How to double your email marketing open rates

Table of Contents

• How to increase email marketing open rate?
• 1. Resending is key
• 2. Try cleaning up your list
• 3. Use double opt-in to build your subscriber list
• 4. Make use of segmentation
• 5. Always test your subject lines
• 6. Make good use of the preview texts
• 7. Audit and analyze the open rates
• Good email marketing open rate - final thoughts

If your email open rate is at par or above 24.7%, you are doing well. But if it is lower than the average, you might want to tweak your email marketing strategies a little to gain a competitive edge. Would you welcome a few tricks and tips regarding this? Here is a complete guide to boost your email open rates.

How to increase email marketing open rate?

1. Resending is key

Don’t worry if your subscribers didn’t open your emails the first time. You can always resend them. Once you have sent your email campaign, wait for a few days. If your subscribers haven’t opened the email, resend it and tweak your subject line a little. The open rates of your second campaign maybe a little less than the first campaign, but it would scale up the number of subscribers who actually see it.

2. Try cleaning up your list

It’s good to clean up your email list once in a while. It not only enhances your open rates but also decreases your email marketing costs to a great extent. So, if you have subscribers who haven’t opened any of your email campaigns in the last six months, you should ask them if they are willing to receive emails from you or not. Here's how you can do this:

- Keep a check on spam addresses and remove them if there are any.
- Send re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers who haven’t opened any of your last 40 email campaigns.
- Make sure to change the subject line and send your email campaigns three times to inactive subscribers. If they still don’t respond, remove them from your list.

3. Use double opt-in to build your subscriber list

Double opt-in is a great way of making sure that your subscribers actually want to receive your emails. It requires the subscribers to click on the confirmation email they receive once they sign-up through a subscription form. If the subscribers don’t click on the confirmation link in the email, they won’t receive any of your emails. Consequently, it can significantly enhance your open rates.

4. Make use of segmentation

If you want to resonate well with your subscribers, give them what they are looking for. Remember, each of your subscribers is different from the other. Their interests, lifestyle, location, gender, age, purchasing power - nothing is the same. How can you target them with a single email campaign?
Leverage the subscriber data and segment your email campaigns accordingly. Did you know that segmented email campaigns enhance the open rates by 14.32%? In fact, even the click-through rates accelerate by 100.95% through segmentation. In short, segmentation if done right has the potential to transform your email campaigns for good and brings you unmatched results.

5. Always test your subject lines

Thirty-five percent of subscribers open an email solely based on the subject line. And if that’s not enough, 69% of them mark an email spam just because of the subject line. Hence, it’s important to decipher which subject line would work best for your email campaign. You can do this by analyzing your subject lines through A/X testing. With this testing, you send emails with different subject lines to a small percentage of your subscriber list. This will allow you to see which subject line performs the best. In this way, you can send the highest performing subject line to the rest of your email list and enhance your open rates.

6. Make good use of the preview texts

Preview texts are a snippet of the email copy you send. It is visible below the subject line. Usually, this preheader is pulled from the body content of your email, but you can optimize it to attract your subscribers and make them open your email. Wondering how can you do that? Use any of these simple steps and you will be good to go:

- Use email marketing software to edit the preview text.
- Try including an enticing second subject line in the preheader.
- Use the preview text as your email summary.
- Include a call to action in the preview text. This would entice the subscriber to open and click on the link mentioned. It is a great strategy to bring them directly to your website and in turn, enhance your website traffic.

7. Audit and analyze the open rates

Analyzing your email open rates can help you understand more about the kinds of email content and subject lines that work best for your campaigns. So, take notice of which of your subject lines and email content have the highest open rates. While good subject lines should be precise (50 characters or less), personal and clear; good email content should be relevant, interactive, dynamic and visually appealing. Get a hold of these attributes and see how you can nail your email open rates in no time.

Good email marketing open rate - final thoughts

Email open rates play a critical role in the success of any email campaign. So, make sure you put your best efforts into reaching your subscribers on a larger base. The above-mentioned tips are surely going to help you improve your email marketing strategies and enhance your open rates, one email at a time. So, what are you waiting for? It’s high time you try them out and deliver results that drive more traffic and conversions for your business.

About the author

Chris is the Director of InboxArmy, a leading email marketing agency that specializes in providing advanced email marketing solutions from production to deployment. He has worked directly with Fortune 500 companies, retail giants, nonprofits, SMBs and government bodies in all facets of their email marketing services and marketing automation programs for almost 2 decades. He enjoys sharing his distinctive thoughts and insights regarding email marketing best practices in his blog.