Email marketing is an integral part of your digital marketing strategy and a guaranteed way to ensure your business’ long-term success online. Unlike social media, you own your email list which allows you to focus on your most loyal customers and work to strengthen those relationships.
Your loyal subscribers are the ones who open everything you send, click on your links, visit your website, and ultimately buy your products or sign up for your services. But the only way to build a list of loyal subscribers is to first get them to open your emails! To do that, you need to begin by deciding what type of email to send, then work towards improving your email open rates with a few simple steps.
What are the different types of email marketing?
The type of email you choose to send will depend on the type of message you want to send to your audience. As a business, there are 3 different types of emails that you can send: promotional, editorial, and transactional.
Promotional emails: Promotional emails are exactly that – emails designed to sell or make a customer take action to move closer towards a purchase. These emails may contain a sales pitch, meeting request, coupon, special offer or can also be an abandoned cart reminder.
The goal of a promotional email is to drive a conversion and will encourage the recipient to make a purchase, book an appointment, schedule a call, or sign up for something. These types of emails directly impact your revenue because they are designed to increase your sales.
Editorial emails: Editorial emails are a form of content marketing, and are designed to either help, inspire or entertain your subscribers. These are the emails that contain relevant content for the reader, including industry tips/tricks, stories, information or even funny videos or memes.
These emails should speak directly to your subscribers and should contain content that is most relevant to them. If they don’t contain content relevant to your audience, they will fall flat, and open rates could decline. Editorial emails help to make you stand out as an industry leader and work to build the know, like and trust factor.
Transactional emails: Transactional emails are often automated ones, and usually arrive in response to a subscriber who has taken some sort of action. Generally, this is in the form of a confirmation email, a link to a download or a thank you email.
Transactional emails are still important in the email marketing world. They are a way for your business to deliver on its promises while showing a bit of your brand’s personality.
Each type of email that you send has an impact on your email marketing open rates and the success of your campaign as a whole.
What does an email marketing open rate mean?
Simply put an email marketing open rate is the calculated percentage of people subscribed to your list who receive and open your emails. The calculation is done by taking the number of people who opened the email and dividing it by the number of emails sent that didn’t bounce.
According to Mailchimp, email open rates tend to average anywhere between 15% and 30% for most industries. Personal interest topics (think hobbies, photos etc.) trend higher while marketing topics (think ecommerce, coupon offers etc.) trend lower. Daily deals have the lowest open rate of all.
Your email service provider will give you the statistics for every email marketing campaign you create and will provide you with your open rate for that particular campaign, among other things. Your open rate will give you a general idea of how your campaign performed and could provide you with insight on what you may need to change for next time.
How can I improve my email marketing open rates?
There’s no point in sending out email marketing campaigns if no one is actually opening your emails! If you’re finding your open rate is lower than you would like, try these 10 simple ways to improve your rates.
1) Keep your list fresh
Have you taken a peek at your subscriber list recently? Do your subscribers still want to hear from you? It’s always a good idea to go through your list on a regular basis to remove any inactive subscribers. This includes anyone who has not engaged with your email campaigns within the last 6 months or more.
Before you remove them completely, try sending out a last-ditch effort email to see if you can get them to resubscribe. If they don’t engage after that, then it’s time to remove them from your list completely.
Another way to keep your list fresh is to check in regularly with your subscribers by asking them to update their information or to take part in a quick survey. This encourages engagement from your subscribers and also shows you who is interested in your emails and who is not.
2) Segment your list
One of the determining factors in email opens is relevance of the email to the subscriber. If someone thinks the email is of importance to them, they are more likely to open it. And the best way to increase the relevancy of your emails? By segmenting your email list.
Segmenting your list is fairly easy, start by adding tags to your subscribers based on behavior. For example, when a subscriber becomes a paying customer, you may want to send them different types of emails than you would send to someone who hasn’t purchased anything yet. If you offer a wide variety of products or services, you could also segment your email list based on specific products purchased (i.e. men’s wear vs. ladies wear, kids shoes vs. women’s shoes etc.).
Once you have your email list segmented, it’s much easier to know what kinds of subject lines and messages will entice a subscriber to open your email and engage with your marketing campaign.
3) Try to avoid the dreaded spam folder
When it comes to email marketing campaigns, the one place you definitely don’t want to land is directly in your subscriber’s spam folder. Emails, even the best ones, can still get caught in spam and rarely opened.
If you want to maximize the reach of your email marketing campaigns, make sure you’re doing everything you possibly can to keep your emails out of the spam folder.
• Make sure all recipients of your emails have opted-in to receive your email campaigns (either through a pop-up email capture form on your website or in store).
• Send your campaign from a legitimate IP address, one that hasn’t been flagged as spam in the past.
• Send through a verified domain.
• Use merge tags to personalize the “To” field of your campaign.
• Avoid salesy language in your email subject lines.
• Include your location if possible.
• Allow subscribers the option of opting out of your emails.
• Remove email addresses that have continually bounced.
There is a chance that your email may not go through, which could result in an email bounce, (this can be temporary or permanent). Over time a higher bounce rate could ruin your sender reputation and put your IP address on a blacklist as spam.
4) Time your emails
When you send out your email is just as important as how you send it and what you say inside. The timing of your email can have a huge impact on whether or not subscribers open your emails, so make sure you’re thinking carefully about what day and time you send them.
One way to do so is to perform some A/B testing to identify which timeframes seem to perform best. Generally speaking, the best time of week to send emails is on the weekday, not on the weekend.
The type of emails you send also play a factor in your choice of time. Hobby emails are more likely to be opened earlier in the day whereas work-related content is more likely to be checked during business hours. You also want to make sure you’re not sending your emails out too early in the day and remember to take into account time zones if you’re sending your emails out nationally or internationally.
Ultimately when trying to decide the best day and time to send out your emails, try putting yourself in the shoes of your audience. What do you think they do in the morning, afternoon, and evening? What does their typical workday look like? How late do you think they stay up at night? How early do they get up in the morning? What are their average scrolling habits (you can use your social media channels to help you get a better sense of this one). Answering just a few of these questions will help you decide on the best time to send out your emails.
5) Subject lines matter
Subject lines are the bread and butter of email marketing campaigns and can be the difference between an email that performs well and an email that doesn’t. Email marketing is nothing new and there are many subject lines that have been used time and time again. In order to stand out from the crowd and increase your open rates, you need to have subject lines that are unique and creative.
• Make them curious: you want to keep your audience guessing and wanting to know more. Use a subject line that piques their interest enough to open.
• Use numbers: numbers tend to draw the eye of your audience, so try using a number in your subject line.
• Make it light: use a fun, joking and conversational tone in both your email and subject line. Serious subjects aren’t as enticing for people to open. Also, if possible, personalize your subject line.
And remember to keep your subject line brief. It should be short enough that someone can simply glance at it and get an idea of what your email is about. A subject line of about 20 words is preferable because it can be scanned quickly.
6) Make your emails personal
When you start writing your emails, imagine you’re writing them to a close friend, with a personal subject line and message. Doing so will create a connection with your reader and will make them feel as though they are the only one that received the email, not one of a thousand.
To make your emails personal, you’ll need to get to know your audience. You need to understand their problems, their wants, their needs, their likes, and their dislikes. You want to make them feel as though they are your priority and the most valued customer.
When you speak directly to your customer, you are creating a sense of loyalty and trust. They believe that you are paying attention to their individual needs and are more likely to open an email from you when they receive it.
7) Keep it casual
Your emails shouldn’t sound stuffy, salesy, or “academic”. They should sound as though you are writing a casual email to a friend, keeping them informed of what’s going on with your business.
Keeping it casual also makes it seem less like a bulk announcement and more like a personalized email, one that people are more likely to open.
8) Write great content, each and every time
Getting users to open your email is one thing, but actually getting them to read it is another. If you have great content, then your readers will continue to open your emails each time you send one. If your content isn’t great, they’re less likely to open them in the future, and may even unsubscribe.
The key to making subscribers happy? Have amazing content! Make sure your content is well-written and valuable to your subscribers. Don’t just send out an email simply to send out an email. The more value you bring to your subscribers, the more loyal they’ll become and your open rates will increase as a result.
9) Make it funny
Connecting with your subscribers doesn’t always have to be formal and stuffy, humour has a way of making a connection with people and bringing them back for more. Humour, if done correctly, brings out your brand’s personality, and will stick in the minds of your subscribers.
Making your email funny doesn’t mean you have to insert countless jokes throughout. It can be as simple as inserting a tongue in cheek reference, a funny meme, or a lighthearted joke. Just make sure it aligns with your brand and your ideal audience.
10) Make it mobile friendly
Don’t forget about your mobile users. If you’re anything like we are, you tend to check your email on your phone throughout the day. That’s why it’s important to make sure your emails are visually appealing and friendly for your mobile users. For mobile, your emails should have responsive formatting and loadable media and should also consider that long subject lines aren’t viewed as easily on mobile devices. You’ll also want to make sure you:
• Keep formatting simple (single column, under 600 px wide).
• Use larger fonts (small fonts are hard to read on mobile).
• Make sure it looks good without images (if possible).
• Use smaller images to reduce load time
• Use a large call-to-action button as larger buttons are easier to tap with your thumb.
• Don’t place links too closely together.
When it comes to email marketing, getting your subscribers to open your emails is the first (and most important) step. Try using a few of the tips above to see if it helps you get better open rates. Don’t get discouraged though if you don’t see an increase right away. Email marketing, like all marketing, can take time to figure out what works best for you and your audience. If you’re having a hard time getting your email open rates up or just don’t have enough time to put into your email marketing campaigns, then give the team at Trilogy Solutions a call. We can work with you to create email marketing campaigns that convert!
