7 Ways that Make Subscribers Convinced to Open Your Newsletter

We love this.

When people open our email newsletter. They click on the links we send them.

Believe me, this isn’t easy.

Now, I’m taking you behind the scene.

All this happens after a certain time period. When you have got at least few thousand happy subscribers – They love what you do and what you write…

You might be running your blog with newsletter or YouTube Channel with the newsletter, either way, email newsletter turns out to be an essential way to talk, collaborate and assist your subscribers.

Ever wonder why people say that money is in the list?

Probably they didn’t tell you that how much time they’ve spent on building a loyal audience and email newsletter subscribers base.

The good thing is they tell you the truth, which is money is in the list, but it’s a half truth!

Why half?

Because, they probably miss something out, which is a long struggle behind a successful email list.

Email list building is extremely important, you probably heard many times, probloggers and experts preach about Email Marketing and List Building – I second them, it’s important and I love to talk about Email List Building, which is why I’ve chosen this topic, because I’ve plenty of things to share with you, which will eventually help you not in just starting off your email newsletter, but also in making it successful.

It’s quite challenging to gain the confidence of the subscribers – From sign up to keep opening the newsletter – It’s never easy to do!

Offering great solutions, providing really helpful material and solving the issues might be the sauces you want to add in the recipe.

MailChimp published Email Marketing Benchmarks showing average email campaign stats of MailChimp customers.

Most of the industries mentioned in the report were between 19% to 23% with open rate, whereas some exceptional cases are 25% to 28%.

Ginny Soskey of HubSpot published an interesting article about Email open-rate and click-rate, in which she showed the stats based on number of campaigns per month and its impact on the open-rate and click-rate of the email marketing campaigns.

Now I’m pretty much convinced.

It’s not about sending back to back emails to the subscribers.

I would rather send 1 email per week that helps, then 3 which annoy my subscribers…

Let me share some of the secrets of Email Marketing which might change your email marketing and newsletter experience—I personally believe in all of these points, and observed closely, which is why I’m sharing with you all.

Find out the methods/strategies to adopt to make your subscribers open your newsletter. Your newsletter’s success belongs to the conversion which begins with the high open rate. Take a look:

1. Subject Must Show Clear Intention of the Sender

Tell your message clearly in the first place.

The receiver should clearly understand your purpose. It becomes easier to make a decision, about opening that email. Ambiguity disturbs subscriber’s mind when he/she thinks whether to open the email or not…
Subscribers expect useful things from you. They subscribed to your blog or newsletter to read amazing tips and solutions.

Clear intention means choosing the simple and right words, plus giving exactly in the email what you promised in the subject line…

Sue Anne of Successful Blogging knows how to write a perfect email newsletter subject. I really liked her recent email newsletter subject.

It’s not always about choosing the keywords in your newsletter subject.

Offer matters.

Give something subscribers want to see and consume.

2. Deliver Precise Solution in the Email

Whatever you’ve decided to cover in your email newsletter, make sure it is full of cream. It must be clearly driven and well-explained from subject to the email body.

It’s true that an appealing subject line tends subscribers to open the email, but more it gets opened, the more it poses responsibility on the shoulder of the sender.

Visme.co is a famous infographic tool for bloggers, internet marketers and businesses to create infographics. Take a look at an email newsletter they sent to their subscribers:

Visme

That was the subject line which was used in the email.

It attracted me to open this email as I was a bit interested to know that how educators are/can use Visme tool.

Because, I want to know, is there any feature or tool I missed out?

So telling something helpful or sharing a factual data helps you to get your desired results from the newsletter.

If you want people to open your email, then offer them something they would like to see. Visme did it brilliantly, once a subscriber opens that newsletter, he/she finds something like this which tends the subscriber to check it out further.

3. Psychological Impact of the Words

Simplicity wins. Clarity helps you to build the trust in Email Marketing.

If you don’t understand the point #3 of this article which is about Psychological impact of the words which need to be used in the email subject, you might be missing a lot of opportunities to successfully create a newsletter campaign.

It’s human nature, you’ll be attracted towards the thing you understand it clearly.

Let’s take an example:

Suppose you’re on an international airport and traveling back to your country, you look at the flight information screen on the airport which is flashing an update – The same message is displaying in English and Chinese, the more chances are you’ll directly look at the English version because most of the people in the world might understand English rather than Chinese language.

Another example:

When I looked at my inbox, and I found 4 of the unread emails in which two have understandable and quite clear subjects and two are typical newsletter subjects, I believed that I would open the first two of the emails mentioned in the screenshot:

4. Subject Must be Helpful

Be a problem solver for your subscribers.

Once you believe in that, you’ll be striving to do this and bring something helpful for your subscribers.

When you continue to do that, your subscribers will continue to note that you always come with great solutions and they find something new and interesting in every newsletter…

You won’t believe when the time would come and they (subscribers) would become your loyal fans and addicted email newsletter readers.

Sam Kirkland, former Poynter Employee writes about TIMES newsletter campaign. He closely analyzed the story of TIMES Magazine Newsletter transition. From trimming the size of the list to adopting the strategy of adding the external content were the hacks to analyze.

Sam explained the subject strategy of TIMES newsletter after the top magazine hired a new director of digital innovation who focused on A/B testing for the subject lines and came up with a strong stance over competitive and more or less 45 characters long subject line idea.

5. Share Past Experience with Subscribers

Adding a message which shows a past experience or result helps anyone to increase the open rate of the newsletter.
People want direct answers. People like to see great things on a single click.

When you offer them something like that, they like to check it out.

The next part becomes so important, which decides the success of the newsletter. Once you’re able to deliver something good to the subscribers, many of the subscribers will appreciate your effort, some of them might not respond, and few of them won’t like it.

But, you have to do what you need to do.

Share you’ve got to share.

Experience counts. Stats engage people.

Once I published a blog post on my personal blog to share my experience with my web hosting company, I thought it would help readers.

Tips always help buyers in the decision.

I liked the HubSpot’s email newsletter which engaged me to open the newsletter – I was pretty much sure that author of this article came up with some research:

6. The Message Must Show the Curiosity

Curiosity is important too. It’s true that you can’t explain a 1000 words article in your 50 characters email newsletter subject – which means you have to cautious on what you write must be intriguing the quest of the subscribers.

I always open email alert from an online tutoring website which intimate me about the new request posted in the category of subjects I’ve enrolled as an online tutor.

Because, I want to know what’s this assignment about.

I don’t want to miss an assignment of my favorite subjects – If I do miss out, I might be losing a chance to earn $15 to $50 on that assignment.

The curiosity factor comes with excitement + uncertainty…

When an email receiver gets little idea about the email, and he/she wants to know the rest of the message and content, then he/she would definitely click on the email to open it and further like to see it.

7. Buzz Creating Words or Sentences

I admit it.

Buzz words help email newsletters to increase their open-rate. However, the success of any newsletter depends on the delivery of quality information and usefulness of the content, but a subscriber won’t reach inside the content if an engaging subject line doesn’t exist.

Once you figure out what is your email newsletter all about. You’d be able to find those buzz words to use in your subject line.

I’m a huge fan of BuzzFeed’s Email Newsletters.

They have adopted a different strategy.

It’s creative. It’s blunt. And it’s engaging.

They always come with a short sized and buzz creating subject lines in the newsletters. Although, they gather a list of stories from their website to send the subscribers, but they ultimately take a random buzz-word or a short-sentence to attract the subscribers base.

It’s a trap that people don’t hate. Probably.

Your Part

Email Newsletter’s success depends on many factors. Your newsletter’s subject is one of those important factors which allow people to decide whether to open it or not.

Even same goes for article titles, no matter you are using Feedburner to send emails to the subscribers or using MailChimp or Aweber for email newsletters, your blog articles would bring you more open rate of newsletter if they would have engaging, helpful and attractive titles.

That’s it from my side. It’s your turn now.

What else would you do to make people respond to your email newsletter?

For models to copy, some great business newsletter examples shows what works.