Is your email open rate a source of depression? Well, the 7 tips discussed in this article will help you increase email open rate without doing anything special.
I know, it feels great when your subscribers open your emails. The feeling cannot be explained in words. Email marketers know it.
So what you can do to experience this same feeling every time you send an email to your list?
Contents
1. Use Your Real Name
Send emails from your own name instead of your company’s name. It is the ‘person’ the subscriber builds a relationship with and talk to, not the company. Generally, an email from a company is perceived to be an advertisement whereas an email from a person is not always perceived as an advertisement.
An A/B test conducted by HubSpot proved that emails sent from a person turn out to have better open rates and CTR as compared to those sent from the company’s name.
2. Email New Subscribers Instantly
Once someone subscribes to your email list, you should shot the first email instantly. No, I am not talking about the confirmation email but you should send the introductory email almost instantly.
A good idea is to schedule the first mail instantly and then a follow up email on the day one. This can be easily achieved from your autoresponder.
Subscribers wait for the email when they opt-in to a list. After all, this is why they opted in. If you do not send an email instantly, they will probably forget you unless you are someone really important. A person who subscribed to get daily updates from your blog will expect to receive updates daily – not weekly. If he doesn’t get an email on the first day, on the second day, and not even on the third day, all your future emails will be ignored.
To increase email open rates you should send emails to the new subscribers instantly and then right on time as promised. If you don’t, they have the right and a justification not to open your future emails.
3. Email Subject Should Be Catchy
Not to mention, email subject lines compel the subscribers to either open the email or send it to trash. The subject line is the only thing that is viewable to the subscribers and if you manage to write catchy and compelling subject lines, an increase in open rates won’t be an issue.
So how to write killer email subject lines? Here are a few tips.
- Use power words such as instant, desperate, reveal, discover, and others.
- Use words and phrases that trigger the emotions of your subscriber. Yes, this is the oldest tricks in the marketing books and it still works.
- Make sure the full subject is viewable in all the web browsers. If they cannot read it, they cannot understand it, and if it is not understandable, why they have to open your email? You have some 50 characters to do this.
- Personalize the subject. Add names, add YOU, or something that relates with the individual subscribers (This can be done easily if you have segmented the email lists).
4. Don’t Be a Spammer
Yes, do not be a spammer, be an ethical email marketer. Do not use spam words and phrases as they will guide your email to the spam folder. Avoiding spam filters is not easy as they are becoming sophisticated.
The simple rule is, do not look like a spammer.
Do not use words like free, sale, deal, discount etc. Your email subject line and copy should not look like an advertisement or a marketing email. If it does, the email open rate will take a deep plunge.
5. Optimize For Mobile
As they say, your customers are on the mobile, are you?
As high as 74 percent of the subscribers use their smartphones to check, open and read their emails.
Optimizing the emails for mobile is not a big deal. You just have to preview it for all the major phones from the autoresponder. This happens to be a little time-taking process but if you wish to increase email open rate, you must not hesitate to spend a few minutes in previewing emails.
6. Send At the Right Time
There is always a right time to send an email to your list. You have to find it by testing, segmenting your lists, email copy, audience, and by looking at industry trends.
An experimental study revealed that emails sent on weekends have the highest open rates while emails sent on Tuesday and Thursday have the lowest open rates.
Your subscribers might respond differently. A little bit of testing will reveal the best time that results in an increase in email open rate.
7. Segment Your Lists
Email list segmentation lets you send personalized, relevant, and extremely focused emails. Of course, this ultimately improves the open rate.
You can segment lists in many ways ranging from buying behaviors to industry to demographics to interests and more. List segmentation should be a part of your email marketing strategy from day one. If your lists are not segmented based on one or more variables, you need to get it fixed so as to better understand your subscribers and to enjoy a better open rate.
It is time to make every email count. Do not let your subscribers ignore all the hard work and effort that you put in crafting and sending an email. It is time to increase email open rate in the true sense.
