Email Open Rate: 8 Tips To Improve Yours
Increasing your email open rate can be accomplished by taking into account the 8 tips in this article. Everyone who sends e-mail campaigns tries to get as much return from e-mail marketing as possible. In my previous blog post about the ' e-mail ROI calculator ' I explained that improving the open rate is very important. But, how can you best increase the open rate of your e-mail campaigns?
The number of times your e-mail is opened depends of course on its relevance for your recipients. We will not go into this in this article.
Tip 1: think of a clear sending name
Even before the recipient looks at the subject line in his inbox, he sees who is sending the email. Therefore indicate clearly from whom the e-mail originates.
Choose the name of your organization or your brand. A complete e-mail address as a send-name is not a good idea (for example newsletter@companyx.com). You sometimes still see an e-mail address in the sending name with sign-on or unsubscribe e-mails. Try to avoid this. In addition, experiment with adding a personal name, next to the name of your company
(for example: employee name - company X).
Tip 2: use a good sender e-mail address
Not all e-mail clients offer equal visibility to the e-mail address of the sender, but in more and more clients this is becoming the case. Make sure that your recipients see an email address by which they recognize you. For example, choose newsletter@company.com.
Tip 3: Write a strong subject line
See the subject line as the title of your e-mail. Briefly explain what the e-mail is about. There are five different forms of titles (headers) and subject lines:
• News head rules: pure statements of facts
• Promising headlines: promise to offer a solution
• Intriguing headlines: a thinker; you have to solve a small puzzle
• Challenging headlines: makes the reader curious
• Selective headers: address a specific target group directly
News, promising and challenging headlines are the most suitable subject line. An intriguing headline is less suitable, because you often see the subject line, but not the e-mail itself. Recipients then do not know to which part of your e-mail the riddle belongs. In addition, recipients have little time and will not think long about your riddle.
Selective headers do not have to be used as the subject line either. You can make the selection yourself via segmentation models. If you send your entire database a campaign
about women's clothing and only mention something about women's clothing in the subject line, the chances are that male recipients will open your campaign. Segment your database and send your campaign only to your female recipients.
Put important words early in the subject line. The further the words are from the beginning of the line, the less attention they receive. It has been examined several times what the influence of the length of the subject line on the email open rate is. These studies come with different results.
Generally, you see a higher open rate with a relatively short subject line (under 30 characters). The importance of a short subject line also has to do with the e-mail clients of your recipients. If your e-mails are often viewed on a mobile phone, the importance of a short subject line is greater than when your recipients view your campaigns, especially in Outlook.
You can also think of personalization in the subject line. You can test this, but be careful. It can come across as fake and "spill-dirty". Research shows that personalization with name has little influence. Only when you start to personalize with, for example, place names, you see an increase in the percentage of opens.
Tip 4: test your best sending day and time
Test when your recipients are best accessible. Try to send your campaigns at a time when your recipients are usually busy using their inbox. Every target group is different and the best sending time is therefore always different. You can only find out by testing.
The National E-mail Benchmark of the DDMA shows that Tuesday and Thursday are the most popular days to send newsletters. These are not the most popular sending days for no reason. But, on the other hand, you can stand out more by sending your campaign on another day.
Tip 5: strengthen your subject line with the preheader
The preheader is often at the top of the e-mail and is the first line of the <body> tag in your HTML code. Because the preheader is the first text, e-mail clients such as Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook will display (a part of) this text in the inbox or in a pop-up at the subject line.
Make sure the preheader, together with the subject line, stimulates the opening of the email.
Tip 6: put important content at the top
In some clients (such as Outlook), recipients already see a preview of the e-mail while they have not yet opened it. Put important content at the top, so that recipients see your most important content in the preview. This increases the chance of opening your e-mail.
Tip 7: ensure a good registration page
The registration page of your newsletter is not only important to bring in as many new subscribers as possible. If visitors to your website visit your login page, it is
important to immediately create the right expectations.
Indicate how often your recipients will receive the newsletter and also describe what information they will find in the newsletter. By indicating both things in advance, you create the right expectations for people who register for your newsletter.
Tip 8: ensure good deliverability
Good deliverability is necessary when you want recipients to open your campaigns. There are few recipients who open campaigns from their spam box. Few marketers are aware of
the factors that cause problems when delivering e-mails. The most important factors that can prevent problems with the delivery of e-mails: processing hard bounces,
processing complaints, preventing spam trap hits, ensuring relevance and e-mail authentication.
Test, test, test
Testing the first five tips takes little effort. Test each part separately so that you exclude external factors and assign differences in opens to the tested part. Email marketing is the marketing channel par excellence to test different components separately.