Show Notes
If you listened to last week’s episode you know that email is so powerful and a core component to grow your business.
Now that we know email is crucial we can focus on how to get the most bang of our buck with higher email open rates.
We’re talking about:
- Why the sender name is so important
- Quick tips to easily improve your subject lines
- And the easiest way to customize the right message to the right audience so that you can resonate with your audience
If you’re a local business owner who wants to generate more qualified appointments online we created a free training to show you our proven three step process. Watch the training
Connect with us
Transcript
Aaron [00:00:00] Hey guys! I hope you are having an awesome start to your day or end of your day whenever you're listening to this or watching this. It's kind of all-inclusive because we're doing a video podcast now so you can listen and watch at the same time. But however you consume the content hope your day is going amazing. We have a really good episode for you. So if you're one of those people who is like "email that's dead", one I'm telling you is that is not dead. It has the highest ROI in your business and find out more about that later. But in this episode, we're going to unpack three things to help you increase your email open rates. We're talking about why your sender name on the emails that you send out are so important, how to improve your subject lines, it's actually easier than you think and how you should be segmenting your audience so that it's a catered and customized message for your audience. So all of this and more jump into the episode you're going to enjoy.
Narrator [00:00:53] This is The Marketing Natives providing actionable ways to grow, improve and succeed in your business.
Narrator [00:01:01] And now your hosts, Christian and Aaron.
Christian [00:01:08] One of the first things that I initially notice, when I receive an email is usually the name or who is it from?
Aaron [00:01:20] What do you mean? Like, oh, this is from Joe at Jurassic Park.
Christian [00:01:26] Right. It should be kind of cool.
Christian [00:01:26] So instinctively we typically look at that name first and then probably the subject line or vice versa. But those two things are obviously some of the most important things. But when it comes to the name, I think there's opportunity for brands and companies to do something a little bit different, and I think recently I would say recently in the past few years, two or three years, we've seen more of Christian from Bit Branding or Aaron from Best Buy sending you an email versus just Best Buy or Bit Branding.
Aaron [00:02:06] Right.
Christian [00:02:09] Come through. So if there's any room for improvement or a smaller tidbit on how to increase the open rate, I would say pay attention to the sender name, right? Who is it coming from? I think that plays a huge role, especially if you make it seem more of a, "This is a real person behind this email" and maybe at the end of the email you actually sign it by the same person cap from whatever else it is from. There could include image of that person. You created more of a personal connection with your subscribers instead of just hiding behind this logo, brand or whatnot.
Aaron [00:02:51] I think it's interesting. So, like the sending providers like Active Campaign, MailChimp, whatever, they actually prefer that as well. Like, that's one of the things that they say. But I'm just thinking of like a brand that is actually trying to be bigger than they are, when their advantage is that they should use like, "Hi! My name's Becky and I own this clothing boutique", like, you're better off Becky saying it's from you than it is to say, like Becky's boutique signed, the boutique team like that doesn't actually help you. It actually hurts you to your point. So that helps with the open rate, I think, too, like who it's coming from. So it's like, oh, this is actually from Becky. She wrote it, even if she didn't. But that helps with open rate, right? But it also helps with like, I think to follow through on it too. It's like you get them to open it, which is what this episode's about. But now the next step is like, what do you want them to do afterwards? It's like if it's coming from Becky and I feel like it's personalized now, I'm like, okay, awesome! Let me check this out. I don't know. Maybe that's something we do for hours, too, is like, Hey guys! Just so everybody knows, like the weekly bit we alternate because right now we do "we", feel like it could be like, oh, Aaron's given an update this week or Christian has given an update this week. I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer for that. But, maybe down at the bottom we put it like Aaron and Christian play like Frenzy, this week was done by Aaron or like next week will be Christian. Be on the lookout, he's going to tell you about this, like, you know, maybe that's something that we could try.
Christian [00:04:12] Yeah I know. On our name I think we use, I'm talking about the name that comes through on that preview it says Aaron and Christian.
Aaron [00:04:23] Yeah.
Christian [00:04:23] So I don't know, it might be better to have Aaron Pearson, you know, someone might be more inclined to "Oh, I got an e-mail from Aaron, like, let me check this out" versus like, Aaron and Christian kind of automatically associate with this, maybe like the newsletter or whatever.
Aaron [00:04:38] Yeah.
Christian [00:04:38] You rarely see that, you know, Cindy and whatever.
Aaron [00:04:43] Well, there's this marketing guys from the U.K. They do it.
Christian [00:04:46] Andre and Pete?
Aaron [00:04:46] Yeah.
Aaron [00:04:49] So I think that, like, if we at least put our names is better, so maybe it's not the best part of it, but I don't think that it should change to like, just my name or just your name on that part of it. I think if you look at our videos or even the podcast or anything like that, it's very much like a duo type thing. So I think it also kind of depends on the brand. But the fact that we at least put Aaron and Christian is like the name that comes across is at least better than just saying it's from Bit Branding. "Hello, Bit Branding".
Christian [00:05:17] Right.
Aaron [00:05:17] So I think, but then the actual name matters too, so like instead of, Hello! @Bit Branding.co, like we could do it from one of our emails and that may be better even though it says it's from Aaron and Christian could be from one of our emails because I think the info and hello is kind of like that's kind of a tougher one too, to send, but I don't know. That's something to think about. But good point.
Christian [00:05:44] And then obviously, I mean, I talked about the sender's name, but I would say one of probably the most important one would be the subject line and making sure that, that subject line one, it's succinct, so you don't have a lot of words and different things in there. I think the ideal is like six to ten words, maybe around 90 or 70 characters. I mean, it gets cut off pretty quickly it depends on the device and the mail app that you're using. But, improving the subject line, whether it's by the amount of words, what you're saying you whether personalizing it or not, where you have the ability to say like, Hey Aaron, on the actual subject line. Little things like that would definitely help you increase those open rates. What I'm talking about, I mean, a lot of these things you see companies use all the time.
Aaron [00:06:41] Yeah.
Christian [00:06:41] So I don't think there's anything new that will dramatically help you increase open rates. But the slight one to two percent things that we're mentioning here is still going to help. There's no magic pill to make people open your emails, but by you doing some of these things, it will incrementally help you with that.
Aaron [00:07:06] I think now, like previously used to see, like people do like a bunch of numbers that they do like the personalized name or whatever, which works.
Aaron [00:07:14] But I think it's something else to test from like the subject lines is like keeping it super short and then make it super conversational. Like if I was going to send an email to Christian, like we don't even really send emails anymore because we use ClickUp. But like if we were like in say 2010, going to send something to somebody before even came along, it'd be like, hey, look at this or like, hey, I want your opinion like question mark, it's just we quit trying to overthink it. I mean you do need to think about it, but it's just more so like keep it conversational and like a subject line that's coming from a real person. I think just that overall tips that we have here is like emails should be a personalized conversation that you have with somebody. The more personalized and like authentic that it makes and it feels, then the more likely somebody is going to actually open up your email and then to do the next thing, because the more that it feels disingenuous or like it feels like it's, I don't know, fake, then it's like that's just another person who wants to take my money or another person you want something from me versus, oh, this is my best bud, Chris or John or Frank or whatever. He just wants to talk to me about marketing, fishing or whatever else. So I think just the small things like that could help with people actually opening the email, right?
Christian [00:08:31] Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, yeah, there's you read one article and it tells you, oh, your subject line needs to be a question. And then, you read another article and it's like, oh yeah, questions. They don't really talk to anyone. So even some of the things that we're telling you might not work for your industry, but it's worth to try and try a few times and you may try, I don't know, putting a question in the subject line. But then, you tried it at sitting at four o'clock and it didn't work for you. Okay, maybe the next time try sending it at nine a.m. See how that changes. So I think with anything regarding email, sure, it's good to see what's out there and see what's working for other people. But ultimately, it's I mean, it's your audience and you still have to go and test. You still have to go and see maybe what times are the best subject line with sender's name is going to be the most important. So I think looking at your analytics, it's crucial for you to determine what's actually going to work for your business.
Aaron [00:09:35] I feel like once you are getting into that nitty gritty, it allows you to find out. I think an advantage for people who are listening is that if you have a smaller list, like let's say you have less than a thousand people on your list, there's an advantage there because, you know, if let's say you get a one percent click rate, you know who looks at your emails so you can actually have a conversation with like, Becky I saw you checked out this email, like, if you don't mind me asking, you know, what was so good about this? Did you enjoy it? You can find out.
Aaron [00:10:11] But part of that is like once you grow the list, it's also making sure that like, okay, well, Becky doesn't really care about this. She actually cares about these things. Like she actually cares about, for example, like for us, like she doesn't care about Shopify apps because she's on WordPress, but she does care about commerce. Okay, great. Well, I'm going to put her on a list that only shows with commerce, because last thing I would want to do is show her something about Shopify because she's going to stop opening the emails.
Aaron [00:10:38] I think Pat Flynn said that's the best, whenever he was like interviewing, I don't know, his camera guy, and his camera guy has a Kodak or a Canon. If maybe he had a cannon and like a Sony and he just has a list, it's like, all right, these are all these people who said, like, heck, yes, I'm Sony, Like A7, that's my shot, like that's what I would like to use, and then all these people who are like Canon, like hands down, coolest camera ever. He didn't send like when Sony came out with something, he didn't send all the Canon people anything about, even though he probably could have and made a little bit of sales. He sent it to the Sony people and those people were like, you know, 50, 60 percent open rates, huge click through rates, because they're like, this is our community this is our email. And so, I think the tip here is that, like, you've got to cater your emails to your exact audience. So like even Christian and I could get on the same email list. But they may talk about like if you're a huge fan of, I don't know, T-Rex's, you may be more interested in this list.
Aaron [00:11:40] I'm like, no, I care more about Raptors. I may open up the emails, more about Raptors than them. We like dinosaurs. If you sent us some dinosaurs, side note, we'll be super happy. But my point is to segment your audience and you get a better open rate because it's specific. It's personalized.
Christian [00:11:55] Absolutely, yeah. It goes back to that personalization aspect which in the subject line, sure, you can do things like mentioning their name, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of what are they actually interested in, then you will definitely receive better open rates because you're talking specifically to a set of people and they've actually told you specifically these are the things that I'm interested in. There's a few ways to, you know, to achieve that. You know, you can do it right from the Get Go. You know, when they sign up on your website, you can have different options that they can just check mark and say, oh, I'm interested in marketing, I'm interested in Facebook and TikTok, and that's it. Then we can actually cater to those people and be more successful. Likewise, just like how Aaron said you could do it, you know, if you have a smaller audience and you're sending emails, just send them a one off like "Hey, what are you actually interested in? What do you want to hear from me? What do you want to learn?" and I will give you a better idea on what are they looking for from you. I'll guarantee you that your open rate will increase from writing things that they're specifically interested in.
Aaron [00:13:12] Hey local business owners! If you're ready to grow your business online without having to work more in your business and you can spend more time on it. We created a free training on how to attract qualified and convert more leads online. It is thirty eight minutes. It's going to take a little bit of your time, but it's going to have a huge benefit. It's completely free. Make sure you click below in the description, whether you're on Facebook, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're on the podcast. Everything's there that you need. Go grab the training now.
Aaron [00:13:43] I think that's something that we need to do too though. Just thinking out loud is like sending that out to everybody, like everybody should be on the weekly bit because they get a recap of everything.
Aaron [00:13:52] But certain people may be like, hey, on Monday, like heck, you send me an email about the podcast because I found a statistic today, which is insane, especially now, is that fifty five percent of Americans listen to podcasts, which is crazy. So that means like Megan doesn't listen to a podcast or she could, but you do and bring it on unless when actually she does and I do. That means, like in the office, like fifty five percent of people roughly thinks Gallup listen to podcasts. But that being said, it's like, it's so much better for us to send that email to the people who love podcasts. And then, if we have a video that comes out later for Facebook or on YouTube, like there may be people who are like, yeah, I don't listen to a podcast, but I love YouTube videos. I'm going to send it to them and they're going to watch on YouTube or Facebook. So I think that's something we need to do to help with our audience, to send more emails to the right people to the segment. But absolutely, that's going to help with the open rates too.
Christian [00:14:47] Yeah.
Aaron [00:14:49] All right, so thank you guys so much for listening and watching. If you're watching on YouTube or Facebook on how to increase your open rates for email, this is the highest ROI in your business. So if you got this far into the episode, you're like, what do you mean? Yes, email is the best way for you to get a return on your investment for marketing. It's better than Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. All of them combined don't equal the same ROI as email. So make sure that you go back through, you check the show notes. If you look at this and you really focus on like, how can you increase your open rate because it will help you grow your business. All right, guys, so if this is your first time listening, please make sure that you go over to that button and hit subscribe whether you're on the podcast or YouTube. We put out content every single week and it will help you grow your business more online and in person. That way you can continue to serve your customers better. If you've been listening to us for a while, please you may leave us an honest rating and review over on Apple podcast. The reviews are great. We love those. But if you leave a comment with the review, it will allow us to give you a shout out here we'd love to shout you out here, but also give us some feedback on where we should be taking the podcast. Also, just be on the lookout. We've been talking about this for a while. This episode will air sometime, I think, in November or December of 2020. Hopefully, new intro, hopefully new podcast art, so we're going to be revamping some things for you guys to make the podcast even better. But hope you got a lot out of this and we'll see you next week on The Marketing Natives.
Narrator [00:16:23] The Marketing Native's podcast is a production of Bit Branding.
