If there is a marketer on this planet that can boast a 100% response rate to their email marketing, I’d love to meet them and ask them what their secret is. Because the truth is, it can be hard to get a lot of responses to the average email campaign. It’s possible to send out hundreds of emails, and only get a handful of responses back. It can be pretty frustrating, but there are ways to improve that response rate! This infographic from Boomerang gives 7 tips to get your emails lean, mean, and engaging. Let’s take a look, and see what they have to say.
- Write like a third grader. You don’t want to dumb your message down too much – writing at a kindergarten reading level will only net you a 46% response rate. But surprisingly it’s been shown that writing at a third-grade reading level will boost your response rate to 53%. A high school reading level, on the other hand, will only grab a 45% response rate, while writing at a college reading level will drop your response rate to 39%.
- Write with emotion. Neutrality shouldn’t be your goal – emails that are slightly to moderately negative or positive will get better response rates (13% and 15%, respectively.) Give your reader an emotion to connect to, and they’ll be more likely to want to engage.
- Write short (but not too short) emails. If you want a response rate higher than 50%, you should aim for emails that are around 75-125 words in length. Anything above or below that amount, and you will see your response rates start to dwindle. Keep it short and snappy!
- Use short (very short) subject lines. How short is short? Well, your subject line should be around 3 or 4 words long to see the best response rate. If you use 2 or 5 words, the response rate will drop from 48% to 46%. If you can’t quite make it work in 3-4 words, less isn’t more – using only one word or zero words will lead to 37% or 14% response rates.
- Include 103 questions in your email. If you don’t ask a question, your response rate will probably hover around 40%. Asking 1-3 questions will shoot it up to 60%, asking 4-7 questions will net 55%, and asking 8 or more questions will get a 50% response rate.
- Take a stand. Don’t be afraid to share your opinions! An email that takes a stand on something is 8% more likely to get a response than an email that takes an objective stance.
- Try to send your emails in the early morning and around lunchtime – that’s when they are most likely to be read.
Do you have any other tips to add to this list? Share them in the comments – would love to see them!
