How do you get someone to open, read and act on your marketing emails?
Before someone takes action on a marketing email, a few things need to happen first.
First, they need to want to receive your emails. Then they need to open them. Then, they need to keep reading and feel confident enough to do something next.
This is why email marketing works best when you think about the full journey.
That journey starts when someone actively chooses to hear from you. They have signed up through your website, landing page or another clear subscription route.
And if you’re following best practice, you’re complying with the relevant data and consent rules for your business.
This is important: it’s a business risk if you’re not compliant, and you’re damaging your brand if someone receives an email they didn’t ask for and thinks, “Who is this, and why are they in my Inbox?”
What makes someone open a marketing email?
The first thing to look at is your subject line.
When you are analysing email marketing, your open rate tells you how many people opened your email compared with how many it was delivered to. There are other factors involved, including the relationship someone already has with your brand, but the subject line does a lot of the heavy lifting.
It needs to give someone a reason to pause and think “Yep, I want to open this”.
That doesn’t mean every subject line needs to be quirky or overly clever. A clear subject line can work better than something mysterious – a question can work well too, or an offer, useful tip or timely topic can grab attention.
The important thing is to understand what your audience responds to - and this is where ‘A/B split testing’ can be useful.
Most email platforms allow you to test one subject line against another. A small proportion of your audience receives version A or version B, and the better performing option is then sent to the rest of your list.
It can take time to see useful patterns – whether your audience responds better to a problem-led subject line, a practical resource, a product or service mention, personalisation (using the name field, for example), emojis, or a more direct benefit.
As an example, if you were writing about email marketing, you might test different words such as “workbook” versus “guide”, or “handy” versus “practical”. Over time, these small changes help you understand what catches attention and how your audience refers to the thing they need. it’s incredibly useful if you maintain a regular e-newsletter.
Preview text also matters – the bit that comes after the subject line. The two should align; you don’t want the preview text to repeat subject line, so think of it as the second reason someone chooses to open the email.
What makes someone keep reading?
Once someone opens your email, the question changes.
Now it’s not “How do I get their attention?” It’s “How do I make this worth their time?”
A good marketing email needs to be relevant, useful and personal to the reader. Moreover, it needs to give them something they didn’t have before they opened it.
That might be a useful idea, a different way of thinking, a practical next step, an answer to a question, or a clearer understanding of a problem they are trying to solve.
This is where many businesses fall into the trap of making their email too self-centred - your products, services, news and updates may be important, but the reader you’re trying to talk to is still asking, “What does this mean for me?”
If you’re sharing a skincare product, what does it help with? Promoting a therapy service? How might someone feel after accessing it? Perhaps you’re inviting people to a webinar – what will they understand or be able to do afterwards?
Good email marketing keeps bringing the message back to the one person reading it.
And so with that comes structure to your email, to keep the reader engaged. Some emails are short and practical, while others are longer and more story-led – both can work, but they need to be easy to read.
Design is also important: use white space and shorter paragraphs and clear headings or sections. This helps the reader take in the information. You want the email to feel manageable, not like a block of text someone must work hard to get through.
What makes someone take action?
“Taking action” could be clicking through to a blogpost or using a discount code, booking a call, downloading a guide or buying a product. It’s what you want the reader to do and they need to feel enough trust and reassurance to do it.
It takes trust
Trust is built through every part of the email – in the relevance of the message, the way you write, the clarity of the next step and the feeling your brand creates. (It even goes back to the stage when they signed up to receive your emails.)
It takes consistency
There’s a difference between being consistent and overwhelming someone’s Inbox. Bombard your recipients, and they won’t just delete the email; they’ll unsubscribe – and that is a big fail in the world of email marketing. A delete isn’t ideal, but it does mean they are still on your list. Unsubscribing means you have lost the opportunity to keep building that relationship.
This is why consistency is useful. If subscribers know roughly when to expect your emails, what they usually contain and how they are structured, it creates a sense of familiarity. And that familiarity can make your emails easier to recognise, read, and trust.
What should you be testing in your email marketing?
Subject lines are a place to start. You can also test preview text, calls to action, buttons versus text links, images, topics, timings, formats and audience segments.
Consider segmenting your data as your subscriber base grows: you might group people by previous clients, potential clients, recent buyers, older contacts, service interests, or product types. Your messaging may not be right for all segments – and the more relevant the email feels, the more likely someone is to read it.
What makes a great marketing email?
The greatest marketing emails aren’t the loudest, longest or most frequent. They’re the ones that feel useful, relevant and worth opening.
So, before you send your next email, consider:
Will this make someone want to open it?
Will this give them a reason to keep reading?
Will this build trust for them to take the next step?
If you’re confident in these areas, then you’re much closer to creating marketing emails someone actually wants to open, read, and act on.
I shared more about this in Episode 13 of A Measure of Marketing: How To Create Marketing Emails People Actually Read. I also blogged about why email marketing remains one of the most powerful yet underrated tools available - over on the L&D Free Spirits Blog.