If you want to be a successful email marketer, it's essential that subscribers open your messages. After all, if your audience isn't opening your emails, it's impossible for them to take action, such as clicking through to your website or making a purchase.

But how do you keep them opening your emails on a regular basis? There are four primary ways: solve a problem, save them money, make them smarter or entertain them.


Here are some tips for crafting these types of successful marketing emails:

1. Solve a problem. 

If you knew that an email marketing newsletter would help solve a problem you were having, would you subscribe to it? If the sender set expectations up front and promised that every email would lead you closer to solving that problem, you'd open those messages, wouldn't you?

One example of a company that does this right is Quibb, a professional news site that allows people to share what they're reading for work. It helps its subscribers solve their problems by digesting news and allowing readers to quickly catch up on what's relevant in their industry. Quibb's problem-solving approach translates into an average open rate on its daily digest email that ranges between 50 percent and 70 percent. That's significantly higher than the average marketing email open rate (in North America) of 25.6 percent, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

2. Save them money.

Groupon and other daily deal emails have proliferated by offering subscribers the opportunity to save money. Sure, you have to spend money to save, but it can be enticing to get 50 percent off a dinner at a restaurant you've always wanted to try or 40 percent off the oil change you've been putting off for months.

Similarly, business-to-consumer marketers often put words such as "free," "save," "sale" or "free shipping" in their subject lines. Many people -- my wife included -- save such emails in their inbox for the next time they're shopping in a store or online. Then, they search their inbox for the promotional offer.

For your own marketing emails, test different types of offers. Sometimes free shipping can be more effective than a percentage discount. Other times, a dollar amount savings may work best. Try a subject line split test to see what resonates most with your audience.

3. Make them smarter.

Some of us embrace the "always be learning" motto. To hone our skills, we read business or trade publications, or we take courses. Many marketers exploit this desire to become smarter by sending emails that promise just that.

An example is social media expert Chris Brogan's weekly Sunday email. Brogan shares what's on his mind with the goal of making his subscribers smarter. In a recent email with the subject line "The Sidewalk, The Storefront and the Back Room," Brogan talked about "touch points of opportunity" -- essentially, how your potential customers can find you. His open rates are often higher than 40 percent, and many of his weekly words of wisdom are shared on social networking sites, helping him attract more potential customers to his email list.

If your emails tend to be focused on selling, try mixing it up next time. Don't sell, just inform.

4. Entertain them.

Some emails include an entertainment component to try to increase readership and sales. For example, MarketingProfs included a fun video in a blog post and email last fall to promote its annual B2B Forum. While it's uncertain exactly how effective the video was in terms of open rates, MarketingProfs did sell more forum passes after the email went out.

I've been doing this with my weekly email for several months. The video is consistently the most clicked -- and shared -- link in the entire email, often resulting in more email sign ups.

It's possible to craft an email that both entertains and saves subscribers money, or one that can both make people smarter and save them time. But most emails focus on only one of the four themes.

Take a look at your recent email marketing messages. Can you identify which of the four reasons your subscribers are reading your emails? If your answer is "none of the above," you might want to reconsider your approach.











































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Groupon CEO Andrew Mason came up with a great idea the other day that has nothing to do with daily deals. Mason, who' was ousted after his company reported poor results in the fourth quarter, tweeted a proposal that would have profound implications for anyone struggling to reach Inbox Zero nirvana:

As Business Insider has subsequently reported, a software engineer at the company took the challenge and wrote a script to apply the 50-words-and-under limit to Gmail.

When compared to Twitter's 140-character limit, this is actually quite generous. Since that quota evens out to about 25 words, you would now have double the amount to say in an email than what you might tweet. As Twitter users well know, crafting tweets can be tricky, but you can pretty much get across whatever you need to say. With 50 words, you would have no excuse.

Enforcing discipline would improve the content of most emails. There's a timeworn case to be made that shorter is better. For instance, Mark Twain once apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short one. Shakespeare also opined (via Polonius in Hamlet) that "brevity is the soul of wit." In addition, you would also automatically screen out a lot of spam and, for us journalists, press releases. Just like in Twitter, if a company wanted to alert you about a press release, they could send a sentence with a link, rather than the whole enchilada.

Despite the evidence, though, not everyone is convinced this is a good idea. Susan Etlinger, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, says that a 50-word limit is "solving the wrong problem." In her view, the issue with emails isn't their length but their sheer number. "You have to mentally triage — read and respond, ignore — that takes a lot of mental energy," she says. She also thinks that unless there was an industry-wide agreement on a 50-word length, adherence to the restriction would be spotty at best.

Joshua Lyman, an independent tech consultant, says that forcing shorter emails might lead to a "chat-like environment" where you'd get three emails instead of one. "It could certainly not help," he says. Lyman says that a word limit would, however, "make people think about their emails."

Despite the potential downsides, I think a word limit is worth a try. Email has become a scourge. Apps like Mailbox are a step in the right direction, but we need to do the equivalent of wiring our jaws shut at this point. A diet of 50 words or less will keep our inboxes lean and mean, especially if we've already set up a filter for those bloated missives from Groupon.

Image courtesy of Flickr, TechCrunch






























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