8 Strategies to Increase Your Email Open Rate

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business. However, if you're not measuring email open rate, how do you know whether or not your campaign is working? This blog post will outline eight strategies that can help increase your email open rates for a successful email marketing campaign.

Average Email Open Rates per Industry

According to email marketing research from Smart Insights, the average email open rate across all industries is just under 16.97%. However, there are wide variations in open rates depending on the industry.

Here is a breakdown of the average email open rates by industry:

Factors Affecting Email Open Rate

There are a number of factors that can affect your email open rate, including:

1. Quality of the subject line - The subject line is the first thing that your recipients will see, so it's important to make sure it catches their attention.
2. Timing of the email - Emails sent during peak hours (between noon and three PM) have a higher open rate than those sent at other times of the day.
3. Personalization - Emails that are personalized with the recipient's name have a higher open rate than those that are not.
4. Type of content - Emails with interesting or valuable content tend to have a higher open rate than those with less-interesting content.
5. Who's sending your emails - This is probably one of the most overlooked factors with email open rates. People tend to open emails from people they have heard of and know they deliver quality content in their emails.
6. The quality of the list - The quality of your email list is one of the most important factors in determining your open rate. Recipients who have opted-in to receive emails from you are more likely to open them than those who haven't.

Pro Tip: 7 Email Design Tips and Best Practices That GET Results!

What is a Good Email Open Rate?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the email open rate will vary depending on the industry and the quality of your email list.

However, a good open rate would be anything above 20%.

Here are eight strategies that you can use to increase your email open rates:

Strategy #01 - Test Different Subject Lines

The subject line is an essential factor when it comes to email open rates. So it's important to test different subject lines to see which ones get the best response.

You can use A/B testing to determine which version of your subject line gets the highest open rate.

A/B testing is a method of testing two different versions of something to see which one performs better. In this case, you would test two different subject lines to see which one gets the higher open rate.

Here are some tips for crafting creative and compelling subject lines:

• Insert numbers - People love lists, so adding a number to your subject line is a great way to grab their attention.
• Entice curiosity - Playing on curiosity can also help get your emails opened. Test different relevant subject lines that have some element of mystery or intrigue. 
• Hint at exclusivity - If you're sending an invitation-only offer, mention it in the headline. Recipients will feel privileged to have been selected for this special promotion! 
  Be provocative - If you can get people to wonder what's inside your email, they're more likely to open it.

Experimenting with these different subject line ideas will drive higher email open rates and improve the results of your email campaigns.

Strategy #02 - Personalize Emails with Recipient's Name

One of the most commonly used email marketing tactics is personalization, and for a good reason - it works!

Personalizing your emails with the recipient's name has been shown to increase open rates by as much as 26%.

You can easily personalize your email messages using merge fields in your email marketing software.

You can use merge fields in the subject line to personalize the subject line and the first line or preview text of your email.

Strategy #03 - Include Content That is Relevant to the Recipient's Interests

If you want to increase your email open rates, it's important that the content of your emails matches what is relevant and interesting for each recipient.

This means tailoring your email campaigns to address specific pain points or interests of different segments of your email subscriber list to get a better response.

You can use data from your email marketing and CRM platform to determine what content is most relevant to each segment, or you can use tools like Google Analytics to track the interests of your website visitors.

Another strategy is to use marketing automation to automatically segment your audience based on the types of content they engage within your emails. You can do this by using link click triggers.

Strategy #04 - Avoid Sending Emails Too Often or Too Infrequently

Another email marketing strategy for increasing open rates is to find the right balance when it comes to how often you send emails.

If you send too many emails, recipients may start to feel overwhelmed or annoyed and begin to unsubscribe from your list.

On the other hand, if you don't send enough emails, recipients may forget who you are and lose interest in what you have to say.

So, aim to strike a balance - try not to send more than one email per day or less than once every two weeks.

Strategy #05 - Create a Sense of Urgency in Your Email Subject Line

In order to create a sense of urgency in your email subject line, you need to give recipients a good reason to open the email immediately.

Some common tactics for creating a sense of urgency include:

• Limited time offers
• Exclusive previews or sneak peeks
• Urgent warnings or alerts
• Time-sensitive discounts

Including a sense of urgency in your email subject line can help to get your email opened and read.

Strategy #06 - Send Emails at Peak Hours

Your email list is made up of people from all different time zones and locations. This means that you may need to send your emails at peak times, so they don't arrive too early or too late for certain recipients.

You must take into account the time zone of your recipient when scheduling your email campaigns.

You can use tools like Time Zone Calculator to help you determine the best time to send your emails.

Strategy #07 - Segment Your Email List

If you want to reignite your open rate, consider segmenting your email list.

Segmenting allows you to send more targeted emails with relevant content, which can help increase open rates and click-throughs from recipients who are most interested in what you have to offer.

You should also make the most of all the data that's available about your contacts - use it to find out what interests them and target them with content that appeals to those interests.

CRM software is essential to keeping track of data on your email subscribers and automating many of the tasks related to this process.

With Pulse, you have everything in one platform to take advantage of our robust CRM, marketing automation, and email marketing capabilities.

Strategy #08 - Pay Attention to Email Deliverability

Your email deliverability is the percentage of emails that are successfully delivered to your recipients' inboxes.

If your email marketing open rates are low, a lot of your emails are most likely being sent to the spam or junk folders, which can have a negative impact on your open rate.

There are a few things you can do to improve your email deliverability, including:

• Using a reputable email service provider
• Ensuring your emails are correctly formatted
• Optimizing your images and other content for mobile devices
• Including an unsubscribe link in every email
• Cleansing your email list frequently to remove emails that have bounced or subscribers who are not engaging with your emails

By taking these measures, you can help to improve your email marketing efforts and increase your email deliverability.

Pro Tip: 9 Essential Email Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking

Conclusion

Your email open rate is a key metric that you should be monitoring to measure the success of your email marketing campaigns.

If you have any questions about email open rates or how to improve them, please feel free to contact us.