5 Things You Need Less Of To Improve Open Rates
Your email campaign open rate is an important metric. The higher the open rate, the more people that are reading your campaigns and therefore, the greater revenue you can generate. However, there are several elements that can actually prevent you from having high open rates. By reducing some aspects within your campaign, you can actually improve open rates.
A higher open rate will also validate you as a sender. Therefore, if you can maintain high open rates, then your email domain will be whitelisted by email servers and this prevents your email from being sent into spam folders.
So, here are some of the things you can reduce in your email campaigns that can help you improve your open rates.
1. Subject Line Length
The first thing you should look at is the length of your subject lines. While they’ve got to include enough information to personalise, provide value and include an offer, the subject should also be short.
More than half of all emails are now opened on mobile devices and these have fewer spaces for letters. Therefore, if you have a subject line that is more than 41 characters then you’re likely to have part of the subject missing to audiences. This will devalue your subject line and reduce your open rate.
2. Spam Words
There are nearly 500 words that are considered spam by filters embedded in email servers. If you have these spam words inserted into the subject line or throughout the copy of your email, then you will have a hard time avoiding the spam folder in your subscriber’s email accounts. You might even have some hard bounces that will further impact your email server’s reputation.
Note that spam words being exempt from the email subject line isn’t the only requirement here. You must make sure that you limit their use within the copy of the email as many filters will assess the quality of the content now as well as the subject line.
3. Images Within The Copy Of The Email
There are many ways that images embedded within the email can reduce your open rates. Firstly, too many images might get flagged up by email filters. Secondly, images consume more memory than simple text. So when readers are on the move, it can take longer for people to open emails with lots of images.
When you do need to have images within an email, try to reduce the memory they require by using image optimisation tools like RIOT. These free tools will reduce the size of the images and convert them into different formats that make it easier and quicker for subscribers to view.
4. The Number Of People On A Send List
You’re never really looking to increase the number of people opening an email, you’re always looking at increasing the percentage of people who open an email in a campaign. This might seem the same, but they aren’t. There are many different people who reside on your email marketing list. They are all at different parts of the purchasing journey or are interested in different products.
Sending emails that aren’t relevant to people is not going to have them open the mail. Therefore, you need to segment your list so that campaigns are sent to the right people. This might mean you’re sending more emails out, but each campaign is to fewer, but more relevant people.
You should also look at cleansing your list every so often so those that haven’t responded to your campaigns, or have hard or soft bounced are removed from your list.
5. Number Of Emails Sent
If you send out emails too frequently you can put subscribers off from reading your emails. Some industries like coupon sites and job sites that send emails out every day experience very low open rates.
Instead you need to find the right sending frequency for your list. It is different for each industry and even demographic, so you might need to do some A/B testing on this tactic.
Get More Opens Through Smarter Email Campaigning
Your email list is valuable. Don’t waste that by limiting your potential results from campaigns. Ensure you’re leaving the right things out of your email content and subject line that can reduce your campaign’s open rates.
What is your open rate? What will you try to improve your open rate?
Let us know in the comments below.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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7 Tips For Ensuring Better Open Rates On Your Campaigns
Open rates are the main drive for your emails. If you can get more people to open your emails, you’ll have more people who click through to links in those campaigns and this should earn you more revenue.
There are many aspects of your campaigns that help you improve your open rates. Here are some tips that can help you become a success with email marketing.
1. Don’t buy email contacts
The first tip is to ensure that you have a clean email marketing list in the first place. Don’t use contacts that haven’t given you permission and never buy email contacts. While it might seem beneficial to have a large email list, if those people have no relevance, they’re useless.
In addition, GDPR laws clearly state that you need the email owner’s permission to store their data. If you’ve bought the list, you cannot guarantee that.
2. Clean Out Your Email Contact List
One of the things that is holding your email open rate back is your list not being clean. People abandon email subscriptions for many different reasons including: no longer relevant content, marketers being too pushy, and the email address itself being abandoned.
You need to remove these people. They’re costing you money to market to a dead email address and affecting your email open rate.
3. Send Emails Less Regularly
Did you know that 78% of subscribers will unsubscribe to your list if you send too many emails. The truth is, that too many emails can lead to information overload and customers avoid these emails – literally deleting them before opening. That is why certain industries, like coupon and daily deal sites, have very low open rates.
Instead, create campaigns that are ultra-focused and are sent to audiences when they need them. Less is often more when it comes to marketing. You want your content to be powerful, not plentiful.
4. Use An Emoji In Your Subject Line
Your subject line is an important part of your email’s marketing. People judge on whether or not to read an email based solely on your subject line. According to a survey, 55% of brands use emojis in their email subject line and this has increased their open rate.
Emojis attract the attention of your audience because they stand out. Therefore, including them somewhere in your subject line is a good option. Perhaps being a little creative like replacing a word with an emoji can help you.
5. Exclude Certain Words From The Subject Line
There are so many words that can trigger spam filters or audiences automatically consider spam. Therefore, you should avoid words like: percent off, make money, collect, clearance and claim. Even words like discount and sale can be frowned upon.
Donate is also a very unpopular word in subject lines.
6. Personalise Your Email Subject Lines
It is better that you look at personalising your email subject line. Don’t just think that a name will now count as personalisation. Customers are very aware of technology and this won’t make them think you care about them. Instead, look at their behaviours and consider inputting some recent products they’ve looked at or content they’ve read from you.
Personalisation helps to build trust and relationships. With the right strategy you can increase open rates by about 50% with some simple personalisation.
7. Adopt A Gender-Neutral Marketing Philosophy
Women spend more time on their emails than men do, especially when it comes to retail based emails. Which is why you’ve always got to consider their email reading preferences in your campaign. One thing that is true of the female audience is that they prefer gender-neutral subject lines.
Therefore, drop ‘boy shoes’ or ‘women’s fashion’ and concentrate on making your subject lines more genderless.
Conclusion
Your open rate is important. The more people you have open their emails, the more sales you will likely have. Use the tips above to improve your campaign’s performance.
How do you improve your email’s open rate? Have you tried any of the tips above?
Let us know in the comments below.
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Why Do My Email Open Rates Suck?
Do you have good email open rates?
One of the main ‘key performance indicators’ you’ll want to measure is your email open rate. The more people that open your emails, the greater your revenue from any given email.
Each industry, and different businesses, have unique open rates. For instance, e-commerce and coupon sites tend to have lower open rates than legal and accounting businesses. However, this is small comfort if you have a particularly low open rate.
What Is A Low Email Open Rate?
A low email marketing open rate can be considered anything that’s less than 15%. If you have this, you should be looking to make a lot of improvements.
Luckily, there are many potential changes you can make which can help you improve open rates and grow revenues. Here are some quick suggestions for you to try.
1. Create Better Subject Lines
A lot of people will open your marketing emails based on the subject lines. If you don’t have a compelling subject line for the reader, they’re going to read another business’ emails first, or perhaps not even bother with yours.
There are many ways to improve a subject line. You could:
- Personalise your emails so they are more specific to the reader.
- Create a compelling offer that has value to the audience.
- Be controversial.
- Use humour to make a point.
2. Reduce The Number Of Subscribers Who Receive Your Emails
While you might think this is about culling your email marketing list, it’s anything but. In this point we primarily speak about reducing the number of people who receive specific emails. This is known as segmentation.
Segmentation is about sending emails to only those who should receive the email. Such as those who have expressed an interest in a certain product or service. It’s no good sending an email about boy shoes to a person who has only bought girl shoes.
Segmentation can automatically increase open rates because there are fewer people receiving the emails who have no interest. This helps to reduce costs and unsubscribe rates.
3. Remove Unresponsive Subscribers
Now we’re going to discuss removing subscribers from your list. However, you shouldn’t just remove subscribers. You should look for people who haven’t engaged with an email for three to six months (depends on the frequency of your emails). Also look for those who hard and soft bounce.
These people need to be sent a re-engagement campaign email where you attempt to bring them back to your brand. If they don’t respond, then you remove them. Note that those who hard bounce should be removed immediately after a bounce. These bounces can harm your brand’s reputation.
While it’s unfortunate to lose subscribers, sometimes you’ve got to do it. It helps to reduce costs and gives you a better set of statistics you can rely on.
4. Change Your Email Marketing Strategy
Auto-responders and behavioural triggered emails work much better than traditional emails. Therefore, you want to try and switch your email marketing campaigns so they are more automated and triggered.
There are several benefits to this. Firstly, automated emails and behavioural emails are more aligned to the current needs of the audience. Therefore, they have a greater chance to be engaged with. Your brand is also in their current memory, so you have an advantage.
Secondly, you can reduce your workload. Automated emails are pre-written. You just need to adjust them when you want to change them. This means you can concentrate on other digital marketing campaigns that can draw audiences into subscribing to your mailing list.
5. Change When You Send Emails
Ensure you’re sending emails at the right time. Email open rates are different for particular days of the week and times of the day. If you send emails at the wrong time, then your email could be missed among others.
Check with your past campaigns to determine when emails are being opened and engaged with. Then use those times as a basis.
Conclusion
Your mail marketing campaigns can be a great success and while your email open rates suck now – they don’t have to. Try some of the improvements above and see how your email’s KPIs change. You might see your business succeed.
What is your email open rate? How does that compare with your industry?
Let us know in the comments below.
Image from Pixabay.
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How To Get Your Emails Opened And Clicked
How to get more opens and click through rates.
Sending emails to your subscribers is only half the battle; you should also ensure the recipients are opening and acting on your mail. This can be trickier than you might think. Open rates vary between industries and even demographics, yet there are common elements and tactics that can usually help you improve your statistics.
So what tactics do we recommend for improving your open rates and click-throughs?
1. Personalisation
How do you get your audience to care about your message? Make the message about them with personalisation. This can be done with a simple insertion of the recipient’s name; though that isn’t always enough.
Sometimes you have to try something more advanced, such as sending campaigns that are segmented based on subscriber behaviour or demographics. The more specific the information to the reader, the greater the chance they will take action.
2. Pre-header Text
Sometimes a subject line isn’t enough for your audience to act; they need more information. While information within the email is probably sufficient, some mail browsers aren’t going to display this. Instead, you need to use pre-header texts.
These should be about 100 characters long and give detailed information about what is included in the email including a strong call-to-action.
3. Use Powerful Call-To-Actions
A call to action is the tool you use to ensure your audience takes further action. However, too many small brands don’t use the best call-to-actions when encouraging readers to carry on the purchasing journey. For instance, many use ‘click here’ which is overused.
A call-to-action should have three parts to it:
- Urgency (so the user doesn’t wait for fear of missing out).
- Definition of the action to take (so they know what to do).
- Value (so they know what their reward is going to be).
Without these elements, call-to-actions are pointless.
4. Mobile Friendly
More than half of all emails are now opened on a mobile device. If your email isn’t optimised for mobile devices, which includes phones and tablets, then you can lose out as when the customer gets to a desktop, they’ve received other emails which they want to deal with.
Some of the major issues with emails on mobiles is the image size. If it is too big then it will consume time and data limit on mobile devices. Limit images to the proper size, no more than 600 pixels wide, and minimise their memory usage.
5. Send Your Emails At The Right Time
Different audiences will read and respond to emails at different times. If you don’t send emails at the right time, then you will find that less emails will be read. There are numerous studies into when the best time to send emails is; however, they rarely agree.
The only way to ensure you are sending your emails at the best time for your audience is to test. This should be done via split testing, where two times are tested and the result analysed. This should be done several times with the best time from the previous test pitted against a new time.
The test should also be done with regards to day. Some brands find that weekends are better than weekdays.
6. Be Concise
Try to limit your emails so they are only about 150-200 words long. This gives the audience enough data to make an informed decision but isn’t too long that they get bored while reading the message.
If your content needs more information, try linking it to a landing page where users can read more.
Conclusion
Your emails are the best marketing platform you have. They consistently have the best return on investment and you can monitor direct results.
However, that doesn’t mean your campaigns will automatically be great. You will need to optimise your campaigns to ensure audiences are opening and responding to your campaigns. Use the tips above to help guide you to improve your email campaigns and get the best results.
Do you have any email marketing tips? Do you optimise your emails for mobiles?
Let us know in the comments below.
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