HOW TO OPT IN OPT OUT THE RECIPIENTS
Subscription Method: How did your email recipients subscribe to your emails? Did they find your Web site from a search engine and decide to opt-in? Are they a customer that automatically gets put on your email list? Are you an ecommerce site that provides an "opt out" or "opt in" checkbox during the purchasing/check out process? It goes without saying, in general, that people who have sought out information and then opted in to receive emails from a company are highly likely to open those emails. On the other hand, if you include a pre-checked sign-up box at the end of a lengthy purchase or registration form, people may either forget to uncheck the box or just miss it in their haste to complete the form. Regardless, how people got on your list is a major driver of their likelihood to open future emails.
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Spam/Junk Filters: Legitimate opt-in emails are increasingly getting trapped by spam filters used by ISPs and corporations - stopping these emails from reaching your intended recipients. But junk and spam filters used by the actual recipient count as "delivered" and will go unread as they are deposited into the user's junk or deleted folder. Microsoft's Outlook Junk filter can easily filter your email if you use certain words and symbols in your subject line and/or body text. Click here to view the current list of what Outlook filters.
10. List Quality/List Fatigue: A quality and well-maintained list is your foundation for high interaction with recipients. Focus on growing your list with target segments that are most likely to take the desired action. Long-time list members may suffer from fatigue (Do emails from Amazon still get your attention like they did 3 years ago?), so consider segmenting by "list age" and offer inactive customers an incentive to purchase or get reacquainted.
11. Frequency: Do the list members receive emails from you (or others if it is a third-party list) daily, weekly or monthly? Mailing too frequently will drive your open rates down. Similarly, mailing too infrequently can cause your recipients may to who you are ... and hit delete without giving your email a chance.
12. Time of Day/Day of Week: There is no right or wrong time/day to send your emails - only what works for you and your recipients. Test different days and times until you find what works best. If appropriate to your business, consider testing different times for work and personal email addresses in your database.