8 Factors that Dramatically Impact Your Email Effectiveness

Permission

We send a weekly newsletter about our new feature releases and product improvements called the Product Insider. This is sent to current partners who want this information, and have come to anticipate its delivery every Monday afternoon. Because they’ve opted in and see this as relevant information, we average less than two unsubscribes each time we deliver the newsletter to more than 1700 contacts.

Brand recognition

Is huge. When people trust the brand, they’re far more likely to open the email. Our 10X marketing automation campaigns take advantage of brand recognition and the results follow. Recently the Modesto Bee, the premier media outlet for Modesto, California, sent out one of our campaigns customized with their branding. While average industry open rates sit near 15%, their campaign had a 34% open rate. What’s more, is that average industry click through rates hover under 7%, while this campaign say a 49.4% click through rate. Brand recognition is nearly magic.

Timeliness

According to a study done at MIT, the odds of connecting with a lead increased 100 fold if the lead was called within five minutes, versus 30. Further, the chances of qualifying a lead were 21 times better if the lead was called within five minutes. Ring those phones!

Email address

We’ve discovered that people are comfortable with opening emails from familiar faces like VPs or managers, and less so with emails from generic addresses like info@yourcompany.com. Send your emails from the most recognizable face in the company. Would you rather get an email from Mark  Zuckerberg or Facebook?

Subject line

Short is sweet. Subject lines are like an elevator pitch for your email. If your subject is too long, you’re going to lose readers. If it’s short, you’ll stand out. A concise subject line is a sure way to boost your open rates by more than 2%.

Personalization

People are inundated with emails. If you’re not thrilled to find another “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!” or “Wow, best deal ever” email in your inbox, neither are your recipients. Provide something of value that speaks directly to them. And I don’t mean using their %%FirstName%%; I mean offering content that people really want to open. The Kansas City Star ran a 10X marketing automation campaign with us. They reached a staggering 51.43% open rate. The click-through rate hit 79.20%, while average industry rates for the same vertical sits near 6.58%. We attribute this success to the personalized content in the emails, customized for each prospect.

Expectation

If you’ve previously sent emails that set the expectation of providing value, your next email is much more likely to be opened.  Because our partners have come to expect value from our Product Insider, our open rates are consistently near 25%.

Quick pitch vs. connection

For the last few months, we’ve been testing two email campaigns with our outbound sales team. One is what we call short and sweet—a quick how are you and a qualifying question to determine if we’ve sought out the correct contact —while the other is a longer email, full of content. So what performed better? The response rate on the long emails was about 5.97%, while the short and sweet saw a response rate of 42.11%. Bye bye verbosity!

Check out our newest case study on the Modesto Bee to see how putting these into action can vastly improve open and click through rates!