This is Barry mould still getting small businesses on stuck in Dan Pink's new book to sell us human. One of the things that he emphasizes is that customers no longer want to be sold to. They want to be educated. And that means that we need to build a relationship with them over a long period of time, so we can be there when those customers are ready to buy. One of the best ways to build a systematic relationship is to use email marketing. However, one of the biggest problems with email marketing is that there are over 89 billion email sent every single day.

Yes, I did say at 9 billion with a B with all those emails, getting Getting set all the time? How do you make sure that your prospect or your customer opens up yours, there are actually 10 steps to getting your email open. The first one is the all important title of the email 80% of the reason that an email is open is because what it says in its title. So for example, one of the titles could be saw this and thought of you, you want to make it very personal. Or you can say, I want to connect you with a resource, or I want to introduce you to this person or referred by X, Y and Z. One of my most popular emails from last year was my wife thinks I'm having an affair, dot dot dot.

Now, that worked out really well because people were intrigued by the title of that email. So what was the punch line? I run a small business. And the punch line was my wife thinks I'm having an affair with my business. That really made a lot of sense. Number two, you've got to go negative.

Now I know this is counterintuitive, we always have emails that are very positive and boost people's spirits, but actually having negative title in an email will actually get it open. Now unfortunately, this is the basis of every reality TV show that's out there. We love schadenfreude. We love to see negative things happen, unfortunately. So you've got to use words like the worst or absolutely or just plain wrong. Let me give you an example.

You could say what to include in your return policy, but much more powerful is what not to include in your return policy. You see, people are afraid of doing things wrong, rather than wanting to do things right. Step number three, you've got to be exclusive. Everybody wants to join a club, that they're going to have a difficult time. By being a part of or not everyone is invited to. So by using the words Exclusive OR VIP or limited time or the deadline is Thursday, it will get people to act on your email.

So for example, your exclusive invitation that only happens once a year. This says that this invitation is not for everybody. And this is your only chance during the year. Step number four is no capital letters. I think most of us by now know that capital letters on the internet or an email is the equivalent of screaming at that person. And besides, it's going to get caught by the spam filter, and it's never ever going to get through to your prospect or your customers.

Number five, you've got to be controversial or contrarian in your message. People don't want to read the same old same old so for example, sending an email out there that says the Oscars were fantastic. No one's gonna To open that up, but if you say, here's what was wrong with the Oscars last night, people are going to be intrigued. But remember, it's got to be within your brand, it just can't be out of the blue. So for example, when Miss Marissa Mayer many months ago, who was the CEO of Yahoo said that people should not be able to work from home, they had to come back from work. I wrote an article that said, Marissa Mayer was right, why people need to come back to work.

Here are some words that you have to avoid, don't use the word free, or help or percentage off or reminder, this will not get paid attention all by people. And again, it's much more likely to get caught by those spam filters. Number seven, and this is really very true. You've got to use numbers in your email. Everybody wants to know, the five simple steps success. People want to follow a very linear list.

Now, not only numbers work, even numbers except the number 10 are really out, you've got to use three, five, or seven. They're very, very powerful numbers. Let's go to step number eight, you got to keep it short, we have to understand that 50% of all email is now open on mobile devices. And what this means is you need to keep the title to 25 characters or less. There's some great tools out there that can help you figure out what is your email going to look like in a mobile device. And one of those nice suggests is Litmus fit me, us.

Let's go to step number nine. You can get help. You don't have to make up these titles on your own. You can go to a resource called tweak your biz Comm. You put in your keywords, and it will tell you some suggestions for what the title should be. And of course number 10 which I think is incredibly important is the from field.

Who is that email from remember, email started in 1981 as a person To person form of communication, and when you get email from support at the company name, Comm. Or info at the company name, comm that takes a lot of a powerful connection, that email really can bring, make sure use a person's name in that email, either the most recognizable name, or perhaps the CEO of the company. Overall, none of these things is going to work unless you do it in a systematic way, regularly, that means you have to send it out at least on a once a week basis. And make sure that the content of what you send is something that your prospects and customers are going to be interested in opening. This is Barry mold still getting small businesses unstuck and that's 10 ways to get your email open.