So the significant difference between primary tab open rate (35%-50%) and promotions tab (5%-10%) make many marketers want to get out of the last tab. But how can we prevent our newsletter mails to go to Promotions tab?

Here is the traditional way that is almost inapplicable, making your readers to move your emails to the Primary tab:

Here are few simple tips you can try:

1. Always write in the right time.

Do not send newsletters over the weekend or holidays (this is a sign that you are promoting something). Try to contact your subscribers whenever they are up to this. The best time for this is 2-3pm. The end of the workday is great time to contact them. They are still focused in their email and it’s absolutely business emailing time. If you email once per week statistics shows that the best days for this are Wednesday and Thursday.

2. Use no images. And include maximum 1 link. No Rss.

Many marketers will disagree using of no images in your email, but that is very valuable for reaching the primary tab. You can catch your readers attention with right text formatting and replace the call to action fancy image buttons with the right wording. Including maximum 1 link will guarantee that you are not sending promotional email with links to many offers in your website.

3. Write your emails in traditional letter form.

Try to write your readers like they are your friends. Using traditional language in your emails will help you to get out of the promotions tab. “Hey George, how are you doing?”, “It’s Dido from Front End Factory. I hope you are doing well.” and etc.

4. Make your emails personal. Reader’s name is a must have.

If you are using aweber or mailchimp you can include your readers’ details in your emails to make them more personalised. Include as many personalised elements as you can. Adding user’s company, project name or address is also a great solution if is possible for you.

5. Do not use promotional words.

Your email and especially subject should be free of promotional wording like “Promotion”, “Sale”, “Discount” etc. Here are few bad examples for your subjects “Hey Mike, see our promotions today”, “Limited time offer for you”, “Save up to 50% on our new collection”, “Get rich with us” and etc.

I hope this article will help you to reach the primary tab of your readers’ gmail accounts.

Please share tis article to help your friends doing this also.

1. Layout it right

Give your customers the feeling that they are in a checkout page and just need to do 1 step to complete their order. Let them focus on filling their shipping & billing details.

Use one-page checkout. Many case studies have shown that one-page checkouts convert better than multi-step checkout pages. Anyway if you really have to make your checkout page in few steps, let your customers know where they are, what have they passed and what is left. In every next step show them what they did in the previous, that way you will prevent them of going back to the previous steps/pages.

Removing main site elements like navigations, sidebars, big footers, banners etc are also one of the best things you can do in point of design. It’s important to have you customers focused and feeling comfortable to finish the checkout.

PayPay’s checkout is a great example of simple one-page checkout.

2. Simplify

Guest checkout option is important. If your customers are not logged in always give them first the ability to checkout without a registration or give them option to sign up with one-click using their facebook accounts. Customers don’t like registering, its engaging. You always can send them an account password after they finish their order.

Ask them only for what you need. People do not like filling unnecessary fields. The less fields your customers have to fill, the faster they will finish the checkout process. Always use default billing address same as shipping with checkbox option to show the billing fields.

3. Trust elements

You have to give your customers the feeling of security checkout process. HTTPS is mus-have. Put logos of the credit cards and payment methods that you accept. Giving money-back guarantee is also really helpful. Adding the right testimonials to the checkout page is worthy.

4. Give enough information

Show clearly all the products of the purchase with their prices, including delivery information, taxes and etc. Your customers want to be sure what they order and how much they will pay. Otherwise you risk them to leave the checkout page looking for total prices in basket page or shipping costs on the delivery page.

5. Prevent exits

You should keep your customers in the checkout page until the time they pay. Try to prevent any option of leaving the page during that time. You can use a simple javascript code or popup if the customer try to leave the page by mistake or even offer them discount if they do it.

I the tips from the Front End Factory will help you to increase your conversion rate.

You can subscribe to our newsletter to get weekly tips on how to better your CRO.

1. Teamwork Projects – Your business timeline

Probably the best project management software out there. It involves so many great features like sub tasking, time tracking, invoicing with different hourly rates or taxes, milestones, late tasks, reminders, team chat, and etc. 100% brandable with many 3rd party integrations. You will just love it and get addicted to it.

Price: starts at $12/month
Free version: Yes
Mobile app: Yes
Visit Teamwork Website

2. Slack – chat for teams

The most efficient and funny way to chat with your team. Allows running multiple teams, chatting in many topics in groups or private, voice chat and screen sharing. Slack-hosted file sharing with great file & history search that will never let you loose an attachment.

Price: Free
Mobile app: Yes
Visit Slack.com

3. Invision app – design management made easy

InvisionApp is the best way to communicate with your clients and manage the design process. Gives great options for design prototyping and collecting/discussing on clients feedback. Even has option for you and your client to draw at the same time in the same screen. Thats amazing! Also you get notified about every single action, comment or file version change so that you will always be on track with what’s happening. Strongly recommend it for web designers and web design companies working remotely with their clients.
Price: $19/month
Free trial: Yes
Mobile app: No

4. ScreenHero – Sharing your screen or even the whole device

This amazing app allows you to share your screen while having a call with a client or colleague and even give them the ability to use your browser, keyboard and clipboard. Super fast and light solution that moves screen shares to next level.
Free trial: Yes
Mobile app: no
Visit Screen Hero website

5. Time Doctor – Stop wasting time

The software that raised our employees productivity with more than 30%. If you manage remotely teams work with freelancers or just want to take more of the time that you are paying to your employees TimeDoctor will help you do that. Offers great features like start/end work, tracking mouse moves, screenshot & weak time use, TimeDoctor can boost your team’s effectivity to the sky and lower your expenses paying for wasted time.
Price: $9/user
Free Version: Yes
Mobile app: Yes
Visit TimeDoctor

1. Write with Sublime Text

SublimeText is an ultra fast text editor that made our work so much easier and lighter. Supports a lot of features that will make you feel comfortable with your code.

Link: http://www.sublimetext.com/

2. Use Less/Sass with Prepros

Benefits of using less css or sass as css framework are so much. Once you get used to this you will never go back to writing old-school css. They come with powerful short-hand codes and functions that will decrease your source code’s line numbers with up to 30%. Reusing or developing the code that you build with less or sass is much more easier than the plain CSS code. Small example of sass:

.header {
.menu {
   li {
    a {
     display:block;
     .rounded(5px);
     background:#eee;
     &:hover {
        background:#ccc;
     }
    }
   }      
 }
}

Prepros complie all your less files into the css code you need immediately after you save.

Links:

http://lesscss.org/
http://sass-lang.com/
https://prepros.io/

3. CSS HAT for photoshop

This plugin will help you turning photoshop layers into css lines of code. It takes text proerties or layers blending options and turns them into a css/less or sass code that you can simply copy and past into your text editor. Saves you tones of measures and time ot check if you have written the right gradient or box-shadow properties.

Link: https://csshat.com/

4. Cut and slice me for Photoshop

Cut and slice me provides you very easy and fun way to export all your photoshop assets into web format graphics (png/jpg), with option to export few formats for them, also retina ready for vector shapes. Really cool photoshop plugin

Link: http://www.cutandslice.me/

5. Browser Stack

Oh man, where can i find IE 7 now to do tests.. or windows XP? Awful question, but s**t happens. The best way to have all kind of devices, OS, platforms and browsers in less than $30/month is using BrowserStack. Absolutely pays every cent of the amount when it’s a question of cross browser, device or platform testing. With the subscription you get remote access to all kind of virtual devices, OS and browser.

Link: http://browserstack.com/

That’s how we manage doing more within less time.
I would love if you share your way to work faster and easier.