Have you looked at your own inbox recently? If not, why not take a quick look now? If it is anything like my own it is becoming increasingly crowded. In fact I would guess that I am receiving 35% more emails a week in 2009 than I was receiving in 2008.
So why are we seeing an increase in the number of emails we are receiving?
Well put simply, there are more people are now realising that email communications deliver real results! But as more businesses start to reap the rewards from email communications, competition in the inbox will only get fiercer. As a result, I have started to think about what factors can make your messages really stand out in the recipient’s inbox. What is going to make recipients open your email rather than the others that are in their inbox? And based on this research it is not going to be no easy task…
Consider how the email looks in the preview panel when no images are turned on
I recently received a flood of marketing emails within the space of a 30 minute meeting, when I returned to my desk I only actually opened one of them, the others were quickly deleted. When I looked at what had influenced my decision to open that message rather than any other, it came down to the way the message looked in the preview panel when the images were turned off.
All the other messages I had received were image heavy and appeared in the preview panel as a mess of missing images. The message that I opened also contained missing images but importantly it also contained text content within the preview panel. I could therefore see it was promoting great holiday deals for Easter and was encouraged to open it and find out more.
Making sure your email displays well within the preview panel can help you encourage recipients to open your message rather than any other.
Deliver value to your recipients on a consistent basis
Last week I received an email from a budget airline followed by an email from a competitor some 30 minutes later. I only opened one of them…
I choose to open the second email because my past experiences of their messages. They have delivered relevant and valuable messages to me in the past that have encouraged me to use their services. As a result I wanted to open their email to see what offers they had for me this time.
In contrast, my past experiences of the first companies emails has taught me that they tend to go for a one size fits all approach and therefore the offers aren’t so relevant to me. When time is tight, there is only going to be one company that gets me to open their messages.
If your campaigns are not delivering value to your subscribers they will tune out of future communications. By delivering value your recipients will want to open your messages no matter how busy their inbox becomes.
Make sure you are at the top of the recipient’s inbox when they have time to read your messages
As email marketers we are trying to make sure our message is at the top of the recipient’s inbox, when they have time to read the message and are interested about what we have to say. This is even more important as the inbox becomes increasingly competitive.
I imagine I am not alone in reading my inbox from top to bottom, or put another way, most recent first. What this means is that if I have a lot of messages to read, the messages towards the bottom (or oldest) of my inbox typically get the least attention.
How can you ensure that the message arrives at the top of the inbox? Well consider the time that you are sending the message. Sending emails overnight or at a weekend to a business address will almost certainly mean that by the time the message is read it is surrounded by other emails. Look at the activity of the subscriber, if they often open your emails at 15:00 in the afternoon then start to send the messages at that time. Consider where they are in the buying cycle, if they have just spent money with you they may be less likely to spend money again, deliver an informative message instead.
James Bunting
Communicator Corp
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http://www.emailresponsibly.com Erin
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