E-Mail Newsletters That You Want to Get Read

Having a mailing list is a highly valuable asset and something that you can use to make a huge amount of money and to promote your business and your products to a large number of people. If you want to make money from an e-book for instance, or from a course that you are going to run online via a series of podcasts or videos, then you can use a mailing list in order to quickly build anticipation for this and then to gain a lot of sales when you unleash your project.

The problem however is that your e-mails need to be read if they are going to have any impact on your sales. And this is where things get difficult. When you have a mailing list you have the ability to market to people inside their inboxes. However the difficult aspect is that so many people will just see them and delete them without even reading them. Tricky…

How to Get Your E-Mails Opened

So how do you make the most of your mailing lists and ensure that your messages actually get opened? Well the answer is that it is all in your subjects are what your people will read and they are what they will use to decide whether or not they have any interest in what you have to offer them (that and the name of the person who sent it…).

The way to get your e-mail read then is to think about the psychology of the person reading that subject heading. People are drawn to e-mails that sound genuine and sound as though they are from a real person on their contacts list, or that might have real opportunities. They instantly turn off if an e-mail doesn’t seem personal or if they know that they’ve been sent to lots of people.

One thing you can do then if you want to be a little more sophisticated is to require people to fill in their names when they fill in their e-mails and to then use this in your e-mail system to automatically put the name of each person you are messaging at the start of the e-mail. So it will say ‘New offers for you Adam’, rather than just ‘New offers’. This way you can sound more personal but don’t overdo it – remember that real people don’t always use names when they address someone, particularly by e-mail. It can come off as creepy if you don’t practice moderation here…

Learning to Sound Human

More important is to just generally phrase your e-mail in such a way that it seems as though you are talking directly to that person. Think about how you would phrase the subject heading of a regular e-mail to someone – chances are that it would be brief and abbreviated and just reference the e-mail. For instance it might say ‘Suggestions’ or ‘Some great ideas’ rather than ‘Lots of great ideas you can use on your website!’. You might even just say ‘hi’.

Another thing is to make it sound like you’re responding to a question or conversation which will pique people’s interest. Starting with ‘Re: Your query’ for instance is a little trick that will make it look as though you’ve been asked to message them and they might assume they’ve just forgotten to look.

People also like to be important and they like to contribute. So if you look like you’re asking for their help ‘Can you lend a hand?’, or ‘Need some advice’ then they will also be more likely to open for their sense of importance (and because it’s a less obvious marketing strategy).

Likewise consider what they wanted when they originally signed up to your mailing list. Did they get a free e-book on web marketing (in which case ‘A question about your website’ is a great subject), or were they interested in getting fit (‘Your personal training program’).