Are your current marketing emails falling short when it comes to open rates? You’ll want to read these tips. 

Is your email marketing falling short when it comes to open rates? 

If you answered yes, you’re not alone. Many companies find that they are sending email after email with no results. It can be a frustrating thing when you consider that email marketing is supposed to be one of the best ways to reach your customers. 

Maybe it’s their busy inbox or that you aren’t sending the right content -- either way you need to take measures to try and improve your current tactics. Once you get customers to start clicking through you’ll likely see an increase in conversions, leading to more sales and an increase in revenue. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at a few different ways you can tweak your current emails to help increase open rates. 

Here’s a quick look at the ways to increase open rates that we’ll cover in this article: 

• Improve your subject lines
• Use personalization for a better customer experience
• Know the best time to send your emails

Start Improving Your Emails With These Tips

75% of people prefer companies to communicate with them via email. That means that your customers want to see your emails in their inboxes. If your open rates aren’t reflecting this, then it’s time to sit down and take a closer look at what you’re sending out. 

People prefer email promotions above all other channels. If you’re spending more time trying to reach customers via social media or direct mail, you should refocus your campaign. Image courtesy of Medium. 

Are you sending emails to an outdated list? Have your subscribers started marking your communication as spam? Is the content you’re promoting irrelevant to your subscribers? 

There are tons of reasons your emails aren’t getting opened. While we will take a look at a few tips that can help make your emails more clickable, there could be other factors contributing to your poor results. 

It All Starts With the Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing your customers see when you email them. It’s often the deciding factor on whether they will open your email or delete it. That makes it one of the most important things to consider when sitting down and creating your email content. 

First impressions matter -- and that holds true for email marketing. Don’t lose the opportunity to use catchy phrases and product promotions to lure your customers in. A boring subject line is sure to find its way into a trash folder. 

Let’s look at a few different ways to help you write better subject line copy. 

Keep it Short and Sweet

You only have so much space to get your point across. If your subject line is too long, it will get cut off and the recipient won’t get the full context. That means that your customers could be missing the most important information simply because the full subject line isn’t displayed. 

For best results, you’ll want to keep your emails short and sweet. Email subject lines with 50 characters or less result in 12% higher open rates and 75% higher click-through rates. By following this best practice, it’s much more likely that your customers will get the whole picture.

When it comes to subject lines, retail space is limited. You need to get your point across right away. Tell them what the deal is to encourage them to click-through to learn more. Image courtesy of Business2Community. 

If you’re promoting a sale or sharing new products -- make sure that is clear right away. Getting to the point right away will help capture their attention and stop them from scrolling through their inbox.

This is even more important when you consider 66% of all emails are now opened on mobile devices. That means that subject lines can become even more condensed and even less of your message will be displayed. 

Take Emails to the Next Level With Personalization

Writing email content with personalization in mind is important. Your customers no longer want to receive irrelevant bulk emails that don’t apply to their wants and needs. They expect that you’ve taken the time to learn about them and provide them with the content they want. 

Creating a personalized email experience a click-through rate that is 14% higher than non-personalized emails. That means personalization matters, and you’re only hurting yourself by ignoring that fact. 

But here’s the thing. Simply adding someone’s name to the subject line or body content won’t cut it. You need to take your personalization a step further and really give your customers what they want. 

Lacking personalization in your email marketing strategy can reflect poorly on your brand. There are many reasons consumers want the content they receive to be personalized -- make sure you’re not frustrating your customers. Image courtesy of New Old Stamp. 

You can do that by using data-driven technology to help you learn more about your customer likes, dislikes, behaviors, and actions. From there, you can use that data to provide them with exactly what they need. 

Here are a few different things you can learn about your customers to improve your emails with advanced analytics: 

• What products they are interested in
• See the areas of your site they have recently browsed
• Know when they are more likely to open emails
• Learn what subject lines are most effective
• Identify what customers are more likely to purchase with a coupon

Once you know this information, you can improve your list segmentation. Segmenting your list will allow you to group like-minded customers and get the most out of your personalization efforts. 

Know When to Send Your Emails

This one may take some time and testing to nail down, but knowing when to send your emails can have a big impact on open rates. Getting the timing right on your emails could help prevent you from getting lost in a sea of competitor marketing emails. 

Knowing when people check their emails can help you identify the best times to send communication. While best practices can guide you on when to send emails, you need to learn what works best for your customers. Image courtesy of Convince and Convert. 

While you can do a search to find when the best time to send your marketing emails is, the truth of the matter is that it will vary for everyone. Your customers all have their own personal preferences and schedule, and that will affect when they can and can’t check emails. 

With the help of A/B testing and technology that can identify when subscribers are opening emails, you can start to hone in on the best sending times. From there you can begin to adjust when your emails are sent. 

As you learn more about your customers, it’s even possible to start sending emails to each individual at the time they are most active. This will not only increase open rates, but it will add another sense of personalization to your content. 

Further Improving Your Email Open Rates

Implementing these tactics will help you increase your email open rates. By capturing their attention right away with a catchy subject line, improving personalization, and knowing when to emails to your customers, you can create an improved customer experience. 

While these tips will help set you up for success, there are many factors that can contribute to poor open rates. If you find that making changes to these areas of your emails don’t provide you with the metrics you were hoping for, you’ll want to keep digging to find the route cause. 

Email marketing is an ever changing world. You need to continue to learn more about your customers and tweak your emails to keep up with their needs. Don’t stop trying to improve. As you learn more about your customers and implement new tactics, your open rates will reflect it.