Email open rate plays a crucial role in the success of your business. Higher open rates can indicate that your business is doing well, while the opposite suggests that there are areas that need improvement. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to increase email open rates and that’s exactly what we will be talking about in this article, so keep reading to learn more.
1. Personalize
You need to personalize interactions to meaningfully connect with your audience. This can help you keep loyal customers and also attract potential ones.
You can make use of the customer data your business has and craft personalized emails accordingly. The important part is to cater to their needs, interests, and experiences. After all, customers expect you to be aware of all their preferences, wants, and requirements.
Here are some tips that can get you started:
- Analyze customer behavior or shopping habits
- Engage with your audience in a way that makes them feel special, such as sending them a thank you or a welcome email
- Provide them with omnichannel experiences if possible
2. Make Your Subject Line Different from the Rest
A subject line significantly affects your email open rates so it’s essential to put a lot of effort and dedication into it. If you fail to create a good subject line, your email will likely end up in the recipient’s spam folder.
Keep in mind that many other businesses regularly send emails to their customers, so the competition is big. That’s why you need to distinguish yourself from your competitors by creating an interesting subject line.
Here are some things you can do to make that happen:
- Use a lively, conversational tone and be as specific as possible
- Use the person’s first name.
- Trigger curiosity, for example, by announcing free offers, wonderful discounts, or new arrivals
- Make sure your subject line encourages the recipient to take action
3. Segment the Email List
Oftentimes, not segmenting your email list can cause low email open rates. As such, it’s crucial to segment the email list so you can prevent this negative scenario from happening.
First things first, pay attention to the stage of every one of your subscribers. This will enable you to craft more targeted emails, which will help you increase open rates and conversions.
But that’s not all; segmenting emails can make your audience feel connected to you at a personal level, particularly during their customer journey, which can positively affect your business.
Below are the several stages of an intended recipient’s journey throughout a customer journey:
- The time they spent on the email
- Time since they last purchased something
- Inactive for a few months
Paying attention to these and creating your emails accordingly will help you greatly improve open rates as well as retain email subscribers.
4. Use Creativity
Note that you shouldn’t send an email without putting some creativity into it. After all, a properly crafted email can help you establish a strong relationship with your audience and gain their trust. It’s also worth mentioning that creating a creative email can be tricky. However, all you need to do is to follow a couple of tips and this process can become much more easier. Some of the things you can do include:
- Keeping emails short
- Using emojis, where appropriate
- Using optimized images
- Making announcements or asking questions
- Following copywriting tips
The last tip is especially important because leveraging copywriting skills can help you grab a recipient’s attention immediately, which is just what you need to guarantee higher open rates.
5. Optimize Emails for Mobile Users
According to Statista, almost five billion people use mobile devices to access the internet. This means that it’s crucial to optimize your emails for mobile users to increase engagement and improve open rates. Additionally, making the emails mobile-friendly can improve the experience of your audience, which can help you maintain a good impression on them.
But if you fail to do so, it can negatively affect your business and the relationship with your customers. For example, imagine that you received an email with an intriguing subject line that grabbed your attention. But after you opened it, you discovered that you couldn’t read the text properly or the image wasn’t displaying.
Things like these can cause disappointment in users and ruin their experience. So to avoid this, try to do the following:
- Choose the single-column layout
- Make sure the subject line doesn’t exceed the character limit
- Consider avoiding navigation bars
- Try compressing large images
- Use white space wisely
- Keep an email short
6. Send the Emails at the Right Time
There are certain time periods that can either help you boost open rates or make them decrease, which means that you should be wise regarding when to send the email. To be more precise, some studies suggest that sending emails at 9 or 10 am is considered the best option, regardless of the business or industry. While others say that open rates are the highest at 1 pm because it’s the time people usually look for distractions, email can be one of them. The best thing you can do is try both and see which one works better for you to maximally boost your open rates.
7. Improve Your Email Reputation
The email reputation is the score that mailbox providers assign to businesses or individuals that are sending emails. It’s how Email Service Providers (ESPs) distinguish between legitimate and spammy email senders.
And now you are probably wondering how to improve email reputation. Achieving that is quite easy, but first, you need to be aware of something. Unfortunately, scammers can create fake emails, claiming they’re from your business, scam people, and ruin your reputation in the process. But don’t worry; you can prevent this by using email authentication technologies, which will allow the receiving server to instantly verify the email from your company while blocking emails from the imposter.
If you are unsure about your options, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are some of the best email authentication technologies you can choose from. Wondering what the differences are between SPF, DKIM, and DMARC? Here’s everything you should know.
SPF vs DKIM vs DMARC: How they Differ
In a nutshell, SPF identifies authorized mail servers, DKIM verifies email content’s integrity along with the sender’s identity, and DMARC offers instructions on handling those emails that fail DKIM or SPF checks. So, as you can see, using all three of them can be a great decision. Once you do this, you will no longer have to worry about how to improve your email reputation.
Final Thoughts
As can be seen, there are many effective strategies to increase email open rates for your business, so all you should do now is implement them quickly so you can sit back and wait for good results.
