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In a recent survey, 40% of email marketers reported declining response rates as one of their biggest problems. This can be the result of repetitive offers, lack of creativity, out-of-date email addresses, and spam filters.

Here are some suggestions to improve your response rates:

Grab them within 7 seconds

You have about 7 seconds to capture the attention of your email recipients. If you haven’t grabbed their interest in that amount of time, you will probably lose them.

Start with the subject line. Move your most important part of the message to the front. Most subject lines get truncated after about 24 characters. If they don’t see an appealing message in the first part of the line, they probably will not read your email.

Use the first 2 inches

Most email readers still use the preview pane. This gives you about 2 inches of screen space to capture their attention. Make the most of it. Give them a reason to read your email.

Make an inviting headline with a reason or two why they read your email. If you save your sales pitch for later, it may never be seen. It’s common to put a logo and some other graphic at the top of the message that doesn’t really say anything. Being “pretty” won’t get your message read. The recipient needs a call to action.

Use white space

Big blocks of text don’t get read. Use white space to make your message look light and easy to read. Write small paragraphs of three or four sentences. Use subheads every two or three paragraphs.

To emphasize important points, use bullet points. Try to summarize these points in a couple of words. Then add benefits under each phrase.

Test your emails

The only way you will improve the quality of your email is through testing. Send out two different version to smaller sample audiences. Determine which one gets the best response. Then send the rest of the emails out using that version. Continue refining your emails using the techniques that perform best.

HTML or text emails

Avoiding spam filters has become quite a challenge. If you are sending newsletters, asking the recipient to add your email to their address book can be very helpful. HTML email with graphics tends to trigger more spam filters. An alternative is to send text-based emails with links back to web pages which contain the graphics.

Trigger words

The use of some words will trigger spam filters. The use of the dollar sign in the subject line a good example. Words like free in the body of the text can also get your email deleted. One alternative is to use foreign language accent marks. Free would then be spelled frée. It remains readable but is not spelled the same.