Using emails as a form of communication and marketing has become a common practice for many brands. However, people tend to ignore emails more and more. In this regard, marketers designed metrics to track their effectiveness. One of them is an email open rate. Can measuring it help your marketing strategy? For sure, if it is low, it might be an indicator of the poor results of your strategy.

In this post, you will know what open rates are about and how to improve your email open rate for the sake of business growth.

What is Open Rate in Email Marketing

Email marketers need to understand whether the recipients engage with the emails sent to them. It is vital for the comprehension of their efficiency. In this regard, the open rate is the measure defined in percentage representing the number of people who open the emails out of all recipients of the email campaign.

Yet, one should take into account that there are other rates that help define the success of any campaign. In particular, the analysis of the efforts of the email marketing team would include the average click and open rate specifics. Besides, you should think of deliverability that defines whether recipients get emails or not. Moreover, there is an email marketing response rate that is vital for the outreach campaigns.

As a result, yes, the email open rate is not the most critical thing, yet the one that you should define for yourself.

What is a Good Open Rate for Email

It is the next question that you are likely to ask when measuring the results of your campaign. There is no direct answer for it, as the good email open rate would depend on the industry and type of your email campaign.

Across the industries, specific rates are considered acceptable and can be an indication that you have effective subject lines. In particular, the good email rate for restaurant, law, media, and entertainment niches would be around 30-40%.

Why? People see more value in email from the representatives of these areas and want to see the offers or promotions. For other spheres, like retail, internet marketing, and travel, the good click rate for email campaigns would be lower, referring to 17-25%. The recipients would read emails from the marketers working in these spheres less frequently due to the seasonal factors, a vast number of offers, and disproportion between demand and supply. Thus, many recipients would ignore the promotions, even the last minute ones.

Besides, the good open rate depends on the type of campaign. For instance, welcome letters or the ones aimed at retention would have high open rates, producing more value to the customers. In terms of outreach, it would be less, as people may consider it spam.

On the whole, you should understand that if your email open rate is between 20-30%, the average open rate email marketing studies define, the chances are high that you are doing good. If not, well, you may want to improve your email open rate. How? Let’s check the next part of this article.

How to Increase Email Open Rates

Before all, the best recommendation is to have a comprehensive approach covering different elements of email campaign designation. To get more email opens, you should ensure that your emails are delivered to the mailboxes, the subject lines are worth clicking the email, and the content is excellent. Here are some of the most efficient tips to follow:

Know that deliverability is your priority

First of all, focus on the email list. For instance, you create a new campaign and want to look for new leads’ contact information. Some tools allow finding and verifying the corresponding data.

Consider using the software to extract verified emails in bulk, and do not waste time on email campaigns not reaching your prospects. Here is the example of the one: getprospect. When you are sure that everything is good with your domain and the email addresses are correct, you can switch to the following parts.

Make a subject line worth clicking

The most crucial factor in terms of email open rate improvement is the subject line. That sentence or word combination at the top of the email template you are designing should be exciting, provide value and match the offer or info you present. Why? It is about engagement, trust, and credibility.

Before all, you want to be unique and interesting to your subscribers. Thus, try to intrigue your customers and bargain them into opening the letter. Simultaneously, the subject line should not be deceptive. This tip implies that the idea you develop in the body of the email would reflect that very sentence. In this regard, why not mention the value you are going to give the prospect.

Moreover, if the subject line and your main offer are different, it may lead to a drain of subscribers or unsubscription. The multiple cases underline that if the letter is coherent in terms of a subject line and email content, it is to improve the click through rate of a campaign.

Interestingly, the marketers have designed a complex formula that involves both click rate and open rate. The average click to open rate varies from 12% to 20%. This small comment should be considered when you have your email strategies set up and need further growth.

Develop hypotheses and test them

Another important suggestion to improve your email open rate is about testing and doing experiments. You may want to segment groups or see what variant of the subject lines is better.

For instance, you have to target two groups: the first one is senior managers of big companies, the other is senior managers of small companies. You managed to use an email address finder to get their contact information but have doubts on how to approach them right. What should you do?

Develop a hypothesis with a question “Would the same subject line be as effective for both of the groups?” and do some tests. After sending different campaigns, you are likely to get the answer that would be effective for subsequent ones, developing your own approach, and finding a good average email open rate applicable to your business.

Avoid elements causing spam alerts

Notably, certain content can trigger adverse effects on email open rates. How? Firstly, the insertion of gibberish elements, exclamation points, or simply spam words can make your email stuck in a spam trap. In particular, email service providers’ algorithms, if they detect such terms, would immediately send your emails into the trash or promotion box. You already know that the recipients ignore the messages that happen to get there.

At the same time, the words used for promotions can push away your prospects. Some people have a sharp eye for promotional emails, and when they see the words “now,” “buy,” “exclusive,” it is a clear signal for them that the email they received is nothing but a waste of their time. Thus, to get more email opens, try to write naturally and without using spam words.

Optimize emails to please the customer

Another idea that you can use is to try making the email pleasant for the reader. How? You can start with personalization and add the names of prospects into the subject line. It would show that you know them or have engaged with them, adding to your credibility. You can create a list in your Google webspace, use an email finder for Google Sheets to extract the necessary data, and integrate this list with some other email software. Major brands use this tactic for B2B lead generation.

Besides, define the right time and day for your email campaign. People have work, duties, and other business. Thus, sending them an offer or something, reflecting their experience, when they are free would add to your email marketing response rate.