I’ll admit — I have a secret email identity. I can’t tell you what it is without blowing my cover. But I will say that the cashier at Lowe’s has no idea. Neither do the owners of the website where I filled out the required form last week to get a free eBook and bumper sticker (I have a thing for bumper stickers).

People set up accounts specifically for junk mail all the time. Even when email is solicited, there’s no guarantee it won’t go straight to the trash. It’s one of the reasons many marketers, including higher education markers, have been forced to ask this important question: how do we craft messages people actually want to read?

If you want eyeballs on your emails, you have to make it through the clutter of your user’s inbox. Here are 4 tips to get your emails read.

1.  KEEP YOUR SUBJECT LINE SHORT AND SWEET.  

Think of your subject line like an elevator pitch — in a very crowded elevator. If your subject line isn’t short and interesting, you’ll turn away prospects. According toConvince & Convert, 35% of email recipients open email based on the subject line alone. That’s huge.

So what makes a good subject line? Speak to users and address their needs like you would in the body of the email. If you know your prospective student is interested in Creative Writing, don’t send him an email that vaguely mentions academics in the subject line. Also, try to aim for no more than 50 characters or 6-10 words — you’ll get the highest open rates.

Mobile devices muddy the waters a little. Say your subject line is 50 characters long. Users who view your email on an iPhone might only see 35 characters. That’s why many marketers are writing subject lines between 20 and 40 characters. Short and sweet is the real deal, especially with a mobile audience.

2. PUT IMPORTANT INFO ‘ABOVE THE FOLD.’

When I hear the phrase, ‘above the fold,’ it takes me back to j-school. However, the fold is no longer exclusive to newspapers. In an email, ‘above the fold’ is everything your user can see without scrolling or taking further action. If your prospective student is pressed for time or disengaged with your message, he or she probably won’t make it past the fold.

Users commonly read an email from left to right and spend the most time at the top of the page. The Nielsen Norman Group found that people spend 80 percent of their time looking at information above the page fold and only direct 20 percent of their attention below the fold.

See how the top half of the page gets all the love?

When writing an email, include your most important information first, and avoid burying your call to action. What are your users’ goals? If you want them to learn more about financial aid options, consider putting a button at the top of your email — something straightforward like ‘Explore Financial Aid.’ You might also consider including links to your social media pages, blogs, or relevant web pages.

3. GRAB ATTENTION WITH COMPELLING IMAGERY.

Our brains love pictures. They process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of the information transmitted to our brains is visual. If you’re not using images in your emails, you’re missing an opportunity to engage your users’ brains and make the greatest impact.

Here are a few tips for using images in your emails:

• Keep your images small. Large files can delay load times and prevent images from displaying correctly. If you want your email to be desktop- and mobile-friendly, go for a pixel width of 450 to 500.
• JPEG and GIF are your safest bets. Almost all email clients support these image formats.
• Avoid using too many images. A 60/40 text to image ratio is usually best.
• Use alt tags. Alt tags are snippets of text that describe images in an email. If your user can’t view the images, you still want them to get a general idea of what your message is about.