5 Email Marketing Tips for Increased Open Rates
Is your message amalgamation in or standing out in an inbox filled with emails?
Email marketing has become an essential part of engaging and targeting prospects and clients online. In fact, eMarketer intelligence that 97% of small businesses use email marketing to connect with customers. There are many aspects that make up an effective email marketing program, but today I’ll focus on how marketers can increase their campaign open rates.
Email content is essential, but getting people to really open your email is a hurdle many marketers find hard to overcome. A deep understanding of your customer base as well as their needs and habits for proper segmentation can be key in making an effective email marketing strategy that produces high open rates.
As marketers we must question ourselves: If I received this email from another company, would I open it?
#1 – Make a Excellent First Impression
What are the two things that email recipients see before really opening an email? Who the email is from, and what the theme line is. These two items are your prime real estate for enticing your consultation to view your email as opposed to simply trashing it and moving on.
The Sender: Recent studies have shown that adding a personalized feel to the email can be key in increasing open rates. As a replacement for of sending the email from sales@companyxyz.com as a replacement for utilize the first and last name of a company hand. Setting up an email to send out messages on behalf of a company CEO or President can have a large impact on open rates. I would also like to note that many spammers are sending out emails with female first names (without a last name) so be aware of this spamming trend and try to avoid it.
The Theme Line: If ever there were an opportunity to convince your consultation to read this is it. Email marketing service MailChip has provided some best practice approaches to making theme lines which include:
- 4 Words or Phrases to Avoid: free, help, percent off, reminder
- Localization Helps: providing a city name can increase open rates
- Newsletter Half Life: by the exact same theme line for each newsletter can decrease open rates
- Theme Line Strength: keep your theme to 50 font or less with the exception of highly targeted audiences
To see some additional tips as well as some theme line examples that have been tested as well as the open rate see the study here.
#2 – Timing Isn’t Everything, But It is Vital
This is a tactic that requires some common sense as well as some experimentation. If your emails are sent too ahead of schedule in the morning they can get lost in the shuffle of other emails either sent late at night or ahead of schedule in the morning. If your emails are sent too late in the afternoon your customer may see it as one more business to review before quitting time and place off reading it until the morning (which will pile it under even more emails). It is also vital to keep in mind your consultation.
If you are running a B2C campaign your consultation may have time to check their emails either during dine or after work. Try experimenting with time frames that match up with that notion. If your campaign has a B2B focus I would recommend sending emails in the afternoon or around 7 or 8 in the morning when you know they’ll be reading. If your email marketing system allows you can always try doing some A and B testing utilizing uncommon time frames to test open rates.
#3 – Avoid Spam Filter Traps
Spam filters analyze a large list of criteria when seminal an email’s “spam notch”. If your email campaigns total spam notch is over a certain threshold then it is sent to the dreaded Spam inbox. There are some common mistakes that are easily avoidable if you know what to look for.
- Spammy phrases such as “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
- Too many !!!!!!!!!
- ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
- Sloppy HTML
For additional tips to avoid being sent to the spam filter be sure to visit SpamAssassin.
#4 – Get Rid of Dead Weight
Depending on which email service you use there should be a report that allows you to determine which emails are either bouncing or which subscribers are not opening your emails on a consistent basis. Your open rate can be dramatically augmented by pulling people from your list who never open your emails. I wouldn’t recommend deleting their emails completely. As a replacement for, do some digging to find where the email subscriber originally came from so that you can make a more targeted campaign to get them re-engaged.
#5 – Refine the Sign Up Process & Email Targeting
Make it simple for people to sign up to hear email correspondence from your company. Having potential customers jump through hoops to hear your marketed material is a poor strategy. In order to make this process effective and engaging perhaps you could provide a fulfillment piece or whitepaper during the initial sign up as a take away and then continue to market based upon their needs.
The more refined your targets within your campaigns are the more likely you are to achieve success with your email marketing campaign. Making separate nurture campaigns for prospects and influencers within uncommon industries and job roles is a fantastic way to commence tracking and improving success rates.
What is a Excellent Open Rate?
Now that we’ve covered 5 vital tips for improving the open rate of your email marketing campaigns, I thought that providing some sort of standardization for open rates by industry might also be useful. Open rate is one of the most commonly ased questions with email marketing clients. While you make the choice to implement each of the tips above, it’s vital to know that the open rate of your email marketing campaigns can differ based upon your industry and butt market.
Image Credit: Constant Contact
What are some of the tips you’ve followed to increase your email marketing open rates? What are some of the top resources you rely on for email marketing advice?
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