• by Robb Wilson , August 2, 2006

Not all commercial e-mail messages are created equal. One kind sits in your inbox for hours or days before you get around to it. The other makes you check your inbox obsessively and then drop everything to open it as soon as it appears.

That e-mail has become a habit, with a grip on you as strong as any controlled substance. You are compelled to open it because you absolutely have to see what's inside. That's how to generate eye-popping open rates, maybe 50 percent to 80 percent in a market niche where 10 percent to 25 percent is the norm.

Don't you wish your own readers or customers felt that strongly about your e-mail messages? Measure your own e-mail program against these five attributes of habit-forming e-mail:

1. The message design is consistent, no matter which division or person sends it. All the elements--title, logo or brand, contents, forward-to-a-friend link, administrative links including unsubscribe, company Web site and contact information--show up in roughly the same place each time, creating a familiar experience the reader can learn to anticipate each time. You have only a couple of seconds to make an impact, so don't force readers to search around for what they want.

2. The message appears at the same time every time. All the talk about the best time to send e-mail obscures one important fact--it's more important to send your messages at the same time, no matter what time of day or day of week you pick, so that you can build anticipation and a reputation for dependability.

3. The sender line is always the same. The sender line is one of the factors e-mail readers use to decide whether to open or delete an e-mail in the inbox. Make yours the same each time you send, and use a name the reader would recognize, such as your company name, product or brand, or mailing title. Never use a person's name unless it's part of the brand or company identity.

4. The subject line includes the e-mail program's name, and the name indicates how often it comes.An e-mail that tells the recipient when to expect it--"Weekly Top Games," "Monday Morning Quarterback"--starts creating the habit right in the inbox. Keep it short--no more than 30-40 characters, including spaces--so that it doesn't get cut off.

5. The content is highly relevant or personalized and becomes a "familiar experience." These are messages that speak to you and only you, or so it seems. The more you let your readers customize their e-mail messages--content, frequency, text vs. HTML--the more valuable you are, and the more habit-forming you become. Also, you test subject lines, offers and other variables to figure out which ones work, and allow those results to inform your message creation.

Next Step: Get others to buy in. Creating habit-forming e-mails is easy to do in smaller companies where you control the whole process from creation to delivery. In a big firm, with multiple departments or divisions, each with its own e-mail program and little cooperation or communication among the units, you face a harder battle.

Take up the challenge, though, because habit-forming e-mail translates into better open rates and higher customer engagement, which then translates into more conversions, whether it's sales, downloads, registrations or whatever your e-mail program goals are.