ll be a step closer to seeing a 26% increase in open rates!

Make A Strong Impression With A High-Impact Subject Line

Fact: 33% of recipients read an email based on the subject line alone.

If your email’s subject line isn’t written to catch attention and compel people to click, you’d be hard-pressed to find success in your email blasts.

Next time you’re writing a subject line, keep the following tips in mind:

First of all, keep it short and straightforward. 40 percent of emails are opened via mobile. And if your subject line is too long, it will get cut off. To make sure your subscribers read the entire line, stick to 50 characters or less.

Now, you also want to tell them what’s inside using those 50 characters. Are you offering an ebook? A video guide? Or maybe you’re running a contest? Whatever it is, you want to let people know what’s in it for them.

And last but not the least, start your subject lines with strong verbs. Subject lines aren’t different from call-to-actions. Both are written to encourage people to take action, and in the case of subject lines, that action is to open the email and read it.

Deliver A Better Experience By Using Responsive Design

Are your messages designed to be responsive and optimized for mobile email readers?

Responsive design adapts to the device of the user - may it be a desktop, iPhone, or a tablet. It uses style sheets to scale up and down depending on the display, guaranteeing a better reading experience for the user.

A static design is likely to end up with poor formatting, jumbled text, and overlapping elements. Not only will it provide a terrible user experience. Your email might be mistaken for spam, too.

And what do people do with email newsletters that look like spam?

They unsubscribe from it.

So, use a responsive email design in your campaigns. And don’t forget to preview your message across different devices before hitting “send.” If your email service provider offers a testing and preview tool, put it to good use.

Make Fine-Tuning Your Email Blasts A Routine

The Obama campaign in 2011 was a huge success, generating $690 million. A big portion of it came from the fundraising emails.

The President’s online fundraiser had a lot of moving parts. Different drafts and subject lines were tested. A sophisticated analytics system ensured only emails that are sure to work were sent. But most important, the campaign’s team of writers never stopped working.

Even after uncovering a high-converting subject line, Obama’s camp didn’t rest on their laurels. They knew that a subject line’s novelty would wear off sooner or later.

And so, they went in search for ideas, carried out more tests, and rinsed and repeated the whole process. A lot of work for sure, but that’s what a $690-million success requires.

You may not be running for presidency nor raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. But if you want your email blasts and campaigns to succeed, you have to play the email marketing game a la Obama’s camp.

Make it a habit to check your email analytics’ reports, and be sure to pay attention to the most important metrics. Aside from the open rate, every marketer should also consider the following key performance indicators (KPI):

• Click-through rate (CTR): The number of people who clicked on the email’s link

• Conversion rate: The number of people who clicked on the link and completed an action such as buying a product, filling out an online form, or requesting phone call.

• Bounce rate: The sent emails that were not delivered to the recipient due to a number of reasons including non-existent email addresses or a problem on the server’s end

• Overall ROI: The total return of investment from your email blasts

Remember: If you can’t track it, you can’t improve it.

So track the emails you send and be thorough, paying attention to the subject line, the contents of the email, and any small changes you make with each blast. Only through this meticulous process of analyzing results and fine-tuning campaigns will you find the type of emails your subscribers respond to the best.

Ready To Blast Your Way To Success?

If you want to “up” marketing to the next level, email blasts should be in your arsenal of tactics. It’s a proven revenue generator and a great way to keep in touch with your audience.

And in this post, we looked at four tactics to add more firepower to your email blasts: personalize the message, use a high-impact subject line, adopt a responsive design, and last but not the least, always fine-tune your campaigns.

Which of those tactics will you try today?