Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your audience. Whether you are a small business or a large company, it’s a cost-effective way to communicate with your customers.
However, you need to get your subscribers to open your emails. How do you do that? By improving your email open rate.
1. Make Sure Your Emails Are Mobile-Friendly
With 42% of all emails being opened on mobile devices, it’s essential to make sure your emails are mobile-friendly.
If your emails are hard to read or navigate on mobile, it’s likely they’ll be deleted in a heartbeat.
To make sure your emails are mobile-friendly, use a responsive design. This means that your email will automatically adjust to fit the size of the screen it’s being viewed on.
You should also make sure your font size is large enough to read on a small screen and that your call-to-action buttons are easy to tap.
Finally, you should always test your emails on a variety of devices before you send them out.
2. Write a Clear and Engaging Subject Line
The subject line is one of the first things your recipients will see when your email appears in their inbox.
It’s important to make sure your subject line is clear and engaging. But, you also don’t want to give too much away. If you do, your recipients may not feel the need to open your email.
One way to make your subject line engaging is to create a sense of urgency, ask a question, or use humor. You can also use emojis and puns to make your subject line stand out.
3. Use a Familiar “From” Name
The “From” name is one of the first things people see when they receive an email in their inbox. It’s important to make sure the name is recognizable to the recipient.
When it comes to email marketing, you want to make sure your “From” name is your business name or the name of the person who is the face of your brand. This helps build trust with your audience and lets them know who the email is coming from.
If you use a generic or unfamiliar name, people are more likely to ignore your emails or even mark them as spam. This can hurt your sender reputation and your open rates.
4. Personalize Your Emails
Personalization is a powerful tool in email marketing. It can help you to improve your open rates and to build stronger relationships with your subscribers.
There are many ways that you can personalize your emails, but one of the most effective is to use the recipient’s name in the subject line and in the body of your email. This simple touch can make your emails feel more personal and can help you to stand out in a crowded inbox.
You can also use personalization to tailor your content to the individual interests and needs of your subscribers. For example, you could use data from your email list to segment your subscribers into different groups, and then send targeted emails to each group.
5. Send Your Emails at the Right Time
Another common mistake is sending emails at the wrong time. This could be the wrong time of day, the wrong day of the week, or the wrong time of year.
For example, if you’re sending an email about a sale, you’ll want to make sure it arrives in your subscribers’ inboxes before the sale starts (and definitely not after it’s over).
Or, if you’re sending an email to promote a new product, you’ll want to send it at a time of day when your subscribers are most likely to be checking their email and making purchasing decisions. This will vary depending on your audience, so it’s a good idea to experiment with different send times and see what works best.
Most email marketing platforms will also have features that allow you to schedule your emails to be sent at a specific time. This is a great way to make sure your emails arrive in your subscribers’ inboxes at the right time, even if that’s not when you’re available to send them.
6. Create a Sense of Urgency
One of the most effective ways to increase email open rates is to create a sense of urgency in your subject lines.
Urgency is a powerful psychological trigger that can motivate people to take action. When people feel like they need to act quickly, they are more likely to open your email.
There are a few different ways you can create a sense of urgency in your subject lines. You could use time-sensitive language, like “last chance” or “ending soon.” You could also mention a limited-time offer or promotion.
7. Use Emojis in Your Subject Lines
Emojis can make your subject lines pop, and they can help you get your point across quickly.
For example, a thumbs-up emoji can be a great way to indicate that your email contains good news.
Just be sure to use emojis sparingly. If you overdo it, you can come off as unprofessional.
You should also be mindful of the emojis you use. Some emojis can have different meanings in different cultures, so make sure you’re using an emoji that your audience will understand.
8. Segment Your Email List
Email list segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into smaller groups based on specific criteria. This allows you to send more targeted emails to your subscribers, which can lead to higher open rates.
There are many different ways you can segment your email list, including by:
• Demographics, such as age, gender, and location
• Purchase history, such as how much money a subscriber has spent with your business
• Engagement level, such as how often a subscriber opens your emails or clicks on your links
• Interests, such as what types of products or services a subscriber is interested in
By segmenting your email list, you can ensure that you’re sending the right emails to the right people, which can help improve your open rates.
9. Resend Unopened Emails
If you spend a lot of time and effort on your email campaign, it can be frustrating when you see that a large portion of your subscribers didn’t bother to open it.
But, you can always resend your email to the subscribers who didn’t open it the first time. Just be sure to change the subject line and the preview text to make it more compelling.
You can also send the email at a different time of day. Some subscribers may not have opened your email because they simply missed it.
10. Use Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful tool that can help you increase the open rate of your emails. Social proof is the idea that people are more likely to take an action if they see that others have already taken that action.
In the case of email marketing, social proof can come in the form of testimonials, reviews, or even just the number of people who have already opened your email. You can include social proof in your subject line, preheader text, or even in the body of your email.
For example, you could include a testimonial from a happy customer that mentions your email list, or you could include the number of people who have already opened your email in the preheader text.
11. Keep Your Email List Clean
This is one of the most important things you can do for your email marketing strategy.
If you consistently send emails to people who never open them, your sender reputation will go down, and your open rates will decrease.
That’s why you should regularly clean your email list.
You can do this by removing subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in the last 90 days.
You can also remove subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in the last 90 days.
This will help you maintain a healthy email list and improve your open rates.
If you’re using an email marketing tool, you can usually do this with one click.
12. Test
The best way to know what works is to test it. If you’re not happy with your open rates, you can test the other 11 tips in this article to see what works best for your audience.
You can also test your subject lines, your preview text, your from name, your send time, your personalization, your segmentation, and your offer to see what gets the best results.
The only way to know for sure how your email subject lines are doing is to test them.
You can test your email subject lines in a few different ways.
First, you can use an A/B test to compare two subject lines and see which one performs better.
You can also test your subject lines with a small group of your subscribers and then send the winning subject line to the rest of your list.
Finally, you can use a tool like CoSchedule’s Email Subject Line Tester to get an overall score for your subject lines.
If you want to find the best time to send an email, you can use the data that you have collected from your previous campaigns.
If you don’t have this data, then you can start testing to find the best time to send an email.
There are lots of different things you can test with your email, from the subject line to the email copy, to the images.
You can also test the time and day that you send your email.
For example, you could do a split test and send the same email on Monday at 8 am and then on Tuesday at 6 pm.
You can then compare the open rates for each time to see which time works best.
Conclusion
Improving open rates is a great way to increase the chances of your email marketing campaigns being successful. It will also help you to reduce the number of spam complaints and unsubscribes received.
To improve your open rates, make sure you’re focusing on creating high-quality content that is relevant to your subscribers. If you do this, you’ll be well on your way to increasing your open rates and driving more revenue from your email marketing campaigns.
