Photo Marketing Mentor

There are some people out there who believe that email marketing is dead. I’ll tell you from personal experience that is far from the case.

I do agree email open rates are on the decline. Let’s look at your inbox for an example, how many emails do you receive in a typically day? Now think about how many of those emails you actually opened. Of those emails you opened who were they from? Typically but not always the first emails you open are from the people you already know, right?

So assuming that you’ve done a decent job of communicating with your list the chances of crafting emails that are continually opened and read dramatically increase. Even if you haven’t achieved this up to this point, with the information in this article you are now armed with resources to turn that around.

In this article I want to share with you 3 tips that will practically guarantee that your emails are opened, read, received and responded too.

1. Craft an attention grabbing subject line. Think about it, the first thing your subscriber reads is the subject heading. It has to say more than “You who? It’s me sending you another email!” When you sit down to write your next email think about what action you want your reader to take via a step-by-step sequence.

Let’s say for example that you are emailing your list because you wish to announce a new gallery show and you want to invite subscribers to RSVP their attendance. That’s your desired outcome.
A headline that would arouse attention could be, “I can’t believe it finally happened!” Or “I was surprised by what they selected”. Now think about these two headlines for a moment. If I was on your list and I received an email from you that used either of these headlines, your chances of my opening that email has drastically increased. Why? Because you’ve peeked my curiosity, either one of these headlines would make me click because I want to know the answer. “What finally happened?” “What did they select?” Can you see how this works?

These headlines are a lot more interesting than New Gallery Show Coming, Please RSVP.

2. Know the next step. Okay now that your email has been opened what you say next will determine how much further your reader will go. Knowing the next step you want the reader to take will make writing your copy much easier. In the case of our artist he/she desires for readers to attend their show and secure a list of RSVP’s.

So the first sentence of your email should complete the statement you started in your subject header. For example for our subject header, “I can’t believe it finally happened! The opening sentence could read – XYZ gallery has just selected images from my new series on ____?” Do you see how I did that?

I wrote my first sentence to complete the statement I posed in subject header of my email. I told the reader the what and the who. Easy right? Now in the copy that follows I could speak more about the series, the images that the gallery picked etc. Finally I want to direct my reader to the final step.

3. Provide a call to action. You always want your email to result in an action taken by the reader. So if your goal were to secure RSVPS’ for your gallery show then you would place a clickable and track able link to a page where (in this case) the reader can submit their rsvp. Notice that I said clickable and track able. In order for email marketing to work to your benefit you need to know the affects your messages have on the reader. Most email management services like Constant Contact or 1ShoppingCart for example will provide you with stats on your click through rate.

The best way to do this is to test your emails by evaluating the results and make adjustments based on the results you receive. What do I mean by test? First, construct the email, send it, and evaluate your results i.e. check your stats. What are you looking for?

• How many times was the email opened?
• How many readers clicked on the link embedded in the email?
• Did you receive the results you sought?

Once you get a formula down for creating responsive emails your golden. A winning formula consists of skill, patience, testing, adjusting and re-launching.

© Rodney Washington, 2010-2011

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