Email marketing can be a highly effective marketing tool for your online store. Consumers are very diligent at identifying crap and spam in their email boxes. Your job is to get them to open your email. The most effective means of accomplishing this, is a targeted, informative and properly crafted email subject / headline.
There are many great headlines that are unfortunately filtered out by spam filters, especially free email providers. Yahoo email addresses are famous for sending whatever they feel like to spam, since AT&T took over their spam execution. So we have a purpose, something to say… But can be limited in how we say it. Tough task, yes… Impossible or unworthy of our time… No Way!
Here are some e commerce related examples of commonly filtered words from emails that just may land your sale ad in the spam bucket.
- Free!
- 50% off!
- Click Here
- Call now!
- Subscribe
- Discount!
- You’re a Winner!
- Reverses Aging
- “Hidden”
- Information you requested
- “Stop” or “Stops”
- Multi level Marketing
- Compare
- Removes
- Collect
- Amazing
- Cash Bonus
- Promise You
- Satisfaction Guarantee
As you can clearly see, there are a great deal of words we would choose to use in our weekly sales ad. Fortunately, we just need to think outside of the box to create the impulse needed to get that consumer to click the email open. Then after we get them to open our email, we have 15 to 20 seconds (a lifetime by comparison) to make our point.
While there are many different approaches to crafting a great headline, simple, straight forward and direct seem to cook up the best response. Some examples of simple and direct headlines are:
Ant Free Pet Bowls 30% off
4th of July Sale American Flags $5
Pay No Shipping Until 8/31 on all Sale Items Store Wide
You see we are being direct, communicating as much as possible in the viewable subject of the email and seeking to grab that impulse “open the email click” as well. The titles are not overly long to gain suspicion and excessive grammar and known problem phrases have not been used.
Many times you have a specific product or information that you exclusively have or can deliver… Maybe you just have the best customer service on the earth, in any case using your store’s best values as a selling point can easily create a call to action on the part of the consumer.
Risk Free Shopping – The Customer is Always Right
Store Purchases made Today Deliver by Christmas Eve NO Additional Charge
Buy PC Games, Immediate Download Delivery
Many times in this blog you have seen me state the obvious value of your businesses’ “authority” status as a selling and loyalty building metric in your store. Many times you can effectively make a soft sell by means of delivering important news or product information to your loyal readers.
New iPod Arrives on 9/5 – Pre-Order with POD.com Today
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Great.com Featured on CNN
Many consumers will bite on a targeted email that contains information, news or “How TO” information that they get for free… From you, a trusted authority on the subject.
Many times using a question to announce your email will create a very spontaneous and emotionally based response from a consumer. Asking a question, tempts us to see the answer…. Especially if the question applies to the user. So if you have been segmenting your mailing list properly, you can send the proper question.
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To effectively market with email, you really do need to segment or sort your list using some factors that can help you make the sale. Common segments are location, gender, income level and types of products purchased. Once you have an idea who your customers are, experimenting with email marketing becomes a far more measurable and effective marketing venture for your store.