Emails are one of the best sources for visitors and sales for your online business but there’s an issue, you send emails and no one is reading them, opening them or even getting them. They could be going to people’s spam box. Your open rate is one of the most important performance metrics you can track. Without a good open rate, the greatest campaign is a non-starter. Email Marketing is such a powerful way to increase sales. We have seen clients increase sales anywhere from 30% to more by doing email marketing right but how do u get people to open your emails because if they don’t open your emails then you don’t get past that first step. So let’s break down steps to reach a good open rate. The percentage of email recipients who open a given email is known as Open Rate.
Understanding and improving your opening rates is a crucial aspect of successful email marketing campaigns
What Is A Good Open Rate For Email?
The average good opening email rate falls between 20%-21%. Don’t be upset if your results are lower, the results may vary with different institutes and organizations. It depends upon the health of your list and various other factors listed below i.e. subject line. For example, the average email opening rate for Real Estate and Construction industry is 26% while computer and electronics industry is only 19% while in business industry, media and telecom and health care companies it is 21%, 23% for Finance, manufacturing and shopping retail companies and 25% average open rate in Education department.
Ways to Improve Opening Rates
Segmentation
The very first thing you need to consider is to SEGMENT YOUR LIST; you have to make sure that your list is much targeted. So if there’s any possible way that you can break your list into more targeted lists, this is going to be more effective.
Let’s talk about some examples. If you’re an ecommerce store and you’re selling clothing, let’s say you can potentially break your list up into the type of clothing that you sell. So, maybe men’s clothing, women’s clothing and kid’s clothing for an example. Those are going to be more targeted lists that you are going to allow you to email those particular user groups content relevant to what they’re interested in.
Let’s talk about travel information; you wouldn’t want to send travel information to anybody that’s not interested in going to Amsterdam. You need to segment your list out into areas of interests, places, people would like to go, or watch. So you can email content that is relevant to them. If you break your list into bucket lists and send it to those people who are interested in those things it’s going to be obviously more targeted and it’s going to result in higher open rates so it’s so easy to take the easy way out. And you’re going to see a significant increase in your opening rate. Exporting a huge list out of your CRM or you just set up email marketing within your CRM, and just emails everybody the same thing, that’s super easy but not effective.
Subjectline
Tip 2 is to OPTIMIZE YOUR SUBJECT LINE: so once you have your list developed and you have the content that u like to send this group, really think hard about some powerful subject line that are going to motivate somebody to want to open your email. Subject line should be eye catchy. The recommendation here is to test your subject line by showing it to your colleagues, break your list into very small test buckets. AB test possible 2 or 3 different subject line that u think could be effective and send it to a smaller group on your list. Then look at the data and the ones that have the highest open rate would be the subject line you would want to use for the reminder and the majority of the list, to get the highest open rates possible.
Couple power tips with subject lines: keep it short, and send yourself a test on your mobile phone and make sure the subject line actually fits on your mobile phone. You should be able to read it and build customer interaction. It helps to gain some understanding and some ideas on what would be motivating to them to open the email so ultimately your test of 2 – 3 subject lines that you start with is pretty good right out of the gate and then look at the data to optimize to the best subject line for the rest of the list based on the results that you see.
Recognization
Tip 3 is to make sure that you are sending your email from someone THE PROSPECT WOULD RECOGNIZE. Whether it’s an individual person’s name or your company name or your company domain name, it should be something that they recognize or familiar with so they know what this content is about and who it’s coming from. If they don’t, chances are they didn’t opt into your list maybe you just uploaded a list or you just blind emailing people. Because of lack of trust, even if your subject line is good, they may be hesitant to open it and they are more likely to hit spam and if you have a high spam rate, potentially you could get black listed means you can’t send any emails to anybody at all….. That’s a night mare. So you want to make sure that you build your list organically, people actually opt in. a smaller list of people that know who you are much better than a much larger list where nobody knows who you are. So it’s better to send a targeted group that’s ready for your information than just blast people on the internet.
Professional
MAKE SURE YOUR DOMAIN IS VERIFIED. With most email marketing platforms, basically all of them, you have the opportunity to verify your domain name. This will get to people’s inbox more frequently at a higher rate. Basically if your domain is not verified your email is likely to go directly to spam so people aren’t even going to see it and if they can’t even see it then how are they going to open it.
Personalization
USE THE PROSPECTS NAME IN THE SUBJECT LINE, think about doing that or any kind of dynamic content relevant to them. Dynamically pull that into the subject line. Email platforms, these days allow for this so that every receiver could have maybe their name in the subject line. It’s because we are built this way to respond to our name. Email subject line is no different so if people are scanning through it and they see their name, it catches their eye which could potentially lead to an open.
Optimization
SEND YOUR EMAILS AT THE BEST TIME. Think about your audience and when are they in their inbox? When are they spending time in their inbox? And you want to send your email probably right before that time is. So for example we send most of our emails to small business owners and so for us we send the email usually on Tuesday or Wednesday or maybe on Thursday if we had to. Monday is super busy for everyone. So they are swamped, probably not going to dig into it but Tuesdays and Wednesdays they are pretty caught up and from Thursdays they are going to be busy again. So Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days for sending emails. The best time to send it is right before they get to work. So try to send emails early in the morning just before these business owners get to work so that your email is sitting in their inbox at the top of the list. So hopefully they have time, they haven’t been interrupted yet and they will click to open it. So, think about your audience. What is the best day and time to send your emails to them and when are they in their inbox and send it just before they are in their inbox to see highest opening rates through your emails.
Valuable
HAVE VALUABLE CONTENT, the email subject line and all these tips I’ve talked about are really powerful to get those open started, get people opening the email but if the content is valuable, they will continue opening your email into the future because they know there is value in your email. If your subject line is unbelievably good and enticing but they have seen a lot of your emails and the content is weak, they probably are not going to open it. So, it really comes down to delivering valuable and powerful content on an ongoing basis. So people look at your emails almost like a goodie in their inbox, right?
Conclusion
This is the mindset you want to build because you are driving so much value, they want to open your emails and when you get to that point you are going to see huge open rates, huge results and you are going to increase your sales.
