Email Marketing Secret 1 - How to Get your Subscribers to Open your Emails and Take Immediate Action

Hello there. Before you go ahead with reading this write-up, ask yourself “Why am I reading this article? Why did I click it open in the first place? Something compelled you; didn’t it? Guess what it is –The Headline. Yeah that’s why you are reading this article. This seemingly simple step is one of the three you can use in grossly commanding your clients to open and read immediately. You know why? Because it offers the promise of a solution to their problems.

That brings us to key number 1 in email marketing techniques: Make your subject lines as compelling as possible. Not much of a secret, eh? But you would be amazed to know that not many internet marketers are using this seemingly simple method. This factor alone can increase your subscriber-reading rate by over 70%. The rule is the same. If you want to catch people’s attention then pen something that will instantly grab their attention by using terrific psychological triggers.

If you’ve been around a while, you are aware that not all emails get read. I mean it is hard enough getting the thing through Spam filters to your subscribers’ inbox. Even then, it might not get read. Yet there is a simple technique that you could use each and every time to conjure up wonderful attention-grabbing headlines. That’s the reason you are still reading this article. I got your attention long enough to compel you to click through. No hypnotic stuff here, just plain common sense.

Now, how do you get to write such attention-grabbing subject lines? See the end from the beginning. When I started with this article, the goal I had in mind was to teach how you could get your subscribers to click through your headlines. So, I had to ask myself “What do I want my reader to do?” “What do I want them to achieve?” Simple, eh? Yeah.

At the beginning of this article, you got the impression that there was something you needed to know. You realised you wanted to learn this and that’s the reason you are still reading this article. At the beginning, there was a hint of getting results with our email marketing campaigns –specifically getting almost everyone on your list to click through and read your emails. That is simply what marketing and ad writing is all about. For example, let’s say you are selling shoes and you want your subscribers to buy the new foot cream or sweat-inhibiting foot powder in your stock. Sending them an email with the subject line: “Buy New Sweat Inhibiting Powder” will not get as many results as “How Do You Stop Your Feet from Smelling?” Now you see that is a unique question everyone who wears shoes is asking. So you are attending to their innate needs by asking that question. Because it is a problem they need solved, you are bound to get higher clickthroughs and ultimately make more sales.

Another result-getting technique you can use is personalization. Instead of just including “Dear friend” or “Dear Subscriber”, you might want to personalize your emails. Most autoresponders now have the facility to do that. All you have to do is automate it to send emails with subject lines starting with the subscribers’ firstname. For example, you could send an email with the title “[FIRSTNAME], here's how I build my list...” Personalizing your email is important as it promotes some form of cordiality. It enhances trust on the part of the subscriber and more importantly, singles your email out almost immediately making it stand out in the crowd.

Get your subscribers attention by piquing their curiosity. The ability to do this sets you apart from your competition. Marketers who have mastered this skill have always made money and gotten higher clickthroughs than their competition. A subject line like “How I got 20,000 visitors in 7 days using just RSS feeds” will definitely grab your audience’s attention and trigger a psychological response making them think they could achieve the same if it is real and doable. The next thing they think after seeing that is “Really? Is that possible? Let me find out” and click. Your email opens before them.

In the next issue we’ll look at another very important aspect of generating higher subscriber results and clickthroughs. In the meantime, watch out for “Email Marketing Secret 1. How to Get Your Subscribers to Open Your Emails and Take Immediate Action. Part 2”.

Remember what today’s lesson is: Make your headlines as compelling as possible.