Will Customers Take 8 Seconds for Your Email?
How much can you learn about your email campaign? Your basic analytics programs can tell you whether your prospects open your email; that’s important to know. It gives you input into how they view your subject line, plus whether they’re even interested in hearing from you.
Then, getting you toward your goal, basic analytics will also tell you how many are responding to your call to action. As those numbers meet targets, that’s happy news indeed – the cha-ching to your inbox ping. The holy grail of your email. The response that leads to a lead.
However, there’s also a lot contractors can learn about those moments after an email gets open, but no click occurs. Just yet.
Advanced email analytics can tell you how long your recipients are viewing your email, which can tell you a thing or two about whether they’re reading, skimming, deleting. The breakdown for email open time falls basically into these categories. When the email is open for…
- Two seconds or less – they’re probably taking a glance or deleting
- Three to seven seconds – probably skimming
- Eight seconds or more – actually reading the email
Knowing this “open time” data can help you gauge the effectiveness of your email campaign.
To improve readability of your email, use a personal tone that is easy to connect to, and make your emails easy to read and digest. Everybody’s busy. Offer helpful information without wasting time. Try reading your email as if you were a recipient – would you pass the two second mark? Would you last until eight minutes? Would you respond to the call to action?
Remember too – even if your email doesn’t get an “open,” you’ve got a chance to get your subject line seen. Don’t waste this opportunity. Personalized subject lines, tempting with a little mystery or being informative, are all valid strategies to employ.