Technology Trends and Tools – Part II: Getting Email Read

The internet is a powerful force, with enough information passing through it daily to fill 168 million DVDs!  Its popularity has led to the popularity of many of our “must have” devices: in fact, on a given day, iPhone sales outpace the number of babies born!

However, with all of this excitement, email still remains the most common way you’ll interact with your customers. 294 million emails are sent daily – that would take two years for the US Postal Service to deliver! So how do you use it to your best advantage?

Subject Lines: Words to Avoid

The average person around the world gets 147 emails a day and spends 2 ½ hours with them, but interestingly, we delete almost half of them in just 5 minutes!  How can you increase the odds that your email makes it though the delete process and gets opened?

One way is by avoiding certain words in your subject lines and using others. Research shows words that generate the greatest response in subject lines are: posts, jobs, e-newsletter, digest, bulletin, edition, giveaway, tips. Words that caused readers to report the emails as spam were: confirm, featured, upgrade, raffle, magic, requested and rewards.

Reply Quickly

It’s common courtesy and good business! A quarter of us now expect a response to email within 15 minutes, and two-thirds within half a day. But you also need to balance that with email overload, which is when you interrupt other important tasks by addressing emails inefficiently.

Mobile-Optimized Email

You may not think you need to worry about your email being mobile-friendly… after all, it’s just email! But 80% of users report reading email on smart phones, so test yours and make sure they can navigate and read it easily.

Source: Mashable.com, http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-science-of-email-marketng, Dr Monica Seeley