When you’re launching a fashion business, you’re probably sending a lot of emails to a lot of different kinds of people: wholesale buyers, editors, press people, influencers, etc. Your goal is to get your brand in front of as many people as possible.
While you’re probably sending out all of these great personalized notes, you might be wondering to yourself:
How do I know if anyone is actually reading them?
How do I know if they actually like the content I’m producing?
There are two things you can do right now to ensure your emails actually get read and opened- and hopefully receive responses.
Adapt Your Email Writing Style
The very first thing to adopt is a casual yet confident email writing style. This goes not only just for the content inside, but also in the dreaded subject header. The subject header holds a lot of weight when you’re crossing your fingers, hoping that person’s going to read it and actually want to open your message.
Here’s a big tip: Say “Hi” or “Hello”.
The best subject headers that lead to opened emails are ones reading “Hi” or “Hello”, or even “Circling back” or “Following up”. These very simple subject headers actually have a certain level of confidence and continuity that your reader is ultimately going to want to feel with you. So if you say, “Hi” in your subject header, it’s way more disarming than “Spring Summer ’16 New Brand Launching”.
Install an Email Tracking Program
Next, install an email tracking program. One of my favorites is called Streak. It integrates easily into any of your Gmail accounts and allows you to see who’s opening up your emails and when. This is crucial when it comes to doing any type of email marketing campaign- especially when you’re not using an auto-responder like MailChimp. You actually want to be able to see these one-on-one communications you’re writing, and know whether the recipient is opening them or not. If they’re not opening them, this gives you an opportunity to resend the email with a different subject header using the same content.
Those are the two main aspects to work on when you send out your very next email. If you email me with a very casual subject header, I’m probably going to open it.
Bonus Tip: Write Great Content
Finally, the content you write is really what’s going to be the clincher to get someone to respond. Make sure it’s all on-point: very direct, short, and specific. Nobody wants their time to be wasted. Keep that in mind while writing your next email.