6 Hot Tips To Increase Your Email Open Rates
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach people. Why? It’s less intrusive than an unannounced text or call, is easy to scale, and allows you to be more thoughtful and informative with the content you provide. However, email marketing doesn’t automatically just work because people sign up for it or somehow made it on your email list. No, no no…you actually need to put a lot of thought into a content strategy to make sure that your message gets delivered, read and is actionable. Here’s a handful of tips for you to get the most out of your email strategy.
1. Ensure Your Emails Hit Primary Inboxes
One way to ensure email delivery is by using a tool to see if it’s probable that your emails will make it into people’s primary inbox, and not a secondary filter or SPAM folder. Something as simple as putting the word “Free” or “cash” in your subject line could trigger a spam filter which will dramatically decrease the chances that people will actually see your email at all. Use tools like Mail Tester to check deliverability before sending out any campaign. This tool will flag the things that might be red flags for you so that you can change them before your email goes out.
2. Check to Make Sure Your Domain isn’t Blacklisted
If you’ve been sending a lot of unsolicited emails or people are telling you that your emails have been going into their spam folder, you may have been blacklisted. A blacklist is basically a list of blocked website domains, email addresses or IP addresses. This can happen if your email is being marked as SPAM by many people, and subsequently, your whole domain can get pretty screwed. Meaning, not just your email address, but your entire team’s and anyone else who has a company domain email. Because when a domain gets on one of these lists, email servers that use these blacklists (the major ones do, like Microsoft’s Outlook, Gmail, etc.) will block emails being delivered from the blacklisted domain. So if you’re on one of these lists, that’s a no go. You’ll need to work to try and get yourself removed from the blacklists ASAP!
Check to see if you’ve been blacklisted by any servers with MXtoolbox. They can also help you try and remove your domain from a blacklist if you find that you have managed to get on one or two. But warning, getting off of these lists is NOT an easy feat.
3. Segment Your Lists
One of the biggest email marketing mistakes people make is not segmenting their email lists. This can be really problematic because it means that you might not be reaching the right people with the right message, which can hurt both engagement and deliverability rates! One way around this problem is by segmenting lists into groups based on interests or behaviors, industries, product interest, etc. and customizing emails for each segment. This gives you a better chance of reaching all your subscribers with the perfect message that will resonate and make a better impact on conversions.
There are a lot of super sophisticated ways to automate this list segmentation, but to get you started at the most basic level, you can have your customers or prospective customers self-select into these segments with a drop down in and of your website form-fills. Asking something as simple as what are you most interested in? And having them select which categories resonate with them best. With many of the most popular email platforms such as Mailchimp, Active Campaign, Constant Contact, Hubspot, etc., you’ll be able to create a workflow that funnels your contacts into the right audience segment automatically.
4. Incorporate Plain-Text Emails Into Your Strategy
Many companies are now moving away from heavily designed campaigns in favor of ones based purely in text format (a trend called “text only” or “plain-text”). The idea behind this simplicity-first movement is that we’ve reached an era where most devices support email reading without images – phones, tablets, desktops and laptops alike. So they don’t always load images. By focusing less on always having every email have graphics and imagery and more on punchy text that gets your point across, many are seeing this improves deliverability and are getting positive feedback that the emails seem more authentic! Plain-text, or plainly designed emails, can help you establish a better, more genuine connection with your contacts. So try to mix this in a bit!
5. Write the Right Subject Line
Choose a meaningful subject line which reflects the content of the email in a succinct enough way so people will know what’s inside without having to open it up… or don’t. Actually, there is data that says being pretty vague COULD also be helpful for open rates. In fact, subject lines such as simply “Hey.” have proven to perform strangely well! The bottom line, you’re going to want to try a variety of things; from descriptive to vague and catchy. You’ll want something that will pique their interest enough to take that initial step of opening your email.
One thing to be aware of, there are certain character limits for subject lines depending upon one’s device or app they are reading the email from, and ideally you want to have less characters so the subject lines do not get cut off. The subject line is the most critical component of an email because if it isn’t catchy and relevant to your segment, then hello trash can! Make people WANT to open your emails.
6. Choose the Correct Time of Day
Choose the time of day that your contacts are most likely to read emails, even if it might be different during work hours and after work. Select a time when they’re more likely to have downtime or not be as busy so there’s a higher chance they’ll open it up in those instances.
Consider the persona and what their day-to-day looks like. Is this email hitting first time moms, dentists, or CEOs? Each will have very different average patterns for when they will most likely be reading their emails. You can even leverage many native tools that come with email platforms like HubSpot and Mailchimp that you can enable to only send to your contacts at the optimal days of times based on their past open patterns.
Nailing Email Marketing Sounds Easy…But it Aint!
Email marketing can be far more nuanced than what most people believe it to be. There are so many things to consider in order to get the most out of your email campaigns, but being equipped with the right information and advice can go a long way to increasing your overall performance. If you need a helping hand, or just want to scale your marketing efforts, you know who to call 😉 – Hint: It’s us. Call Axle Eight.