Ryte's journey to become Masters of Mailing.
We at Ryte love keeping in touch with our currently over 600.000 users worldwide. For this purpose, we use several ways of communication. Email marketing is one of them. In this digital age, emails are not only an excellent starting point for conversation. They can also be very beneficial in building a relationship of trust with people all over the world.
If you want to experience the value of effective email marketing firsthand, see how we did it!
How email marketing helped us out
Almost two years ago, my journey with this amazing company began. Since then, the number of approximately 240.000 users grew rapidly. Of course, there were a lot more aspects that changed with our user count. One example is our rebranding in 2017. The well-known Brand Name OnPage.org was left behind, and we finally became Ryte.
Naturally, in a short amount of time, our user base had tons of questions and an (at that time) relatively small team was eager to answer all of them as efficient and fast as possible. It was challenging but…
a well-thought-out mailing strategy helped us immensely. To me, that made one thing very clear:
Whatever might be happening with your business, having the right email marketing technique is like having a safety net. What this safety net is made from and how stable it is, however, depends on you.
The future for email marketing looks so bright. So why is it that, many still not succeeding with it?
Things that are too simple often tend to be risky. I experienced that, too. It happens that we write emails while being busy, juggling different tasks at once and suddenly our mails become worse than what we ever wanted to send out.
If you are not cautious here, it will result in plain, non-beneficial or even weird emails. Hubspot wrote an article dedicated to the worst marketing emails and nutshell.com collected cold emails that made me laugh and shiver at the same time.
Let me be honest here. I didn’t want to be like the person whose emails I persistently ignore.
I wanted to create something that excited, motivated or purely delighted the receiver. That’s where my passion for this topic started to grow. Soon, I came to the following conclusion: effective emailing is not witchcraft.
I’ve condensed what I’ve learned at Ryte into 4 key points so that you can understand the psychology behind effective emails and are able to make use of it.
1. Subject Lines — All about the first impression
If the customer has no desire to actually open your email, you’ve wasted your precious time. To prevent this, be careful with the subject line. Key is to find a sentence that is very hard to ignore and distinguishes you from all other senders.
Sentences that make the receiver curious, have a personal touch or simply leave him or her questioning “what the heck this email is about?” are especially effective.
Some examples, I personally have been successful with:
- Yikes! Not much longer… (This headline makes curious. It can be used for expiring contracts, special campaigns, you name it!)
- Carl, do you remember me? (This is a personal approach. It can be used to reconnect after some time or if you are waiting for feedback)
- Get this before it’s gone (I use it for anything that screams limitation)
- Um, you are missing out on something (This raises curiosity. It’s great for pointing out something useful to the recipient, for example, a helpful article or special offer).
Popular websites like Buzzfeed often make use of the technique to incorporate numbers into their headlines! I want to suggest you, trying out numbers too. But why?
Let me explain:
Why numbers are so effective
Nowadays, nobody has the time for reading through entire novels of information. Numbers in the subject line imply easy, absorbable bites of information. For all us busy people, that means: It takes little to no time to go through and thus, is super attractive for the recipients.
Here are a few examples for headlines with numbers that I used before:
- 4 effective steps for generating great content (suits this kind of article: https://en.ryte.com/magazine/content-strategy-how-to-turn-content-into-a-champion)
- 5 minutes to spare? It will be worth it (for short and easy to read articles, for example, https://en.ryte.com/magazine/5-steps-for-semantic-holistic-content)
- How to make 2018 your year? (https://en.ryte.com/magazine/seo-trends-2018)
Another way to get people’s attention is the use of emojis (if that suits the email’s concept of course). Emojis immediately stand out. They will draw attention to your email, even in crowded inboxes.
MailChimp posted a list based on the most frequently used emojis in subject lines. Although they are often used, they might not be the most effective ones in boosting your opening rates. From my experiences, eye-catching ones that trigger positive emotions are the best choice.
Here are some emojis I’m talking about:
- 🎁 Get this now before it’s gone
- 🌈 How to make 2018 your year
- ✅ 4 effective steps for amazing content
In a world full of smartphones
A study from return path shows, that approximately 55% of all emails are opened on a mobile device. You see, It’s awfully important to double check your subject lines. Do they look interesting enough and aren’t cut off on mobile devices?
A very handy, free tool to check this is the subject line checker from zurb.com. This one will show you exactly how your email would appear in the inboxes of the most popular mobile phones.
2. Trustworthiness — no business without trust
Trust is a major factor, if not the biggest one when it comes to a business’s success. For this reason, it is very important that trustfulness is also reflected in your emails.
The spam folder is a big trap when it comes to appearing trustworthy. There are trigger words that will move your email to the spam folder immediately. Emails in spam folders do not get much attention and even worse, appear to be quite sketchy. The words you use definitely have a huge impact on your success.
Some trigger words do sound very appealing. This could lead to you using them all the time without even a second thought.
Find out what words you should get rid of by checking out this master list from Hubspot. Not only the choice of your words but also how you use them matters. If you tend to highlight important parts of your subject lines by using CAPSLOCK it definitely sends out the wrong signals. The same goes for exclamation marks.
Talking about wrong signals: Another important factor is your email address. In February 2016, GoDaddy did a survey of 1000 American adults to see how important a business email address actually is. The outcome?
Domain-based email addresses turned out to be three times more important as an indicator of trustworthiness than, for example, an active Facebook or Twitter account for the business.
It’s obvious: You should never forget, setting up a professional email address when working on your marketing strategy.
Last but not least, the content of your email is essential when it comes to building a relationship of trust.
Napthali Hoff´s article in the Huffington Post about building trust is a wonderful example of what we should keep in mind when writing emails to appear trustworthy.
“In essence, trust is a feeling of security that you have, based on the belief that someone or something is knowledgeable, reliable, good, honest, and effective. At the least, there exists a meaningful combination of some of these attributes. When applied to human relationships, trust develops when people interact and like the results, in terms of the quality of what they get (information, service, companionship, etc.) and the way in which it is presented and/or delivered.”
If the fundamental concept of these attributes is not covered in your emails yet, try incorporating them more. It will be a positive change.
3. What signals to send?
Emails should never transport a feeling of being work for the recipient. If your emails appear as something that is stressful to read or a waste of time in general, nothing will happen. It’s as simple as that. By following the 4 steps below, it will be more likely that your emails will be read and lead to the desired action.
- Emails should be easy to read and bring the point across. Work with paragraphs and highlight important parts. This leads to a more structured email that gives the recipient a better reading experience. It also reduces the reader’s tendency to close it immediately.
- Only ask the most important questions, preferably just one. As soon as your message looks like a catalog of questions and feels like an interrogation, you won’t get a reply. The recipient doesn’t owe you an answer so your mailing should be something, he or she wants to reply to. What helps is to make clear that you want to save the recipient’s time, not steal it.
- If you are in need of an answer, make the recipient understand that he or she will get an advantage by responding. This could be in the form of inspiration for new projects and ideas, help with some sort of struggle, a good offer… Think about what kind of emails you enjoy receiving and why and use this information to work on your own emails.
- Make it easy to schedule appointments with you. If you want to plan a meeting or call with someone, the planning itself should be as comfortable as possible. I use calendly to send out a quick link and let the recipient decide when to meet. This works wonders because there won’t be much discussion about what date and time to decide on.
4. The right timing
We desperately wait for answers or feedback and often tend to demand exactly that over and over again..with consequences.
69% of American email users will unsubscribe if you send out too many emails.
That’s what CMB found out in March 2012. Moreover, there are usually recipients who simply delete emails in general without reading them. Both factors combined have a very negative effect on all business activities planned.
How often is too often?
It’s a slim line between keeping everyone up-to-date and being so annoying that people will never want to see emails from you ever again.
If you want your emails to be valued, make sure that recipients can count on a high, constant level of quality. They should also have enough time in-between to catch a breath. This allows building up excitement about what will follow next.
With the number of customers I take care of, a quarterly email is always on my schedule. Other than that, I keep them up to date as soon as we release new awesome features. Also, sharing brand-new articles in our magazine might assist them with their current workflow. This routine works extremely well for me and our users.
When it comes to the ideal amount of emails, I have only one suggestion: Do not search the internet for the perfect number of emails that you should send. In the end, the answer will always be 42 anyway. ;-) If you can’t refrain from showering your clients in emails, there’s one thing you have to make sure: always provide value.
If someone unsubscribes despite the useful content, he may not be the right person for your business anyway.
When you have revamped your email strategy, you should make sure to review it over and over again because previous mistakes are the best teacher.
To understand what your target group wants, evaluate which emails were well-received. This way, you will also find out which email concept failed miserably and needs to go. I use Act-On which tracks everything from opening to response rates. All in all, it allows me to determine how users interact with my emails. That helps with developing new methods for emailing approaches.
If you are in need of a tracking tool and use Gmail or Outlook a lot, check out the best tracking tools in 2018 for Gmail and Outlook.
But be careful
I shared the techniques that worked for Ryte and boosted our mailing success. Yet, there’s a risk factor that I want to mention, too. The magic word is clickbait. You may have guessed it.
I do admit: Clickbait is actually a great way to draw attention to your emails. your intention could be questioned when using it to the extreme. Sooner or later, going way over the top with clickbait leads to nothing but the impression that you are unable to meet the recipient’s expectations. In the end, mistrust will follow. Hence, make sure that the recipient gets at least a small amount of what is promised in the email itself.
In conclusion
Email marketing is still the cornerstone of success for many companies today. This marketing technique is less about only selling a product or an idea and more about building a high level of trust. If done correctly, everything else will follow on its own. The result will be satisfied, long-term customers and a constant, strategic workflow. We at Ryte definitely experienced the benefits of email marketing and I’m certain that you will do, too.
