Top 5 Strategies to Boost your Email Open Rates
The single most important metric when sending any form of email is your Open Rate. But what can you do to make sure that future clients and contacts actually open your emails?
The single most important metric when sending any form of email is...
Your Open Rate.
You can have the most cleverly crafted email, like, ever...
But that won't matter diddly-squat if no-one opens your email in the first place!
So, here are our Top 5 Tactics for getting your Emails Opened.
Counting down from...
Number #5 - The Preview Text
This tactic is good to do but it's not vital.
It's why this tactic comes in at Number #5.
Put simply, some email broadcast tools offer the option to include Preview Text.
This is language that appears as a 'preview' in the recipeients inbox.
If you want to exploit this feature, use the Preview Text field to answer the question...
"WIIFM?" (What's in it for me?)
Note: This is not a super-powerful tactic. Use it whwn it makes sense.
Number #4 - List Hygiene
If you are sending emails in bulk, it pays to clean your lists.
This means, removing 'hard bounces', 'spam traps' and 'unsubscribes'.
Some emails broadcast tools will do this for you, over time.
But if you are sending to a new list, google 'email list hygiene services'.
Our two fave list hygiene services are 'NeverBounce' and 'ZeroBounce'.
Note: If you consistently send to 'dirty' lists (with too many dead emails bouncing or too many unsubscribers complaining), you will reduce the 'deliverability' of your emails.
Spam filters will learn to recognise your emails as 'low quality' and your emails become more land more ikely to end up in Spam folders. Noooo!
Number #3 - The Email Subject
We are now moving into tactics most likely to have big impact.
An email with a boring headline, such as 'Newsletter', that does not feel personalized or does not sell the value of its contents, is less likely to be opened.
So, when it comes to headlines, these three options work well: -
-
Personalize (EG. ' James 'Wild Thing' ?')
-
Get Cute/Cryptic (EG. 'What comes first? Leads or Sales'? Do you know?)
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Answer the question, WIIFM? (EG. Top 5 Tactics to get your Emails Opened)
Number #2 - Broadcasts v Batching
Do not under-estimate the influence of your delivery mechanism.
When you send emails using a broadcast tool, most Email Inboxes (such as Google or Outlook) now recognize the difference between Broadcast and individual emails.
Broadcast emails are more likely to wind up in the 'Promotions' folder.
However, batching tools, which send emails one-to-one, are more likely to end up in the 'primary' emails tab (depending on how you have setup your inbox).
If you are sending less than 1,000 emails, it helps to explore atching options.
Note: Our 'batched emails' are getting Open Rates above 65%, whereas our Broadcasts (like this email here) typically get Open Rates between 20% and 30%.
Number #1 - The 'From' Field
Several years ago, I bought a business namely for its email database.
It came with a list of 72,000 opt-in subscribers.
Over several weeks, I ran multiple split tests to boost the Open Rate, the Click through rate, reduce the Unsubscribe rate and generally 'wake' this dead list.
After many, many tests, I had raised the Open Rate from a number in the teens to an Open Rate just shy of 25%. I was feeling good about this but had one last test to run.
While the database didn't know me (yet), I decided to change one thing...
The name in the 'From' field.
Until this moment, I had been sending from the business.
Yes, the name of the business is what I had been using in the 'From' field.
I replaced that with MY name, 'James Tuckerman'.
The recipients did not know me...
I could not rely on my personal brand...
Yet, the Open Rate jumped to 44%!!!
Yes, humans like getting emails from humans.
That's why this tip comes in at number one.
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