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Email marketing, most people have a love-hate relationship with it. We all know it’s great; email is one of the best tools we have to communicate with our audience. But creating content, finding great photography and figuring out the best time to send can be tough. Especially when your audience isn’t engaging with the emails you’re sending (you are reviewing your stats, right?!). Luckily there are some simple but effective things you can try to get people to open your email.

Stand out from the crowd.

There are plenty of articles out there that give suggestions about creating subject lines. And most of them are decent, but the problem starts when everyone reads those same articles. You end up competing for inbox attention with a company or thousands that created a subject line the same way you did. You need to stand out in the inbox; you need to try something that most other companies are shying away from doing. Create a clever subject line you normally wouldn’t. Doing this helps you stand out and at the same time creates a more human touch for your brand. Using pop culture references or movie quotes in your subject line can bring a different feeling to your email from the start. The email could be a complete bust or it could end up being of the most opened emails you’ve ever sent. As long as the subject line somehow relates back to the content of the message I think your audience will be pleased.

Let the user’s imagination do its job.

Don’t give away all the details in the subject line. I’m not saying create a “click bait” type subject line, but just be general.  If your subject line says something like “The service you’ve been waiting for…” instantly the user is going to start thinking of all the services you provide for them. Then begin to wonder what more you could offer them. Eventually curiosity will get the best of them and they’ll need to know what the content of the email is. Be general, be vague but don’t lie.

One last thing you can try is changing your from name.

Over time your audience is going to get used to seeing your from name. It will become easy to glaze over especially if they are not engaging with your emails. But if you simply change your from name it might get them to open and read to see why the message is coming from a different name.  You might want to watch your stats a bit more closely if you decide to go this route. Changing the from name can be very effective, but people that are engaging with your emails might be looking for the name they are used to seeing. One tactic you can try is creating a special email for a segment of your audience that is not opening emails. Then send to that segment using a different from name.

Email marketing can be very tough, but changing up a few minor things from time to time can have a big impact.  Email marketing usually comes with some great stats, start reviewing them to see what you should be doing different. If you continue to do the same old stuff, expect to get the same old results. Remember in some instances you can do A/B testing to see what gets the best results.