Some will argue that email marketing is a waste of time because: “I always delete enewsletters when they come through.” It’s true that these days even grandma is tech savvy enough to smell an email sales pitch. Yet email marketing is a huge business, and that’s because when it’s done right, it can work. Good email marketing can help establish a brand, generate sales, and boost a brand’s fan base.

The problem is that lots of people try building their own enewsletters, and they go about it the wrong way. We’ll briefly look at some of the dos and don’ts for firing off marketing emails that will help your email get read.

Subject lines are like speed dating

Subject lines are your first impression. Your reader will see the subject line and, in a split second or two, they will decide whether to open the email or not – so make sure it’s a damn good line.

Like on the dating scene, you have to capture someone’s attention quickly before they switch off and move on. You can be guaranteed that your readers’ inboxes will be flooded daily, so you’re competing against dozens or perhaps hundreds of others. No one is going to read that many emails, so you really need to stand above the crowd.

Obvious sales pitches, boring writing, and stupid sentiments are major turn-offs. Subject lines like “Wow – 15% off hats!”, “You won’t believe these 5 tricks to land a man” and “There will be some changes to the OCR later this year, according to RBNZ CEO blah blah…” are all probably destined straight for that little trash icon.

A simple rule of thumb is to ask yourself the question “would I open it?” Be really honest with yourself about this. If you’ve already invested a lot of time and sweat into your email, then you probably just want to answer “yes!” But think about it – if someone sent you that email, would you actually take the time to open it and read it? There are always more interesting ways to express an idea, so there’s no harm in rethinking your subject line if you need to. For more information on writing a good subject line, check out our headline tips.

Who is your reader?

In our experience, far too many people overlook this simple question. Until you know who your audience is, you can’t possibly tailor the content to suit them, and if the content isn’t relevant, then who’s going to read it? An email about 10 top slimming bridesmaid dresses, for example, is going to be deleted by every teenage boy in your database.

So consider what your content is and how you can twist it to suit the bulk of your readers. To use another example, suppose you sell cakes. There would be no point in sending out emails that are just about beautiful baby shower cakes. Sure, some mothers-to-be would be interested in what you have to say – but they probably don’t represent that majority of your readers. What about the people who want birthday or wedding cakes? The third time they see another subject line like “Beautiful Blue Baby Boy Cake” they will probably block you.

If you have several different sets of people that you’re trying to appeal to, then what you can do is write separate small articles in your enewsletter that will appeal to each of them and keep your subject line more broad, but still engaging.

Reward people for opening your email

Aha! They’ve opened your email! You’ve got their attention! So…now what?

First off, don’t bombard your reader with a wall of text. As soon as you do, they will think: “Aw dammit, it was just boring spam after all” and promptly delete it.

It’s simple really, make sure you reward your readers. Your readers are valuable so reward them each and every time they open one of your emails. Now, the reward doesn’t have to be monetary. It just has to be something that makes your readers glad that they took the time out to read it. So, for example, if you sell cookies, tell people your top tips to make foolproof, gooey, soft chocolate chip cookies. It’s actually pretty unlikely that they’ll go away and do it, but it gives them interesting content and helps to establish you as a cookie-making master.

To be continued…

These are just a couple of basic tips to improve your email marketing. We’ll go over some more tips next time, but in the meantime if you follow these rules, your emails are far more likely to be read.