10 Hacks to Jack Up Email Opens and Conversions!

How is your open rate for broadcast or autoresponder emails?  I hope you are watching your statistics and know how your email campaigns are doing.
There are 3 measurements of an email campaign: unique open rate, bounce rate and click-through rate.
Your email marketing service — like MailChimp or AWeber — lists each campaign’s open rate prominently in reports. It’s calculated by dividing the number of unique opens by the amount of emails sent, minus the number of bounces.
Calculate your open rate:
Open Rate = Unique Opens / (Number of emails sent – emails bounced)
What’s a good open rate?
Your open rate will depend largely on your industry. According to MailChimp, the average open rate for companies who specialize in hobbies is over 30% while an open rate of just over 18% is typical for emails about marketing and advertising.

Here are 10 ways to get whatever your conversion is  higher:

1. Be Funny

Use a little humor in your subject lines if you want your subscribers to see you as cool and hip. This will put them in a more casual and relaxed mode often making them more inclined to read your email.
“I think I just did the silliest thing”
“I sure do love boss….”
Most people laugh at the idea of someone owning up to doing something silly. This not only fulfills the humor side of the subject line but also sets you up to pre-sell literally whatever you want.
You can see that the second subject line draws from the common notion that most people don’t like their boss. This connection to the common joke  draws upon the funny side of it, but it could even draw a connection to some of your readers who are employed by someone else.

2.  Personalized

When most people think of personalization in an email they think of using your subscriber’s name, which is an absolutely great tool to use if you are collecting names with your emails. But there are also some other options at your disposal.
One great one that most people don’t use is the location personalization. With AWeber (and I’m sure with other autoresponders too) you can choose to use a person’s city or country in either the subject line or email you are sending them. For example:
“For [county name] residents only”
“I’m looking for people in the [city name] area”
This really draws people’s attention because it personalized exactly for where they live.

3.  Controversial/Shocking

Nothing screams “Open Me!” like a controversial headline. I’ve seen ones similar to this used before:
“I think Google is broke…”
Google is a huge topic among anyone working online, so this immediately draws curiosity as to the content of the email.
If you’re in the internet health/fitness niche, something like:
“Top Weight Loss Product Proven To GAIN Weight!”
Anything controversial or shocking will really draw people’s attention to open your email.

4.  Call To Action

There’s nothing wrong with using a call to action every now and again in your email. A call to action is one of the best ways to get people to… well… take action!
Read this:
“50% Off For 24 Hours Only.. GO!”
The “GO!” in the subject above is the call to action. It’s screaming out to Go Do it! Right Now!
And guess what… “Read this:” could actually be a subject line as well. Not only does it bring a call to action, but it also covers my next open rate tip.

5.  Mysterious

So the “Read this:” subject line, as I said already it’s a call to action… but it also brings a sense of mystery.
“Read what? What should I be reading right now?”
People hate to miss out, and this actually factors into something called the “Information Gap Theory“.
They suddenly realize that there is some piece of information they don’t know about. They will feel compelled to know what this is, because aren’t we just born curious creatures?
Here is an example video I created with the title “5 Hacks to Jack Up Email Opens and Conversions“. In the call to action part, I’m asking the viewers to click the link to read the complete article here.

Another good subject line for this is:
“On October 12th I am…”
You’re what! What are you doing on October 12th!
People feel compelled to know things. So give them a little something, but deliberately hold back a very big piece of information.

6.  Scarcity

Now this is one I’m sure a lot of you have already heard, but still very important.
Scarcity can play a HUGE part in getting more people to open your emails. I’ve used some great email lines where it’s something like:
“First 20 People Get In For FREE!”
You don’t want to oversell, and you do want to make good on your offer.  Having said that,, it draws a lot of attention. People really hate to miss out on something.  Our society has engrained in everyone that they can’t miss out. They have to fit in and be part of the group, the exclusive club… use this to your advantage.

7.  Casual

Be casual in your emails. Write like you talk.  I’m doing that here in this blog post.
One of the best email opens I ever got was a subject line that said:
“What’s up?”
If you can be casual to your subscribers and be more of the real you, they will tend to want to read your emails more.
Here’s another example of a casual subject line:
“How were the holidays?”
Sounds like something a friend would email you right?

8.  Numbers and Lists

This is a big one. People LOVE lists. I’m sure you’ve seen all of the lists on Facebook that are so popular:
“10 Craziest People”
“13 Most Beautiful Places Ever”
“8 Things Your Spouse Won’t Tell You”
If you can create some type of list for your subscribers then odds are they will want to read it. Especially if it’s on a topic that interests them. I mean just look at the title of this blog post! A numbered list is a great way to increase email open rates!

9.  Punctuation

This is a great one that can be used a lot. Specifically for punctuation the “?”, “!”, and “…” work very well.
Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s honestly the best thing to do, but for punctuation I’m going to tell you to look back through all of the example subject lines I posted above.

10.  Content Preview

As you may know, a lot of the big name email services will show a content preview of the email.
The preview of the email is the grey text where the red arrow is. This is the first sentence in your email (or at least part of it). It’s always best to keep this content preview in mind when conjuring up emails.
The first email in the image above is actually a great example of putting the content preview to good use. They use the subject line “This month’s issue…” And then follow up with the first sentence explaining what this month’s issue is about.
Bonus tip:
Timing is everything, right?  By experimenting with the day and time you send your emails, you’ll start to find the sweet spot for your emails.  It will depend on the topics.  Examples:  Hobby emails will probably be read in the evening and weekends.  Business oriented emails will be ready during the day.  Morning or afternoon is something to test, keeping an eye on which day/time converts best.