Earlier this year I spoke at iLive 2013 in Latvia, and presented 7 tips on getting your subscribers to action your emails. The sponsor of iLive, Mailigen has just blogged a nice sumary of the main points of the presentation .

6 Tips on How to Make Email Subscribers React

Focus on email campaign objectives

Email marketers often focus on the opens and clicks of email subscribers, forgetting about conversions which are, of course, most important. An increase in opens and even clicks doesn’t necessarily mean that conversions will also increase. Purchases, registrations, reads, downloads, etc. will increase only if you had set them up as a goal.

If you know exactly what you want your email subscribers to do after receiving your message, it will be much easier to achieve it with appropriate subject lines, call to action buttons, images, content and other email elements.

Carefully craft subject lines

“Spend 80% of your time crafting a subject line, call to action and headlines, and 20% writing copy,” highlighted Kath Pay at the conference. Create subject lines and call to action buttons with your email subscriber in mind.

• Be extra specific, relevant and useful to your customer. Shorter is not always better, so replace the usual “Continue” CTA with something more specific, e.g., “Check availability” in order to get your email subscribers to act on your emails.
• Be visually different, for example, make your subject line stand out visually by trying square brackets, symbols, etc.
• Use digits, action words and timely topics, for example, use an end date for a campaign to motivate email subscribers to react to the message right here and now.
• Use a call to action by asking a question.
• Make the call to action appropriate to where the email subscribers are at in the buying cycle.

Maximize the golden real estate

When creating your email design, use the golden real estate wisely – the upper left hand corner of a newsletter. As we read in an F-shaped pattern, this is the place where attention is paid first of all. So don’t waste this space for images or logos. Leave it for text where you directly call on your email recipients to act.

Read the full article

You can also view the presentation on Slideshare here.