Even the most skilled marketer needs to use different methods to improve their email open rate in any email marketing campaign. That’s why we’ve gathered a list of the 4 most important factors that can affect your open rate and what you can do to improve your results.
Send emails from personal accounts
Marketing automation certainly makes it easier to send mass emails, but mass emails can often end up in the junk folder. It’s important you use a personal account so that you don’t come across as spam. It also helps your audience connect with a certain individual in the company, who they can turn to if they have a query or question from your email marketing campaign. We sometimes forget, as marketers, that the email campaigns aren’t just a lead generation tool, but they can also be a lead conversion tool if your leads feel that they have someone they can connect with and talk to straight away.
Make your subject line a conversation starter
We often hear the line, “make your emails personal”. Most marketers do this simply by adding the first name of their recipient into the subject line. While this works well, some spam companies have caught on so you can’t guarantee using first names will increase your open rate. However, if you combine first names with a conversation starter, you are far more likely to engage with that person and encourage them to open your email. Some great examples we’ve found included:
- “Vicky, can we schedule a call for tomorrow?”
- “Ali, I’m sorry.”
- “Jess, I read your post on LinkedIn and just wanted to say…”
Or, tell them what the email includes
As the saying goes, the headline of your email is 80% of the hard work. After all, if they don’t like the subject line of your email, they probably won’t open it at all. While questions, numbers, how to’s and percentages work, categorising your subject line has proven to increase clicks in attracting, engaging and converting your email audience according to a study done by HubSpot.
So, if you wanted your target audience to watch a quick video on what your product can achieve, the headline should have [Video] in it. Or [Blog], [Infographic], [Whitepaper] or [Case Study], depending on the content. The minute they know you are offering them valuable content for free, the quicker your leads will open your email.
Remember, it’s not just about the open rate
Finally, open rates are great, but they are not the be all and end all of your email marketing campaigns. Click rates, engagement and conversions are all important parts that also need to be considered. So use analytics to track every individual result and consider which elements of your emails need changing.
Perhaps the subject line isn’t as truthful as it could be about the content inside or you are giving them too much information in the email, leaving them uninterested in clicking through to your website. Whatever the case, as long as you create emails that you yourself would be interested in opening, you will start to see your leads interact more with your email campaigns.