Rochelle Williams September 16, 2021 Here is a simple talisman for success if you’re an email marketer – higher email open rates mean more conversions. Sounds obvious? Even then, many organizations don’t end up writing emails that subscribers want to open. In fact, a study by MailChimp found that email open rates are just at 21.33% across all industries.
In a quick glance, this figure looks ok. But is it really? Suppose you have an email list comprising a whopping 15,000 subscribers. With a 21.33% conversion rate, only a mere 3199 leads are ever going to see your emails, and fewer will take any action.
Remember, there comes a point, when it doesn’t matter how extensive your email list is, but how many prospects within that list open your emails. If within the same list of 15,000 subscribers, your open rates go up to 50%, you end up with 7500 leads engaging with your pitch.
So, how do you get here? By following these 10 hacks that are sure to improve your email open rates:
1. Don’t Forget to Segment your Email List
Without email list segmentation, you cannot personalize your emails. While you can categorize your email list under parameters most relevant to you, try these three segments for starters.
Segment based on:
- Demography
- Challenges and pain points
- Like and dislikes
2. Get your Subject Line Right
Your subject line alone is what encourages prospects to open your email. It also helps form your brand’s first impression. So, craft it well! How?
- Personalize it for your target audience. Write more than one subject sentence for, say, different age groups, even if the product you’re pitching is the same.
- Hold back on using too many punctuations like exclamation marks. You’d be surprised how commonly marketers use more than one exclamation point in subject lines for emphasis. Choose to emphasize with your words instead.
- Keep it concise and avoid vagueness.
- Draft it in the form of a question, if you can.
- Use powerful words and phrases. These stir emotion and arouse curiosity. For example, the image below uses a power word like “sanity-saving.”
Source: Smart Blogger
3. Get your Email Timing Right
Remember, leads will read your emails at different times in different parts of the world. Some will read them late at night, while others will do so in the morning. Leverage whichever email automation tool you use to track the time most of your prospects read your emails.
Once you have an optimal time, send emails accordingly to boost open as well as click-through rates. Also, as a general rule of thumb, avoid sending marketing emails over weekends. Several studies have now revealed that weekends are the most inopportune time to send promotional communication.
4. Get your Email Frequency Right
Nobody, and that even includes you wants their inbox to be bombarded with too many promotional emails from one brand. Not only does this single-handedly bring down your open rates, but the prospect can blacklist you or mark you as spam.
Simply put, strike the right balance with your audience. Generally, sending emails twice or thrice and no more makes for a healthy frequency that doesn’t annoy prospects.
5. Re-engage with the Dormant Prospects
All email lists have prospects who haven’t opened promotional emails from certain brands in months. Your list is likely no different. Weed them out! And scout for new prospects.
But, before identifying and deleting them from your email list, make sure to draft and deploy a re-engagement campaign. Maybe, this campaign contains time-limited offers or personalized deals to re-engage passive leads.
6. Send Emails using an Official Email ID
No matter how small your business is at this point, don’t use your Gmail or Hotmail ids to send out marketing communication. Such a practice will likely land you in the prospect’s junk pile. Use a domain email address that carries your brand name to stay out of spam filters and boost your open rates.
7. Ensure a High Deliverability Rate
Unfortunately, over 20% of marketing emails don’t land up in your prospects’ inboxes. These emails bounce because of:
- Temporary server issues on both ends
- Sending emails to abandoned or obsolete email ids
- Prospects who accidentally blacklist you
Upping your deliverability rate will automatically boost open rates. You can do this by:
- Sending reminder emails requesting your subscribers to whitelist you.
- Confirm if a prospect has willingly subscribed to your list by asking them to click on a link sent to their inbox.
8. Avoid using Certain Words in Email Subject Line and Body
Stay away from phrases and words that make your email seem less authentic. For instance, “Urgent,” “free stuff for you,” “you have won,” and several others. Think of these phrases similar to swear words in email marketing.
9. Send the Same Email Once More
Sometimes your prospects want to open your email, but they simply forget or get distracted. And, once they do, they won’t revisit your email. To avoid this situation, resend the same email to subscribers who didn’t open your first email.
Don’t worry about being too intrusive here. You’d be happy to know that this is not an uncommon practice used by marketers to boost their open rates.
10. Don’t only Send Promotional Content
Sure, the ultimate goal for your brand is to sell its wares, but this doesn’t mean all your emails must carry a sales pitch. Share informational or educational content to make your email campaigns more engaging. Help them gain light on their challenges through blogs, case studies, etc. When you send a mixed bag of email content, you are more likely to increase your open rates.
Conclusion
With these 10 tips, you can undoubtedly experience higher open rates, eventually translating into more conversions. As for subscribers who, even after all the attempts, don’t open your emails, it’s best to let them go! After all, not all subscribers turn into qualified leads, and that’s ok.
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