The average email open rate in 2024 was 18%, which is not an encouraging figure for marketers. These days, people face excessive incoming information, and fewer people are willing to open emails.
Your email marketing campaign can only be effective so long as your subscribers are opening your emails in the first place. In this article, we’ll dig into effective strategies that can help to improve the open rate of your email marketing campaigns.
1. Segment your email list
Segments are clear-cut categories of users that have similar reactions to a certain trigger. Segmenting your email lists helps to improve the relevancy of your emails, and it is not difficult – all you need is to come up with criteria that match your mailing goals.
You need telling information to distinguish subscribers from each other. Utilize the data you already have and determine whether more data is required. The easiest and most effective method of obtaining data is a detailed on-site registration form. After signing up, ask the user a few clarifying questions about their company size, industry, interests, etc.
2. Personalize your emails
In digital marketing, personalization involves tailoring your messaging to individual customers. You can achieve this by keeping in mind the preferences and needs of your customers so that you market the right experience and product to the right customer at the right time. Adding a personal touch to your emails can improve the open and click-through rates.
You can achieve personalization using these recommendations:
- Talk by name – Addressing a customer by their name helps to establish a tone of confidence. However, be careful not to become overfamiliar
- Respond to behavior – Take every available opportunity to launch trigger-based campaigns. Triggers might include occasional or regular user distractions or actions, such as a sign-up, dropped shopping cart, downloaded content, and customized offers
- Offer operable free staff – Everyone loves free things. Be sure to include some pieces of advice and tips that a subscriber can benefit from. You can send templates, briefs, and whitepapers
3. Avoid spam filters
Spam filters have become more sophisticated over the years, but they are still not 100% effective. Even your best emails can end up in a spam box. If you want to improve your email open rate, you should ensure your emails are not flagged as spam. Here are some ways to avoid your emails getting caught up in the dreaded spam folder:
- All recipients should have opted-in to receiving your emails
- Send your emails through verified domains
- Teach your recipients how to whitelist your emails, and request them to add you to their address
- Avoid being too salesy
- Include your location
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines
4. Use an outstanding email subject line
The email subject line plays an integral role in enticing your subscribers to open your emails. Always work on ensuring that the subject line stands out. Businesses have used email marketing for years, often using the same subject line formulas. These common subject lines are likely to be filtered as white noise, and you should avoid them at all costs.
Use these tips to create a unique subject line:
- Entice curiosity to encourage recipients to open your emails
- Insert numbers
- Use a conversational, fun, or joking tone
5. Run anticipation-building email campaigns
Anticipation is a powerful tool that you need to use when you are running email campaigns, since humans are naturally curious. Once you grab the attention of your email recipients with an outstanding subject line, aim to keep them on the edge of their seats with an anticipation-building email. Its impact is that more recipients will take your call to action (CTA) seriously. A simple way to build anticipation is never to send ‘dry emails,’ but make it mandatory to:
- Make a promise that will be delivered in the next series of emails
- Offer a hint on what the next email will contain
- Send emails containing exclusive offers, promo codes, or freebies
6. Discover the right frequency for your audience
It would be frustrating if you received low-value emails from the same person each day. That is exactly how your email recipients feel when you send them too many emails. Regardless of your line of business, make it your objective to limit the number of times that you send out emails. Surveys show that consumers prefer receiving promotional emails monthly (86%) or weekly (60%). If you do not do this, your subscriber list will gradually thin out as more people will unsubscribe or report you as spam.
7. Deliver your emails at the right time and day
According to internetmarketinggeeks.com, timing is important to your marketing campaigns. Once you have determined the right content for your emails, it is important to know when to deliver them. Analysis of business emails shows that email click rate varies throughout the week, and you need to know the best day to send your emails. To do this, you will first need to test the best-performing days for your email and then choose the best time for sending them. Typically, most people are prone to open emails that they receive early in the day or late in the evening.
8. Refine your sign-up process
Successful email open rates begin the moment a potential customer joins your email listing. This means that you need to evaluate the expectation that you set for each new contact. Here are practical questions that will help evaluate the strength of your sign-up process:
- What do you promise customers who join your email listing?
- How do you get new contact for your email listing? Do you have their permission, or do you randomly reach out to any email address you come across?
- How well do you stick to the value you promised at sign-up?
- Did you specify how often your email recipients will hear from you?
By looking at these factors, you will have ease creating a better sign-up process that will attract people who have a true interest in your emails. This will also reduce the possibility of spam complaints as your contact list will largely contain high-value recipients.
Endnote
For your email marketing campaigns to be successful, you need to target the right person at the right time and with the right message. The above tips will help you to improve the email open rate and conversion rate.
