How to Get More People to Read Your Emails

Having emails full of great content doesn't matter unless people are opening them. This often starts with a catchy headline to get recipients to click it. Successful email marketing efforts take a mix of factors to get exactly right.

First, you need to avoid the spam filter and end up in the inbox. Then, you need to get people to open the message. However, even if these first two steps happen, there's no guarantee recipients will click through to your website.

Here are some tips to make your email marketing more successful:

1. A/B Test Everything

Like any online marketing effort, there are a multitude of factors that influence the success or failure of email messages. It's difficult to determine how campaigns are performing without thorough A/B testing.

Things that may seem intuitive are not. For example, there isn't one layout that will drive conversions, according to a blog post from Vertical Response.

The right design depends on your audience's preferences. The best way to select the right format is to test several different options. Marketers can also run split tests where half the audience gets one layout and the other half gets another to determine which design generates more clicks.

2. Write Snappy Headlines

This is crucial for increasing open rates.

While personalization can help, it's also important to avoid sounding too promotional because this can act as a spam trigger for many email providers. The right headline will intrigue users into clicking.

It can be helpful to make the subject line a reference to the relevant content in the email rather than the offer. In addition, you can attract recipients' attention by posing questions in your headline.

This is especially true if the question provokes people to take action.

3. Send Email From a Specific Employee Rather Than Your Company

Subscribers love to be able to put a name to a faceless company.

While many businesses have a generic email address they send messages from, it can be more effective to tie messages to a specific person.

This allows recipients to make a more direct connection with the company and can make messages more engaging.

4. Consider Your Target Audience

No email marketing effort should be executed without first considering the target customers' preferences. A newsletter format that includes whole articles can be effective, but you need to have reliable data about how users are interacting with your messages.

For example, if most of your subscribers are reading emails from mobile devices, this longer format may not be appealing. Marketers need to assess subscriber data to determine device preferences because this can often dictate layout choices.

In some cases, including links instead of full articles can be a more effective option, but marketers need to be careful to test the overall effect on user experience. Too many links can be visually unappealing.

5. Use Responsive Design

Responsive design is one way to overcome the challenges of providing a consistent experience to users across multiple platforms. With the prevalence of mobile devices today, there is a strong chance many of your subscribers will be reading emails from their smartphones.

However, a mobile-optimized experience isn't enough anymore because the variety of screen sizes make one layout size ineffective.

Responsive design reformats based on the device used to view it. This is one the best ways to accommodate users, whether they use a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer to read emails. If you want to learn more about responsive emails, check out Litmus's resources.

What tactics do you use to make your emails more clickable?