Email is an essential form of communication that can make or break business relationships. And because more than one hundred twenty-two billion emails are sent every hour, it’s important to know how you can move from simply sending emails, to sending emails that get opened, read and responded to.

With a few simple steps and tricks of the trade, you can send email that creates conversations with prospects and customers; provides content that is meaningful to your audience and most importantly; drive qualified leads to a sale.

Here are 6 email need-to-know essentials:

Subject Line:

• This is the most important part of the email because it’s the first thing your recipient sees and has an opportunity to respond to (or not).
• Punctuation such as question marks and exclamation points are unnecessary because they don’t influence open rates.
• Initial caps result in increased engagement. For example: Thanks For Signing Up
• Personalization increases open rates by 22%. For example: Thanks For Signing Up, Bob
• The subject line should be a strong and relevant lead-in to the content inside.
• Keep the character count to a minimum; you have up to 32 characters before being cut off on iPhone and up to 50 characters before landing in the spam folder.

Content:

• Have a goal. Do you want to introduce a new product or service? Generate more leads? Convert existing leads into customers?
• Know the wants and needs of your audience to create content that’s meaningful and relevant.
• Create content that aligns your goal with the wants and needs of your audience.
• Get their attention with information that’s benefit oriented.
• Tell them how you, your product or your service can fix/solve/improve.
• Make them an offer they can’t refuse.
• Be brief and to the point.

Signature Line:

• Be sure to include the personal basics of name, title, address, phone number and social media links. (However, limit the use of images because each image can appear as an attachment and may also need to be downloaded to be viewed.)
• Include your company logo and web address.
• Keep your signature line consistent with the brand image.

Create email that’s mobile and wearables friendly.

In the first quarter of 2015, 67% of all email opens occurred on a mobile device, and 75% of those were smartphones. This is a phenomenal shift from desktops and laptops and makes mobile devices and wearable the new inbox.

When to send?

The days and times with the greatest email open rate is Tuesday and Thursday between 9 a.m. and noon.

Track your emails.

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