Every day we fight to keep up with the avalanche of emails in our inbox. It’s tempting to bulk delete everything just to cut through the noise. If your business sends out a newsletter, it’s important to find a way to stand out.

We have some ideas to make that email clickable for your audience.

Episode Transcript

Jeffrey Lambert:            00:00                Every day we fight to keep up with the avalanche of emails in our inbox, and it's tempting to just bulk delete everything just to cut through the noise. But if your business sends out a newsletter, it's important to find a way to stand out. We have some ideas to make that email clickable for your audience. That's next on Inbound Academy.

Jeffrey Lambert:            00:33                Hello and welcome to Inbound Academy brought to you by Rizen Inbound. I'm your host, Jeff Lambert. On this week's episode we're going to jump into email marketing. You should already be doing this, but you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. So I've invited creative director, Nicole Mena from Rizen to discuss this topic with us a little more thoroughly. Nicole, thanks for coming back on the show.

Nichole Mena:              00:56                Oh, thanks so much for having me Jeff.

Jeffrey Lambert:            00:58                Absolutely. So email, it sounds like something that really shouldn't be around anymore. Yet, it is still. And you know, before we get into talking about email newsletters and how we can optimize them to make people more interested in opening them, I really want to start off by asking you just a basic question. How prevalent is email in 2019?

Nichole Mena:              01:19                So yeah, of course email is still relevant. And just to give you some stats and to clarify, more than 50% of U.S. respondents check their personal email account more than 10 times a day. That's a staggering number. There is about 5.6 billion active email accounts, so that should tell you something in itself. And you know, newsletters are not just the medium for older generations either. We see that 73% of millennials prefer communication from businesses to come via email. So of course it is still relevant.

Jeffrey Lambert:            02:01                Okay. So just some of those stats you mentioned, I mean, there's about, I think about 8 billion people in the world currently, and that number just gets bigger every year. And you know, almost 6 billion out of the 8 billion people have emails. Like you said, more than half of people are checking multiple times a day. So that doesn't sound like a dead medium to me, to your point.

Nichole Mena:              02:20                No. Yeah, it's definitely not.

Jeffrey LAMBERT:          02:22                Yeah, absolutely. It's something I use every day. I don't really think twice about it. It's certainly not going anywhere.

Nichole Mena:              02:30                That's right.

Jeffrey LAMBERT:          02:32                So then that leads us to the question we're talking about. As businesses we use email as a way to connect with our customers. You know, overall it seems to me like we're kind of drowning in our emails, because everyone has an email now and everybody's sending it to us. Would you agree with that statement?

Nichole Mena:              02:52                Yes. There's so many emails that we're just bombarded with them on a daily basis, so I can understand it being overwhelming for people sorting through these types of emails. So you really have to stand out in a crowd for an email to catch somebody's eye.

Jeffrey Lambert:            03:08                So why don't we jump into some tips on what people can do to be able to make that email that they're sending to their customers stand. You know, really be the message that people are going to want to click when they go into their inbox. So why don't we start off with an important tip you have to be able to make that happen?

Nichole Mena:              03:28                Yeah, sure. So like I said, you want the email to really catch the reader's eye. So not only do you want the email to be something rewarding for people, you want to share a useful tip. Invoke some type of emotion, right? Inspire them. And really your email should give something back to them for opening. So first and foremost, what really catches a reader's eye is subject line of course. Right?

Jeffrey Lambert:            04:01                So let's talk about that term, the subject line, just to make sure everybody's on the same page. What is that referring to? What part of the email is that?

Nichole Mena:              04:09                Sure. The subject line is the header, the title, what you see when you're scrolling that inbox. So you know, you have to make sure that that title of your email stands out amongst the bombardment of emails in your inbox. Right?

Jeffrey Lambert:            04:25                Sure. What ways and things that you've used, maybe some strategies that you have to really increase those click rates?

Nichole Mena:              04:35                Right. Okay. So a couple of things. The first is that the subject line should be 17 to 24 characters long. And you know, sentences need to be short, using some using strong descriptive words, and not only descriptive words you can use, but terms that elicit emotional responses. So things like "important," "remember," and "wonderful" have higher open rates. And there's a great little tool you can use from CoSchedule. You can just plug in your subject line and it'll give you a rating and help you tweak your subject line for better optimization.

Jeffrey LAMBERT:          05:19                Okay. So I'll make sure to put a link to that in the show notes for our listeners. That sounds great. And man, 17 to 24 characters, that's not a lot!

Nichole Mena:              05:27                Yes. Not a lot.

Jeffrey Lambert:            05:28                Maybe a sentence at most. Really?

Nichole Mena:              05:30                That's right. That's right. So you want to be as descriptive as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.

Jeffrey Lambert:            05:36                Okay. Good to know. You know I remember reading somewhere, and maybe this is more of a generational thing, that emojis actually have a really high success rate when you include them in your subject lines.

Nichole Mena:              05:46                You know, I do see them used quite a bit nowadays and they do just bring my eye right to that subject line. So if it's, you know, something you'd like to use, then by all means, I think it's something that really will stand out. Stand your email title out from, from the rest of the emails out there. So yeah, that's helpful.

Jeffrey Lambert:            06:11                A picture is worth a thousand words, so that certainly falls into this.

Nichole Mena:              06:16                Yes, it does.

Jeffrey Lambert:            06:17                Okay. So we have a short subject lines. Short and emotionally charged subject lines. What's another tip that you have to increase open rates for emails?

Nichole Mena:              06:28                So yeah, there are a few things you can do to make your emails more engaging. First and foremost, you want to keep it short. You know, really long emails kill the interest of your audience. So maybe keep it down to 30 seconds before a reader moves on. You know, that's your target. So make the content really just snackable, short and concise. Challenge yourself to cut your text by half if you're editing it. So think about that the next time you're writing body of content. Another great tip is to use a natural voice. So stop thinking about email marketing, right? Be more natural. You don't want to sound like a robot. Consider your emails to be a way of talking to your customers or readers. Be as natural as possible. Use lingo that is relevant to your target audience, you know? And then, you want to have a very clear call to action. So tell your readers exactly what you expect them to do next and remind them why it's in their best interest to buy or participate with whatever you're selling or whatever action you want them to take next.

Jeffrey Lambert:            07:50                Okay. Really providing value for your audience. They want to know "why am I clicking on this?"

Nichole Mena:              07:56                Yes. So that's first and foremost. You want to ensure that you're really detailing what's in it for them.

Jeffrey Lambert:            08:05                Right, right. That makes sense. And that's gonna make me want to click the email because I know that there's going to be something that I can actually get some - some benefit from when I opened that email.

Nichole Mena:              08:15                Absolutely. That's all. That's what an email is supposed to do for you.

Jeffrey Lambert:            08:18                So now, I guess on kind of a side note, back to the natural language point, Nicole, you bring up a good point. You need to write in a tone that feels like it's genuine to people that are opening your email. But you know, I guess to point out to our listeners, if I own a pizza shop, my tone is gonna be different than somebody that runs a sneaker store. Right?

Nichole Mena:              08:44                So yeah, there's going to be a difference when using tone, like how you are going to speak to them? For pizza, your audience as a pizza shop is going to differ of course from any other industry. Or how, like your example, the people that are very into sneakers. So you know, the audience for the pizza shop should be a more casual, relaxed tone compared to people that are really more interested in sneakers. They're a little more technical when it comes to certain aspects of sneakers. So it's going to be different. And what's the best way to improve your tone is really go into different competitors, see how influencers are speaking to people in your same industry. So I think that could be a great way to really delve and dive deeper into improving your tone. And maybe even reading related magazines, just really paying attention to how the competitors or maybe influencers are using that specific language. And then use that yourself to see how it works for you.

Jeffrey Lambert:            09:58                That makes sense. You know, good writing comes from looking at good writing. So you know, it's only natural that you would pay attention to what's working elsewhere. So. Okay, Nicole. So we talked about the importance of the subject line and trying to keep that short and concise and you know, emotionally charged. We talked about,making sure that the email itself is concise and short and not going to dominate the person's entire day. And looking at the email, you mentioned the call to action being really important, giving people a reason to want to open the email and to do something with the information they're getting. And then we left off here by talking about the tone that you're supposed to use to try and make it as natural as possible. So out of those things, how many of those do you implement yourself on a daily basis with the clients that you work with?

Nichole Mena:              10:50                Oh, each and every one of them. I think it's so important to make sure you're covering all of your bases and including each of these tips and tricks. Because at the end of the day, like we said, everyone's getting bombarded with emails left and right. So these are mainstays to ensure that your emails stand out and people are opening your emails.

Jeffrey Lambert:            11:12                Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so to our listeners, I'll make sure to include those links that Nicole mentioned. And try these out to see if these work and if your click rates increase based on the email newsletters that you're using. And if you're not using an email newsletter, like we talked about at the beginning, it's certainly a good space for you to start getting into immediately. Okay. Nicole, thank you so much for coming onto the show and talking about some of these important tips.

Nichole Mena:              11:36                Oh, it was great to be here, John. Thanks so much.

Jeffrey Lambert:            11:39                And that does it for today's episode everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in again. And remember we changed up our format a little bit. We're going to be doing a new episode every week. But one thing isn't going to change and that's that every episode is going to be filled with advice that's going to help you grow your business. And remember, if you're looking to partner with an experienced, friendly and results driven team that can help you grow your business, check out Rizen by going to go Rizen.com. That's Rizen with a "Z." You can also follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn by searching for the username "RizenInbound. That's one word, "RizenInbound." And if you're looking to help us even more, remember you can help us reach new people by leaving a review on the podcast app of your choice. Thanks again for your support. It means a lot to us and we'll see you on the next episode.