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How to Improve Email Marketing Open Rates

12 Quick Items to Review Today

Answering the #1 question all email marketers need to know

by Alyssa Rice

Introduction

The #1 question all email marketers get from clients, bosses, or colleagues is, How can we get open rates to increase? There is no one simple answer. This is because a group of factors comes into play. We'll review those here.

An open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open a specific email out of your total number of subscribers. Most ESP’s provide this statistic, but you can calculate it by dividing how many people open your email by how many people received that email.

The average open rate is 21.33%, but it certainly varies per industry, and it may be best to focus on your internal open rate and monitor its performance over time.

The click through rate is entirely dependent on the open rate, so here’s how to increase both of those by improving on these ten things:

1) Formulate a Great Email Subject Line

The most obvious tactic of achieving more opens is your subject line. You can test multiple strategies, including:

Emojis - They can make your email stand out. Keep these to a minimum so you don’t annoy your readers.

Personalization - Use whatever personal information you have on hand to personalize your subject lines. Not only did this email use my first name, but it also used my birthday.

Calls to Action (CTAs) - Use words that encourage readers to take action, like “Book Now”, “Unlock”, “Discover”, “Simple”, “Easy”. The key is to make it sound effortless for them to convert. Find some more CTA examples here.

2) Use a Descriptive Preheader

The preheader is the subject line’s secret weapon. This is the text that is directly after the subject line.

A good preheader compliments the subject line. They relate to each other, and are synergistic. This is a great example, as they flow right into each other:

Use these tactics:

  1. Ask a question

 

  1. Use their first name

 

  1. Use numbers, like $20 off, $100 gift card

 

4) Deploy Time Restraints

 

5) Make Your "From Name" Personal

The best thing for email open rates is your From Name. According to Super Office, 45% of subscribers say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from. The goal is that once people see your From Name, they are going to open your email.

Here, the key is to have a cemented, known brand. Make sure your content has quality and consistency, and you’re giving your subscribers what they want.

6) Send At an Optimal Time of Day

Figure out what time of day your subscribers open emails. The best way to do this is through testing. Run a test for a couple months on the same days of the week and alter the times of day that you send.

7) Set Expectations on Email Volume Subscribers Will Receive

Let subscribers know what to expect. Nothing is worse than receiving multiple emails a day that you don’t want to open or read. On your subscribe page or within your subscription offer, let them know if you’ll be sending daily, weekly, monthly, twice daily, or whatever your particular cadence is. They will know what to expect and they won’t be as annoyed.

8) Clean Your List

If you clean your list to reduce duplicates and inactive subscribers, your email list will decrease, however your open rates will increase because they weren’t opening emails anyways.

Ways to clean your list:

  1. Identify unengaged subscribers
  2. Use double opt-in (confirmed opt in) when adding new subscribers to avoid zombie and bot signups
  3. Identify reasons for email bounces
  4. Check spam filters
  5. Re-engage inactive subscribers through a re-engagement campaign (see #10)
  6. Remove inactive subscribers
  7. Get your list cleaned periodically (every year or two usually works fine)

9) Forward to a Friend

Including a forward to a friend CTA in an email can help with opens. This feature encourages recipients to share it with their contacts. When they click the link, it opens a form to enter the names and email addresses of friends they want to forward the email to. Many ESP’s already have this feature built in, ready for you to drag and drop into your newsletter.

It will hopefully increase your list size, too.

Huckberry, a men’s clothing brand, does this well.

 10) Deploy Segmentation Strategies

Some subscribers don't necessarily need every email you send out. For example, if you’re having a Labor Day weekend sale at your store in-person in Austin, Texas, you should not send emails to anyone 50+ miles outside of Austin. Create different segments based on geographics, demographics, psychographics, buying behavior, and where they’re at in your sales funnel.

You can segment on lots of different things, in order to target your communications and offers to make them more relevant.

11) Conduct A Re-Engagement Campaign

A re-engagement campaign is a sequence of emails sent to inactive subscribers, with the goal of getting these subscribers active again. You can get them to re-engage by:

  1. Sending a personalized email, using their name, history with the brand, location, etc.
  2. Providing a very special "last ditch" offer or incentive
  3. Reminding them what your newsletter and/or brand is all about
  4. Including what’s coming next at your company or update on future events
  5. Sending from a public figure at your organization ( for example: Letter from the Editor, Letter from the CEO)

12) Optimize for Mobile

According to TechReport, 60% of email campaign reads are from mobile.

Email service providers typically automatically make your emails mobile-responsive. However, you should still consider the smaller size of mobile screens when designing your campaigns.

You should:

  1. Keep subject lines short and include important words at the front
  2. Enlarge CTA buttons for easy clicking
  3. Use a larger font
  4. Keep different links far away from each other in the email so your reader doesn’t tap the wrong one
  5. Left-align email copy
  6. Include alt text that makes sense

 

Conclusion

As with most of these tactics, testing and refining is crucial for finding out what is best for your newsletter’s open rate. By revamping these avenues that are commonly overlooked, your open rates will soon improve.

Resources
30 Best Emojis for Subject Lines https://subjectlinetesting.com/blog/the-30-best-emojis-for-email-subject-lines-copy-paste/

Net Atlantic’s Inpired Marketer AI Tool: https://www.InspiredMarketer.ai

The Optimal Times to Send Email Marketing and Post on Social Media https://www.netatlantic.com/resources/articles/the-optimal-times-to-send-email-marketing-and-post-on-social-media

20 Effective CTAs (Calls to Action): https://www.netatlantic.com/resources/articles/20-effective-call-to-action-phrases