Have you ever wondered why some emails open instantly whilst others take hours to get read? If you want to reach potential customers, then you'll need to master the art of email marketing. The good news is that it’s easier than you might think! In this article, I’m going to share my top 7 tips to boost your email opening rates. Let’s dive in!
Email marketing has become the staple of almost every company and brand out there because it provides a low cost way of communicating with their target audience. That being said, the amount of attention paid to each piece of mail sent out remains a big mystery. Some companies send hundreds or even thousands of emails without knowing whether they reached anyone at all.
There are no magic bullets in regards to improving your email open rate. Instead, there are seven ways to improve your chances of receiving a response from someone who opens your email. But, before that let's understand email open rate.
What is an email open rate?
Email open rate refers to the percentage of the number of subscribers who open the emails you send through your campaign. These rates can differ depending on many factors.
Email deliverability is a major factor determining whether an email reaches its recipient – or gets bounced back as spam. The open rate for each individual message is a key metric, but also important is the average click through rate for all emails sent from a particular sender. If the overall CTR is high, then delivery rates should be better.
Also, email open rates vary based on the quality of the subject line, the style of the email, and other factors. However, they are generally quite high for a given site, typically around 60–70%.
How to Get Higher Email Open Rates?
There are several things marketers can do to increase their email open rate. If you want to boost your stats, take a look at our guide on how to improve your email open rates.
Get the Subject Line Right
Subject lines are more important.Your email subject lines should be simple and direct. Be honest about what readers will gain when they open your emails, and you’re more likely to increase your open rates over time.
Here are some basic rules to follow:
● Keep your email subjects simple. The less complex and direct, the better.
● Don’t use capital letters and/or punctuation!
● Don’t use buzzwords like “free”, “help”, “reminder”, “attention”etc. are likely to decrease your open rates.
● Offer relevant incentives. Offer discounts or other incentives to give users a reason to read the email.
● Don’t forget the A/B test. Study the open rates of different subject lines and compare results.
● Be mobile-friendly. Make them crisp and to the point.
Avoid ending up in Spam
If you solely follow the rules of email marketing strategies, it’s not that hard to stay out of your customers’ spam folders.
Most spam filters automatically send sketchy-looking emails to the spam folder. The standards for spam are set by a variety of laws – such as suspicious formatting, image-to-text ratio, missing information (address and unsubscribe options), incorrect code, etc. – the analysis of which results in a spam score.
Another way to improve your email open rate is to use personalized metadata. Use merge tags to add the recipient’s name in the subject line, and don’t forget to ask readers to add your email to their address book.
Set Clear Expectations
When subscribers sign up to hold your communications, it’s important to not only be honest with them about what you’ll be sending them but also very clear. If they sign-up for a newsletter, and they get coupons or other promotions instead, your open rates are going to tank, and fast.
Be timely
One of the most important factors is whether your emails are likely to be opened is timeliness. If a subscriber signs-up in January for a newsletter and they don’t receive anything from you, your open rates aren’t likely to be high. Instead, try sending an automated reply “Thank you for subscribing” email, and/or a “Here’s what to expect” email soon (if not immediately) after they’ve subscribed.
Be human
The first thing recipients see when deciding whether or not to open an email is to determine if they have a personal connection with the sender. People like to communicate with people and spam filters are more likely to see an email from a company as advertising, which is more likely to end up getting deleted. If your emails look like they’re coming from a person they have a better chance of being opened.
Add some humor in your emails
Consider your tone of voice this time if you are still looking for ways on how to improve email open rates. When you compose friendly emails as if you are talking to your best friend, you create a more personal dialogue.
Adding a bit of humor to the content will make your emails even more personalized and the reading experience more pleasurable.
So don’t panic when you play around with words. Your readers will enjoy it and your open rates will rise.
Update your list
This is very important! Over time, some of the subscribers will stop reading and/or engaging with your emails. They may be uninterested or change their emails. This will, of course, adversely affect your Open Rates.
Therefore, to increase your email open rate, periodically remove inactive users from your mailing list. This way, your email marketing strategies will focus only on those that comprehend and engage with your content.
At the end of the day though, these hacks are all taking the support of how the human brain works. And while that might be sufficient to capture your reader’s attention in 3–4 seconds, you are still a human and they are too. Your emails need to conquer that human quality of a personal email that can be felt by both the sender as well as the recipient.
What is the average email open rate?
Email marketing remains an important part of almost every company’s strategy today. The main purpose of emails is to get them opened. According to Statista, more than 90% of consumers check their mobile device within 30 minutes of waking up. As result, they prefer shorter messages over long ones. Today, emails are such a great way to generate leads and increase sales if sent properly.
The average "open" rate for an email campaign is about 60%, while the actual conversion rates tend to be much lower - less than 10%. When considering how effective your emails actually were, consider the number of times they were opened (the average), rather than just clicking through and dismissing them. Your campaigns should include ways to engage users with your content, such as adding images, links and calls to action.
Email opens and click rates have increased greatly over the last couple years. According to MailChimp, an email marketing company, the average open rate for emails sent from an individual sender ranges between 15% and 20%. That means that on average only 15%-20% of people who receive an email will actually read the entire message. However, when you send bulk messages via email listservs or software such as Constant Contact, OpenXchange, Hubspot, or AWeber, the open rates are much higher.
We take a look at the statistics from our client base. They send out an average of 20 unique emails per month. Each of those emails gets opened between 9%-13%. This means that nearly 70% of the time, these emails fail to deliver the desired message or action. In contrast, customers who receive promotional messages via social media posts are usually more likely to respond.
What's a Good Email Click-Through Rate?
The click through rate for email messages is determined by several factors, such as how well targeted the message is, what is in the subject line, and whether there is a link included. A generic subject line like "I'm thinking about buying" has a poor CTR. The same applies to links embedded in emails, which should be linked to landing pages to drive conversion.
A great email click through rate for any marketer should be above 50%. If you're getting less than 20%, then you aren't reaching customers who want what you're offering. To increase your click through rates, focus on having compelling headlines, using relevant images and graphics, and writing in short paragraphs.
FAQ's on email open rate
It depends on what you're selling or promoting. If you are offering a product for sale, then your best bet would be when people are shopping online. However, if you are trying to market an event, like an upcoming holiday or special occasion, then sending emails out closer to the date might work better.
There is no magic number for optimal subject line length. However, studies show that longer subject lines tend to be clicked less frequently than shorter ones.
E-mail marketing is a form of direct email communication between businesses and consumers where they can directly communicate about a product or service.
Personalization is one of the best ways to increase the opening rate of an email. This is why marketers use a combination of both behavioral and contextual data that helps them understand who their customer is, what they want, where they come from, when they are interested in a particular product/service etc.