There’s no denying that email marketing is hard work, but there’s nothing like being able to connect with your leads and potential customers on a one on one basis directly in their inbox using personalized content. There’s no other marketing technique like it.
However, it doesn’t matter how well your emails are written or what approach you’re taking; your content will only be effective if you’re able to your emails open, which of course depends on your open rates.
But how do you improve your open rates and get your emails in front of more people? Today, we’re going to detail everything you need to know!
1. Clear Out Your List
There’s no denying there’s going to be people who have signed for your mailing list for the freebie you were offering or were genuinely interested in what you have to say but have recently (or perhaps over time) gone off your content and now no longer open your emails.
“As an email marketer, it’s important to make sure you clean through your list and remove anybody that haven’t opened your emails in a long time. This way, you can make sure your open rate results are accurate and representative of the content you’re creating”
Terry Johnson, a project manager for WriteMYX and Brit Student.
2. Divide Up Your Lists
Email segmentation is a tried and tested tactic that’s been proven to work time and time again, and it’s vital to make sure you’re implementing it into your own lists. By dividing your subscribers up, you can post content that’s dedicated to that particular target market.
This basically means you’ll be producing more accurate and highly targeted pieces of content that will increase your open rates because the content will be suited to them.
3. Write For An Individual
While you may be writing to hundreds or thousands of people, in the eyes of your customer, you’re only writing to them, so make sure you’re writing your emails with the sense that you’re talking to someone on a one-on-one basis.
This is so important because it will help you to connect with the individual, rather than treating them like another number on your mailing list. Get this right, and people will be much more likely to open your emails for longer periods of time.
4. Get Out The Spam Folder
One of the main reasons you might not have your emails being opened is because you’ve ended up in the spam system of some email clients, so it’s important to make sure you get yourself out of this! To do this, there are several things you can do.
“From making sure your readers are actually opting into your content and allowing it, as well as making sure you’re sending your content through legitimate domain names, also include your location, use merge tags within your emails, and make sure you’re using a professional IP address”
Tina Jackson, an email marketer for Next Coursework and Australia2Write.
5. Enhance Your Subject Line
The subject line of your emails is going to be the first thing anybody sees to do with your email, and just like the headline for an article, it will be make-or-break to many people as to whether they open the email or not. If you want to improve your open rates, this is an element you’ll need to work on.
Try finetuning the tone of voice for your email and making certain tweaks to see what happens. Try A/B testing and sending out two different emails to see which one performs best. You won’t ever get to a finished product with subject lines, just a continuous journey of tweaking and getting better and better.
6. Get Your Timing Right
To cut a long story short, there’s no hard and fast rule as to when the best time to send your emails is because they will vary from person to person. However, statistics do show some general trends that could be implemented into your email marketing campaign to boost your open rates.
For example, sending your emails on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, tend to perform better than those sent on the weekend. What’s more, getting the time of day right, especially if you’re targeting people in the same time zone, can make a big difference.
Increasing email open rates isn’t an easy job, but with these great ideas, it can be done. Make sure that your subject line is always relevant and interesting, that your content is just right for the stage of the buyer’s journey your segments are in and that you deliver what they expected.
These ideas will only get you up to a certain point – you have to work hard to be consistent in quality so that alone can attract people to open your emails.