The holiday season typically brings an over-saturation of emails to the inbox. In this high traffic season, it’s important to stand out in the inbox to achieve the best delivery results, open rates, and click-through rates. Here are some tips to help your emails grab subscribers’ attention.
Make It Clear Who Sent The Message
The from address is one of the first things a subscriber uses to determine if they are going to open the message, so use a from name and address that is easily recognizable as your organization/brand. As always, make sure that the domain for the from address is owned by you (not an address from a free site like AOL or Yahoo).
In addition, authenticating email from your domain helps protect your brand by reducing the chance that your email is mistaken for spam. Critical Impact can help you build and maintain a good sender reputation by providing a digital signature that authorizes each email as coming from you. Contact your account admin today with any questions about getting sender authentication set up for your account.
Create a Compelling Subject Line
The subject line also plays a big role in the open rates for your message. Experiment with two different versions of a subject line, to see which one performs the best with your specific group of subscribers. A good A/B test will reveal usable data to help you determine what’s working in your marketing emails and what’s not.
Target Subscribers to Drive Results
As we mentioned in last month’s blog article, It’s Time to Clean Your Email List to Drive Results, you can easily avoid large bounce rates and unnecessary host blocks by making sure your send lists are clean and do not contain non-responsive subscribers. You can also organize subscribers into curated segments. Each subscriber is unique in their interests and therefore will respond differently to emails. Improve your sender reputation by cleaning your lists, and sending targeted email campaigns.
Create Content that Sparkles
Your holiday message content needs to grab your subscriber’s attention and present information clearly. Choose content that is relevant and interesting to your subscribers. Consider segmenting your subscribers by region or interests in order to send them more targeted messages.
To improve click-through rates, add a clear call to action link. Lead up to the CTA by providing compelling content. Make sure your CTA clearly stands out for subscribers who quickly skim your emails on their phones.
For good delivery, you should also try to avoid content that could flag a spam filter. Make sure you have a good mix of text and images, since some spammers use images only in their email campaigns. Also try to avoid spammy words such as click here, free, urgent, etc. Finally, make sure that there aren’t too many hyperlinks in your message, and that the links go to a reputable site, such as your company’s website.
We hope you can use these tips help to make sure your email lands in the inbox this busy holiday season.