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Every Internet business owner looks for ways to generate more income from their email campaigns. Well here’s where it all starts: you need to get people in the habit of opening your emails. 

If your subscribers are not opening your emails, then they’re obviously not going to see your awesome content and strong calls to action.

So how do you get people in the habit of tapping open your emails the second those emails hit the recipients’ inboxes?

Take a look at these seven proven ways…

1. Send Emails When Your Audience Can Take Action 

Since so many people have mobile phones, most folks are almost always connected and monitoring their inboxes. However, just because they’re monitoring emails doesn’t mean they have time to take action on them.

If they open your email and don’t have time to take action, then it’s unlikely they’ll remember to take action later. By that time, their inbox will have filled up with your competitors’ emails. Yikes!

So what you need to do is figure out when your readers are not only online, but they also have time to respond.

Here are four steps you can take to figure out the best time to email your list:

1. See when most of your subscribers originally joined. For example, if a lot of people seemed to join on Tuesday morning, then that’s probably a good time to send emails.

2. Think about your audience. Where do they live? Do they work? If so, what are their work hours? What kind of hobbies do they have and when do they do them? Answer these types of questions, and you’ll get a better idea of when your prospects have time to read emails.

3. Look at when your audience is otherwise active. For example, when are they commenting on your blog or social media pages?

4. Test and track. Ultimately, this is the best way to figure out exactly what days and times are best for mailing your subscribers.

Next…

2. Broadcast Emails Regularly 

The idea here is to get your subscribers used to receiving your emails on certain days at certain times. Indeed, you want your subscribers to look forward to your regular emails.

For example, you might create a regular feature, such as offering a new freemium every Friday. You can bet your readers will eagerly open every email they get from you on Fridays!

3. Offer Your Best Content and Deals 

Sometimes email marketers figure that since they’re offering their newsletter for free, then they can offer content that’s worth zero dollars. That is just the opposite of what you want to be doing. Instead, you should be offering your BEST content to your readers.

Learn this…

You want your readers to be thoroughly impressed every time they open your emails.

That means you should be consistently sending out high-quality content. Every. Single. Email.

You should also be offering your best deals to your subscribers. Reward them for staying on your list by offering bonuses and discounts that they can’t get anywhere else.

4. Build Anticipation 

The idea here is to use your current email to boost response for an upcoming email. You do this by building anticipation, as well as telling readers exactly when to expect the next email.

For example: “Stay tuned, because tomorrow you’ll discover a surprising way to save thousands of dollars on your taxes this year. You won’t want to miss this, so keep an eye on your inbox…”

5. Use Relevant Subject Lines

You can get away with using irrelevant subject lines… once. But once you do one “bait and switch” where the subject line doesn’t match the content, your readers are going to lose faith in you. And that means they’re not going to open your future emails.

Let me give you an example…

Subject line: Here’s your $5487 affiliate check…

Email: If you join my affiliate program today, you could be receiving emails like this every month!

See how that works? You get people thinking they’re getting money, and then you pull a fast one on them. They’re going to be disappointed. They’re going to trash your email. And they might even unsubscribe.   In other words, use only relevant subject lines … not “clickbait” type subject lines!

6. Format For Mobile

More and more people are checking their emails on their mobile phones, which means you need to be absolutely sure your emails look good. Of course if you’re sending text, it’s generally no problem. Just be sure to have plenty of white space, and put links on separate lines so they stand out and they’re easy to tap/click.

And what if you’re sending HTML emails? Then you need to be sure you’re using a responsive design template. This means the design, images and columns should naturally grow or shrink to best fit the user’s device and screen size.

7. Resend Unopened Emails

Most every major email service provider (such as Aweber) provide tools for you to track how many people are opening your emails and clicking on your links. Better yet, these service providers also give you the tools to segment out the people on your list who didn’t open your last email. And that means you can send a follow-up emails to those folks.

Heads up…

Don’t send out same email with the exact same subject line and pre-header (preview) information. It’s possible the recipient decided to simply not open your last email because it didn’t grab their attention. So offer something new—a new benefit, and/or a pinch of curiosity to persuade recipients to open this second email.

Okay so… You just discovered seven proven-effective ways to get your subscribers in the habit of opening your emails. If you apply AT LEAST one of these tactics, you’re bound to see an increase in your open rate and overall conversions. But don’t just choose one method. Instead, put them all to work for you as soon as possible to see what they can do for your response rates!

Need email marketing help? The Email Marketing Kickstart Workshop is ready for you to enroll! If you want to learn how to use email marketing in your online business, get people to open your emails, click your links, and buy then you NEED to grab your spot right now at http://www.LearningIM.com/email-marketing-kickstart-workshop

It’s a problem as old as old as email marketing itself: a poorly responding list. Sometimes marketers struggle to get clicks, they struggle to get people to open their emails, and they struggle to get readers to take definite action (such as purchasing a product).

Why does this happen?

There are actually quite few mistakes that can kill your results. Are you making one or more of these mistakes too?

Read on to find out…

Mistake 1. Setting Incorrect Expectations

From the very moment someone lands on your lead page or even reads the very first email you send, you should be telling them what to expect with regards to your list.

Specifically, this includes:

What kind of content they can expect to receive. Promos? Special discounts and other deals? “How to” instructional content? Freemiums? Curated content? Some combination of these? Whatever it is, let your readers know upfront what they get.

How often they’ll receive content. People don’t mind getting frequent content, as long as they know to expect it. However, what is a problem is if you email infrequently, such as less than once per week. If you don’t get in touch on a regular basis, your subscribers are going to forget about you. That means they’ll do business with your competitor who reaches out to them more frequently.

Related to this…

Mistake 2. Repurposing Your List

Some email marketers don’t see much of a response from their lists, so they repurpose it. In other words, they start sending content that violates their readers’ expectations. This is a mistake that will kill your results.

For example, maybe you’ve told your list they’ll receive “content and tips” once a week. But then you start hammering them with promos once a day.

Or maybe you have a bodybuilding list that started off focusing on specific lifts, but now focuses almost exclusively on nutrition. You’re likely to see your conversions drop, because current subscribers primarily signed up to get lifting info, not nutrition info.

So how do you fix this?

Obviously, the first step is to plan your list strategy carefully so that you don’t end up repurposing it midstream.

Secondly, if you DO make a major change, then warn your readers. Let them know what’s coming for a few weeks before you make the change. Be sure to also change your lead page and welcome emails to reflect these changes.

Mistake 3. Sending Untargeted Emails

There are actually two parts to this mistake:

The first part is making the mistake of simply not understanding what your market wants.

There are three ways to fix this mistake:

Do your market research. Find out what your market is already buying, and then put similar offers in front of them.

Survey your list. Find out what their problems are and find out what kinds of solutions they’re seeking.

Test your offers. If they don’t perform, find an offer that does produce high conversions with your list.

The second part is making the mistake of not segmenting your list.

You can fix this problem with these steps:

Separate your prospect lists from your customer lists.

Separate customer lists according to what they purchase.

Offer freemiums to your prospects to help you segment by their interests.

Once you have these micro-targeted lists, you’ll be better able to send out targeted content and offers that produce high conversion rates.

Next…

Mistake 4. Crafting Poor Subject Lines

Your subject lines can make or break the success of each email you send. If they’re boring, overhyped or irrelevant, people won’t even bother to open your email.

You can fix this mistake by applying these tips:

Offer a big benefit. Let readers know what’s in it for them if they open the email. (E.G., “Here’s the #1 way to get more traffic…”)

Don’t overhype. It’s okay to make a bold promise if you can deliver big-time within the email, but don’t exaggerate and hype things up. (Here’s an example of what NOT to do: “How To Make $1 million in 48 hours!”)

Use social proof. People are more likely to do something if others are doing it too. (E.G., “Find out why so many smart marketers love this app…”)

Next…

Mistake 5. Ignoring the Pre-Head

The pre-head is that little bit of text that is shown in the message preview, which is accessible before the recipient actually opens the email. If the subject line gets their attention, then they’ll often look at the preview. If the preview doesn’t hold their attention, they’re not going to bother opening the email to read the rest.

Point is, you need to make the first 100 characters of your email absolutely gripping. Tell a story. Present a big benefit. Build anticipation for what’s coming. Make people curious. In short, give people a compelling reason to open your email.

Mistake 6. Making The Email About You

One of the best ways to lose your readers’ attention is to make the email about you. It’s one thing to tell a relevant story about yourself, but it’s another thing entirely to make the entire email about you. When that happens, readers bail out. You can bet they won’t see your calls to action.

So how do you avoid or fix this mistake?

There’s actually a simple “quick and easy” way to ensure you’re making your email about your readers and not yourself. Simply take a look at how many times you use words like “you” versus how many times you use words like “I” or “me.”

HINT: You should use the word “you” MUCH more frequently than words like “I” or “me.” You should be using the word “you” about three times more often than self-referential words.

And finally…

Mistake 7. Offering a Weak Call to Action

Your subscribers can be hooked and engaged throughout your entire email, but you can still blow it at the end by offering a weak call to action (or, worse yet, NO call to action).

You see, people don’t click on a button or link just because it’s right in front of their face.

You need to do two things:

#1: tell them specifically to click on that link.

#2: give them a good reason to click now.

For example: “Click here now to take advantage of this special 50% off pricing – but hurry, this offer ends tomorrow!”

Okay so those are the basic mistakes… I’m sure there are a ton more. 😉

Did you discover that you’re making one or more of the mistakes you just learned about? The good news is that you also learned how to fix these mistakes or avoid them altogether. You can even use this as a checklist of mistakes to avoid the next time you send out an email. Here’s to better conversion rates!

Need email marketing help? The Email Marketing Kickstart Workshop is ready for you to enroll! If you want to learn how to use email marketing in your online business, get people to open your emails, click your links, and buy then you NEED to grab your spot right now at http://www.LearningIM.com/email-marketing-kickstart-workshop