83) Drop your fear and self-loathing about sending emails. Those on your list chose to receive your emails and they can opt-out if they don’t like them. Trust your audience – they know you are not spam.
84) When scanning our inbox, we are using our highest cognitive abilities to quickly choose between spam and wanted emails. Those on your list will know you are not spam. Also, your email may not have been opened but it was seen. (See 86 and 87 below.)
85) Everyone can send one more email a month and response will increase.
86) Email response is seen in more than open rates and clickthroughs. You’ll see it in brand searches, PPC clicks, later response when users are on your site. Even unopened emails can sell. It’s the ‘nudge effect’ – influencing behavior without specific instructions.
87) Use your brand and a message in your email’s from and subject line.
88) Research: long subject lines – less opens, more response; short – more opens, less response. You’re going to have to do your own tests for your list.
89) Before segmentation, the pot (your list) is big. After segmentation it is small. Do the math: response = numbers x response rate. Response is more important than response rate.
90) Beware of some much-quoted research on segmentation. One Forrester report showing increased response (from increased response rates) as mailings were segmented assumed that segmented lists were the same size as the original non-segmented. In practice this doesn’t happen.
