How to Get People to Open Your E-Mails
Issue# 2711
- WEALTHY: Double your sales by answering 2 questions (Alex Mandossian)
- HEALTHY: 4-factor fat loss (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Napoleon on interest and fear
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Why you don’t have to worry about taxes as an affiliate (George Dahir)
- How a simple change in thinking can help you achieve your dreams (Raymond Aaron)
- It’s Good to Know… about dollar signs and restaurant menus
- Add “etiolate” to your vocabulary
* Hightly Recommended *
The Secret “Three-Step Strategy” to Internet Riches
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“There are two levers for moving men: interest and fear.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
How to Get People to Open Your E-mails
Picture this: You spend hours writing an article that you KNOW will motivate people to tears/laughter/action. You send it to your e-mail list – a group of people who have specifically asked to hear from you – and no one opens the e-mail. The article ends up unread, deep in your subscribers’ inboxes. Your words aren’t digested, your ideas aren’t discussed, and your suggestions aren’t tested.
Frustrating, no?
It’s even more frustrating if you’re an Internet marketer and your revenue relies on people opening your e-mails, reading your articles or sales letters, and taking the actions you recommend.
In most (if not all) cases, you’ll never have a 100 percent open rate – where every last one of your subscribers opens your e-mail. In fact, according to e-mail marketing company Campaign Monitor, “If you are getting an open rate between 20 percent and 40 percent, you are probably somewhere around average.”
The thing is, the more people who open your e-mails, the more chances you have to make sales.
Let’s say 5 percent of your subscribers open your e-mails. Of that 5 percent, 10 percent buy the product you’re offering. If you have 1,000 subscribers, that means you’ll make $500 for every $100 product you sell via e-mail.
Even if your conversion rate (the number of people who buy what you’re selling) remains the same, you can DOUBLE the number of sales you make if you can double the number of people who open your e-mails. Today, I’m going to give you two simple ways to make that happen.
Here’s the heart of the matter: Whenever you send an e-mail message to your subscriber list or to your friends or colleagues, they ask themselves these two critical questions before taking action:
1. WHO is this e-mail from?
2. WHAT is this e-mail about?
Test this yourself the next time you’re about to open the e-mail messages in your inbox. If you’re like most people I’ve surveyed, you ask yourself WHO? and WHAT? before grabbing your mouse, clicking, and reading each one.
The WHO? Question
Answering the WHO? question is easy, because it’s right there in the “from line.” I recommend that your from line never changes. Here’s what mine looks like:
~ Alex Mandossian ~
Specifically, I put a tilde symbol (“~”), then a space, then my first name, then another space, then my last name, then another space, then a second tilde.
That’s it.
Key Point: The reason I use the tilde in my from line is because it often puts my message at the top of my recipients’ list of new e-mails. Many e-mail programs sort alphabetically, and they give the tilde symbol an even higher alphabetical ranking than words starting with the letter “A” (like my name).
The WHAT? Question
Answering the WHAT? question is not so easy, because it depends on the way the “subject line” is written. Unlike your from line, it makes sense to constantly test your subject line copy until you find the winners.
I don’t make any claims with my subject line, because I feel the one and only job of that copy is to pique my recipients’ interest – so they open, read, and click the link in the body of the e-mail message.
The purpose of the from line is to motivate your recipients to read your subject line. The purpose of your subject line is to persuade your recipients to read the body copy of the e-mail.
It’s that simple.
What to Do Now
First, I want you to decide on what your from line will look like for all your e-mail communications. Once you make this decision, always keep your from line the same. Never change it.
I recommend using tildes or asterisks or dashes in your from line so you’ll get top alpha-numerical priority in your recipients’ inboxes. Here are a few examples:
* Jane Doe *
~ Jane Doe ~
- Jane Doe -
Second, I want you to become a student of effective subject line copy. So keep a file of subject lines that elicit your own curiosity. (Remember, that’s what you want your subject lines to do for your recipients.)
The subject lines that work best for me are brief (seven words or less). Here are some that have had good pulling power for me:
- This ONE is for you…
- Your presence is requested…
- Have you seen this?
- Will you say “YES” to this?
- This is about our appointment…
- It’s not your fault…
- Who’s to blame for this?
What about you? Have you ever written a winning subject line? If so, please share it here.
[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about success. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at www.AlexMandossianToday.com.
Increasing your e-mail open rates is just one way to boost your revenues. Now you can get in-depth, cutting-edge marketing techniques and tips from ETR Publisher and CEO MaryEllen Tribby, the rainmaker who guided the Early to Rise team from $8 million to $26+ million in revenues in 15 months. Learn how to get your hands on all that multimillion-dollar advice, including play-by-plays of case studies... copywriting "cheat sheets"... media buying guides... and much more right here.]
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Read his full report and see how you can try it out at home without risk, for 30 days, right here.
Taxes? What Taxes?
By George Dahir
The benefits of becoming an affiliate marketer are obvious. You’re working with an established business that has proven products and marketing copy. So you simply promote their products online, send customers to the “parent” website to buy, and take a cut of each sale.
You don’t have to worry about customer service, order processing, or any other operational headaches. And now, despite the passage of affiliate tax laws in many states, you can keep sales taxes on your “not to worry” list. You’ll still have to pay taxes on your earnings, of course. But the merchant you affiliate with will be responsible for collecting taxes from customers – not you, the affiliate!
This is great news. Affiliate marketing has become a cash cow, especially in the last few years. As a matter of fact, out of all of the affiliates who participated in the recent 2009 Affiliate Summit Affstat report, 71 percent stated that their average monthly income from affiliate marketing is as high as $5,000. The other 29 percent are making between $5,000 and $20,000 a month.
If you’ve been shying away from this lucrative business because you’re afraid you don’t have the Internet marketing chops, I have a solution for you.
Early to Rise will be holding a Super Affiliate Retreat on July 18 in Denver, Colorado. The event, hosted by me (ETR’s Affiliate Manager) and Edwin Huertas (ETR’s Web Marketing Manager) will be a one-day crash course in affiliate marketing. Every attendee will learn exactly how to become a successful affiliate marketer, including the secrets behind some “super affiliates” who’ve already earned between $100,000 and $756,000 by working with Early to Rise.
[Ed. Note: There are only a few seats left for the 2009 ETR Super Affiliate Retreat. This is the perfect opportunity to learn how to make money in affiliate marketing. Click here to find out more.]
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life
There is a “mental game” going on in the subconscious part of your brain. So says John Assaraf, author of The Neuroscience of Financial Success, who has studied the effects of positive thinking on the brain for 20 years. He explains that this tells your brain’s version of Google exactly what you want it to search for in the outside world.
Change your brain’s “search criteria” from negative to positive, and you change what your brain focuses on. Among other things, this allows you to see opportunities in a new light.
To achieve any goal, success mentor Bob Cox points out, you need to believe that you have the ability to take advantage of every opportunity to succeed. So, by eliminating negative thinking, you help motivate yourself to take action.
It’s easy to do the kind of “neural reconditioning” I’m talking about. Here’s how…
When you’re aware that you’re having negative thoughts… immediately implant the opposite. Let’s say you’re driving to a job interview and you start thinking about how you could botch an answer… or appear too nervous… or forget to shake the interviewer’s hand. Instead of allowing yourself to continue with this negative thinking, tell yourself that you will dazzle her. You will get her to laugh at your stories, you will wow her with your past performance, and you will prove that you are well-qualified for the position. Then visualize yourself at the interview, doing really well. This will open you up to doing exactly what you need to do to sail through with flying colors.
Do this with every challenge you face… and you will begin to change your life.
Ed. Note: A well-known international speaker Raymond Aaron is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the Parent’s Soul. Get two free chapters of his latest book – Double Your Income Doing What You Love - at RaymondAaron.com.]
Correction:
Due to a formatting error in Wednesday’s issue of Early to Rise, we left out some important information from Kelley Herring’s article on the connection between sleep and your immune system. Along with getting sufficient sleep, says Kelley, you can amp-up your immune system by “getting adequate vitamin D (all it takes is exposing yourself to sunlight for 15-20 minutes, three days a week) and immune-boosting nutrients, including vitamin C and selenium.”
You can read the full article right here.
4 Simple Factors That Can Help You Lose Weight, Starting Today
Fat loss is simple. It involves just four factors.
1. Nutrition. The rules are easy. Eat whole, natural foods and consume fewer calories than you need. Nothing is more important than nutrition for fat loss and health, so get rid of the junk.
2. Resistance training. Most people neglect this, but if you want a better body, you have to sculpt it with resistance training. That could mean bodyweight exercises or weight exercises. (You can get more work done in less time with my non-competing superset system.)
3. Interval training. As I have said many times before, interval training has been shown to burn belly fat better than long, slow cardio.
4. Social support. It’s easy to get social support online. Just visit any of the weight-loss forums and ask for help. Powerful, powerful stuff, but often overlooked!
[Ed. Note: There's no need to exercise for hours on end to get the lean, fit body you want. Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne can help you burn fat and build muscle with three 45-minute workouts a week. Learn how right here.
For more easy-to-implement ideas about how to live longer and feel better, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter.]
It’s Good to Know: Dollar Signs and Restaurant Menus
Ever noticed that restaurant menus sometimes leave the dollar sign off the price? You may have assumed that it’s meant to encourage you to go for higher-ticket options… by removing, ever so slightly, the association between price and actual money. Now, a study by Cornell University’s center for Hospitality Research, seems to back up that assumption. They found that diners given menus with no dollar signs, just numbers, spent significantly more than those given menus with dollar signs.
(Source: Cornell University and Myrtle Beach Sun)
* Highly Recommended *
Don’t Get Mad at Wall Streeters… Get Rich Off Them
Are you a disillusioned stock market investor?
Or maybe even just a “regular” Joe or Jane alarmed by the economic woes reported daily on every TV channel, radio station, the Internet, newspapers, and magazines?
If so I’d like to invite you to join my “anti-Wall Street” club.
We don’t sit around bad-mouthing fat cats or lamenting our lost dollars.
In the Liberty Street League, we’re getting even by making money hand over fist “off Wall Street.”
Find out if you qualify to join the League today.
Word to the Wise: Etiolate
To “etiolate” (EE-tee-uh-late) – from the Latin for “straw” – means to blanch or bleach; to make sickly.
Example (as used by Colin Thubron in The Lost Heart of Asia): “Under that etiolated sky all life seemed wrung out.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker... build your self-confidence and intellect... increase your attractiveness to others... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's Words to the Wise CD Library.]
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Tags: bev dwyer's secrets
Sure. I send emails quite often, and I have always tried to get the attention of my readers. Just to read other’s suggestions was enlightening.
Alex, the examples you gave for getting your emails opened by subscribers are great, and I have personally found them to be very effective.
I am surprised that you did not mention personalization by incorporating the subscriber’s first name within the subject line, which all good autoresponders easily has the capability of doing.
Incorporating the subscriber’s first name at the beginning, end, or somewhere within the subject line has a positive double impact.
First, it lets the subscriber immediately know the email is from someone they know and/or have a positive relationship or business with.
Secondly, It takes advantage of a basic human desire and need to be recognized and/or special… even if it’s by a total stranger. Plus it gives each subscriber the impression they are more than just a number to you because you made the extra little effort to address them personally.
I have also found using wacky subject lines, questions, and lines pertaining to current events and news makers to be highly effective at getting your emails opened.
Wacky example: Terry, epigenetic idiopathic endogenous found in your… This subject line makes no sense at all the the general population, nor does the average person know the definition of the first three words. It is wacky, but it peaks the curiosity and urges the reader to find out what it is, and what the heck you’re talking about.
Question example: Terry, will this new law will effectivily eliminate your… The question subject line peaks one’s curiosity and interest because it seems to address something very important directly related to the reader.
Current event/news makers example: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett wills both reveal… This subject line incorporates two of the hottest current events and news makers running right now. Even readers who have no interest in one or the other are curious to see what the two could possibly have in common.
Thanks Alex for posting such a great article on getting emails opened and allowing us to join you in sharing our own experiences and ideas.
Philosophy here is so true. I have always been an optimist, but I was unaware of the subtle, negative language that I picked up from my environment. Having read this book, I became conscious and began to change my thoughts and lifestyle.
My most effective line to my customers is: “Just Keeping in Touch.”
My favorite is “Let Me Try To Save The Firm Some Time, And Money”
This is geared mostly to law firms…easily adapted to medical by using Practice instead of Firm.
Yikes.
I read these familiar headlines over and over again….usually in my junk mail folder when I’m looking for a misplaced email sent by a friend who didn’t make the whitelist. Of course, they occasionally seep like raw sewage into my real mail whereupon I automatically delete them because they’re so commonplace, overspammed and overused I know that can’t be of any real value to a busy professonal like me.
Please. For your own sake, please, please realize that the gig is UP.
We need NEW information which delivers value, punch and promise. And, oh yea, ready-willing-and-able buyers with credit card in hand. Not achingly tired cliches used by every part-time, social media barrista on break at Starbucks.
Yes, I’m so for real. Not a bad-ass kid looking for after school kicks. And, if you think I’m a dumbass for writing this column, shoot me an email at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lisa Simmons
Business Development
Community One Associates