How AI today is different

Various forms of AI technology have made it possible to create more effective email marketing, and this has been around for many years.

You can use AI to perform A/B and multivariate testing. You can use it to personalize emails by synching it with your customer database so it knows their demographics, prior purchases, and other relevant information. It can help you segment your lists more effectively and quickly, and clean up your email lists to improve open rates and deliverability. 

All of that is great. 

But now, with ChatGPT and its generative language technology that actually interacts with you in real time, AI has taken a big step forward. 

Now, AI can work as your assistant to help you actually write and enhance the content of your emails. Let’s look at some ways you can use AI to produce and improve your email content.

We’ll look at subject lines, email content, and CTAs. But first, you need to know how to engage with AI so it produces email content you can actually use.

How to prepare ChatGPT to produce what you need

ChatGPT can actually learn based on what you tell it. That means, you want to do more than just ask it to write an email or a subject line. Before you get to that point, give it some information so it knows what you’re trying to do and the assets you have to work with. Here are more instructions for how to do that.

For example, if you’re writing an email campaign built around a particular sale, deal, webinar, event, or some singular opportunity with a deadline, tell ChatGPT the goals of your email campaign. 

Also, describe your audience. For this email, who are you writing to? It may not be your entire list. It may be just for a particular segment. Tell ChatGPT whatever you can about these people — demographics, interests, previous purchase history (or lack thereof), how recently they subscribed, etc. The more you can tell AI about your audience, the more relevant the email content will be.

Next, be sure to share any relevant assets that are part of the campaign. These could include:

• Product images
• Landing pages the email will link to
• Free gifts or lead magnets like special reports or coupons
• Relevant dates, such as deadlines or times when this audience joined your list

The more you can tell the AI program in advance, the better its output will be. 

With that in mind, let’s look at how to use ChatGPT’s AI to make your email content better.

Email subject lines and AI

There are several ways to go about creating subject lines for your emails using AI. Here are three approaches you can take:

Ask the AI tool for subject line options

Once you’ve prepared ChatGPT with information about your email campaign and audience, ask it something like this: 

“Write ten email subject line options for the first email in our campaign.”

It will produce ten options. With those, you can either take one you like, ask it for more choices, clarify your request if it’s a bit off the mark, use several of them for a series of emails, or just take what it gave you and use it as a starting point to write your own subject lines.

If the tone is off, you can ask the AI program to write new subject lines with a more desirable tone. We’ll talk about how to do that a bit later.

Write one first and ask for alternatives

Another approach is to write your own subject line first and then ask the tool to produce alternatives. This might work better because it gives the AI program an idea of what you’re looking for. You might say it this way:

“I wrote this email subject line for our campaign – [subject line]. Give me ten subject line alternatives to this one.”

Write the email first

The third method for getting subject lines from AI is to write the email first, and then use either of the two strategies already given. This way, you can give ChatGPT the content for the actual email, and it will produce subject lines relevant to what is already written. 

Try all of these approaches and see how each one works for you.

Email content and AI

For your actual email content, you can use ChatGPT’s AI to improve your writing in all sorts of ways, as well as speed up the process for producing more emails. Here are several tasks you can ask the AI program to perform:

Get email topic ideas

Once you’ve fed the AI tool information about your audience, campaign, product, and other relevant details such as time of year, holidays, or perhaps the landing page the email will link to, ask ChatGPT to come up with email topic ideas.

This is particularly helpful if you want to create a whole campaign, but it works well for one-off emails, too. With topics in hand, you can get to work planning and producing the emails.

Write email outlines or suggested structures

ChatGPT can also produce email structures and outlines. This is sometimes a good first step rather than having AI write the whole email. Once you finalize the structure you want, writing the email will be easier, whether you do it yourself or ask an AI program to do it.

Write your opening sentence

The opening sentence is arguably even more important than the email subject line. If people open your email but the first sentence doesn’t draw them in, they won’t keep reading. 

So, ask ChatGPT to suggest several opening sentences, just like you did for subject lines.

Write the entire email

When you have the topic, and possibly the structure, for your email in mind, you can also ask ChatGPT to just write the entire email. What it produces will not work for a final product. But if you have given the AI tool sufficient information to help it write this email, it will be a strong start.

You can then edit and revise the draft to make it match your brand voice, and to make sure it’s hitting all the key points.

Improve a pre-written email

You may not be too thrilled about having an AI program write your emails for you. If you find it can’t quite do the job and you’re tired of revising what it produces, try it the other way around. 

Write the email first, and ask the AI tool to revise yours. The more specific and clear you can be in what you ask it to do, the more effective its revisions will be. 

For instance, you can ask it to shorten your email if it’s too long but you’re not sure where to cut. You can ask it to be more persuasive, or to be more engaging for your target audience. Try different suggestions and see what it does. You may find a couple of its improvements worth keeping.

Check your grammar, spelling, and clarity

AI can also easily check your basic writing skills so you don’t send out an unprofessional-sounding email. With an email you’ve written yourself, or even an AI-generated one that you’ve revised and improved to sound more like you, have an AI tool give it an editing pass.

Check your email’s tone

You may find that the emails written by ChatGPT have all the right content, but they don’t sound right. You can ask the AI tool to rewrite the email in a different tone. As mentioned earlier, you can also ask it to do this for your subject lines. 

The key to succeeding here is to use descriptive adjectives for how you want the email to sound. So, in your prompt, ask the AI program to “rewrite the email in a more [adjective] tone.” 

Here are some adjectives you might try:

• Casual
• Conversational
• Silly
• Friendly
• Professional
• Urgent
• Trustworthy
• Approachable
• Witty
• Emotional

And, you can always combine a couple of these, such as “friendly and approachable,” or “professional and urgent.”

This article shows screenshots of actual ChatGPT interactions so you can see how it changes the content of emails based on your prompts.

Inject humor, wit, or pop culture references

Yes, ChatGPT has a sense of humor. Or, at least it thinks it does. You can ask the AI tool to come up with funny or witty one-liners, puns, and other forms of humor. It will attempt to fulfill your request, and sometimes what it comes up with is pretty good.

You can also ask it to add in pop culture references you may want to use to engage and entertain your audience. And again — you can do all this with subject lines too, in addition to the email content.

CTAs and AI

By now, you’re probably getting an idea of how this works.

Your call-to-action buttons and links, and the text you use for them, play a big role in helping engage and convert your audience. 

Just like with subject lines, you can ask ChatGPT to come up with a list of CTAs. You can do this after the email is written so it has something to work with, and this is probably the best approach. But you can also use the other methods suggested for subject lines.

Use AI to make your email content better

Now you have a good guide for how to use ChatGPT to enhance your email content. And you can probably see how this will also help you write them faster.

If you have a MailPoet account, using AI to help write your emails means you can send out more emails without having to spend as much time on each one as you did before.

That means you’ll get more out of your email marketing. And remember — you can use AI to generate your automated emails, too. It can write your welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, confirmation emails, and all the other types you can use MailPoet to send.

See what else MailPoet makes possible

The latest marketing tools may grab headlines, but simple and consistent communication keeps potential customers thinking about your products, services, and brand. And nothing does that better than email.

Why is this true?

Because email is relatively simple to use. It’s also more affordable than many other types of marketing, and just about everyone has an email address and checks it regularly. 

In general, you should be using email for two main purposes — engaging and corralling new customers and leads, and solidifying your relationship with existing ones.

If you’re not already doing so, start using the small business email tips and practices listed below to create successful email marketing campaigns. Even implementing a few of these small business email marketing tips can lead to an immediate improvement in your engagement or revenue.

1. Send more emails

Stop worrying about unsubscribes — most small businesses send far too few emails because they’re worrying about annoying people into leaving their list. Most of the time, however, this just prevents organizations from making the most of their email list.

You’re never going to keep every subscriber forever. People’s lives change, their tastes change, they move or pick up new hobbies. Use email to nurture your best customer relationships and don’t sweat too much about things you can’t control. 

There’s no exact number here. Bigger companies may want to send more emails than smaller ones, but what really matters is two things:

• How fast your list is growing
• How many people unsubscribe with each email you send

You want your email list to grow, so don’t send out so many emails that your unsubscribes outpace your new signups. Otherwise your list will shrink. 

But again, this is not usually the problem. Almost all small businesses send way too few emails, sometimes even less than one per month. And if you’re not staying in touch with subscribers, how will they remember you?

If you have a webinar coming up, a big new product launch, or a holiday sale, just sending one email simply doesn’t get the job done. Even your best customers won’t even see, let alone open, every email you send. It takes multiple attempts. Simply re-sending the same email to people who didn’t open it the first time — with a new subject line — will increase responses.

If you only send out a couple of emails each month, make a focused effort to get out even one more every 30 days and see how it impacts your marketing goals.

2. Send email more consistently

Consistency is more important than volume. Sending five emails one month and then zero the next is worse than sending two each month. Gently and consistently nudging yourself to the top of their mind is better than overwhelming someone and then disappearing for weeks. 

But email cadence is also not an exact science, and each business will want to find its own rhythms, again depending in part on how much your list is growing. 

And while consistency is good, you may also have the occasional email marketing campaign or special event that requires an extra high volume for a time. That’s okay. 

Some businesses — especially large ecommerce brands — send email every single day. They wouldn’t do this if it was destroying their email list and not producing something. Other businesses find a diminishing return with too frequent emails. It just depends on your business and audience.

The main thing to keep in mind is to make a plan and stick to it. If sending once a month is all you feel you have capacity for, then start there. Or try twice a month, or once a week. 

The reason consistency matters is because, even if your subscribers don’t open the email, the subject line itself serves as a connection between your small business and your customers. They’re seeing a marketing message from you. You’re returning to their minds. You’re part of their lives. And you’re contributing to stronger customer retention. 

3. Leverage email automation

Email automation can be one of your small business’ best friends. It eliminates the complaint of “I don’t have time to send all these emails.”

When customers and leads take particular actions, they should receive an email reply, and with an email service provider like MailPoet, you can automate almost all of these. For example, you can automate email replies whenever a customer:

• Buys a product
• Leaves something in their shopping cart — abandoned cart emails
• Joins your email list (even segmented by a specific signup form)
• Requests a lead magnet such as a free guide or eBook
• Registers for a webinar

These automated emails can be standalones, or you can create a whole series of emails, such as a welcome series. If they buy, you want them to buy again. You can ask for reviews. Motivate referrals. Show appreciation. Send rewards. Make special offers. Announce new products. Show yourself as a valuable part of their lives. 

Email automation can perform all of this, and once you have created the email and set up the automation, it just runs in the background all by itself.

4. Don’t just sell — deliver value

To stay relevant and appreciated, you must give your customers things they want. That means, don’t just keep selling. Every email cannot be yet another coupon, sale, or deal.

Send valuable content. Valuable content wins over new subscribers who haven’t bought yet. It reassures new customers that they made a good decision. It increases lifetime customer value. 

Valuable content depends on your industry to some extent, but it could be:

• Problem-solving tips relevant to your contact list
• Answers to common questions
• Explanations of your return policy
• Descriptions of your shipping options 
• Customer success stories
• Links to videos and social media posts

If you have the right email marketing tools, you can deliver this sort of content in automated emails such as a welcome series or a post-order email. You can also send it out in your regular email communications. When you position your small business as a resource, an asset, an authority, and a helpful and friendly guide, your email subscribers will appreciate it and not feel constantly bombarded.

5. Segment your list to increase personalization and relevance

You’ll deliver even more value if you can segment your list and use those segments effectively. For example, for a WooCommerce or other stores selling online, you could segment your customers based on:

• Lifetime customer value
• Product categories related to their purchase
• Purchase frequency
• Average order size
• Location
• Demographics like age, gender, and family type
• Responsiveness to email deals
• Special calendar days and seasons

Yes, segmentation may take more time, because it can mean creating more emails each month since different segments will receive different content. But if you can send just one email per month to four segments, that could be more effective than sending four emails per month to your entire list. 

Here’s more about the seamless integration between MailPoet and WooCommerce.

6. Create and follow an email content calendar

An email content calendar sets your plan for your ongoing email communication. Typically, you’ll map out the following items, month by month:

• When you will send each email
• The topic or purpose for each email
• A call to action for each email — buy, click, read, sign up, share, etc.
• Any additional assets required for each email, such as blog posts, product pages, and coupon codes

What this does is make you stick to your goal of sending more emails, and sending them consistently. You may not know what you’ll write for each email when you create the plan, but you will have an email on the content calendar and a chosen topic. So when it comes time to create that email, you know what you’re looking for.

7. Don’t overdo the graphics

Some small businesses feel pressured to make design-heavy emails because they look better. And since design-heavy emails take more time and effort to create, the business owner puts off their next email marketing campaign because they’re too busy. 

If you don’t have time to make graphics, then don’t! Send emails that are mostly text or even an entirely plain text email. Email is first and foremost about showing up, staying relevant, and remaining on the minds of your customers. Trying to make the “perfect” email, but taking weeks to do it, will not generate as much value for your small business as sending out emails every week, even if they don’t have tons of fancy graphics.

Plus, text emails feel more personal and less like marketing. Ideally, you can create a healthy mix of graphics and text, because this will engage more subscribers who respond to different stimuli. 

Pro tip: Because some email users have graphics disabled in their mailboxes, you should include text links for your calls to action instead of only positioning these in graphics. 

If your small business site is on WordPress, you already have an advantage in this department because you can use one of MaiPoet’s WordPress email templates to create a beautifully-designed email. This allows you to balance text and graphics, but doesn’t take hours to build. 

8. Use email to grow your SMS list

SMS marketing is growing in popularity, and for good reason. Receiving a text from a small business feels different from receiving an email. Plus, texts are shorter and get a nearly 100% open rate.

Email is one of the most effective tools to grow your SMS list, because you can regularly mention it to your contact list and give mobile users the opportunity to opt in to receive texts from your small business. Plus, many people check email from their phone, so they can take action right then and there. Your existing customers are your warmest audience for this. And once they’re on your SMS list, you can market to them using two channels, not just one. 

9. Get permission

Speaking of opting in, you need to make sure all your email subscribers have given explicit permission to join your email marketing list. Email compliance regulations such as GDPR are quickly becoming the norm, so make sure you aren’t adding customers without their permission.

What this means for ecommerce stores and other small businesses: 

If customers give you their email address during the purchase process, you must provide them an option to give their express permission to receive marketing emails from you. Email platforms such as MailPoet make this easy. 

You can’t just add their email addresses to your list because they ordered something from you. If you do, they can report your message as spam and damage your sender reputation. This means that even legitimate subscribers may end up finding you in their spam folder instead of their inbox.

10. Keep your email reputation strong

Lastly, modern email marketing strategies require paying attention to the health of your email list. 

If you consistently send emails to expired or non-existent addresses, the companies that fight email spam and look for abusive practices will take notice. This can cause your emails to get delivered less often — even to loyal subscribers. 

What this means for small businesses online:

• Pay attention to bounce rates
• Remove email addresses that bounce repeatedly, or get reported as non-existent
• Keep your list clean of inactive subscribers

A good rule is to create segments of subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked on any emails in a certain period of time, such as a year. 

Once or twice a year, update this list segment, and send them a ‘reactivation campaign.’ This short series of emails gives these subscribers the option to confirm they want to remain on your email list. It’s a good idea to include a special offer in a reactivation campaign, because you want them to stay. And as made clear earlier, this email marketing campaign should include several messages, because not everyone sees each one.

Pro tip: Don’t beat around the bush with subject lines here. Be very direct — “Want to remain on our email list?” “Still want to hear from us?” “Are you still there?” Subjects like these have no ambiguity. Some people really are just busy, but like being on your list even though they don’t engage that often. 

This is called list hygiene, and it’s a good thing to do once or twice a year, in addition to regularly removing emails that bounced back as undeliverable. 

Need help with email automation and marketing?

MailPoet is quickly becoming the go-to email platform for small businesses and ecommerce stores. It makes email automation, segmentation, and consistent sending easy, and if you have WooCommerce, MailPoet connects with your data and will report on metrics showing how your email marketing is influencing revenue. It can also help you recover abandoned carts and grow subscribers in a GDPR-compliant way. 

MailPoet also has a built-in SMTP service for WordPress, so you can handle your transactional and marketing emails in a single place for a more consistent experience for both you and your subscribers.

Sign up for a free MailPoet plan here.

Well, as we’ll explain in this post, the actual answer is a little bit more complicated than just comparing your open rate against the benchmark. Yes – benchmarks can be useful, and we’ll share the data, but benchmarks should still be just one data point in your analysis.

In the end, the only benchmark that really matters is your own business. Are your open rates going up or down? And how can you optimize your campaigns to boost your open rates to get the most benefit out of your email marketing efforts?

With that in mind, we’re going to do two things in this post:

1. We’ll show you the email open rate benchmarks from five different providers that are, collectively, based on tens of billions of emails. After all, you’re probably primarily here for the data, so we want to deliver.
2. We’ll share some tips for how you can improve your email open rates, so that you can improve your open rates versus the most important benchmark – your site’s current open rates.

Email open rate benchmark studies – what the data says

If you’re searching for email open rate benchmarks, you probably want to see what the data says, so we’re not going to keep you waiting.

The overall average email open rate across all industries and locations from five different data sources is 19.66%. 

Collectively, the total numbers come from tens of billions of emails sent within the past couple of years. We didn’t weight the numbers based on the number of emails sent – we just averaged the overall open rate from each source.

Let’s go through the data in more depth…

Mailchimp benchmarks – 21.33% average open rate

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In Mailchimp’s email marketing benchmarks, the overall average email open rate is 21.33%.

However, the open rate depends heavily on the industry. Unsurprisingly, the highest open rate is for government-related emails, which enjoy an average open rate of 28.77%. The second-highest was “Hobbies” at 27.74%, which is also unsurprising (it makes sense that people are interested in emails about their hobbies).

The lowest industry average open rate was for vitamin supplements at 15.03% (with eCommerce not far behind at 15.68%).

Mailchimp maintains its own public open rate benchmarks based on billions of emails. The data was last updated in October 2019 and comes from email campaigns with over 1,000 sends.

Mailchimp also analyzed other email marketing metrics, such as click-through rates (CTR), unsubscribe rates, and more.

Campaign Monitor benchmarks – 17.8% average open rate

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In Campaign Monitor’s benchmarks, the overall email campaign open rate average is 17.8% for all industries.

Just as with Mailchimp, the industry with the best average open rate was government-related emails at 30.50%. Nonprofits took second place with a 25.2% open rate.

The lowest open rates were for companies in the automotive (and aerospace!) industry with a 12.60% open rate. I’m guessing that’s mostly from car dealerships, and not that people are ignoring invitations to go to space with Virgin Galactic

The food and beverage industry and retail industry were also near the bottom at 13.0% and 13.9%, respectively.

Campaign Monitor built its benchmarks by analyzing over 30 billion emails sent by companies in over 171 countries between January and December 2019.

GetResponse benchmarks – 22.15% average open rate

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The average open rate in GetResponse’s benchmarks across all industries was 22.15%, which is the highest on this list.

One unique thing about GetResponse’s benchmarks is that they also break out the data by country, which is another big variable in open rates. Many European countries had open rates of ~35% or higher:

• Germany – 40.67%
• France – 36.25%
• Netherlands – 35.35%
• Spain – 34.95%
• Italy – 33.24%

On the other hand, the USA and UK were near the bottom, both with identical 18.39% open rates.

This adds another big wrinkle when trying to compare your business against the benchmarks, as you need to focus on location as well as industry.

GetResponse collected its data from over four billion emails sent between January to June 2019. They only looked at active senders with at least 1,000 contacts.

Constant Contact benchmarks – 16.06% average open rate

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In Constant Contact’s benchmarks, the overall average was just 16.06%, which is the lowest overall average of any dataset we looked at.

It’s also the only provider that had an industry in the single-digits – automotive services enjoy just a 9.80% open rate.

The industries with the highest open rates were religion (28.04%), government (25.92%), and primary/secondary education (25.32%).

To collect its benchmarks, Constant Contact analyzed over 200 million emails. The data is current through December 2020.

HubSpot benchmarks – 20.94% average open rate

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In HubSpot’s benchmarks, the overall average email open rate is 20.94%, though it varies by industry.

The lowest industry is “Electronics” at a 19% open rate and the highest industry is “Real Estate”, at a 26% open rate.

HubSpot built its email open rate benchmarks by analyzing the data from 19,033 customers for batch email campaigns. In this case, “batch” campaigns are campaigns with over 1,000 sends.

The data was collected from November 2018 to November 2019.

What’s a good email open rate?

Above, we told you that the overall average open rate is 19.66% across the five different data points we looked at, though it varies quite by industry and country.

So – what does that data mean to you?

If your average open rates are above 19.66%, does that mean they’re fully optimized and you don’t need to change a thing?

If your average open rates are below 19.66%, does that mean your email campaigns are an unoptimized hot mess and you need to hire a new marketer?

The answer to both questions is most likely “no”. 

If you’re above the benchmark, that doesn’t mean you can’t get even higher open rates. 

And if you’re below the benchmark, that doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing something wrong. Sure, there’s probably room for improvement, but the same applies even if you’re above the benchmark.

What is the benchmark, anyway?

While you can see that there are some trends between different benchmark services (e.g. religious emails always have one of the highest open rates), there can be differences, too.

Let’s say you’re in the construction space and your average email open rate is 19%. You want to see how you compare to the benchmark, so you go to Mailchimp and see that the overall is 21.77% for construction businesses.

You’re low! You need to fix things, right?

But then your coworker goes to Constant Contact’s benchmarks where the average open rate for construction is 17.71%. Now you’re beating the benchmark!

You’ll never be able to find a perfect benchmark to compare yourself against, so benchmarks are only useful as a very rough guide.

If your open rates are 5% and the benchmark is 25%, then yes – the benchmark is a pretty good indicator that you need to change how you’re doing things. On the other hand, if you already have something that’s in the same area as the benchmark, the benchmark can’t really tell you whether you’re doing well or poorly because there are too many variables.

A good email open rate is better than it was the month before

We’re not trying to tell you that benchmarks are worthless and you should ignore them. Instead, we just want to remind you that the most important benchmark is your own benchmark.

All things being equal, are your open rates getting better or worse over time?

If they’re getting better, you should view that as a success. If they’re getting worse, it might be time for some course correction.

So – how can you improve your own email open rates? That’s the question we’re going to answer in the next section.

How to improve your email open rates – nine tips

What you’re doing to improve your own email open rates is far more important than how you compare to the benchmarks. So – let’s end with some actionable tips on how to improve email open rates.

If you’re already beating the benchmark, these tips will help you leave it even further in the dust. And if you’re struggling to catch up with the benchmark, these tips will give you the knowledge you need to keep improving.

1. Nail your subject lines

When you’re talking about open rates, your email subject lines are the most important content in your email. After all, they’re pretty much the only content your subscribers will see when deciding whether or not to open your email.

Here are some quick tips:

• Keep your subject line short – under 60 characters.
• Play around with “stand out” tactics such as humor, shock and awe, vanity, etc.
• Lead with a discount (if applicable).
• Use numbers and lists.
• Personalize your subject lines (more on this later).

Additionally, make sure to avoid words that will get you flagged for spam or the Gmail Promotions tab.

You can also consider playing around with adding emojis in your subject lines. There’s some data suggesting that this can increase your open rates, though it’s not clear-cut so you’ll want to see how it works with your specific audience.

For a deeper look, check out our full guide on how to write great email subject lines. We also have some examples to inspire your subject lines and some “templates” you can use.

2. Make your preview text work for you

All email clients display your subject line, but many email clients also give you a little bonus text – the preview text.

You need to maximize all the real estate that’s available to you, so you shouldn’t forget about the preview text when optimizing your open rates. In fact, according to a survey from Litmus, 24% of respondents used the preview text to decide whether to open an email.

By default, email clients show the first sentence of your email. However, if you’re using MailPoet, you can enter a dedicated preview line that works in tandem with your subject line to boost open rates.

3. Send your emails at the right time and day

One of the interesting things about Campaign Monitor’s open rate benchmarks is that Campaign Monitor also breaks out the data by day, not just industry.

The difference isn’t huge, but the highest day (Tuesday) has almost a 1% greater open rate than the lowest day (Sunday). There’s also even bigger variance within some industries:

The time of day matters, too. Most office workers regularly check their emails at 10 AM, but they might not be as tuned-in at 7 PM when they’re trying to relax.

Of course, this depends on your industry and target market. If you’re sending emails to college students, they might not be as active at 10 AM as office workers.

The important thing is to recognize that day/time matters and experiment to find the best time for your subscribers – check out our post on the best day to send emails for more.

4. Segment your lists

Segmenting your email list is another useful strategy to improve your open rates. 

With segmentation, you can make sure that you’re sending emails that are optimized to engage with different types of subscribers on your list.

For example, let’s say you have an eCommerce store. It wouldn’t make sense to send the same email to people who make a purchase every single week as you send to people who haven’t purchased in three months, right?

By breaking them into different segmented campaigns, you can send promotional emails that are relevant to each type of customer, which can boost your open rates.

Check out our beginner’s guide to email segmentation to learn more.

5. Personalize your emails

According to some data, emails with personalized subject lines enjoy ~26% higher open rates than those without.

Logically, this makes sense – if people see a personalized subject standing out from a list of generic subject lines, they’ll be more likely to click on it.

Some ways to personalize your emails include:

• Adding a user’s first name. You can do this easily with MailPoet.
• Sending emails based on a user’s activity.
• Segmenting your lists (per the previous suggestion).

For more, check out our guide on how to use personalization in emails.

6. Pay attention to the number of emails you send

The number of emails that you send plays an important role in your open rates – send too often and people might think you’re a spammer, but send too infrequently and people might forget about you. Both scenarios can lower your open rates.

In general, sending an email somewhere between once a week and once per month is a good starting point, though it obviously depends on what you promised people when they signed up. 

If someone specifically signed up to receive a daily digest, then by all means send them a daily email.

For some more thoughts here, check out these two posts:

• How often should you send emails?
• How to not be a spammer (we know you would never intentionally spam! But accidental spamming can be just as frustrating to your subscribers)

7. Use clear and consistent “From” contact information

Using a clear “From” name and email address helps subscribers quickly tell that the email comes from a trusted source (you) rather than some random sender. If they know that they can trust the source, they’ll be more likely to open it.

Some tips:

• Always use your business/brand name as the “From” name. If you want to personalize it, you can use “Name at/from Your Business”. For example, “Kim at MailPoet”.
• Make sure your “From” address is your main domain name.
• Avoid using a “no-reply@” email addresses.

Here’s an example that includes both a personal name (builds a connection) and the business name (instant recognizability):

8. Clean your lists of unengaged subscribers

One huge variable for open rates is how clean your lists are. If you’re sending a big chunk of your emails to people who haven’t interacted with your emails in months (and may not even use the email address anymore), your open rates are obviously going to be a lot lower than someone who’s exclusively sending to engaged subscribers.

This is why it’s a good best practice to keep your lists clean. You’ll save on sending costs, improve your email reputation, and get more useful data. Check out our guide on how to clean your list using Clearout.

9. Pay attention to email deliverability

Your subscribers can’t open your emails if they don’t receive them, which makes email deliverability a silent killer for your open rate.

Deliverability includes issues such as getting stuck in users’ spam folders, bounce rate (soft and hard bounces), and other issues that prevent users from even seeing your emails in their inboxes.

If you’re using MailPoet, we offer a built-in sending service that handles many of these issues for you so that you don’t have to worry about your emails ending up in spam. We also have a huge guide on improving email deliverability.

For some other tips, check out our full post on how to improve email open rates.

The best email open rate benchmark is your own – improve it today

In the end, all of the email open rate benchmark data in the world can’t answer the most important question of your email marketing efforts – are your email marketing campaigns performing as well as they could be?

Yes – you can use the benchmark data to see how you stack up. But in the end, the most important data is whether you can increase your own open rates (and other important metrics such as click-through rates).

With the actionable tips we gave you at the end of this post, you should have the knowledge that you need to start improving and iterating your campaigns to move your open rates ever upward.

And if you’re using WordPress and in search of an email marketing plugin that gives you all the tools you need to maximize your open rates, learn how MailPoet can help you make your email marketing efforts a success. Get started today – it’s free.

While they all claim to be that “email you’ll always open”, many do fall short from that and fail within the first year. For one, the overload of email marketing examples shouldn’t discourage you from focusing your own efforts on sending regular business newsletters. It can only help you see what’s working and what you should never waste your time on.

So what actually makes a business email eye-catching and readworthy?

We’re having a look at 10 best business email examples we’ve reviewed over the course of multiple months to understand why they are better than the rest. Here are our findings for every specific instance:

Morning Brew

Morning Brew sends out daily emails to over 2 million people every single morning. Plus, they have separate editions for retail and emerging tech. No wonder an entire team with multiple writers, designers, and coordinators is working on these.

The first thing I like the most about this newsletter is simply how it appears in your inbox. All editions come with a coffee cup emoji in the subject line so you can easily identify them.

But let’s take a closer look at the actual newsletter:

You’ve got from the beginning a super friendly introduction paired with a mention of their daily sponsor (this is how they monetize their newsletters). Then, we get into a series of separate news for different industries and areas of interest. 

People won’t read the whole thing but they can skip to the same section every day. All news is summed up for busy professionals and they make it easy to share anything through handy social media buttons after each section.

They’ve also made sure to include a section on their sponsor (complete with a special offer for readers) not too high up where it would distract people from what they signed up for.

Like any reputable business email, they also provide a bunch of unique sections with their own content: BREW’S BETS, a podcast, and even fun facts or quizzes. So you can start your day with something else other than just business on your mind.

Why these business emails are great

Morning Brew has profited a great deal from subscriber retention, making sure to deliver just what they promised. They even have their own referral program that’s helped them gain millions of subscribers. On top of this, everything is shareable so word of the “media outlet” keeps spreading whenever readers find the content useful.

MailPoet

As a WordPress plugin that helps businesses of all sizes send newsletters, it’s only natural for MailPoet to deliver fantastic emails. The approach they’ve taken is to focus half of the content on their own brand while keeping the rest of the email fun and educational.

The goal behind these emails is to approach a mix of brand promotion and informative materials in a fun manner. The tone, colorful images, and monthly employee pic help readers get to know the team better without feeling like they’re talking to a company.

The best part is the “Links That Got Us Chatting” section which alone is a good enough reason to subscribe. The team shares a series of informative articles that are sure to give you your monthly fix of fun facts. Clearly explains why they have 30,000 happy readers.

Why these business emails are great

The business newsletters are sent once a month, giving just enough time to compile handy content and have a solid list of product updates. Taking a similar stance, you won’t clutter your subscribers’ inboxes but you’ll still be able to deliver your promo content and cater to their needs.

Social Print Studio

Social Print Studio sells just what their name suggests: prints. From photo books to stationery, wall art, cards, and so much more. With so many ways in which you can personalize these, it only makes sense for their emails to provide loads of ideas and tips.

The main thing that you notice after a while of receiving these emails is the effort that’s put into copywriting. The tone is consistent throughout all messaging and they prefer to opt for perfectly chosen words instead of long text. 

Here’s a perfect example that includes the language customers are likely to use, has just the right words for the call-to-action, and (fun fact here) they always add something funny to brighten up your day in the P.S. section:

Plus, all of their business emails are mobile-friendly, displaying best practices such as having limited large images, keeping only one CTA button that’s easy to click, and obviously, getting the responsive design in check.

Why these business emails are great

They send emails on a regular basis but the thing is that every single email is different. They’ve managed to send out giveaways, lists of tips, fun events and discounts, brief tutorials, surveys, app updates, team and brand insights, and even solely promotional videos.

For every holiday they have either a small giveaway or special offer. For every other day, they keep things educational and occasionally product-oriented without making their emails too long.

Changing up the type of content you send out keeps users engaged and ensures you meet all of their needs.

Casper 

The reason I chose to add Casper to this list of best business email examples is because they sell mattresses. But this hasn’t stopped them from turning an apparently not-so-email-friendly industry into email marketing success.

The first thing that stuck with me ever since I subscribed is how many emails I got.

A lot. Sometimes every single day. Whether it was for a holiday, special offer, company update, and many more reasons. Here’s an email that stood out:

Frankly, it has all of the classic ingredients of successful business emails:

• Strong focus on one product, which shows how you don’t need hundreds of items to put together a good sales-oriented email
• Perfectly placed CTAs
• Lots of supporting images along with short and sweet descriptive text
• Customer testimonials
• Social sharing options
• Clean design.

If you’re in charge of marketing for a product or service that doesn’t seem as “email-friendly”, I strongly encourage you to sign up to their emails and check just one month’s worth of their messaging. Their tone is both fun and educational, delivering fun tips among the rest of their promotional newsletters.

Why these business emails are great

They’ve turned the boring mattress industry into emails you won’t mind receiving on a daily basis.

The variety of emails they send makes readers eager to see what kind of tip or offer they’ll share next. Definitely impressive given they sell 3 mattresses and just a couple of extra bedding accessories.

Drop.com 

The business idea behind Drop.com is unique in itself: they make use of real people’s insights and collaboration to come up with products they will truly want to buy.

In addition to this, they’ve still kept their initial business model through which people would request a product but the company would purchase them in bulk so costs were lower for buyers although they had to wait to get them. 

The main direction the company is going in right now remains developing their own products with the help of their community. So the emails they send out are aimed at showcasing and recommending products.

When you sign up on their website you’ll be asked to choose your main product interests. From watches to mechanical keyboards and trendy tents. This is how you sign up for the emails too and ensure they’re customized.

Anything that’s popular goes into their business newsletters. But let’s see how these emails are different from the usual eCommerce and retail ones.

On one hand, there’s no mention of the price. Instead, the focus is on how many people have bought or ordered the product. Talk about using testimonials and social proof at genius levels.

The second win is that all products will likely find a buyer to love them. Since they’re using potential buyers to create product concepts, they don’t add in products nobody needs.

Finally, there’s the brilliant visuals. The images you get in the newsletter clearly depict a product’s best traits including design, lighting, and texture. Every single product looks so good, it’s impossible not to click on them even if you don’t necessarily want to buy them. And every product page has 10+ images of all angles and options. A true visual delight.

Why these business emails are great

This email is all about the items they choose to display. Much like smart product recommendations, literally all of the products you’ll be suggested have been approved by buyers at some point. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even be selling them. Plus, the segmentation they do when you sign up ensures you’ll at least want to open the email and have a look.

Sleeknote 

We’re taking a break from item-oriented emails to see how a SaaS company tackles email marketing.

Here’s just one of Sleeknote’s emails:

There are really 2 things they do extra well. One is the GIF they add to every single email. They record these themselves to make sure it includes the author and is relevant to the topic of the email as opposed to just choosing a random GIF.

The second pro for these emails is that they don’t look like they’ve been sent by a company. They’re written in the 1^st-person, talk about the sender’s experience, and aim to help the receiver by offering useful content just like you would send it to a friend.

Sleeknote also shared a list of their top 10 best performing emails that other marketers can use as an inspiration.

Why these business emails are great

These examples of business emails are personal and fun, keeping everything straight-to-the point through simple text and design, proving that you don’t need a huge marketing team to send great emails.

Instead of regular “buy our tool” or “we launched a new feature” messages, they send friendly emails with links to neat content, guides, and templates that people might find a need for and won’t have to pay to get.

Grammarly 

These emails are any writer’s dream. Grammarly excels at staying top-of-mind for users and having them come back to use the tool by providing super useful stats in return for their subscription.

Their sheer usefulnesses makes it hard for me to unsubscribe since I want to keep getting the insights into my productivity. For free.

Why these business emails are great

These regular emails are a top example of how to stay on a user’s mind by providing practical statistics and mixing them with subtle hints of your tool.

In the example above, you’ll notice the Grammarly brand introduced through blog posts, a huge CTA, and the mistakes section which you can obviously fix using their tool. They even show you which features you’re not using yet along with a special offer that’s easy to claim.

The Hoxton 

The Hoxton is a hotel chain that sends weekly emails targeting a new location every time. While they do reference their hotel from time to time, most of their newsletters are kept educational and, above all, fun.

The Portland edition above focuses on all the events you can attend over the upcoming period of time in the city. They make it all about the actual experience you can have in the city.

The hotel is presented at the end as something you can opt for to complete your experience. Since space for promo is limited, they made sure to include their top benefit: flexible check-in and check-out time.

Why these business emails are great

The Hoxton manages to appeal to a potential client’s real interest. And that is not necessarily the stay itself, but the experiences they can have in the city. Nailing a subscriber’s intent is often of top importance compared to any design or copy tweaks you might attempt.

Digital Nomad Girls

DNG is a digital nomad community that connects people from all over the world and is also available on Facebook so anyone can join in the conversation. 

If you’re not yet one, imagine for a second that you were a digital nomad or freelancer. What are the things you’d be looking to get from an email newsletter of this kind?

Fun tips and job opportunities are highly common as answers. And that’s just what you get in these business newsletters.

The community relies on memberships and retreats for monetary benefits but these are never the main focus of the emails. Every edition is extra friendly, personal, and riddled with emojis. This sure is a breath of fresh air from the rest of the emails any freelancer or nomad would get.

The real value of these business emails I make sure to always open is that they summarize everything that’s happening in the community. From hot topics of conversation to a list of all the other members who can offer a work opportunity.

Why these business emails are great

Communities are huge these days. Whether they’re standing alone like this one or connected to a brand.

If creating a following is your top goal, fun and insightful business emails such as the ones from Digital Nomad Girls help you create loyal leads which will turn into active community members, further spreading the word on your brand. And it doesn’t even look like you’re selling something so no need to make it entirely promotional.

Books That Matter

Books That Matter is an example of a small business that continues to offer value to customers, without the main focus being their product.

As soon as you get the email you’ll notice it’s all about catering to the reader’s needs. From a friendly introduction to hand-picked inspiration and curated content. In the very example above the article snippets are focused on opportunities the subscriber can try right away as the writer has done all of the research work in their place.

Why these business emails are great

This specific business email example excels by keeping the attention on humans (in this case the subscriber) and away from the product.

The main principle behind this attempt is that people don’t want to subscribe to a newsletter that’s all about advertising and promotions. Instead, they’re looking for educational content that will be of real value to them.

How to use these business email examples

Take only the best practices from these examples of business emails as an inspiration for your next newsletter series. Don’t just copy these business newsletter examples. Write down the elements you’ve liked and see how you can bring your own unique touch and tone to them.

For more inspiration, check out our review of 12 other email newsletters that are sure to give you some more ideas.

If you’re just getting started, the MailPoet plugin can help you send WooCommerce store emails to improve your email deliverability.

Try MailPoet for free today for 1,000 subscribers. Already have more? Sign up for a plan.

Do you have a business email example you’ve been using as an inspiration or just can’t wait to get every single month? Share them in the comments below.

It might seem obvious, but more people are going to click your links if you make them easy to see and interpret. This means thinking about how you word your links, what colors you use, where you place them, and what you link to.

And, of course, the more clicks you get, the higher your click-through rate (CTR). CTRs are a useful indicator of email engagement, as Jack Kitterhing explored recently on the blog. If you want to get your CTR above a “good” rate of 3%, you need to get more clicks.

So how should you format your links for more clicks? Here are some pointers to keep in mind next time you’re updating your email design or putting together your newsletter.

First up: What are you trying to get your subscribers to do with email links?

Before adding using links in emails, think carefully about what you are trying to achieve with your email. When someone opens your email, what do you want them to do? When they click your links, where do you want them to go? And when they get there, what do you want them to do next?

Considering what actions you want the subscriber to take will help you decide which links are important, and how you want to guide the subscriber toward your desired action, i.e. reading a blog post, signing up for an event, pre-ordering a book, sharing your email.

Don’t try to cram too many links into your emails. Instead, only include essential links and no more — you don’t want to confuse or distract subscribers with too many links.

For example, if you’re sending out a monthly newsletter you might include several links to your latest blog posts or favorite articles. On the other hand, if your email is for a product announcement, you might have one call-to-action link that, when clicked or tapped, takes subscribers to a landing page.

1. Always link to valuable content

Every time you include a link in an email, first ask yourself, “Does this link offer the reader value?” Does it help them solve a problem, offer a great deal, or educate or entertain?

Keep that value at the forefront of your mind when you write your links. This will help you stay focused on what your content offers the subscribers. Because the more value you offer, the more appealing it’s going to be to subscribers, and the more likely they are going to click your email links.

Digital product design platform InVision is known for regularly nailing its email communications, and its weekly newsletter is a great example of this. It includes a round-up of the latest posts on the InVision blog and a curated list of “favorite” design links at the bottom.

Sounds like a simple formula? All you need to do is link to blog content, right? Well, not exactly. The special ingredient in InVision’s recipe for email success is actually the quality of its blog content. Blog posts are contributed by people in the design community, with editing help from InVision staff.

As InVision’s former VP of Marketing Clair Byrd explains, InVision’s strategy on the blog “has never been to be about InVision, but instead, to represent an accurate cross-section of what the design community cares about at any given point in time.”

It’s this authenticity that is reflected in the weekly email newsletter. When subscribers click through to the blog, they know they’re going to read something insightful and valuable.

2. Use concise, descriptive and engaging link text

Don’t use “click here” as link text. Aside from the fact it tells the subscriber nothing about the value of the link, 46% of email opens are on mobile compared to just 21% on desktop. So most of your subscribers are actually tapping, not clicking.

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), when linking text, you should use brief but meaningful link text that:

• Provides some information when read out of context,
• Explains what the link offers,
• Doesn’t talk about mechanics, and
• Is not a verb phrase.

For example, you want to avoid the following sentence and link in your email:

To read Jack’s latest blog post, click here.

Or:

To read Jack’s latest blog post, go to the MailPoet website and navigate to the blog.

Both of these sentences divulge too much of the mechanics of getting to Jack’s blog post. Instead, use something short and sweet like:

Read Jack’s latest post.

Notice that “read” is left out of the link because W3C doesn’t recommend putting verb phrases in linked text.

Author Austin Kleon nails his link text, which you’d expect of a writer! Each of his links provides some information when read out of context, is descriptive so you know what the link offers, and doesn’t go into mechanics. As a result, his email is concise, informative, and engaging.

Above all, you want to use descriptive text that tells the reader where they are going. Your readers’ eyes will be automatically drawn to your links, so many sure they are engaging.

Don’t make the subscriber question what will happen when they click/tap your link. If you’re vague or confusing, you’ll lose the subscriber’s trust.

Note: If you are writing text for a CTA, the rules are a bit different and should be action-oriented. We’ll explore this later in the post.

3. Links should go where they say they are going to go

This seems obvious, but how many times have you clicked/tapped a link and landed on a page you weren’t expecting?

Make sure your link text accurately describes where the link is going so as not to confuse subscribers. If people think you are tricking them into visiting a page, you’ll immediately lose their trust. In a worst-case scenario, they might even feel compelled to unsubscribe from your email list.

Also, don’t forget to verify all your links work before sending out your email! There’s nothing worse than sending out an email to thousands of subscribers and discovering later that one of your links had a typo, linked to a 404, or linked subscribers to the wrong website.

4. Links should help your subscribers save time

Links should allow your subscribers to save time when reading an email and let them choose what they would like to read more about, without distracting from the primary goal of the email.

For example, say you’re announcing a product launch to your email list. Rather than include every little detail about your new product in your email, write up your announcement as a blog post and link to it in your email with a clear call-to-action. Your email can then highlight the most important features of your product, and you can include links to pages that provide more detailed information.

You don’t want to cram too much information into your emails. When using links in emails, keep them short and concise so they’re easy to read and so subscribers feel compelled to click your links to find out more.

5. Consider how you design your email text links

Links should be easy to identify and clearly labeled. While most people will automatically recognize standard text links in personal emails that are blue and underlined, you’ll want to make sure that your links match the colors of your brand and email design.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when changing the color and style of your email links:

• Use a color that complements and contrasts the color of your non-linked paragraph text. For example, if your business logo is orange and your paragraph text is black, use orange for your text links.
• Use the same font and size as your paragraph text.
• Consider underlining your links for instant link recognition. Tip: Don’t underline text that isn’t a link. That’s why underlining was removed in MailPoet’s designer!
• Once you’ve chosen the color, font, and size for your links, keep it consistent throughout your email. Using different colors and styles for your links will confuse your readers.

A great example of color and design done well in an email is the weekly Really Good Emails newsletter. The RGE primary branding color is red, so this is the color used for text links throughout the email. The only exception is the small text underneath the header image, which is grey and underlined.

When you open the RGE newsletter, you know exactly what is a link and what is regular text — there’s no room for confusion because the design is consistent.

Bonus: Use images or buttons for important calls-to-action

If you’re really looking to push something in your email, consider linking an image or button rather than text. When used strategically, image and button links will grab a subscriber’s attention more quickly than text links.

Any image in your email newsletters can be turned into a clickable/tappable link. But image links often aren’t as obvious as text and button links. So if you’re including an image link, make it obvious. Add text to the image, or include text underneath to indicate that it’s a featured image for a blog post.

Buttons are a common way to display calls-to-action. Use strong, actionable verbs, like “Buy Now” or “Shop Now” or “Get the App.” Using the word “now” in your CTA will subconsciously prompt the user to take action immediately rather than putting it off until later, or even forgetting about it entirely.

Here’s a great example of how images and buttons can be used effectively in an email. Video hosting platform Wistia’s email newsletter offers a round-up of its featured posts. Images and post titles are linked, and there’s a big blue CTA underneath the top post. Using the words “Let’s see,” it’s pretty obvious that when you click/tap the CTA, you’re going to be taken to the post.

What’s great about linking images and text for blog posts is that you’ve giving subscribers more opportunities to access your content. People typically just know that when you click/tap an email next to a post title or headline in an email, that it’s going to be linked.

Here’s another example from activewear brand Lululemon. Each of the images is linked, and some images are overlayed with text. This email is simple and intuitive, and even similar to the shopping experience on the Lululemon website.

Track your clicked/tapped links with MailPoet

Now that you know how to write and design your links, you’ll want to know how effective your efforts are in improving your click-through rates. With MailPoet, you can get helpful statistics that provide an overview of your open and click-through rates for each of your email campaigns.

With a paid MailPoet plan, you can access more advanced statistics, including overall clicks per newsletter and a breakdown for individual links. You can also create campaign tags and track them with Google Analytics.

Wrapping up

At the risk of stating the obvious, more people are going to click your email links if they are easy to see and easy to understand. If you try to trick the reader into clicking a link or you overstate what the link offers, subscribers will feel cheated.

Design plays a big part in how subscribers not only view your emails, but how they perceive your business or organization. So taking the time to make sure your links look good will not only encourage more people to click your links, but will reflect on your brand and the value your offer.

With MailPoet, you don’t have to worry too much about your design! No matter which email template you choose, you can be confident all MailPoet templates follow email design — and link! — best practice.

Got a question about writing for formatting your email links? Let us know in the comments below!

But, 1971 also marked the birth of email. The very first messages were sent on the ARPANET system, a precursor to the internet.

Today, it is hard to imagine a world without email. By some estimates, nearly 270 billion emails are sent every day. That is a massive amount of content traveling through the internet every day.

Email is one of the most powerful marketing channels, as well as the preferred method of communicating with businesses for 73% of millennials.

With so many emails, it can be challenging to stand out. Plus, you have to contest with email filters, the Google Promotion tab, and worry about getting flagged as spam.

So, how do you make your email stand out? How do you create a true work of art and avoid the spam tab?

Every good artist needs inspiration. In this post, we will look at some of the most original, compelling, and creative email newsletters landing in email boxes everywhere.

1. Muck Rack

Muck Rack is a PR software platform designed to make it easier to connect with journalists, pitch stories, and allow PR reps to track the results of their efforts.

They also send out a daily email newsletter, the Muck Rack Daily, a daily digest about the state of journalism. Their digest is a collection of important changes in the journalism field written in an engaging tone. There is no fluff, but the email newsletters aren’t dry either.

They also do a fantastic job of writing more or less depending on the topic. The day before Michael Cohen’s testimony, we got a long, GIF-filled email newsletter covering all the hot topics. (Amazing, and amusing.)

Another day, there were just a few highlights. I appreciate that they value my time, which makes this email newsletter a favorite.

Why Muck Rack made the list: The balance of news and trends, and the focus on being useful, not meeting a certain word count.

2. The Skimm

Founded by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin in 2012, The Skimm offers a daily rundown of all the important news in the world with a tongue in cheek tone. This is absolutely my favorite digest email newsletter. It keeps me informed, and I LOVE the tone and creativeness of the copy.

Here is a recent sample of their email newsletter:

Funny, and filled with great information. They also do deep dives into topics, such as the Russia investigation, US-N Korea relations, elections, and entertainment topics like football and the Oscars.

I also love that two women turned a difficult to monetize email newsletter into a powerhouse of a company, with a newsletter, app, podcast, and several other products.

Seriously, who thinks “Hey, I have an idea; we will send out a daily email newsletter about what is happening in the world, people will love it.” There are dozens of similar email newsletters, it doesn’t sound like something you could monetize it.

Yet, they did it and The Skimm is unique and stands out.

Why The Skimm made the list: It is hilarious, I always learn something, and they link to more info about tons of topics so you can learn about new topics instead of being embarrassed about what you don’t know. They are also transparent about advertisers, which I appreciate.

3. InVision

InVision is a digital product design platform that makes it easy to create, approve, and collaborate with team members. They are used by some of the top companies in the world, including Uber, Netflix, and Twitter. InVision also offers plenty of educational resources, including a robust blog, books, podcasts, and a list of workshops.

InVision also sends out a weekly email newsletter filled with news, tips, and interviews about the design industry. They also include updates about InVision, but the main focus is on useful content.

Why InVision made the list: I love the blend of industry news, tips on how to better use InVision, and education, It makes this a useful email newsletter for designers and their teams, as well as a way to educate them about InVision.

4. Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon is a best selling author, artist, and former librarian. His weekly email newsletters are short but packed with useful and inspiring info.

Take, for example, one of his recent email newsletters:

Austin includes a (somewhat random) assortment of topics including:

• What to say when you have nothing to say
• Why Austin keeps writing
• Recommendations of books for parents
• His favorite record
• Films you should watch

What really stands out about his email newsletter is the laid-back tone. He does promote his books, but in a natural way. You feel like you are getting an update from a friend who cares about you, not being sold to by a best selling author.

Why Austin Kleon made the list? I love the authentic feel. You feel like you are talking with a good friend, not reading a promotional email newsletter (which it totally is).

5. Brain Pickings

Brain Pickings is a weekly Sunday email newsletter filled with inspiring articles about art, science, books, and “other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning.”

At first glance, this email newsletter feels all over the place. And, to be honest, the design is not very inspiring. You get a review of a book, the recording of a poem, children books, Charlotte Bronte on faith and atheism.

But all the topics do have a similar thread: they are all related to what it means to be human. Not all email newsletters need to stick to the exact same topic, and this example shows that well.

Why Brain Pickings made the list: Content can be more important than design. This email newsletter is packed with intriguing information, but the design remains very basic.

6. Litmus

Litmus is a program designed to help businesses build, test, and monitor their email newsletter campaigns. They send out a monthly newsletter with tips on branding, segmenting your emails, finding jobs, and links to their podcast.

What really stands out is their design. The large block of color and modern graphics make this email newsletter beautiful to look at and easy to consume.

I also love the variety of topics. You expect a brand email newsletter to include a lot of their own content, and this one does, but they balance it out with truly useful information for their audience.

Why Litmus made the list: Perfect balance of branded and useful content and stunning design makes this perfect email newsletter for inspiration.

7. MasterWP

MasterWP is a weekly email newsletter filled with news, apps, tools, and other thought-provoking content designed just for WordPress professionals. I love the simple graphics, they evoke an old-school feel.

This email newsletter is a balance between news about the newsletter’s founders, Alex and Ben, as well as updates about WordPress, including more information about the new Gutenberg editor, and links to interesting articles.

Why Master WP made the list: I love the balance of in-depth and short form content. Overall the email newsletter is pretty long, but the content is really good, and the color blocks make it easy to skip through sections you aren’t interested in.

8. Wait But Why

Wait But Why is a unique and sporadic newsletter and blog from Tim Urban and Andrew Finn. The blog is entirely reader-supported (read: no ads) and filled with long-form essays written with incredible depth and research, despite the funny and self-deprecating tone.

This screenshot from their About page is a fantastic example of the tone you can expect.

(My personal favorite “Trying for 75 minutes to fix this table so the two columns are the same width because WordPress hates happiness.”)

When you join the email list, you get a weekly email newsletter featuring one of their best posts. Over time, you default to the general list and get sporadic updates when they’ve published a new post.

Topics include how to choose a career, Space X, marriage, Tesla, being late, and procrastination. Tons of topics, right? But most pieces are in-depth and are accompanied by kitschy stick figure drawings.

Why Wait Buy Why made the list: The clever tone and deep dive into different topics make this email newsletter a nice entry point to this unique blog. Who says shorter is better? Sometimes it is. But sometimes you just have to do what works for you.

9. Really Good Emails

Really Good Emails is a site dedicated to showcasing the very best of email design. Unsurprisingly, they also make the list! Here is my favorite recent email newsletter. (Can we talk about the heading: “I like big fonts and I cannot lie… ” — amazing.)

Their newsletter is a mix of industry trends, news, and the best emails of the week. You learn a little something and can get inspired to create your next great email campaign. I love the clever copywriting and the short and sweet approach.

Why Really Good Emails made the list: Love the balance of learning (seriously, who knew there were font scandals??) and examples of emails for inspiration, which is likely why most people subscribed to this email newsletter.

10. MailPoet

It is no surprise that MailPoet, a WordPress plugin for sending email newsletters, has a fantastic newsletter. Their newsletter is a solid mix of educational content about sending email newsletters and content about MailPoet as a brand.

They send it out once a month, which is refreshing in a time where too many brands seem to think more email is always better.

Their most recent email newsletter starts out with an update about the brand.

Then, they share the best content from their blog.

But, my favorite section is the “Links that got us chatting” section, where they share tools and interesting content from around the web.

Why MailPoet made the list: The balance of brand and industry-related content as well as the clean, on-brand design make this newsletter a compelling example of branded newsletters done right.

11. Dense Discovery

Dense Discovery is the brainchild of Kai Brach; the curator of Offscreen magazine. Every Tuesday subscribers receive a mix of practical and inspirational content that helps support productivity and creativity.

Issues are opened with musings from Kai himself; from tales of recent travels, to thoughts on an article he’s read. Each edition offering insight into his life and profession.

The rest of the newsletter is a compilation of useful software, tools, and gadgets that can help web workers be more productive, alongside showcases of beautiful illustrations, fonts, and examples of print design to satisfy our creative side.

Every issue of Dense Discovery is available to view in their archive.

Why Dense Discovery made the list: This newsletter is packed with content, but is presented in a format that’s really clear and easy to digest. I really love the combination of practical tips and light-hearted creative inspiration, especially the reader-submitted Gif of the week. What a cool way of engaging with your audience!

12. Ann Handley

Ann Handley is a best selling author of the book Everybody Writes, and the COO of MarketingProfs, a training platform for marketers. Twice a month she sends out a cleverly named email newsletter called Total ANNARCHY.

Each newsletter offers insights into who Ann is as well as interesting tips and resources about life, writing, and marketing as a whole. She mentions personal anecdotes, like going to a plane or having a conversation with a friend, but she also shares cool tools, interesting videos, and new trends.

The tone feels very personal and the content is intriguing and useful. The design, really, is very basic. No flashing graphics, just words, emoticons, and a few pictures.

Why Ann Handley made the list: This newsletter has a special place in my heart due to the no-BS, personal tone and the balance of useful and genuinely interesting content.

13. The Repository

Last, but not least, I want to plug The Repository, an email I’ve teamed up with Kim Gjerstad from MailPoet to send out each week.

The Repository is a new kind of weekly email for the WordPress community. Unlike other newsletters, it’s not just a bunch of headlines and links. Each week, we filter through the news you need to know, find out what’s everyone’s saying on Twitter, and then put it all together in a fun and informative email.

We like to say it’s the most conversational email in WordPress. I mean, you don’t see too many emails that feature views and opinions from people in the WordPress community.

Who should read it? Everyone! We’ve designed this email to suit users from all backgrounds, from developers and business owners to hobbyists, marketers and designers. If you’re interested in WordPress, The Repository is for you.

The first issue of The Repository landed in inboxes in the week following WordCamp US and the response was overwhelmingly positive. We’re delighted that we’ve been able to combine our skills (in writing, email, and journalism) to send out this email for the community.

Why The Repository made the list: It’s a new weekly email that balances news, views, and industry-related content, giving the community a say in the week’s events. If you work with WordPress, this is one email you won’t want to miss.

Wrapping up

It is easy to get caught up looking at what everyone else is doing and trying to follow ‘best’ practices. The thing is, best practices don’t work for everyone. How boring would it be if we all sent the same types of email newsletters?  

Some times longer is better; sometimes shorter works well. Depending on your audience, design might be incredibly important or you may be able to keep it very simple.

The key to designing newsletters that get read? Create an email newsletter the represents you as a person or a brand and aim to provide information your audience will find useful. Don’t worry about the best practices — worry about what your audience will enjoy!

Do you have any favorite email newsletters that didn’t make this list? Share your favorites in the comments below!

Like me, you’ve probably spent hours crafting your email newsletters, perfecting your timing, topics, images, and CTA.

But what good is an amazing email if no one opens it?

Email subject lines can make or break an email. For subscribers who get tons of emails in their inbox every day, a funny, shocking or simply factual subject line can compel someone to actually open your email.

In fact, nearly 47% of email recipients say they open an email based on the subject line. Plus, 69% of email recipients say they report email as spam solely on the subject line, which can tank your deliverability rate.

If you feel like you’ve tried everything to improve your open rates, the issue might be with your email subject lines.

Below are some of the absolute best email subject lines we’ve seen and why they work.

1. FLASH SALE

This email title comes from eBags, an online retailer of luggage and travel accessories. They have some really creative email titles across the board, but this one is a favorite.

This email title stands out for a few reasons. It uses emoticons, which are visually appealing and still not too common in most email boxes. The title also leaves a little mystery. Well, how good of a sale are they having? The only way to know is to open that email!

eBags uses emojis quite often in their email marketing. Here are a few of their more recent email titles.

Why it works: Using emojis increases open rates by around 25%. They aren’t a quick fix, but they can make a good email subject stand out.

2. “Hey, VIP! You get early access to our one-day FREE SHIPPING event!”

This title is from online flower retailer ProFlowers. It hit inboxes at the end of January, which is prime time for ordering Valentine’s day flowers. (For more, check out: 4 Tips to Prepare Your Emails for Any Holiday Calendar Event.)

This email subject line works because it triggers FOMO, i.e. a fear of missing out. I only have ONE DAY? I should get on that! Shipping for flowers is often more than the arrangement itself, so free shipping is a tempting offer.

The exclamation points make it feel a bit more urgent, as do the caps for FREE SHIPPING.

A word of caution here: The overuse of ALL CAPS and !!!!!! can trigger inbox spam filters. (Here are a few more ways you might be triggering spam filters without realizing it.) This title carefully walks the fine line between looking spammy and excited.

Why it works: This email subject makes the recipient feel important while also highlighting a limited time offer that triggers FOMO.

3. “Unlock your review pages, save 25%”

Sounds a bit boring, right? Maybe, but it is still quite effective.

This email subject line comes from Vimeo, a video platform and online community for video creators.

Their recent email campaign aimed at encouraging users to come back and sign up for a paid plan. The reason this one made the list? It is straightforward and to the point. If you are on Vimeo’s list, you know exactly what you are going to get from this email.

Sometimes clarity is a good thing. There’s nothing better than clear communication.

Why it works: This title is to the point and doesn’t try to hide intent. If you have a good deal, flaunt it!

4. “No lights? No camera? Action.”

Taken out of context, this email subject line might not stand out. But it comes from Soapbox, a Chrome extension designed to help people record and share professional-looking presentations and videos.  

The email goes on to explain how users can use their tool to create professional videos, all without the fancy gear many video producers have.

Not having fancy equipment is clearly a pain point for their audience, and Soapbox uses this simple email subject line to let subscribers know they have the solution.

Why it works: This subject line hits on a common pain point for Soapbox’s customers, and offers a solution.

5. “Your basket is having abandonment issues… :(“

This abandoned cart email subject line comes from Jack Wills, the British clothing brand.

Here’s the thing, most email subject lines are uninspired and, well, boring. While short, to the point subject lines can be effective, sometimes a little creativity and just plain fun can go along way.

The clever wording in this email subject line is an attention-grabbing way to remind site viewers to finish their purchase.

Why it works:  Cart abandonment emails are effective on their own, but the clever wording of this email title makes it stand out.

6. “Invoice like a pro: Get your invoices paid faster”

This email came from Quickbooks, the online accounting software aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses manage their books and grow.

The email gives subscribers a step-by-step process for setting up free bank transfers.

But the email subject line is a teaser. It makes subscribers want to know how can they get paid faster? It is a good hook that addresses the needs of any business owner.

Here’s the thing: you have to be honest if you use this type of teaser subject line. Don’t promise something you can’t deliver. This subject line offers — and the content delivers.

Don’t use a spammy teaser subject line because people will lose trust in your brand. You may get a higher open rate today, but you lose in the end by damaging your long term relationship with subscribers.

Why it works: By offering a result that every small business wants, this email subject line makes people want to read more.

7. “A shipment from order XXX2016 is on the way”

Transactional emails, like this one from Shine Craft Vessel Co., earn 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email. More importantly, transactional emails can generate six times more revenue than other types of emails.

This email subject line isn’t particularly clever; it simply lets the customer know their order is on the way.

The trick? Don’t just automatically send customers their tracking number and be done. Include a way for your customer to convert again by linking to your store, like Shine does in this email, or include a “related products” section at the bottom of the message.

Why it works: This email subject makes it clear it is a transactional email, so it’s more likely to be opened.

8. “[In Case You Missed It] Our best-performing blog post of all time”

How often have you heard  “Did you see…?” or “Did you read about…..” in the past week? With the rise of social media, information spreads faster than ever, and none of us want to be caught not being up to date.

This title plays on our desire to know about the latest trends, memes, and news.

Digital Marketer reported this email title had an open rate of nearly 22%, which is pretty impressive when the average open rate in the marketing and advertising niche usually hovers around 16%.

By leveraging FOMO, this email subject line encourages readers to read the email to find out what their best-performing blog post of all time is and why it is so awesome.

Why it works: Innately, people want to be a part of the crowd. We think “Well, if so many other people like it, I bet I will too!” Titles that play on this desire have higher open rates.

9. “What do yoga shorts have to do with honesty and kindness?”

This intriguing email subject line comes from Fortitude and Flow, the website of educator and coach Audrey Holst. She helps people build the life they want while staying balanced and present, so the quirky subject line fits her brand well.

The reason this one really works? It makes the reader curious. What in the world do yoga shorts have to do with honesty and kindness? Her emails are generally insightful and honest, so I knew this would be an interesting read.

Why it works: Intrigue, plain and simple. If you can inspire curiosity, your subscribers will click. Just make sure to avoid bait-and-switch subject lines that don’t deliver on their promise.

10. “$50 For Your Thoughts”

This subject line comes from Frye, a manufacturer and online retailer of leather shoes and accessories. It stands out for a few reasons — clearly the $50 offer is enticing, right? But it is also a clever play on the “Penny for your thoughts” phrase.

The real secret to this email subject line? It is shorter than the average subject line. Sounds counter-intuitive, but the shorter subject line stands out! It makes the reader feel like their time is valuable and generates a bit of curiosity.

Take a look at this email inbox.

Notice how the first five are around the same length? The subject lines that stand out the most is the shorter ones from David Sherry (also a great subject line, by the way) and Ibotta.

Why it works: This email subject line is shorter than average and uses a clever turn of phrase, which helps it stand out in crowded email boxes.

11. “Black Friday Sale! Up to 50% Off Sitewide.”

Sometimes, keeping it simple is the best strategy. This email from Incase, the online retailer of sleek computer cases, backpacks, and travel gear lets subscribers know exactly what to expect.

As simple as it seems, there is a secret strategy you might not recognize. “Sale” is an email subject line power word. In fact, using the word sale increases open rates by 23%. (“Save,” on the other hand, only gives open rates a 3% bump.)

Why it works: Power words convey more emotion and are different enough to stand out in an overcrowded email box.

Other power words or phrases to use for your email titles include:

• Be the first
• Forgotten
• Sneak peek
• Members only
• Secrets
• Extraordinary
• Private
• Unlock
• Become an insider

12. “Best of Groupon: The Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)”

This email subject line from the online deal finder Groupon has been included in several email title roundups in the last few years, and for a good reason.

This subject line perfectly nails the humorous vibe Groupon is known for, while explaining what the recipient can expect when they open the email.

Why it works: Groupon is known for being a little tongue in cheek, so this subject line is on brand. The touch of humor makes the subject line stand out, while the middle portion of the subject line lets the reader know what to expect.

Wrapping up

If you have been struggling to improve your open rates, your email subject lines might be the culprit. Hopefully, the examples above will inspire you to write creative, engaging subject lines that will make your readers want to open your emails and read what you have to say.

Just remember to stay away from spammy practices, like using too many exclamation points, or using misleading subject lines. Your long-term email strategy should be to build a strong relationship with your list, not use gimmicks to get a good open rate on one email.

Ready to get started? Which strategy do you think will work best for your audience? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Email conversion strategist and copywriter Val Geisler recommends spending as much time on the subject line as on the email itself. So I’ve assembled some of the best subject line styles to increase your open rates and keep your email strategy moving in the right direction.

1. Emails with numbers and lists

It works for clickbait articles, and it works for emails. People love lists and they love numbers — as long as those numbers are relatively low and easy to wrap your head around. You’ve probably seen email subject lines such as:

• Top 18 of 2018
• 9 Common Android Problems and How to Fix Them
• 2018 By the Numbers

All of these email subjects are real — and they each communicate something tangible and specific. That’s why numbers are so successful — you know exactly what you’re going to get when you open this email.

Emails with numbers and lists promise a certain amount of useful information, and as such, they can stand out from the rest of the emails in a user’s inbox. The tactic is so successful that some brands will even go so far as to make the number and the list part of the name of the email instead of the subject.

For example, “Moz Top 10” sends out a weekly newsletter, but “Moz Top 10” is the name of the sender, not the subject line. This is a variation that might also work for your brand or business, depending on the nature of your email newsletter.

Use this strategy when: You have a lot of information to get across. Lists are a great way to organize that information into a chunk that’s easy to digest.

2. Subject lines designed to shock

As with anything in life, you can get a little attention if you’re willing to say anything. That holds true with email subject lines as well.

If you use a controversial or shocking email subject, it’s likely you’ll increase your open rate. But there are significant risks to this strategy, especially in these politically polarized times. It’s important to weigh the risks carefully before proceeding with this strategy.

Use this strategy when: You want to shake things up and you have email content that is actually shocking. If your shocking subject line doesn’t match the email content and subscribes feel like they’ve been tricked, your unsubscribe rate could go up.

3. Humorous subject lines

Humor is a wonderfully persuasive tool in nearly any setting, but it’s especially true with email subject lines. If you can get your reader to laugh, you’ll probably get your reader to open your email.

Some examples of humorous subject lines include:

• It’s time for sportsball! (Shirt Woot).
• You are one with the Star Wars sale, and the Star Wars sale is one with you (Think Geek).
• Spocking stuffers (Star Trek shop).

Humor, of course, needs to be used appropriately, so it should never be crass or at anyone’s expense. But it’s a great way of making your brand appear approachable. Humor humanizes you in a way that few other techniques can, so readers feel as though your email is coming from a person instead of a business.

Generally speaking, however, humorous subject lines should still provide some insight into what your email is actually about.

For more: Lessons in Writing Memorable Content from the Master of Wit, Oscar Wilde.

Use this strategy when: Your subject matter could use a dose of humanity and humor, or when you want to personalize your brand in some way. Humor is a great way to relate to your readers.

4. Subject lines that appeal to vanity

We all like to think of ourselves as being on top of our game all the time, more or less. So an email subject line that appeals to the vanity of the reader will often find success. Email subject lines might look like the following:

• Happy birthday! It’s time to celebrate you! (Red’s Savoy Pizza).
• Age defying beauty tricks (La Mer).
• Your butt will look great in these workout pants (Fabletics)

Use this strategy when: You really know your audience — and you know you’re not going to offend them.

5. Short subject lines

When your subject line is short and to the point, you’re taking a gamble. First and foremost, you’re betting that everybody else’s subject lines are going to be long. That means your short subject line will stand out from the crowd.

It’s hard to emphasize how important that can be. Getting readers to notice your email can be challenging given that everyone these days is sending out emails. Your reader’s inboxes are jam packed with reading material, most of which they never open.

A short subject line could be your best bet to stand out. Examples include:

• AS IF (The Reformation).
• Who Does That? (Buzzfeed).
• Save $100 (Rosetta Stone).
• Upgrades Ahead (Etsy).
• Sicily’s simple pesto (Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street)

You can see how each of these subject lines conveys a significant amount of useful information in as little space as possible. You know, more or less, precisely what’s inside each of these emails before you open it. That you stand out from the rest of your reader’s inbox means you’re maximizing your chances for an increase in your open rate.

Use this strategy when: Your email topics in the past have been longer, or when you have a topic that fits a punchy subject line.

6. An appeal to emotions

We all know that emotions are powerful motivators. How you feel can often influence how you behave, and that’s certainly something to think about as you’re crafting your email subject line. This emotional appeal could come in many forms — sometimes helping to uplift your reader and sometimes appealing to fear or sadness.

These appeals to emotion aren’t always bad, necessarily. When you spend some time thinking about what drives your customers or your audience, you can accurately pinpoint ways to use emotions to motivate that audience.

Some examples include:

• Will you put down your phone to save a child’s life? (Unicef).
• Learn a language with only 5 minutes per day (Duolingo).
• Feed your guests without breaking the bank (Pizza Hut).

You can see how these appeals vary based on the emotion provoked. The Unicef subject line appeals to a sense of guilt or sadness. The Duolingo subject line appeals towards one’s own inner hopes of self improvement. And the Pizza Hut subject line appeals towards your sense worth as defined by your ability to host.

These are all very different, very complex emotions. But if the subject line lands on an emotional level, you’re much more likely to open the email in question.

Use this strategy when: The data behind your message is a little dry or overwhelming. Emotion is a great way to make data relatable.

7. The straightforward email subject

Sometimes, the best way to get someone to open an email is to be as straightforward as possible about what’s inside. This is a common tactic when:

• You know that your reader wants to know the information contained in the email.
• The information contained in the email serves a business or transactional purpose.
• The information inside the email applies personally to the recipient of the email.

That said, a straightforward email subject — simple and to the point — may also be an effective persuasive technique if deployed under the right circumstances. For example, you could easily email a customer or group member about a new promotion in much the same way you would email about a pending transaction.

You just want to ensure you don’t do that terribly often or thoughtlessly. You don’t want your customer to feel as though he or she has been duped, and you don’t want to alienate your readers by deploying this strategy too often.

Some examples of straightforward email subject lines include:

• Your statement is ready to view
• Thank you for registering for _____
• Your item has shipped.

Use this strategy when: You have straightforward information to deliver (and when the customer is expecting that information).

8. Putting discounts right in the email subject line

Sometimes, you just want to cut right to the chase. That’s especially true when you know that the only reason your subscribers keep opening your emails is for the discounts (this would one time when market research would be very useful). In these cases, you can put whatever discount you’re offering right in the subject line.

9. The “time is running out” approach

There’s no harm injecting a little urgency into your email subject lines. After all, it doesn’t take all that much time to actually open up and read an email. So if you can make it seem as though it’s now or never, your reader might actually expend the few seconds necessary to open and read your email.

But it better be worth it and it better be accurate. Rosetta Stone, for example, has become something of a running joke because it advertised offers that were expiring and would never come again — only to re-run those same basic offers just a few weeks later.

For this example below, DesignModo uses the subject line “Halloween Discount! Slides Framework 30% OFF.”

You don’t want to lose the trust of your readers. So this approach is usually reserved for short-term sales, discounts, and coupons. Some examples include:

• Your 15% off is about to expire (Barnes and Noble).
• Earn double points today only (Jersey Mike’s Subs).
• Last chance to save 20% on our highest rated meat-cleaver (America’s Test Kitchen).
• Notice: Your Prime Pantry credits are expiring soon (Amazon).

You get the idea. By creating a sense of urgency, you can give readers even more of an incentive to open your email and take a peek at what’s inside.

Use this strategy when: You can genuinely point to a deadline by which the reader will need to act. It’s important that the reader feel these deadlines are legitimate.

10. Make your readers curious

Another classic persuasive strategy that applies to email subject lines is as simple as it is difficult to pull off: make your readers curious. Typically, you engender curiosity by leaving information out of the equation, but that can be a dangerous play when it comes to email subject lines.

Leave out too much information, and your readers won’t know what to make of the subject line. Put too much information in and your ploy for curiosity simply won’t work. The trick is to find the right balance–and that will often mean ensuring the subject line revolves around a topic the readers already care about.

Some examples of the curiosity strategy include:

• Don’t open this email! (Manicube).
• The best times to post on Instagram in 2019 (Later).
• You’ll be checking out this new stuff All Night Long (All Night) (Thinkgeek).

You can see how sometimes this subject line almost employs a kind of reverse psychology. In other cases, they just hint at information that the reader would likely want to know.

Use this strategy when: You know that your users will appreciate a little bit of playfulness, or when you have some interesting information that you know your users will appreciate.

11. Ask your subscribers a question

When you use the word “you” in an email subject line together with a question mark, it’s human nature to be curious and want to do something about it. For example, consider these subject lines:

• Jane, is this the product you’ve been waiting for?
• Are you still deciding?
• Do you need some style inspo? Check this out…
• You don’t want FOMO do you?

Each of the about subject lines poses a question, asking the user to question themselves. This type of subject line is incredibly effective because it plays on a subscriber’s curiosity.

Obviously, if all your subject lines include “you” with a question, it’s not going to work — your subscribers will quickly cotton on to what you’re doing! But if you use this strategy sparingly, it’s a powerful way to boost your open rate.

Use this strategy when: … All else fails and you can’t come up with any other ideas for a subject line. This strategy is foolproof and one you should use sparingly.

Finding the right email subject line style for your newsletter

While there’s no single strategy that will get you a 100% open rate for your emails, employing the right combination of strategies will certainly help you increase your open rates for your audience.

Finally, I want to leave you with a couple of useful tools:

If you’re completely stuck for ideas, check out Kopywriting Kourse’s Subject Line Generator Formula. This awesome tool lets you input a copy and then spits out a huge list of email subject lines.

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is another useful tool if you want to see how compelling your subject lines are. While it’s been designed for article headlines, it can help you write more powerful subject lines that captivate your audience.

What kinds of email subject line styles have worked best for your email newsletters? Let us know in the comments below!

Keeping your emails and blog posts concise is about more than cutting out long introductions and useless banter. Concise writing is about ensuring that your communication with your users is specific, thoughtful, and useful. It’s not just about cutting words, it’s about finding the right words.

Being concise in emails: Why is shorter better?

There are two primary reasons that shorter emails and blog posts tend to be better for marketing and customer communication purposes.

• Time is precious. Your customers are busy people! If they’re perusing your content, it’s likely for a reason, and they don’t want to spend a lot of time reading through your life story in order to find the information that’s more valuable to them. It’s not that your life story isn’t interesting — it’s just that blog posts and emails should focus on communicating useful information as efficiently and persuasively as possible — it’s about being concise in emails and blog posts. That’s what customers expect and they’ll be a little miffed if you waste their time.
• You babble. Writing is a process, so sometimes it’s a struggle to find the right words to adequately express your ideas (especially if your ideas happen to be complex). When you can’t find the right word, you sometimes use several. When you can’t articulate the right idea, you might sometimes meander. So you can see how easy it is for even seasoned writers to get off track and become unfocused.

It’s not necessarily that long blog posts are bad or that long emails just don’t work. The trick is to make any email or blog post only as long as it needs to be.

(For more on email length and being concise in emails, check out Long vs. Short: Why You Should Keep Your Emails Brief.)

So let’s look at three tips to help you write emails and blog posts that are concise.

Step 1: Organize your writing

The very first step you should take when being concise in emails or blog posts is to focus on organization, whatever form that may take.

When you’re writing a journal or a diary, you can be as unfocused as you’d like. But if you’re creating a blog or an email, you really need to spend some time beforehand thinking about how you’re going to organize your piece.

Before you begin

If you’re at a loss for where to even begin organizing, there are three simple questions that you can apply to any email or blog for your business:

• What’s your message? Every blog post you publish and email you send ought to have a purpose. You shouldn’t start writing your final draft before you can articulate your overall message. This can be something as simple as “to teach people how to write more concise emails.”
• Who’s your audience? Who are you really writing for? Most professional writers will imagine that they’re writing to one or two individual people (marketers will often refer to these as personas). You can tailor your message for your audience to ensure that your blog post or email is relevant.
• How are you going to persuade? Connecting your audience with your intended message isn’t always easy. If you spend some time considering the approach you’ll take, you may find your message a little more thoughtful (and as a result, a little easier to concisely articulate).

Outline and revise

Once you’ve answered those questions, you might want to spend some time outlining your email or blog post. We know, we know — not everyone is thrilled with the idea of outlining when being concise in emails.

But even a simple outline (the planned headings or the big topics you plan to discuss) can go a long way towards keeping you on track.

Likewise, writing is a process-based craft. You’re not going to knock it out of the park on the first try all the time. Reserve at least a little bit of time to revise. During the revision process, you can eliminate many of the unhelpful words, phrases, and sentences from your piece, improving your overall concision.

Interested in learning how journalists structure content? Find out in Writing Like a Journalist: The Inverted Pyramid.

Step 2: Start writing

Once you’ve completed the planning stage, you can finally begin composing your email or blog post. The composition process can be anywhere from smooth to tense, depending on the day. But there are a few tricks to keep in mind as you’re writing that can help you stay focused on being concise in emails and creating a thoughtful, concise piece.

Avoid “very”

There are some words that just aren’t particularly potent. Instead, they just fill space, slowing down the reader along the way. The best example of a word like this is “very.” Don’t be fooled, this word finds its way into everyone’s writing from time to time.

But it’s a word that reminds both writers and readers of one thing: you could have done better. So as you’re writing, occasionally search for “very” and, when you find it, replace it with a better word or phrase.

Examples include:

• “Very important” can be replaced with “critical.”
• “Very often” can be replaced with “frequently.”
• “Very happy” can be replaced with “ecstatic.”
• “Very quickly” can be replaced with “rapidly.”

Watch out for other “weasel words”

“Very” isn’t the only word you should avoid when being concise in emails. There’s a group of words collectively (and loosely) known as weasel words. These are words that tend to obscure your meaning rather than refine it. Often, “weasel words” are an artifact of incomplete research, and any reader that catches them will question your credibility.

Examples include:

• “Research says…” – Be specific about the research. Are you talking about a specific study that was conducted? Mention the study.
• “Experts say…” – Who are these experts? And why should I believe them? Naming the experts can fend off some of those questions and increase your credibility.
• “Often…” – How often? Be specific. If you aren’t sure how often something happens, then you should probably mention that as well.
• Any overbearing use of jargon will become a collection of “weasel words.” The only thing a reader understands when jargon gets in the way is that the writer is not a great communicator.

The easiest solution is to ensure that you take the time to be as specific as possible in your writing. However, achieving that level of specificity on a consistent basis can be challenging, so don’t be too proud to use one of the many writing assistance apps available today.

Find your word count sweet spot

Your email and blog posts should be no longer than they need to be. But sometimes it’s nice to know what kind of attention span you can expect your readers to exhibit. Make no mistake, readers will have very different expectations of emails and blog posts when it comes to length.

For emails:

• You’re going to want to keep emails relatively short. If you’re writing an email newsletter, for example, feature only snippets and previews of all of your top stories when being concise in emails.
• Your readers are not going to want to read a long email. Just about any email you send should be 500 words are less — and even that is pushing it.
• Break your emails up into discreet and easy to read paragraphs.
• Keep in mind the limitations involved with emails (videos and images can be problematic)

For blog posts:

• The word count “sweet spot” for your blog post will vary on the topic. However, most blog posts will be around 1900 words.
• If you absolutely cannot write about your topic in fewer than 2000 words, consider breaking your blog post up into several installations (part 1, part 2, etc).
• Shorter blog posts are not necessarily bad, but you do want to make sure you’re giving your readers enough material to make your blog post worth the click: not too long and not too short.

Step 3: Polish (and cut)

The final part of the writing process is often the hardest — and it’s the part that most of us tend to skip right past when being concise in emails. Once you’ve written a concise draft of your email or blog post, you need to polish and revise it. You can look for content to cut along as you go.

Cut redundant language

When you speak, you might repeat a certain point for emphasis. You might say something like, “in other words….” But writing generally works better without those repeated phrases, unless you have some kind of persuasive purpose in mind.

So keep an eye out for redundant words and phrases or any time you might repeat yourself. When you cut such redundancies, you make your writing clearer and more concise. This is counterintuitive, to say the least.

That’s because we tend to think that the more we explain something, the more clear it becomes. We have to resist the urge to over-explain – an act that will both bore and alienate the reader. Cutting out redundant language can help us keep this tendency in check.

Rely on a beta reader (if you have time)

Marketing emails and blog posts are usually composed at lightning speed. So one of the best ways to make sure your writing on point is continually underutilized: using a beta reader (the term is usually used in a publishing context, but works just as well in marketing). A “beta reader” is essentially someone who will read your copy before you send it out:

• Your beta reader should be someone with a keen eye (to catch typos and misspelled words).
• Your beta reader should be someone you trust (and, if necessary, someone who is authorized to read what you have written–be conscious of any non-disclosure agreements you may have signed).
• Your beta reader does not have to be an expert–it could just be someone sitting in the cubicle next to yours.

A beta reader is generally tasked with making sure that your email or blog post is understandable and that the core concepts are communicated effectively.

Which email are you sending?

Our discussion on blog posts and emails has been pretty extensive, but it’s worth spending a little bit of time talking about what kind of email you’re sending. My advice on brevity applies to both personal emails and email newsletters, but just how concise those emails should be might vary.

For example, an email newsletter should get right to the point. But an email to a customer regarding a complaint should begin with some language that acknowledges the issue the customer has been having, something like, “Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

Excising those pleasantries in the name of being concise will likely only alienate customers (you’ll have to find a balance in there somewhere).

That said, many companies have instituted a “three-sentence” rule for inter-office communication in order to promote brevity and rapid responses. Under this rule, every email should be under three sentences (with some exceptions, I’d imagine).

Wondering what you should be saying to customers? Find out in 11 Things You Should Never Say to Customers in Emails.

Be concise because it makes you more effective

Brevity is not a virtue unto itself. There’s no trophy for the world’s shortest email or blog post. Which means that, for as much emphasis as we put on your ability to be concise, that should not be the end goal in and of itself.

Rather, concise writing is a way to make your emails and blog posts more effective. When you’re forced to reign in your wordier tendencies, your writing becomes more focused, more intentional, and more thoughtful.

And that improves the quality of your prose, whether it’s your latest and greatest blog post or a simple email to a vendor. By eliminating what’s unnecessary, you put more focus on what’s relevant and meaningful to your readers – and that will only help your business in the long run.

I’ve been writing professionally for over a decade, and online for seven years. My partner always asks me, “Don’t you ever run out of ideas?!”

Well, no. Honestly, coming up with ideas is the easy part! But it’s something that I’ve developed as a habit and it’s not accident. I’ve got an organized system in place to help me generate ideas for the articles I pitch and write for clients.

That’s why in this post, we’re going to explore tips and tricks to help you come up with enough content ideas for your website and your MailPoet newsletters so you always have something to write about.

What kind of content do you need?

While it’s not always the first question you need to answer, you might find it helpful both to your business and your marketing goals to know what kind of content you need. In the early days of the internet, “content” was usually defined pretty narrowly: whatever you happened to write for your blog or website.

But today, content can come in a near endless variety of permutations. Some examples of content might include:

• The written word. Articles and blog posts. A tried and true method, for sure, but one that has proven its effectiveness over years.
• Images. Whether you think about it this way or not, images are indeed content — and, when uploaded with proper alt text, search engines can make sense of your images.
• Videos. Perhaps the most engaging form of content on the web today, videos can take the form of quick tutorials or long PR pieces, depending on your target audience.
• Podcasts. One of the more novel forms of content used in marketing today, podcasts are essentially downloadable radio shows. And people love them. I personally listen to them every day.
• Email newsletters. This is an oldie but a goodie. Email newsletters have been around for years, but they’re finding new life these days thanks to email segmentation coupled with targeted advertising. With half of users aged 18-24 now seeking relief from social media, according to research group Origin, there’s an opportunity to connect and engage via email. For more: Top 5 Time-Saving Tips for Creating Email Newsletter Content.

Much of your content will be some kind of hybrid creation: a little video and a lot of words, or a blog article with a featured video, or a podcast with a highly customized image. It’s rare for one type of content to work all on its own. But it can happen.

Once you know the kind of content you need…

Each type of content is going to have its own requirements, limitations, and advantages. Video, for example, has amazing click-through rates and engagement, but it’s costly to produce.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that you want your content to be connect with your readers. To do this, check out our post Authenticity, or How to Write Genuine Content.

Knowing the types of content can help you generate ideas for that content, and vice versa. There are simply some topics that will be better covered in a video tutorial than a blog post, or in an email newsletter rather than a podcast.

7 tips for coming up with content ideas

Developing your own content ideas can be quite challenging, even if you’re a veteran of content marketing campaigns. But here are a few nearly universal tips — all tips I personally use — that can get the ball rolling.

1. Read widely

I try and read as much as I can about what’s happening in WordPress, because that’s the niche I tend to write about the most. I also keep tabs on what’s happening generally in tech and in the copywriting world.

Reading a wide range blogs and websites is a great source of inspiration for new posts. I also subscribe to a lot of newsletters like Hacker News, Versioning and NextDraft. When I’m not in front of my computer, I love listening to tech and business podcasts.

For example, the idea for a popular post I wrote for the Pagely blog, 40 Must-Read Blogs for Leadership & Entrepreneurs came from looking at my Feedly list and thinking that one of my Feedly collections might be helpful for others.

2. Let Google do your brainstorming

Google is an incredibly sophisticated search engine, so it’s not surprising that the company has spent a great deal of time and money researching how people think. Its predictive search text is proof that this was a fruitful labor.

When you start typing your search, Google’s predictive algorithm will fill in the missing words with other popular searches.

And it’s an excellent way to start your brainstorming process. Let’s say that your business involves selling artwork. When you start typing “Artwork” into Google, the search engine provides the following suggestions:

Sure, not every suggestion is going to be a winner, and your articles may or may not end up becoming more specific (you can then type your more specific prompt into Google), but this is a great way to see what people out in the rest of the world really want to know.

The suggestions might not become your next topic all on their own, but they might lead you there. And that’s a big step up from a blank page.

There are some great tools out there that utilize Google’s search prediction functionality and data. Answer The Public and Clearscope are just two examples.

3. Find a community

There’s a community for everything, from science fiction television shows to automotive parts. And your business is no different. The trick is you need to find your community — the forums and the message boards and the social media groups where your community hangs out.

Once you’ve found that community resource, you can convert message board topics to those content ideas for your own blog posts, articles, or email newsletters. This has the advantage of being well-calibrated to your community already — you know these are topics they care about.

The key here is to ensure you’re adding something to the conversation. If your business or organization offers a solution to a common issue discussed in the community, for example, you can create an excellent article with a built-in audience primed to share and engage. And that’s really the cornerstone of many content marketing strategies.

4. Check your comments

You might not realize it, but your readers are leaving you big ideas for your next piece of content. All you have to do is check your comments.

When you post an article or a blog, it’s likely that you’ll generate at least a few reader comments. Likewise, when you send out an email newsletter, you’ll often receive at least one or two questions back in return. Those comments and questions are a great opportunity to mine some topic ideas.

• If one of your email newsletter subscribers asks you a direct question, it’s a good bet that other subscribers will have the same question (or close enough). Turn this into a topic for a blog post or your next newsletter.
• A comment praising one particular piece of your article or raising a question about another part of your blog is pointing you in the right direction. These types of comments are telling you exactly what your readers are interested in.
• Articles or blog posts that generate a significant amount of commenting should go right into your “follow up” pile. Start planning the next installment of that blog post or newsletter soon because you’re on to something.

There are several advantages to taking content ideas right from your users. First and foremost, you don’t have to guess what your users will be interested in. Second, you immediately know that you’re addressing a concern that your readers have articulated, so you know it’s going to be relevant to your readers.

5. Use your own research

Inevitably your business is going to have to do some problem-solving. That’s just part of growing any business. Luckily, you can use that research to drive your own content ideas and needs. You can take your own research and use that to develop content. Your research, then, becomes doubly valuable.

Let’s say that you run a restaurant of some kind (maybe a casual Italian joint, because that sounds delicious), and you want to appeal to a younger crowd. This can easily drive new content ideas:

• You’ll likely research what eating habits Millennials engage in. And that’s a great topic for an article or blog post. Maybe there are some weird and wonderful habits you could explore?
• You could research how tastes have changed over the decades, how some foods have become popular while others have waned. That’s another good topic for a blog post.
• As part of your research, you might talk to chefs or culinary experts in your area. Those areas could at once inform your business decisions and make excellent episodes of a podcast or a series of blog posts.

You can see how three easy research steps — all research into your own business growth needs — can help you develop content topics you can use in a variety of places.

6. Keep a running list

Content creation is a continuous, never-ending project. You’re always going to need content. That’s why keeping a running list can be exceptionally useful. Even the most creative marketing professional is going to have hot streaks and lulls. Sometimes ideas just flow with more ease.

That’s why keeping a running list of topic ideas is one of my best practices. If you need to generate five topic ideas and you’re feeling creative, don’t call it quits at five. Keep going! If you’re feeling creative, just keep that list going as long as you can.

• Don’t worry about whether the topics will still be relevant in a month or two. Chances are, all of your topics will be relevant again sometime.
• Having a backlog or running list of topics means you’ll be able to plan your content strategy in advance, an important step in content marketing.
• The longer your running list, the more willing you’ll be to eliminate shallow ideas and focus on the good ones. (This should not be your concern as you brainstorm, however.)

Ideas for content can come to you anywhere and anytime. Having somewhere you can keep track of your ideas is vital to organizing and tracking your strategy. Personally, I use the Notes app on my iPhone. In the past, I used physical notebooks. There are many project management apps — like Asana, which I use, too —  that can also make this easy to achieve over the long run.

7. Brainstorm with intention and thought

To say that one of the best ways to come up with new content ideas is to brainstorm seems… obvious. In fact, it’s so obvious as to be unhelpful. Of course you should brainstorm! But the trick is that most people don’t really know how to brainstorm. There’s more to it than just thinking really hard, or gathering your team in a room and throwing ideas at the wall.

• A good brainstorming session requires structure. Generally, this means trying to answer a single, focused question, but the exact setup doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you have some ground rules and limitations on your brainstorming.
• Try various brainstorming techniques in order to generate ideas. This could include mind mapping, listing, free-writing, and so on. (If these sound like the steps you used to take before writing a paper for school, that’s because they basically are.)

It’s important that you frame your brainstorming session as something more than “Let’s come up with ideas.” Limiting the scope of your brainstorming will often increase the creativity.

8. Let data be your guide

When all else fails, fall back on data. Or, depending on your viewpoint, maybe you’d like to look at the data first. The point is that even a common (or free) data suite, such as Google Analytics, can give you a lot of information about your audience.

And knowing your audience can spark some of your best content ideas. Google Analytics can provide baseline demographic information, such as:

• The age or gender of users who visit your website.
• Where users who visit your website come from (what country, state, or city).
• What type of device visitors to your website typically use.

There are other analytics and data gathering apps that can provide you with even more specific information (and, of course, Google Analytics offers all kinds of upgrades). If you find that the vast majority of your audience is comprised of women, you can compose content to appeal to that audience (or to expand that audience).

Using that data to help create your content can help ensure that your ideas are relevant for your audience and calibrated for your users.

Content ideas are everywhere — you just have to know where to look

There are no signs that content as a marketing strategy is going anywhere anytime soon. This means the content you’ve created will keep working for you year after year. All you have to do is come up with the ideas first! Hopefully, these tips have helped you figure out how to come up with content ideas with ease.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this gem of a blog post: Lessons in Writing Memorable Content from the Master of Wit, Oscar Wilde.

What are your strategies for coming up with content for your blog or email newsletter? Share your strategies in the comments below!