Email marketing typically encompasses a lot of KPIs like unsubscribe rate, delivery rate, etc that provide you with valuable insight about your campaign. But among all of them, your email open rates are one of the best factors that let you know how the campaign is doing. Email open rate refers to the percentage of your subscribers who open the emails sent through your email campaign and the higher this rate, the better.
So, what can be done to ensure your messages are opened and read? Though there’re many things that can help you increase this number, we’ve rounded up four key ones here. Have a look at the following approaches.
Strategies to skyrocket your email open rates
#1 Focus on email list segmentation
Researches have shown that these days, a huge percentage of customers tend to engage with an offer only when it’s been personalized based on previous interactions. And email is probably the most effective way to leverage personalization. If your emails containing fully-customized content, which addresses the specific pain points of your target audience, reach the right inboxes, it’ll automatically boost open rates. Some of the best methods to segment your email list include reviewing website browsing behavior, location, previous purchases, etc.
#2 Ensure your emails reach the inbox
Did you know that a significant percentage of emails ultimately end up in the customers’ spam folders just because the senders fail to ensure that those don’t look like spam? A variety of rules collectively form the criteria for spam. These include incorrect code, missing information, suspicious formatting, etc – all of which contribute to the overall spam score. Your email will be flagged as spam if its score is higher than what’s acceptable and you can simply forget the chances of it being opened. To ensure your emails aren’t spammy, you can scan them through tools like Postmark, mail-tester, etc before they’re sent.
#3 Optimize your emails for mobile
With the increasing number of smartphone users, optimizing your emails has become a must when it comes to improving your email open rates. In fact, mobile opens are accounted for 46% of all email opens, according to email marketing stats by HubSpot. But it isn’t your email content that we’re talking about optimizing. Instead, we’re suggesting you optimize the things seen by the recipients before opening your emails. These include your “from” name, the preheader text (the short preview of an email following the subject line), etc.
#4 Time your emails properly
Probably you’ve heard that proper scheduling of posts plays a crucial role in social media marketing. And in email marketing, that concept is equally important. By nature, we tend to open emails that were sent recently and are at the top of the inbox instead of the ones that are at the bottom. Remember that if a subscriber signs up for your newsletters in January and receives the next thing from you in June, your email open rates aren’t going to be high. So, be sure to send a “Thank you” email (could be automated) after they’ve subscribed. It’s also important to stick to a set schedule. You can also send a reminder email to the subscribers to check if they’re still interested to hear from you if you fail to create an email sequence.
Final Thoughts
In terms of email marketing, low open rates give a clear signal that your recipients aren’t engaged with you or your brand. Though there is no one-size-fits-all solution for boosting this rate, the strategies we mentioned here would certainly help you raise it considerably. Once you’ve got a better open rate, it’ll eventually lead to a better click-through rate and ultimately improved sales.
If you’re struggling to improve your email open rates, reach out to Bare Bones Marketing through phone at 512-571-2296 or email at info@barebones-marketing.com and we’ll help you implement the above strategies and more to accomplish the goals.