Sending an email blast to your customers doesn’t do any good if your message doesn’t get opened.  And yet even with a permission-based list of people who have asked to receive emails from your shop, you would be doing well to get an “open rate” of 20%.  Mailchimp is a large email marketing service, and based on the statistics compiled from their 7 million users, the average open rate for retail stores is about 22%.

One of the best ways to improve the percentage of subscribers who actually click on your email and look at it is to write a compelling subject line. It needs to be short and descriptive, preferably with a call to action or a bit of humor — just like a good print ad headline. But remember that on digital devices, your email subject line is often followed by a short preview of the message, so you should make both work.

Always send yourself a test copy to tweak before hitting the send button on an email blast. I’ve probably never sent out an email to our customers without going through at least 5 or 6 different test copies, making minor adjustments each time.

An excellent article in the WordStream blog offers “The 9 Best Email Subject Line Styles to Increase Your Open Rates.” (I don’t mind passing along the link to this valuable information from Megan Marrs, because one of her pieces of advice is “See something you like? Steal it!”)

It’s also important to avoid words in the subject that will automatically get your message caught in a spam filter. The various lists of words to avoid get quite long — it’s hard to imagine many words that are not included — but generally avoid words like free, money back offer, guaranteed. Don’t use a lot of capitalizations, dollar signs, symbols and exclamation points.

Many people will not open an email with an attachment, so include any photograph or text that you want customers to see right in the message. And keep in mind that a high percentage of people look at email on a smart phone, which means that a narrow format is good.

Sending emails with the right frequency is also important for avoiding unopened messages — or worse yet, being “unsubscribed.” Make sure that you have something to tell customers that is worthwhile, and include special offers from time to time to reward them for making your open rate above average.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder