Email marketing is one part of an internet marketing strategy that most companies do on at least a semi-regular basis, and we’d bet yours is no different. But sometimes, the results of those campaigns can be a little disappointing. If you’re having trouble getting people to open your email and then take action on them, read on for some tips to increase your chances of being seen!

• Don’t write ANYTHING in all capital letters. Do you feel like I just yelled at you? I feel like I just yelled at you. People don’t like to be yelled at, whether it’s on the phone, in person, or over the internet. If you’re capslocking your subject lines or anything else in your email, even for emphasis, you’re yelling. Shhhhh. Tone it down and use italics or bold lettering instead.
• Use bullet points. Bullet points make your email so much easier to read. It breaks up topics and presents the reader with some order instead of a wall of text.
• Be relevant. The best way to get people to read your emails is to make their contents relevant to the recipient. This might mean that you need to do a better job of segmenting your mailing lists by source or by interest or by whatever makes sense for you and your customers. Or it might mean you put some planning into the types of messages you want to reach people with at each stage of the sales process.  Just think about the people who are going to be receiving your email, then decide what information they want to know and what they don’t really care about.
• Be brief. I know it’s super-easy to talk for ages about certain topics related to your business or industry, but email isn’t the place for that. If you’ve got a lot to say, make it a blog post. Otherwise, keep your message short and to the point.
• Don’t overdo it on images. It’s not an absolute no-no to include images in your email, but too many can alert filters that will send you into SPAM. One to three images should be your limit.
• Watch your subject line. Certain particularly “sales-y” words are triggers for SPAM filters. Think back to the last time you received an email from an “African royal” and you can probably come up with a few. But before you send off your email, consult this exhaustive list by our partners at HubSpot to make sure your subject line is good to go.
• Don’t send attachments. If you’re running a bulk email campaign, it’s really important to make sure that you’re not attaching files to the email before you blast them. If there’s a file you want recipients to download, upload it to a file-sharing site like Dropbox and include the link to the file in the body of the email.
• Include a call to action. To get your email marketing audience engaged, make sure you’re including calls to action. If there’s something you want to do, be clear about asking them to do it! Insert a clickable button to where you want them to go, bold, italicize, underline, whatever (just don’t shout), but ask for the action!
• Watch your success rate. If you send an email that gets a particularly good response, figure out why and then make sure future emails apply what you’ve learned. Was it the time of day you sent it? Was it the type of content contained in the email? Was it sent to a particularly well-targeted list?

Have you had any huge email successes or embarrassing failures? We want to hear about them! Sound off in the comments.