5 Ways to Increase Email Opens and Engagement

Today I'm going to share five simple and proven email marketing hacks to increase engagement and open rate.

1. Use Proven Subject Lines. Looking at the industry data you should probably consider subject lines that are one of the four. It is also important to rotate between these on a regular basis as your subscribers will eventually wear on any of these techniques.
   1. Build curiosity
   2. Be direct and state a benefit
   3. Use urgency or scarcity
   4. Show proof with case study or example
2. Unicode symbols are often call Glyphs and they draw a lot of attention in a subject line when used on occasion to draw a little extra attention. There are thousands and thousands of available Glyphs that you can use. Use http://emailstuff.org/glyph/search to look for a good glyph and get the code to use.
3. Leverage the Google Plus Profile in Gmail inboxes. If your from email address is verified on a Google + profile, your profile image will show up on the right hand side of the screen along with your profile name and potentially your latest shared item from your wall.
4. Don't forget the second subject line. In your subscriber's inbox after your subject they see the first several words of your HTML email. If the first text in your HTML email is “View This in Your Browser” or “Follow us on Facebook” or something similar that is not helping drive your open rate. Here is a good tutorial about how to control the hidden text in the HTML file that will be seen here.
5. Avoid the morning purge. The first thing people do in the morning when checking email is to delete about half of all the unread emails in their inbox. All of the stuff they are subscribed to that they just don't feel they have the time to review first thing in the morning in their rush to get going. Don't send your emails first thing in the morning… wait until after that first purge. Where possible better control this by individual time zone.