7 Truths Behind Great Email Open Rates and what to do . These small changes can lift your results 3x and and make you an email winner
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
How to increase your email open rates
- Use a recognizable sender name not a company name
- Use up to 10 words in your subject lines to get the best open rate
- Send regularly
- Send your email campaigns during the work day and after lunch
- Optimize your email campaigns for mobile, check before you send
- Segment your email lists
- Clean your list and get rid of the wasters
We will talk about more than these however they are proven to be the most important items on our agenda.
An average email open rate is 21% as conducted by Super Office. However, your open rate can vary with a lack of attention to the specific.
Add to this an average click-through rate of 3.3% you can get an idea of where you stand in this.
You need opens to get clicks to create sales so every step is important
My preferred carrier is Constant Contact
Spend as much time on your subject line as you do on the content
Never a truer word has been said. Most of us receive a lot of emails during the day so unless you grab our interest in the first second or so it just won't happen. We won't open we will delete it and move on.
Not opening your email is not a sign of disrespect, it is simply that what you are promoting is not of interest at this time, however, keep trying you may get me in a better mood next week.
I get emails from a few of the best in the business, not your average dummies, people like Neil Patel, Russel Brunson, and Ryan Deiss. These guys know the business and practice the rules. I may get mail every day or every week however most still go unopened.
Ryan at DigitalMarketer.com; do you stand out in a crowded inbox
Neil Patel; 3 SEO trends in automation.
Joel Therrien; This is the way to go Peter
Mike Filsaime; The biggest profit opportunity of 21
Chris Cardell; Peter the time has come
Noah Kagan; When to actually quit your job
What do all these have in common?
First of all they don't hide behind a company name or non de plume they say who they are right up front. I often talk about Know, like and trust as the pillars of marketing and these guys play on that.
You won't immediately hit the destroy button because you know and like them, your eyes will go to the topic line to assess your interest level..
Therefore your name and subject line are essential in your email marketing.
Secondly, I don't get an email every month, I get one every day, relentlessly, year on year regardless if I open them or not. I don't open everyone, maybe the odd one to see what is going on.
Finally, I have actually bought something from all of these along the way.
All email names are not real
Every day I get mail from various people wanting to do a report on my web page, improve my SEO and do my Social media marketing.
This mob has become very cunning in that they use names similar to or the same as celebrities.
The little recognition flag goes off in your brain and you dwell a little longer. They do this to emulate the above real names and suck you in.
I probably get a dozen of these a day and interestingly sometimes get tempted because they have the formula. It is one that works so make sure it is on your list.
7 Truths Behind Great Email Open Rates and what to do and importantly when to do it.
Send your email campaigns during the work day and after lunch
Whilst this statement generally runs true it is not exclusively so.
For example, I send mail to various tradespeople that are out working during the day.
there is no way of getting an open rate during those times. Evenings are also quite rushed with invoicing and family time however a weekend works well.
The general business person has peak times during the week. It was discovered that Tuesday to Thursday were the best days and in the afternoon when they are seeking diversions from their general activities.
Living in Australia I get a lot of overnight mail that confronts me every morning. This is my ruthless time with a delete button so it is really hard to get my attention.
However, in the mid-afternoon, all the sales channels come in with retail action. why because they get better clicks at that time of the day, these guys know what they are doing and have the stats on what works so I believe them.
My conclusion to this is to understand your customer, where they live and what they do and time slot them to the best action periods in their day.
Optimize your email campaigns for mobile, check before you send
This was a hard lesson learned that is still sometimes ignored.
Mobile phones are growing in the use of email collection. Many of us now have an address linked to our mobile.
Before you broadcast a message send a sample to your own email and review the result.
Large images are not good, links are too close together, and background colours are among the few no-nos.
The mobile phone is generally ignored by mail writers thus the open and click rates will suffer as a result. Don't let this be your mistake.
Segment your email lists
Take the humble baby carriage as an example.
Your average business or tradie has absolutely no interest however the female audience between say 23-40 is an ideal target.
Furthermore, the grannie brigade of 65+ Women has a huge interest in this as well.
Therefore you really need to segment your market for the best effect.
In fact, I have about 20 different categories to target based on the business and interest. These are mostly retail business outlets of all kinds so their needs are very different.
However, my newsletter marketing is very general in the discussion so it can go to all classes.
It is all about targeting your market as specifically as possible to obtain the best rates.
You may consider sending a second or further mail to those that opened the original mail. I achieved a 60% open rate doing this recently with a 3% click-through rate to back it up
7 Truths Behind Great Email Open Rates and what to do with time wasters
Clean your list and get rid of the wasters
You are generally charged on the number of subscribers in your list and not on emails sent therefore this can cost you money.
However, there will always be those that will never open a mail no matter what. There will be many a secretary that simply wipes the slate clean before handing the value to the boss.
This is common in many businesses so it is indeed difficult to gain the Like button.
Many of the experts will continue on forever or until you unsubscribe. They work more on niche marketing or specific targets that they know will roll over one day. It is just a matter of timing
I have a group of dentists that I market to, in fact, I even used follow-up calls because my offer was so good. We did a survey and found that very few dentists ever got near our mail. The front desk simply exploded every mail that came in that was not customer attached.
I never found a good answer to this because they are always too busy to talk and were not given access to mail. The few that we did get were more by luck than good work.
The opposite is the bored operators that go into click frenzy. They click the links, the Facebook link, Instagram even terms and conditions if they can. They are not buyers delete them and move on.
It will make your stats look better however we want real figures, not rubbish.
My conclusion and wrap-up on email open rates
If anything you do can be considered a real art this is really one of them.
Email marketing is still the most effective low-cost media to gather new business.
What you do with it can make a massive difference to the results.
Therefore incorporate these few simple rules and you will make a massive difference to your outcome. When you are sending thousands of emails a one percent change can be the difference between success and failure.
We can't guarantee your results however we can say that those who take this seriously have seen massive returns on the output.
Of course, content and offers are important but being opened is the only way to success.
If you are currently emailing do it better, if not then it is time to start on a new journey that will provide good returns on output.
7 Truths Behind Great Email Open Rates and what to do by Peter Hanley
