Advertisers and marketers compete for the attention of potential clients and customers in the competitive world of online advertising and marketing. One of the more popular means used by these people to raise brand awareness and strengthen customer patronage is email marketing. In this article, we will discuss 5 tips that may help improve email open rates – the metric used in describing email marketing performance.
Email open rate is given in terms of the percentage of people who actually opened and read an email.
But how does the person or company who sent the email track the total number of people who opened and read their emails? Sent emails contain a one pixel by one pixel photo. Whenever the pixel is loaded, the email registers as having been opened. In short, the image must be loaded before the email is considered as having been opened. Thus, email open rates may not be the most reliable metric of measuring email marketing performance. Nonetheless, despite its inaccurate nature, it can still give one a reasonably good picture of the degree of success of their email marketing campaign.
5 Tips to Improve Email Open Rates
Top 5 Tips to Improve Email Open Rates-email marketing
1. Make Yourself or Your Brand Known
Always use something specific in the “From” line of your email. It would be best to put your company or brand name for easier identification. Using an irrelevant name will give your recipients the wrong impression that your email is a spam or a virus which they should ignore and delete. On the other hand, making the company or brand that you are representing immediately known may pique their interest and encourage them to open the email.
2. The Subject is Important
Aside from the taking care of what you put on the “From” line, it is also important to think of what will you put on the “Subject” line. The best words or phrase to put on the “Subject” line is one which is catchy and at the same time embodies and summarizes the contents of your email. Never use catchy phrases that are totally irrelevant to the contents of your email. Doing so will not only disappoint those who open your email, but it would also discourage them from reading your future emails.
3. Make it Personal
It is certainly difficult to address each and every one of your target recipients, but it is important for you to devise strategies that would make your emails more personal. You may try using a persona that addresses the email recipient on a personal basis. He or she may take the character of someone whom your clients can easily relate to or someone who is trustworthy. The important point here is that you must show your customers that they are important and valuable to you.
4. Give Your Clients What They Want
Before you write the body of your email, know what your clients want. You may want to do some research or survey before proceeding with this. Once you identify what they want, work on the contents of your email around them. It would be best if you could focus on marketing your product as a solution to their problems or as something which would make life easier for them. Give your email’s body a personal touch by relating to your clients. Show them that your company or brand understands their wants and that your products are actually made and produced for them.
5. Refrain from Sending Emails Too Often
The goal of email marketing is to entice as many clients as possible to support your brand and products. Sending them emails repeatedly on a regular basis (daily or weekly) might irritate them instead.
Similar to any kind of marketing tool, email marketing is all about capturing the attention of consumers by showing them that they are important and valuable. At the end of the day, who would not want to open and read an email from a company that can relate to their wants or needs and satisfy them? Show your clients that they are important and they would surely return the favor!.
You can in fact use “free” in subject lines; you just need to test it with your audience. Also, your company name of newsletter should be the “From Name” so as to not waste space in the subject line with this information.
I have 800 people on my list and I haven’t had very good open rates! It’s pretty sad actually how many people so not open their e-mails. I’m starting to this the most of them aren’t even real people. I sent my 3rd e-mail two days ago and finally this one was opened by over 67% which is better but still so low.
Often people subscribe to receive freebies like ebook. once they receive that, they stop opening emails. In fact, in most of the cases, people don’t even use their primary email address. By following tips in this post and having a appropriate campaign of follow up mails, we can improve email open rate. I think 67% open rate is really good. Thanks for sharing this.
Hi Brian,
Wow! That’s pretty much a n improvement in terms of the open rates you are getting. I’m glad the article helped in someway.
Thanks a lot for reading my article.
Tony 🙂
Hi Akhilendra, you tips are really good. After tracking my Aweber reports, I found that first few emails got the good open rate but after few days the email opening rate dropped to less than 5%. I think one of the most important thing is subject. It should be very targeted & appealing.
That’s true, most of the bloggers and marketers face this problem, subject and frequency is very important. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
Hi Pritam,
Wow! very good analysis. The Title of your emails really matter. You need to capture your target audience in 2 sec using your title.
Good luck on your endeavor.
Tony 🙂
Hi Tony,
All good tips on email marketing. I know that there are a few headlines that will really get people to open your email but once you do of course you have to deliver.
I think sending them way too often is something a lot of people can’t stand. Now I know at a time when you’re promoting a launch of a product you want to really drive home to your subscribers that this is something that they may want but that also turns a lot of people off.
Still, at the same time it can really bring you a lot of sales.
Thanks for your suggestions.
~Adrienne
I agree.. Emails are stil lbeing used today not just for communications but for business. EMail Marketing can really work for you if you’d really make time to master it and improve your emails through time.
Thanks for reading!
Tony 🙂
Hi,
Really nice tips to increase email open rate. I use to send email newsletter to my mailing list atleast 5 times and week and i must say ,the open rates get reduce everyday. Because of it i have stopped sending any email as i thought my subscriber was not interested in my email. After reading your post, i think i have made many mistake and i am sure , your post will help me a lot.
Thank & Regards
Shan
Thanks shan for your comment.
Wow! I’m glad to help shan.
Really appreciate your comment.
Just make sure that your title is good and you don’t sell in your email.
Build a relationship first before you actually sell.
Good luck!
tony 🙂