Email is still the most powerful way to communicate with prospects and customers. And while we all know that not every email gets opened or read, the more consistently you, as a business owner, send out email (with valuable content, that is) the more you will get the right people opening and clicking.
But here's an even more powerful tip for increasing your email open and response rates:
PERSONALIZATION
Commonly email messages are just too rigid. They're boring.
Such messages can end up being neglected or simply erased– SPAM, for short. You need to intend making your recipients think: “A real person's sending me an email,” and that it's not just being automated.
Once again, having that personal touch to your email would do you a whole lot of good. It can help you get more emails opened, increase your engagement level, and even enhance your credibility with the recipients.
And, when you personalize emails, you'll want to write in a conversational tone. Don't be too formal!
You might also consider segmenting your email list according to categories, like by gender or location, or age brackets… so you can adjust the content of your messages to the individuals groups. Or, perhaps, you can categorize them according to client type (past, current, etc).
Get the right data up front…
I often like to only ask for an email address on sigup forms, because it's the easiest for to fill out, and the one that is most likely to deliver the highest conversions. BUT, that also means I'm not capturing a name to be able to personalize my emails. So I'm starting to change my thinking.
Especially now that I'm working with UpViral, which allows me to automate the email personalization within their system. Granted, I've also been able to do this in my GetResponse account, but I just ignored that option (until now).
Here's a quick screencast of how I can personalize the follow-up email sequence in my viral listbuilding campaigns inside UpViral:
And here's a great infographic from the folks over at UpViral on how you can personalize emails from some of the most popular email service providers:
