You know that staying engaged with your customers and prospects is important. Very important. You’ve built a solid database of valid email addresses. You have a great newsletter tool that makes it easy for you to create professional-looking emails. But the real question is: How do you get people to open and read your emails?

We’re all in the same boat. We get a lot of emails every day, and if we’re being honest, we don’t read most of them. Maybe you open a few, you skim, you see nothing of interest, you delete. But you have your go-to brands and companies whose emails you always open. Why? Because you know the content is interesting, valuable and important to you.

You need to become one of the go-to brands for your prospects and customers. In order to get them to read your content and see the value in it, you first have to get them to open the email.

Be brief. Be interesting. Pique curiosity.

• Ask a question in the subject line. But, make sure you answer it in the beginning of the email. If they don’t see the payoff immediately when they open your email, they’ll think you tricked them.
• Personalize the subject line. Show them you care about them and they’re not just another name on a list. When you see your name or your company’s name, you know you didn’t receive the email by mistake.
• Keep the subject line short. Remember that most of your audience is reading your emails on a mobile device. If they don’t get the gist of your message at a glance, they’re probably not going to open it.
• Use your analytics. One of the best gauges on whether a subject line will work is if it worked in the past. Keep a bank of successful subject lines and use them as models.

You did your job, and they’re interested. They opened your email. How can you make your content work hard so the next time they receive an email from you, they’ll think “Oh that was worthwhile last time. Let’s see what they have for me today.”

Be brief. Be interesting. Quell curiosity.

• Keep it short. Communicate your key message in the first few lines. They may only read that far, but if it’s a strong message it’ll be enough to get them to take action.
• Maintain your focus. Don’t try to jam five different topics into an email hoping that one will stick. Be confident in your content, drive your point home and get them to respond.
• Pay off your subject line. If you asked a question or made a promise and they bought in, you need to deliver. If you don’t, you’ll lose their trust. And that is a very difficult thing to regain.
• Provide something of value. This doesn’t always have to be a coupon or a promotion (but that can work). Share insights or best practices that they wouldn’t have otherwise known. Knowledge is powerful.

If you were successful, your open rate will continue to increase because you’re building trust with your audience. Your content is consistently valuable, and they count on that. They’ll continue to open your emails until you stop delivering value.

And if you’ve hit home with the topic, they not only enjoy reading your emails, they want more. They take action. They visit your site to read more articles. They visit your site to submit a lead. Now your emails are working hard. They’re generating traffic and leads.

This is not the time to become overzealous and start spamming your audience. Be selective. Select your most valuable content or promotion and offer that to your loyal audience. They’ll appreciate that you’re paying attention to what they’re interested in and not taking advantage of their loyalty. If you send too many emails, you’ll risk becoming uninteresting, unimportant and unread.

Be interesting. Be valuable. Be successful.

Originally posted on PowersportsBusiness.com