Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

67Writing for EmailWhat Would You Open (WWYO)?

People on your email list have asked to receive your emails—at least, I hope they have (you are using an opt-in list, right?). (See the second-to-last paragraph of this rule.) That's an advantage: you have the privilege of interacting with a person by invitation, in the relatively intimate setting of the recipient's own in-box.

Considering the volume of marketing email being sent, its projected growth, and (too often) pitiful open rates, I suspect many of us are doing it wrong. Many still treat email as a broadcast tactic—using a word like blast to describe an email campaign, or not segmenting a list to make messages relevant to the people who care the most, or not testing various approaches to see what works with their audience.

In other words: this is a good time to rethink your email content, to reconsider what you're sending, and why, and how you're communicating. Earlier we talked about swapping places with your reader. Here, I'm suggesting you swap places with your recipient and write an email you would open.

Much of the typical advice around email marketing writing is straightforward:

• Use short subject lines. Emails with subject lines of 6–10 words have the highest open rates, yet most emails sent by marketers have subject lines of 11–15 words, according to a March 2014 report from Retention Science, which looked at 260 million ...