5 Steps to Compel Busy People to Read (and Act) Your Emails

People are busy all the time. They go to work, attend meetings, and have a lot up their sleeves. And most importantly, most of the people receive a large number of emails every day. With a lot of other jobs to do, only a few emails are read and even fewer are acted upon.
 

In a situation like this it is a great possibility that your email might be overlooked and ignored by your target customers, even though it might be important. So the trick is to research and find out that how do the emails that you send are opened and acted upon.
 

Most of the people open the emails that have useful information, provide a reward or benefit in return for a quick action, personal invitations, necessary updates or information or current trending news that is both helpful and of their relevance.
 

So, whenever you draft your emails whether to send it to your manager or your customers, it is important to make sure that they are well crafted and impactful so that it doesn’t take much time of the reader.
 

Here are some life changing tips that will compel busy people and your customers to read and give response to your emails.
 

Your subject line alone is responsible of representing your email. It is time that you put a lot of efforts and pay attention in crafting a crisp and catchy subject line. Avoid using any spam subject lines as people easily recognize them.
 

These subject lines consist of words like free, ‘X’ percent off or bait and switch ploys, request for donations, anything with an exclamation point, fascinating or too good to be true statements.
 

Email subject lines need to attract the customer’s attention just like news headlines do. It is advisable to avoid long and full sentences in subject lines and keep it 50-60 characters long at most.
 

An email subject line should be long enough to cover the essentials and short enough to make it interesting.
 

Market research suggests that the best subject lines are short, to the point, and provide just enough information so as to generate curiosity to read your full email in the readers.
 

However, if you are having hard time settling on a specific subject line for your email, some businesses have also tried leaving it blank.
 

Statistics suggest that improved email open rates and conversions are observed in the case of these subject lines as compared to cheesy and fascinating subject lines. Put your important stuff in the beginning so that it is read clearly as 50% of the emails are read on mobile phones.
 

You can try using, “meeting information for Wednesday”, “The schedule for the next webinar”, “New data: ‘X’ percent of the customers want...” and so on. These are some of the effective and most conversion drawing email subject lines.
 

Image source: evercoast
 

The body of your email should not consist of a long essay as people find such text boring to read. Instead of writing a long paragraph that might have great content, it is advisable to make bullet points that are much faster to read.
 

The idea is to keep your customer’s eyes moving all along the bullet points and come up finally to a clear and distinct call to action link. If you are writing an email about your upcoming product, you can simply jot down the advantages and distinct point of your product in a short and concise manner.
 

The main task is to place the call to action link immediately after it so that the customer knows what to do next. If your body is more than 300 words, it is advisable to pick up the phone and talk to the customer instead.
 

Show the reader what you can do for them and avoid using exclamations as far as possible.
 

Image source: Fast Company
 

Most of the businesses make mistakes by not emailing their customers frequently. This habit might even make the customer forget the fact that they even subscribed to your list.
 

If your subscribers or customers are habitual of hearing from you every month, send them an email every month, if it is weekly, then don’t forget to send an email every week. The main aim is to attract your audience and make them habitual to open regularly sent emails. Remember to email, only when you have to.
 

If you think that you need an instant reply or the subject is quite touchy, pick up the phone instead and talk to the customer.
 

Image source: Springbot
 

Busier the people are, more do they love talking about themselves. According to a research conducted by the Harvard University that also involved brain scans, it was found that people actually get a kind of biochemical fuzz by talking about themselves.
 

After all busier people have much more to tell. You can take this opportunity to share something about yourself and ask them questions. You can ask how the project they are working is going on or simply how they are doing.
 

If there is a trending topic, you can simply ask what they think about it. This practice is sure to get you your email conversions.
 

Write an email to your audience as if you are writing it to your friend. Don’t make it appear too formal, instead write one to one. Try to keep your messages conversational as if you and your customer are communicating.
 

Personalizing emails is also important because the customers receiving your emails should feel that you are talking to them alone and not the masses. Make them feel that they are the only ones receiving the email rather than sounding like a telemarketer.
 

The most essential requirement is to focus on building a relationship with the customer in order to get them open your emails and respond to them. Focus on email consistency and relevance that will make them habitual of your email. These practices are bound to make your emails read and acted even by the busiest people.