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Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Doing it Online:

• How to use the power of emoji’s to help your open rates…
• How to avoid ‘click-baiting’ but still grab attention…
  
• 3 ways to get more people to read your emails…
• And other tricks to get your emails opened as much as possible!

So… Apple, in their infinite wisdom, has made some updates to tracking…

And this is going to affect email open rates in a big way.

Now, we get it, it’s to help with privacy etc. 

But, the nerds/entrepreneurs in us are all like…”Nooooo!” Because it’s going to make it harder to track how emails are going and the stats just aren’t going to be as reliable. 

This means it may look like your open rates are going to go way down, even if that’s not accurate. Which is a bummer. But don’t stress, because even with all these new changes, we’ve got some tips + tweaks for you. 3, in fact. (+ a bonus tip).

So, let’s dive into it + give you 3 ways to get more people to read your emails!

Tip #1: Use emoji’s + personalisations

Our first tip is to make sure you’re using emojis and personalisations in the subject line. Don’t use them all the time, just sprinkle them in every now and then. Because the whole point of this is to keep things feeling a bit fresh, and not letting the audience get too used to (bored of) your content. 

Making things personal by using their name is a great way to catch their attention, again, just remember not to do it all the time. 

Tip #2: Alternate between short/long + serious/silly subject lines

Our second tip is to mix up your content, or more to the point, the way you deliver your content. To keep things feeling fresh and not formulaic, try experimenting with your subject line length and style. 

Sometimes a really short and snappy 2 or 3 word line can be perfect. Other times, a full sentence is great. Switching between the two every now and then is best. 

You can also play around with a few fun, lighter, even abstract subject lines. Sometimes a little bit of a random subject line can be a fantastic curiosity hook. 

Although, just be careful not to slip into being ‘click-bait-y’. We don’t want that. I go into this more in the episode, so give that a listen for more details here. 

Tip #3: Split test!

Our third tip is my absolute favourite. The split test! We do this with all of our campaigns. 

The split test is simple, you just come up with 2 subject lines for each email and then the email service sends out the email with both subject line versions to a small portion of your list. 

Some will get the first version, others will get the 2nd version and after a period of time, the best performing subject line will be sent out to the remainder of your list. 

If you have a smaller list, it’s a good idea to allow for a longer window of time to test the two subject lines, to make sure it’s statistically significant.

The split test is also a good time to have a play with some really contrasting styles, you can make one long, one short, one fun, one serious and see which one performs better. And you can get a feel for what your audience responds to. 

Pro tip: I would highly recommend at the end of each month, that you (or your VA if you have one) go through your stats and pull out the 2 best and 2 worst performing emails and add those to your reporting. You’ll begin to see patterns, like maybe every time you use an emoji you get an extra 10% on open rates.

Most email service providers should allow you to do this, and if you don’t split test already, we highly recommend using it.

Bonus tip! Be consistent!

And a bit of a bonus tip here for you is to be consistent. Consistency builds trust. And at the end of the day, the people who are going to open your emails are the people who feel like they have some kind of a relationship with you. They feel like they know your brand, they know what to expect (not in a boring, formulaic way) and they know you always hold up your end of the bargain.

(Also, please don’t just show up in their inbox when you’re promoting something!)

I do give a bit more insights here in the episode, so go and give that a listen for a few extra pieces of gold dust.