Hacking tips on How to stand out in the “Inbox” folder

There is a legend about the 100% Email Open Rate. But in fact, you'll get such success only if you send newsletters to your family members (but there is no guarantee). The average Open Rate of the mass mailing campaigns in the marketing/advertising industry is 17.85%.

But there is a chance to make this fairytale more real.

Wanna win the perpetual battle for attention in the inbox? Read this article and find out practical hacks on how to improve the newsletters to make it noticeable for the user.

What email campaign elements you should pay attention to

You know how important the first impression is ㅡ people like to judge a book by its cover. The same thing with email newsletters. But if the e-letter “cover” doesn’t catch the users’ eye ㅡ it won’t be opened. The end of the story.

There are newsletter parts people see opening the inbox folder:

1. Sender name
2. Subject line
3. Pre-header text

If you fail this stage, your campaigns could fall short.

Thus, we collected the list of the practical tips to improve these elements of your email campaign to make it visible to the radar of the user overview.  

Tips to make your newsletter subject line shine

Tips that proves its efficiency — read, remember, combine:

• Watch the size:

In the mobile age, people prefer short and concentrate information format. Due to this tendency, the headline length became shorter than before:

The “sweet spot” for mobile readability:

There are examples of how the marketers capture the recipients’ hearts in the 41-70 character subject line:

• Think over the fun references, unusual associations, controversies, or statements with double meaning to use in the headline of your newsletter after its content was written.

Among the standard methods there are “cheating” tricks for a one time use:

• Create the curiosity gap with the help of a short drama

It means you take the essence of the newsletter and use only a short paraphrased announce.

For example, you’ve written an announce of the blog-post about the Digital Marketing Trends of 2019.

You may use the subject line “Changes”.

If your readers are used to the creative tone of the newsletters this heading would be quite intriguing. Just imagine, finding such a newsletter in your inbox on a Thursday afternoon you start thinking “What is this? Maybe it’s something from my job. What is changing?”, and open the email.

• “Fwd:” and “Re:” in the subject line

In such a way you'll make the subscribers think that your email is forwarded or replied from a friend or job. Thus, you higher the chances of the email campaign to be seen.

By don’t lie, use it according to the content of your email. For example:

Don't cross the line between the intrigue in the email header and clickbait. Keep the subject line relevant to the content of your e-newsletter.

• Try to combine the sender’s name and the subject line to make it a sensible statement.

For example:

Here ‘Atompark’ is the "sender name" while ‘tells about the subject lines hacks’ is the email heading.

• Use numbers

The classic method, which still works as well as in the previous years.

Source

Example:

You can also combine it with the emoji or any other techniques described above.

Get the maximum from the email preheader

Pre-header is the short text that follows the subject line when viewing an email from the inbox.

The mistake of the majority of email campaigns is in ignoring the preheader.

Source

But it can be even worse:

• Showing the code

• Forgetting about the placeholder text:

• Leaving the images' Alts in a text:

It rises up the chances of your email to be noticed by readers. Work over its text, and give the subscriber a compelling reason to open the email.

There is a list of tips to optimize your newsletter preheader:

• Don’t repeat the info you’ve mentioned in a subject line, try to elaborate it:

Source

• Start with the classic personalization by mentioning the subscriber’s name:

• Get rid of the unwanted extra text in the preview of your email using the Jaina Misty coding hack (from the Litmus presentation):

Just use a zero-width non-joiner ‌ in combination with a non-breaking space   to make a gap (white space) after your preview text.

These were the special hacks to help your campaigns stand out in the mailing box.

In addition, you should always remember the classic rules:

• Be creative
• Avoid being spammy
• Keep the relevance of your email campaigns
• Make the text simple

Use it to make the newsletters shine and attract the subscribers’ attention.

Written by:

Anastasia Sukhareva