Email marketing is an important marketing technique for businesses to stay in constant contact with their customers. It’s also an avenue to source leads and potential clients. Email marketing provides ease and affordability to business owners.
However, an email is only useful when delivered to and opened by the recipient. The idea behind sending an email is to get people to open it and ultimately follow your CTA. However, many do not open their emails for certain reasons.
Even the most carefully written and quality emails can be left sitting in the inbox for a long time or forever. If your email open rates are presently low or you just wish to improve them, this article shows you ways to do so.
In email marketing, there are two important metrics to track the success of an email. They are Clickthrough rate and Open rates.
Email click-through rate is calculated in percentage. It is the number of recipients who clicked on one or more links present in your email. The email click-through rate’s success depends on the email open rates. People have to open your mail before they can click any link in it.
Email open rates refer to the percentage of people that opened your email out of your total subscribers. It can be calculated by dividing the total amount of emails opened by the total number of emails delivered (total sent – total bounced), then multiplying the result by 100%. Simple right?
For example, You sent 500 emails to your subscribers, and 50 of them bounced, implying that only 450 emails were delivered. Of this 450, 350 have been opened. This means that the email open rate will be 350/450 x 100%, giving a 77.78% open rate.
The average email open rates vary across industries and countries. It also depends on the type of email you’re sending. According to Statista, in 2020, the open rate of marketing emails worldwide stood at 18 percent. Among the presented regions and countries, the share was highest in Australia, where it amounted to 20.6 percent.
The list below describes some top methods to increase your email open rates.
Almost everyone with an email in the world now accesses them through their mobile devices. These devices only show a few words of the subject line. Business owners and marketers can use the subject line to their advantage to ensure that recipients open the email.
Below are some tips for writing a great subject line that captures the recipient’s attention.
Do not make the error of sending out the same email to everyone on your list. Segmentation of your subscriber’s list helps to deliver only the emails relevant to each subscriber. Segmentation is the process of dividing your list into sections based on some common factors. Email segmentation gives business owners and marketers an avenue to send more relevant content.
The more relevant an email content is to a receiver, the likelier it is for that individual to keep engaging with your email. Segmentation is a technique every email marketer should know, but the reality is most are ignoring it.
List segmentation ensures better personalization with email content, which ultimately implies great engagement and higher conversion rates. You can base your list segmentation on various factors: age, gender, industry, location, previous purchases, social interests, etc. An easy way to implement segmentation is to provide a simple signup form where subscribers can select their preferences.
Your email content is just as important as its subject. No one will read an irrelevant email to the end. In addition, no one will read an email that lacks quality even when it’s relevant to them.
This is why segmentation and personalization of content are crucial in email marketing. Once you have successfully divided your list into different segments, you can then write targeted, personalized, and relevant content for every recipient. This will quickly increase your email open rate.
Your email’s content should be tailored to provide knowledge to the recipient and entertain them. This way, they will continue opening and reading your emails whenever they come in.
One thing to note while writing your content is that you should remain truthful. This means that you should write about whatever you promised to write about before the recipient subscribes. Another essential thing to note is that you should discuss how the content is beneficial to the reader.
Timing is everything in life. An email that a person would normally open may sit in the inbox forever when sent at the wrong time. However, the reality is that no defined time works for every business.
Sure, there have been different theories as to the ‘perfect’ time. Some say it’s around 10 pm when the individual is ready to retire to bed. Others say it’s by 4 pm. There’s a popular theory also that the best time to send emails is around 1 pm when most people are on lunch breaks.
However, the truth is that the above times may work for one business but flop for others. This is why A/B testing is recommended for timing. A/B test different emails and draws conclusions about the best time to send them. The timing may also differ across segments.
For example, a list segmented according to age will have different optimal times for older and younger people.
No matter how efficient your email gathering methods are, your list is bound to get stale at some point. Subscribers may stop engaging in your emails for many reasons. They may have found a better service, or they generally just lost interest.
For this reason, it’s important to clean and update your list regularly to flush out the dead weight. You can update your list by eliminating any subscriber who has not engaged with any emails you sent in the past 6 to 12 months. However, it is advisable to reach out to them via a special email one last time before removing them completely. This might help change some people’s minds and regain their attention.
One way to ensure you’re adding active subscribers to your list is through newsletter signup forms. A newsletter signup form is used to capture the email address of would-be subscribers. You can check for some newsletter signup examples as a guide to assist your business.
Many excellent email marketing content has gone to waste because they ended up in the spam folder. Spam filters are being updated regularly and have become very sensitive. As an email marketer, you must ensure that the content of your mail and the subject line do NOT contain anything that may be flagged as spam.
Spam folders are one of the leading reasons for a low open rate. Below are some quick tips to avoid your email ending up in the spam folder.
Once you have crafted your subject line and content, it’s recommended that you A/B test them. A/B testing provides the information you need to choose the content or subject line best for an email campaign.
You can also test other elements of an email like images and CTA. Having foresight into what content appeals to your subscribers by testing different versions is a great way to increase your email open rate.
No doubt, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies when done right. However, an email will not perform its function if it doesn’t get opened. This article discussed some top ways to improve email open rates, so now go to your marketing team calendar and see what you can do to implement some. of the strategies offered, as you’ll see an increase if you follow these religiously in your own marketing endeavors.
