Increase Your Email OpenRate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

The common goal of all marketers is to gain email addresses from web visitors. Unlike socialmedia or search engines, which have a company standing between you and your visitor,email is a direct connection to the customer. Because of this, crafting emails that drivetra�c to your site is high on the list of priorities.

Of course, driving tra�c from email depends on open rates. Find out how to increase youremail open rate with these nine key factors.

1. Keep Subscribers EngagedIt’s important to send your subscribers regular emails to be sure that your list stays fresh,but you can still lose some of your email list over time. People may change emails or loseinterest in your brand overall, so it’s smart to remove inactive subscribers regularly.

You can still give them one last chance to re-engage, however. This can be accomplished anumber of ways, but it’s just an email asking your subscriber to engage with you before 

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

purging them from your list. Anyone who responds stays, but everyone else gets purged.

You can also check in with your subscriber list periodically to see if they want to updatetheir information. This reminds them that they’re still in control of how they interact,which builds a more personal connection and encourages them to engage.

Finally, you can try to re-engage your list by conducting a survey to rate their satisfactionand gain some insight. O�ering an incentive, such as a free gift, encourages theirengagement and gives you valuable information to keep them satis�ed.

2. Segment Your ListOne of the most important factors in whether someone opens an email is deciding if it’srelevant to their needs. Segmentation is an easy way to accomplish this and be sure you’renot �ooding your subscribers’ inboxes with emails that don’t apply to them.

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Segmentation can be done a number of ways, but the best place to start is by tagging yoursubscribers’ behavior. For example, you want to send di�erent types of emails to your repeatcustomers, �rst-time customers and future customers you’re nurturing.

You may also want to create segments based on the types of products purchased,demographics, locations and other information, so you can tailor your emails to yourcustomers’ needs and entice them to open.

3. Avoid SpamSpam �lters are becoming more and more re�ned, but it’s still possible to end up with youremails in the spam folder. If this happens, you can count on your email never being opened.

So, if you want to maximize the reach and engagement of your email list, you need to do allyou can to avoid ending up in the spam folder. Here are some tips:

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

 Be sure everyone on your list opted-in. Send emails from an IP address that hasn’t been used forspam in the past. Send using a verified domain. Make sure your code is clean. Personalize the “to” field of your email. Take the time to show subscribers how to add yourbusiness to their address book to be sure they always getyour emails. Avoid sales language that’s likely to trigger spam filters Avoid deceptive subject lines. Include a location. Make sure it’s easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe asthey wish.

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

4. Get the Timing RightTiming has a big impact on whether your subscribers open your emails, so it’s worth thetime and e�ort to test di�erent timeframes and see what performs.

You can also take advantage of others’ research, such as MailChimp . Though the research isgeneral, it can give you a great starting point for when your emails will have the mostimpact.

Overall, they found that no particular day is better than another, but during the week isbetter than the weekend. Morning is also better than afternoon, evening or late night, butthat’s also dependent on the location, occupation and age of the subscriber, as well as thetype of content being sent.

That’s where you come in. Think a little about your subscribers and what their normalroutine might be, what type of content you’re sending and when you would be most likelyto want to read your email.

5. Improve Your Subject LineSubject lines are a signi�cant factor in your email open rate, so they have to grab attention.Some businesses get lazy with their email marketing and copy the same subject line formulaover and over, leading to bored subscribers and unopened emails.

If you want to separate yourself from the pack, you need to get creative. Keep your subjectlines intriguing but not overly clever or confusing, use a joke or question and speak in alanguage that aligns with your brand and your customers.

You can also check out this post from Neil Patel about writing great subject lines that getopened, which gives you some in-depth advice.

6. Write to One Person Only

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

When you write an email that’s meant to go out to thousands of subscribers, that can easilyre�ect in your tone. This makes sense, but it’s much less e�ective than writing as thoughyou’re speaking to only one of your subscribers.

You want to keep your emails personal to connect with your audience, which can’t be doneif you’re writing to the masses. This requires insight into your customer, however, and theability to identify their problems, interests and values.

If you don’t have that type of insight on your customers yet, now is a great time to start. Asimple email that includes a survey or a conversation allows you to ask the questions youneed to better understand your customers’ problems.

7. Write PersonallyAs we mentioned, keeping it personal is much more e�ective that writing emails with massappeal. Disconnected, sterile messages will never be opened on a consistent basis, regardlessof how well you craft the rest of the email.

This is often challenging for people, but the key is to write to your subscribers as thoughyou’re friends. They’re �ooded with emails all day every day, so if you can reach them on apersonal level and convince them that what you sent is worth reading, your emails will beopened.

8. Create Excellent ContentContent is read after an email is opened, so you may wonder why that’s included on thislist. Even if your goal is to increase the open rate, you still want your emails openedconsistently in the future, and that has everything to do with what’s inside.

Think about it this way. If your subscribers take a shot on you and start opening youremails, only to �nd content that’s subpar or shallow, they have no incentive to open youremails again.

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors

Keep it valuable and relevant to your audience every time, and you may �nd yourself with along list of loyal subscribers who look forward to getting your emails.

9. Make it Mobile FriendlyMobile is increasingly more popular, so it makes sense that a lot of your audience uses theirsmartphone to open an email. Even if your product and target audience fall outside of thedemographic most likely to use mobile for email, you still can’t a�ord to neglect the needsof your mobile users.

Mobile-friendly formatting is the �rst step in this process, but there are some other thingsto consider about emails speci�cally. Smaller screens make it more di�cult to see graphicsand shorten subject lines, so that’s something you need to think about as you write youremail.

You also want smaller images that load faster, and make sure your email looks good withoutthem. Some systems turn images o� immediately, so you may spend that time on an emailthat doesn’t display images anyway.

Finally, pay attention to your buttons and links. Your mobile subscribers are using atouchscreen, so small call-to-action buttons and links that are too close together will havethem accidentally clicking the wrong thing or unable to click altogether.

Keep at ItIf you’re looking for better open rates, improving in these key factors will certainly help,but it may take some time to see what works and what doesn’t. Regardless of your insights,email marketing is a little bit of an experiment, so give yourself a chance to �nd out whatworks for your brand and your audience to enjoy sustainable results.

Increase Your Email Open Rate with 9 Key Factors