Email Marketing: How to Craft Campaigns That Yield Higher Open Rates
The key to an email marketing campaign’s success is its open rate. You can’t generate new business if no one opens the email.
How do you measure email campaign success? The total number of users who open your email (email open rate) and those who click on the link (click-through rate) are typically used as indicators of successful email marketing campaigns—the higher, the better. Of course, clicking through depends on who opens the email in the first place.
According to a 2019 Tech Crunch report, many businesses see average open rates of around 20%, so don’t feel like you’re alone in your search to just get someone to open your emails.
Many nuances could contribute to lower email open rates, and below, we’ll discuss five strategies to turn those lower open rates into higher open rates.
Your Subject Line Is Your First Impression
You are constantly making first impressions with your customer base. Your subject line is the first impression of an email campaign, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
The holidays are coming up, and it is hard for many who have difficult ties with family or have lost a loved one. Instead of being overly positive, consider what is helpful to your users based on your analytics of who your customers are. Get ahead of such situations by having your customers opt out of the types of emails they don’t want, including specific holiday emails.
Helpful Subject Lines Do No Harm:
- Individualize your voice.
- Limit exclamation points, punctuation, and emojis.
- Ask questions.
- Inspire urgency or curiosity to lure them in without sounding like clickbait.
- Avoid spam filters by avoiding spammy words like “not spam,” “winner,” or “best offer.”
- Tell a story that feels personal.
Educate your target audience, and don’t focus only on sales. Provide value and demonstrate the impact of your solutions.
Segment Your List
Subscribing to an email list is only the first step to good user engagement. Segmenting your list allows you to sort your subscribers into categories more likely to increase open rates, such as by demographics or desires. If applicable, you can also segment your list based on the content upgrades they make.
Behavioral segmentation is based on tracking a subscriber’s use of your website. If a subscriber visits a specific page more than once, send a personalized email related to that page to that user. The subscriber has a high engagement rate with that page and is more likely to open your email.
Find the Optimal Time to Hit Send
Do you have a global audience or a regional one? Some email marketing platforms send email campaigns at the appointed hour but will do so based on the recipient’s time zone.
Just select the optimal time that suits your audience. Interestingly, MailChimp suggests that weekdays are much better for sending email marketing campaigns than weekends.
Use a Branded Email Address
Avoid spam filters by having users allow list the email address your company uses, which should feature your brand name from a secure domain. Some web hosts provide free email services with your purchase.
Double Opt-In to Boost Deliverability
Double opt-in adds a step to the email subscription opt-in process, requiring users to verify their email addresses and confirm interest. Double opt-ins signal an increased degree of interest and ensure deliverability. Your email marketing platform may already automatically integrate this feature, but it’s worth looking into if it doesn’t.
These tips are proven strategies that yield higher open rates, but once a user clicks through, remember to keep it consistent and not be afraid to re-engage with your audience. The customer’s journey can change over time, as does your journey as a company.