Sneaky Tips to Get Your Emails Opened

by Brian Jowers · April 25, 2018

You work hard to write the perfect email — and then nobody even opens the darn thing.

Sigh.

What’s a marketer to do?

Try a new subject line using one of the following tactics:

Insert your personality and get personal

Let’s face it — no one gets excited by dry toast, which is precisely why you need to let your own personality shine in your subject line.

True, some people won’t like your personality. So what? Others will love your personality because they see themselves in you, and they’ll become rabid fans.

Examples: “Three experts in our niche that are flat out WRONG,” “Why I loathe beets and want them exterminated from the planet,” “Why I check under my bed before going to sleep,” and 10 things the worst world leader in history taught me.”

Use numbers

In a big field of words (think your Gmail inbox) numbers and symbols stand out.

For example: “7 ways to screw this up,” “3 people I hate” and “5 days in the doghouse.”

Ask a question

For whatever reason, questions just seem to work better than statements.

For example, instead of, “How to do this,” you might ask, “Can you tell me how to do this?”

Other examples: “Why can’t you go to the bathroom?” “Where do you want me to ship this?” “Is the dorky look back in style?”

Invoke Curiosity

Strange headlines get clicks — sometimes. This one is a little tricky, but if you can arouse enough curiosity, you’ll be blown away at how many subscribers open your emails.

Examples: “My Dr. told me to eat dirt,” “How to know you’re about to have a heart attack” and “The dessert only diet.”

Super short subject lines:

There was a reason why, for awhile, you kept seeing the subject line, “Hey.”

It worked.

But like anything else, once it’s used too much, its effectiveness wears off.

Still, every once in awhile try using either a one word subject line, or a short subject line that you use as a great opening to a story. Examples:

“Damn,” “That’s when I knew,” “Groan…” “Facepalming AGAIN,” “Yikes!” “Oh no!” “How did THAT happen?” “Unbelievable!” and so forth.

And one last sneaky but ultra-important tip:

Always send out your emails a second time to everyone who didn’t open them the first time.

How this works: Nearly every autoresponder has this option now, and if yours doesn’t, ask for it.

Send out an email in the morning. Wait 8 to 12 hours, and then resend it to everyone who didn’t open it the first time.

Use a different subject line the second time, but keep the email the same.

Your second subject line can be entirely different from the first, thus (hopefully) sparking interest in those subscribers who didn’t open the first one.

Or you can simply say, “You missed this earlier email,” or some such.

Typically, I get nearly as many opens the second time I send an email as I do the first time.

It’s a great way to reuse your emails. You’re not bugging those subscribers who did open your first email. And you will get more clicks and make more sales with almost no additional effort.

You can even schedule the second email when you send out the first. Just make sure to send it only to those readers who did not open it the first time.