Good open rate is a sign of growth for any company as it indicates that your subject line is performing well. Conversely, a lower open rate must be concerning as it can affect your email engagement and, thus, other email metrics.
This guide will discuss ways to improve open rates to ensure all your subscribers open your emails.
Table of contents
What is an open rate?
The open rate indicates how many of your delivered emails get opened by your target audience. It helps you determine the effectiveness of your subject line and user engagement.
You can calculate email opens using this formula:
Email open rate = (Number of opened emails / Number of emails delivered) X 100
How to increase your open rates?
Improving email open rates relies on two important factors that your subscribers see before opening the email: subject lines and preheader text. However, other factors come into play too.
Here, we have listed 10 actionable hacks to help you increase your email open rates:
1. Make a fresh email list
Ensure that your email list is updated since many subscribers might be inactive or have shifted to other brands. Collect the latest data of the interested recipients who often check their emails. In this way, you can reach the right people.
2. Use an engaging and compelling subject line
A subject line can grab people's attention in seconds and can convince them to read your mail.
The subject line and sender's name should be as short as possible.
It should not consist of any inappropriate words or characters. An inappropriate subject line or sender's name may not reach the target audience as it can go into the spam folder, so you need to make an attractive, concise, and unique one.
3. Write a clear preheader text
Preheader text is the text which is visible just after the subject line. This text is also visible in the notification if a customer uses a mobile phone to check your email. The preheader text gives a brief description of what you are offering to your customer or your motive. Preheader text can influence people to read your whole message.
Here are some best practices for the preheader text you should follow:
Write a brief line or add a question that would arouse the reader's curiosity and can be converted into sales.
Make it personalized (by adding the user's name or emoticons), which would make them open the email.
Create a sense of urgency like a limited-time offer, coupon deals, etc.
Related guide: An Ultimate Guide to Creating Personalized Emails
4. Use double opt-in
Double opt-in ensures that you have a good quality contact list, and this will help your email reach the maximum number of people with the right email address.
This option confirms the email by sending a confirmation email and then adding them to the contact list. It can help you send emails to the people interested in your product, which will further increase the email open rate and conversion rate.
5. Segment your email list
By segmenting the list, you can categorize subscribers or customers into different segments like new subscribers, regular customers, irregular customers, etc.
You can offer discounts or other incentives to the new customers to retain them.
In contrast, you can come up with alternatives for regular customers so that they don't leave in between.
Related guide: Step-By-Step Guide to Segment Your Email List in 2022.
6. Make emails responsive for every device
Since most of the customers use mobile phones to check their emails, you must ensure that the email is responsvie to mobile phones and other devices.
The text should neither be too small nor too big.
Provide proper spaces between text.
Keep the message short and precise as most users don't prefer reading long messages.
The graphics should not be too large since it takes longer to load.
7. Decide the best time to send email
The best time to send an email is usually decided by several factors, including geography, holidays, demography of the subscribers, etc. However, it can vary depending on the people you target and what schedule they follow.
For example, if your target audience is students, the best time would be in the evening or weekend. On the other hand, if your target audience is the employees of an organization, then the best time would be in the afternoon and on weekdays.
The best time can also be decided based on geography. For example, if your audience is based in a specific country, the best time to send emails would be dependent on their time zone.
To know how to find the optimal send timings, you can read these guides:
Related guide: A Guide to Finding the Right Email Cadence for Higher Engagements
8. Avoid spam triggered words
You should avoid using words that trigger email clients' spam filters. Some of these words are - Cheap, jackpot, 100% free, profits, etc. Avoiding these words in the email subject line can help improve the email open rate due to higher deliverability.
Related guide: 284 Spam Words That Are Affecting Your Email Deliverability
9. Create relevance by using the latest viral trends and local news or festivals
Most people are familiar with the latest trends on social media or in the news. So you can use trending topics to build an irresistible subject line. In addition, local news and festivals can enhance the relevance of your message resulting in more email opens.
10. Provide value, not just information
For building long-term relationships with your customers, you need to provide value so that the customer can connect with your products and create the right image of your business. In some scenarios, your subscribers might not buy the product themselves, but they can recommend your product to their family and friends, which will result in the growth of your business in the long run.
Conclusion
Getting a good open rate is highly important for your business. You can use email marketing tools like Mailmodo, which supports maintaining and segmenting lists, A/B tests, personalization, and much more to increase your open rates.
