An email from the IRS taught me why investing in the sender ID is more important than just subject lines alone.

Recently, when I checked my inbox in the morning, I saw an email from the IRS.

I quickly ignored all other emails and clicked on it, only to see that it was a notification about a delayed tax refund for 2022. 

Because it was the IRS, I had clicked on it first. 

Now that I think about it, I can’t even remember the subject line.

But because it was an email from the IRS, I realized it was something that was very important and it put my scanner on red alert!

So, could that be the secret?

Could it really be as simple as understanding that people will open our emails if they think it is important to them?

Does that mean that low open rates imply that our emails are not important to them?

If so, what can we do about it? 

1. Email only when you have important information to offer (unless you have a valuable blog/newsletter that people have voluntarily subscribed to) 
2. Ensure that the offering inside the email is so important, that it is the most important email of the day 
3. Elicit a deep and loyal relationship with your email recipients by respecting their inbox and their lives