First Words... Email Marketing

When I sign up for a new online shopping account or enter my details to download something or other I’m pretty careful to notice the little checkboxes that opt me in or out of receiving further marketing messages.

I think I’m pretty fair – sometimes I’m interested and sometimes not. And from the marketer’s point of view there’s no point in bombarding someone with messages if they’re not interested. In general, the “bulk” emails that I receive are those from organisations I’m aware of. Well, the emails that make it to my inbox anyway.

So that’s the first hurdle over for the marketer. Now they’ve got to get me to open the message. I’m a dab-hand at selecting all the uninteresting messages in my inbox and deleting them without a further thought.

Stage one for getting my interest is two-fold. Firstly there’s the email subject – you’ll see the importance of getting this right discussed all over the place. However, there’s another thing to think about.

I use an email system that pops up little alerts on the screen when I receive a new email. The alert shows who the message is from, the subject, and the first few words of the message. Call me a cynic (many do…) but when I see the words “Can’t read this message…” or “Read this message in a browser”, I know immediately that the email is a bulk message, and more often than not I delete it on principle.

So the second “fold” of stage one that I mentioned before is to get the initial text in the body of your email to be as compelling as the subject. Before the “read this in a browser…” text in your email, include a very short, compelling sentence about your message. You never know, it might just get my attention.