TH-Dissecting An Email To Ensure Effectiveness

So…what’s in an email?? You have a list- you write a little message- press send and bam! All done, right?

Wrong!

The world of email communication is so so so vital in today’s marketing world that it becomes almost impossible to think of a world without marketing emails.

I wake up every morning and go through my 6 email inboxes. I have a Gmail account for work, a Yahoo account for super official mail, a Yahoo account for junk mail, a Hotmail account (because that was my first email account ever) for junk…and so on and so forth. I read through subject lines in each of these inboxes at-least 5 times a day (if not more) from my smart phone.

Each of those emails are targeted to me because I have either asked to be sent them, or opted in, a member of something or being SPAMmed.

There is a guaranteed science behind each of those emails and I am going to reveal them to you briefly below:

1. Target Audience/Group:  I fit into a certain target group and someone has bought my contact information because there is some data supporting the fact that if I like floral prints, i will most likely wear dresses. And voila! I have eCommerce shops knocking at my inbox- showing me all kinds of floral prints available in beautiful dress shapes.

2. Subject Line: Ah! The science of subject lines. Chances are- I am either part of a test group that is keeping tabs on my particular behavior or I’m part of a control group whose behavior is all sorted out. What I mean is- the subject line “Jessica- 50% for the next two hours” could be the only way to get me to open your email. The reason for this is- they’ve tested different emails on me. And know that urgency works for me.

3. Mobile Friendliness: If ain’t mobile friendly- fuhgetaboudit. Not happening. I won’t open it. Touch it. Look at it. In-fact- some people will go as far as to unsubscribe if they don’t like the user experience you are offering them. Damn, we’re spoiled!

4. Layout and imagery: This may be stating the obvious- but take the time to play around with the layout to see which one is the most successful of the lot. People respond to good experience- and once they’re used to a certain format- don’t break that unless you have an even better experience lined up for them. Think of it as changing the newspaper read from portrait to landscape. No-one has ever broken that convention- because no-one needs to.

There are so many more ways to appear credible when writing, sending and designing an email. Time of Day, Day of Week, Landing Pages, Call to Action, Personalization, who it’s “From”, the actual message are just more elements to what makes a successful email.

Take time- effort and skill to really understand what you’re doing when it comes to emails. When you do- you’ll begin to see an uptick in those open rates and click through.