What is Email Open Rate?
An email open rate shows marketers the number of subscribers who have opened emails sent to them compared to the whole number of subscribers on their mailing. Email marketing campaigns are only successful as more emails get opened.
For instance, if you have an email marketing campaign with 100 subscribers and only 40 subscribers open the emails you send, you have an average of a 40% open rate. This figure is below average and isn’t considered a success.
Divide the number of subscribers who open your email by the total number of subscribers on your email campaign list, and you will have the figure of your email open rate. So, for the example used above, this will be – 40 ÷ 100 × 100%, which is equal to a 40% open rate.
Email open rate shows marketers an overview of their email marketing campaign. It reveals which strategy works and which does not work. With this, marketers can know if subscribers are engaging with their email campaigns or not. It helps marketers decide what strategy to use continuously and the result to expect from such a strategy.
A low email open rate signifies that your customers are not engaging your sales funnel, and this is an issue that could lead to the total failure of your email marketing campaign. The low email open rate has been solved by marketers through various strategies, some of which are effective and others not so effective.
A captivating subject line, segmentation of your email list, sending re-engagement emails, and sending emails at the best time are common effective strategies used by marketers over the year. But most marketers still face a low email open rate, and so it becomes necessary for some change in strategy.
So, in this post, we will talk about 4 brilliant ways to improve your email open rates. As earlier mentioned, the rate of the open email determines the success or failure of your email marketing campaign; therefore, making necessary changes to your strategies would hugely improve your campaign.
A low email open rate will only result in fewer sales which is a failure of your marketing campaign. Having it for too long could cause even more serious damage to your brand in the long run. Now comes the question, how do I increase my email open rate for my marketing campaign?
The answers are provided in this post. I will be revealing some strategies that will help increase the open rate of your email letter. The key highlights we will focus on below include:
- Elements that affect email open rate
- Brilliant ways to improve your email open rate
- Final Thoughts on email open rate
Elements That Affect Email Open Rate
Your subscribers’ rate of open email depends on several elements, such as the value your email letter offers, the content structure, subject line, email list, and the time you choose to send out your mails.These elements will determine if a subscriber will open your email letter or not. Now, let’s take a brief look at some of these elements.
1. Value of your email letter: Your email letter’s value to your subscribers should be at the back of your mind when crafting one. No one will likely open an email that doesn’t cater to their needs. You must know what your audience wants and give them exactly what they want.Different subscribers might have different needs, so you must ensure that your email letter caters to a certain category of subscribers’ needs while giving everyone valuable information. Once your target audience sees value in your email letter, they will likely open and take action.
2. Content Structure: Your email letter’s structure will determine how well your subscribers understand your message. Most people are too busy to go through lengthy email content.You must keep it short and precise, ensuring that you pass information in an understandable structure. The content structure of your email letter must be easy to read and understand.
3. Email Subject Line: This is fundamentally the first thing your subscriber gets to see before deciding to either open or not. But the interesting part is that an exciting subject line can make a subscriber open your email.The subject line must be short, precise, and conveys the information of your letter to your audience. This is probably your biggest chance to get your email opened by your subscribers, so take time and craft a compelling and exciting subject line.
4. Email list: This is an ignored factor that has caused most marketers their email campaigns and sales. As a marketer, you need to know the source of your email list.If you tricked people into subscribing to your email list, you likely wouldn’t have genuine subscribers who need your information, product, or services. Therefore, it is important that your audience directly subscribes to your newsletter platform’s email list.This way, you will get subscribers who truly want your information, product, or services, and they will always open your email letter and take action.
5. Email Timing: The truth is there’s no perfect time to send your email letter. Subscribers have different times they engage with their emails. And trying to pick the perfect time would be almost impossible.You should send your email letter throughout the day. There’s a chance that it will get to a certain category of subscribers but not all.Send out your email letter at intervals, see what works best, build on that and increase your email open rate.
Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates
1. Communicate Your Message Rather Than Selling: The most important part of an email marketing campaign is the Subject Line. This is the starting point of everything good or bad that will happen to your campaign. And so, a study done of 200 million emails by Mailchimp discovered that straight forward subject line works best.The study revealed that customers could immediately notice a lousy subject line from a boring one. Instead of trying hard to get your customers to open your email by writing a loud and overhyped subject line, you should rather focus on communicating your message via the subject line.Customers are tired of receiving loud spammy subject line emails, and so you will do your marketing campaign a lot of good if you keep the subject line simple and boring. When they see value in the subject line, they will open your email.
2. Diversify Your Strategies: Sending out the same email marketing campaign every time over a period can get bad for your campaign. Customers will likely become disinterested and ultimately unsubscribe from your email list. You should not let that happen.So, instead of keeping things the same every time, mix up your strategies and see the results. You can follow the Pareto 80/20 rule. That is, in 5 emails sent 4 are useful and valuable to your customer, and so if 1 email contains blunders, they will hardly be noticed.This email marketing strategy ensures that your email creates a lasting impact on your customer with a dynamic content type. It also keeps them expectant on your next offer, simply because it’s valuable.
3. Make Them Mobile-friendly: It’s no surprise that the mobile phone is the leading device people use to access the Internet, including emails. A study done by Litmus on email open rate discovered that half of the people receive their email on mobile phones. Therefore, such emails are mostly open via mobile phones.With these, your email campaign must be mobile-friendly. There are no two ways to say it; if you don’t optimize your emails for mobile phones, you are losing about half of your potential customers.This is now our reality. Every medium of your marketing campaign must be mobile-friendly such as your websites, e-commerce store, web page, sales pages, and much more. Make your emails mobile-friendly, and you will see a drastic increase in your open rate.
4. Track Your Results And Make Changes Where Necessary: Track your email campaign to see every open email, click, and action performed by your customers. By tracking your email results, you get to know what strategy is working and which is not. It also allows marketers to split test two email campaigns, which helps see what impacts your strategies have on closing your customers.The beauty of this strategy is that you get to continuously tweak your campaign for better results. If a campaign doesn’t work, you can change some things and see what works. But be careful not to overdo this, as most campaign requires consistency before success is achieved. All in all, tract, test, and tweak till you succeed.
Conclusion
Email open rate is a big determinant of the success or failure of your email marketing campaign. If your email open rate is low, you need to apply the strategies discussed. And if they are high, then you can aim higher.Know what works for you and improve on it; that’s the secret to a successful email marketing campaign. And don’t forget to keep abreast with the latest strategies and methods.