Including a simple, personal question unrelated to business (e.g., "What TV show did you watch this week?") in newsletters or outreach emails encourages replies. This humanizes the communication, improves engagement metrics, and positively impacts email deliverability.
As two-way conversations drive engagement, it's crucial for marketers to verify their Email Service Provider (ESP) or CRM can handle replies to mass emails. This functionality, which is not standard on all platforms, is essential for capitalizing on reply-based engagement tactics.
The pre-header, or second subject line, has a major impact on open rates. Using continuation words like "and," "but," or "plus" at the beginning of the pre-header encourages the reader to continue from the subject line, which can result in a significant open rate lift of up to 10%.
Contrary to recent best practices, testing shows that starting a newsletter subject line with the edition number (e.g., "[Scoop #42]") can now significantly increase open rates. This highlights the need to constantly re-test old marketing tactics as user behavior evolves.