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Email Marketing - 6 Ways to Get Brides to Open Your Emails

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Wedding Professionals:

This blog post is the second part of a four-part blog series on the topic of email marketing.

Part 1 - 7 things you should email to brides.

Part 2 - 6 easy tips on how to get brides to open your emails.

Part 3 - 4 secrets of getting brides to click on your emails.

Part 4 - 2 free ways to collect more email addresses from brides.

A great way to deepen your relationship with new bridal leads and with your existing customers is to use email marketing. Last week, I outlined 7 Things You Should Email to Brides. While it is incredibly important to focus on the content that is inside the email, it is also very important to master the outside of the email (aka the email’s subject line).

Today, a bride’s email inbox is overcrowded with offers, deals, contests – you name it. So, it is critical that your email's subject line makes a compelling first impression. In just a few words, you need to convince a bride that your email is going to make her life better. To help do this, here are some best practices that I’ve learned over the last ten years:

Keep the subject line short. Most email service providers (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc.) will only show the first 50 characters of a subject line. This includes spaces. So, you’ll want to make sure that your subject line fits within that limit. Otherwise, brides won’t be able to view your entire subject line.
Subject lines should be direct. What's in it for the bride? Clearly state this benefit within the first 20-30 characters of the subject line.
Avoid using your company name in the subject line. This is repetitive since the email comes from your company.
Use an email service that enables you to track your response rates over time. I recommend using Constant Contact because they make this entire process so easy. Keeping track of this will help you to understand what your audience responds to most.
Establish trust each time you send out an email. You can do this in part by ensuring that your subject line is not misleading. In addition, send out email regularly but not too frequently. I like to send out my email to BridalTweet members on a weekly basis.
Be consistent. Make sure that your emails always comes from the same person or organization. For example, my weekly emails come from ‘BridalTweet’. I’m consistent about that. It would also be fine if they came from ‘Christine Dyer’. The point is that it should always be the same, so that your audience will get to know you over time.
BONUS: Make sure that a bride actually receives your email by following these easy rules on how to avoid a bride's SPAM filter.

As I alluded to above as well as in previous blog posts, I stand behind Constant Contact for email marketing and I personally use their service to send a weekly email to our BridalTweet members. In fact, my wedding business couldn't run without their service. In my opinion, Constant Constant has the most professional-looking email templates. I’ve tried other services that just didn’t convey the professional look that I require. Feel free to take advantage of Constant Contact’s 60-Day Free Trial.

Do you have any best practices to share about sending email to brides? If so, please comment below.

About This Blog: Christine Dyer is the Creator and Founder of BridalTweet. Christine has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly blog, you'll find advice on an array of wedding business topics such as how to market to brides, social networking, wedding PR, wedding sales, vendor networking, branding, pricing and much more. Please pass this news along to your own professional wedding network. To receive this advice in your email inbox each week, Sign Up for a Free BridalTweet Membership.

Comment by Exquisite Designs and More on March 9, 2010 at 10:26am: Good stuff, thanks.

Comment by Konstantina Saraidari on March 10, 2010 at 9:49am: Thanks once more Christine. Is somewhat irrelevant to ask what you consider appropriate to include a wedding newsletter;

Comment by Samantha Shay Photography on March 11, 2010 at 2:51am: great tips, thanks for writing this!

Comment by Marty Greensterin CSEP on March 11, 2010 at 3:11am: To project a winning newsletter or proposal, you must know where the pain is. What is bothering your bride's to be. When you answer that question the newsletter becomes more powerful.
If you disturb their complacency, stimulate their thinking, and then offer a solution your a problem solver. If we are not solving a problem we could be a distractive part of the problem, and you never want to be positioned there.

Comment by Bruce Blackwell on March 11, 2010 at 6:17pm: I've also performed tests to see which emails received the most attention - opens - click-throughs, etc. Great article - good advice.

Comment by Sophia Buenfil on July 21, 2010 at 1:11am: You should include a "call to action" in your emails, such as Call Now, Make An Appointment, etc.

Comment by Sarah Kavanagh on September 28, 2010 at 5:06am: Thanks Christine, Great tips as always - I've been using Mailchimp which seems to work well but I'll be checking out constant contact as well.

Comment by Stephanie Benedetto Padovani on September 29, 2010 at 7:42am: Great tips, Christine! If she doesn't open your email, you don't even have a shot. The subject line is critical.

Be different. If you're following up after a bridal show, don't send an email that looks like everyone else. I've had a lot of luck by sending an email with the couple's date and location in it; it's proof that the email is from someone they know.

It's hard to know which subject will get the best response. Test, test, test! It's the only way we can figure out what works for sure.

Using an email autoresponder service (like Aweber or Constant Contact) makes it easy to test different email subjects and content to see what works best.

Comment by Angela Love on December 26, 2010 at 9:38am: Great info, thanks for sharing. I am going to tweak my email campaigns in line with your tips.