5 Tips To Increase Your Email Open Rates
By: Jennifer Neel
Tags: Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Email Marketing Tips, Email Open Rates, Marketing Strategies

I don’t know about you, but I have the hardest time picking a movie to watch.

The whole ‘Netflix and chill’ (or Hulu, or Prime, or Disney Plus+…) scenario would be a lot more fun for me if it didn’t come with boatloads of anxiety.

I used to get so frustrated with myself about this.

There are SO many movies that I want to watch… oh boy, I certainly don’t have difficulty filling up my watch list.

But actually picking one when I snuggle up to watch? That’s at least an extra 30 minutes added to the film itself!

Who’s with me?

It’s not FOMO. With the option to pretty much watch whatever I want to watch whenever I want to watch it takes that off the table.

It’s a fear of wasting my time.

I hate, absolutely hate, when I start watching a movie and I’m just not that interested.

So one of two things happens:

a) I wait it out, give it another 20 minutes, see if the plot thickens or by the grace of some higher power the acting gets better… okay, another 10… and by that point I’m already so committed to the movie I have to finish it.

b) I watch the first 20 minutes, decide it’s just not pulling me in, exit out, pick another movie, go through the same thing, and either finally find something I want to watch after a few tries, or I roll over and go to bed.

If you don’t struggle with this, I commend you 👏. You have great movie picking abilities and must be easily entertained.

As a storyteller, I’ve got to plug into something right away otherwise you’re probably never going to grab my attention enough to compel me to sit and watch the whole thing through.

This is the same for me with almost everything.

What does this have to do with email open rates?

Guess what?

I know I’m not alone in this struggle because it’s the same thing your readers are going through when they open their inbox.

If your email is the present, your presentation in their inbox is the wrapping paper. And if the whole package (sender name, headline, preview text, lineup in their inbox) doesn’t look like a story that will capture their attention, they probably won’t open it.

Another reason your readers won’t open your emails are if your last email sucked. If you didn’t provide them with the value they were looking for, you might have lost them.

Those aren’t the only reasons why either. Lack of email open rates could also be from:

You’re ending up in their spam or junk folder

They don’t know or remember who you are

They don’t check their email that often

They interact with you consistently on other platforms

Oy vey. Sounds like just getting your emails opened, let alone read and taken action on is an uphill battle.

Do I even need to send emails to my list?

You already know the answer to this, but YES!

100%.

“But Jenn, most of my audience is on my social media… why bother?”

Because social media can change in an instant. Your audience can be enthralled by another channel you aren’t on. Your account can get blocked, flagged, hacked, or deleted… something I’ve seen happen so many times it isn’t funny. The channel’s algorithm can change. The rules can change. They can *shock* get rid of the app altogether!

Your email channel is yours. You have full ownership and rights to your email list, no matter what. It’s what they call ‘owned marketing’. You’re in control of how often, when, and where you communicate to your audience.

“If I hate emails and don’t like to read them, why would my audience?”

Target market research, baby! This isn’t about you, it’s about them. And even if you think that your audience doesn’t particularly like emails… or they’re a younger generation more focused on social media channels… email isn’t going anywhere and I guarantee they still read it.

Plus, with the competing rat race that is social media, no matter what channel we’re talking about, you constantly have to “spray and pray”, hoping that your content reaches their eyes.

With email, you know it’s getting to them… even if it’s piled under a bunch of other emails. This is why it’s beneficial to drive traffic to read your emails in all your other content because then they will actively go searching for it.

Email’s kind of special in that your audience member invited you to have a private conversation with them. The fact that they opted in or signed up for your list shows that they were inviting you into their private sector of the internet. On social media, just because they follow you or view your content from time to time, doesn’t mean they invited you… it means you invited them.

“What if I’m already selling and sharing the same stuff on my blog or other accounts? What’s the point of sending it in an email?”

I think some of the points above cover it, but to recap, they may not be seeing your stuff on social media. Also, you want to provide powerful content where your audience wants to consume it the most. Sure, maybe based on your research most of your audience loves Facebook or YouTube, but some of them still might prefer email.

Let me also add that if you are just C&P the stuff you share on social into an email… nah brah, not a good look.

You can drive traffic from your email back to that piece of content on the channel it is shared, sure (then you can increase your viewership, or likes, or whatever metrics you want to grow for that space), but quite frankly it’s really lame and lazy if you do that. It shows your audience that you don’t care. That you aren’t invested or willing to have a deeper, more intimate conversation with them made for their email experience.

Every interaction they have with you is an experience. No one wants to be directed to three different experiences, only to have it be the exact same thing.

Here’s five ways you can optimize your emails to get those open rates up and build a better relationship with your readers.

1. Make Your Subject Line Attention-Grabbing

Your subject line, along with the Sender, is the first thing that your audience sees when your email hits their inbox. 33% of email recipients only open their emails according to the subject line, so it’s kind of important. Going back to the start of this blog and my movie watching conundrum, your audience wants to know if this is a story that they are interested in. Your headline is helping them determine if they:

Will open and read it now or ‘save it for later’

Don’t really want to read it, but might eventually

Are just going to delete it

Are going to report it as spam

No one’s going to open an email unless they feel like it will benefit them, end of story. If your subject line:

Speaks to something they’re interested in right now

Answers an urgent need or desire

Invokes curiosity

Makes them feel like they’re going to miss out

Speaks to why they should open it right now

Is newsworthy

Catches their eye with emojis 👀

Your chances of getting it opened are that much greater. That sounds like a lot of pressure to place on a small amount of text, but get it right and you’ll be so pleased that your emails are actually getting read. You’ll definitely want to start optimizing your subject lines now, considering email providers like Gmail and Apple Mail now direct emails automatically to Spam boxes if they can tell a reader hasn’t been opening your emails for some time.

2. Send Emails At The Right Frequency

No matter what other marketers and blogs will say, there is no ‘one size fits all’ right answer for email frequency, even as it relates to the industry. What’s right for one audience and the relationship it has to a brand isn’t necessarily right for the other — even if they’re close, almost identical, competitors.

Now, we will see trends across different industries. For example, CoSchedule reports that a mere 2–3 times per month is preferred by 37% for B2B and B2C businesses, while 4–5 times per month is preferred 25% for B2B and 30% for B2C. IMHO, that’s definitely not enough, but again, it all depends on the target audience, what the entire marketing funnel looks like, and what the business sells.

The problem is, if you don’t email often enough, it can: lower your brand’s value, make you ‘forgettable’ in your target’s mind, look like you’re inconsistent/give your brand a poor reputation, send you to reader’s Spam box more frequently, and of course, lower sales. If you email too much, it can: lower engagement rates, cause email providers to filter or block your emails, increase your unsubscribes and complaints.

So what’s the best way to figure it out then? Make sure you do your market research and update it on a regular basis. Don’t be afraid to ask your list, or ask your social media audience how often they prefer to be emailed. Track your open rates and see if there are any trends you can identify related to how often or how little you’re emailing, while also taking into consideration other factors.

3. Personalize Your Sender Name

Personal rant: I can’t tell you how annoying it is when I opt-in for something and it comes from the business name, not a real person. Another personal rant is when I opt-in for something from a brand and they send it from a real person, but with no signs of who they work for. In either scenario, I feel lost as to who I am talking to.

In general, email open rate statistics tend to show that a business has better luck when they personalize who the email is from. Add a photo to the account as well so your reader can see a picture of you, the sender, rather than (like mentioned above) a name they don’t recognize.

Personalization with your emails is really important because, as mentioned earlier, your audience member just invited you to have a private, one-on-one conversation with them in their inbox. When an email, or any type of copy for that matter, feels personal, it’s more likely to connect to the reader and win them over to open over and over again.

Something I’ve seen done more recently that has gotten good results is email marketers personalizing their name, but with a “Hey, it’s [name]”, or, “👋Hi, [name] here!”, with “[name]” being your name/the business owner’s name, not the name of the audience member. I think this works really well because it’s attention-grabbing and breaks things up for the reader’s eye as they scroll.

If you are going to personalize, I’d highly suggest doing something similar to the above or adding the name of your business after your name, that way people who are new to your list won’t wonder who “Ben” is, or who “Convert Copy” is either.

Yes, they did opt-in for your emails, but think about how many other emails they’ve opted-in for, are receiving regularly, and how short our attention spans are. For example, I’m terrible with names but great with faces. Until I build more of a relationship with you, you might not be that memorable.

4. Write An Enticing Preview Description

This is one of the most looked over parts of an email, by far. I get it! You’ve put so much time, care, and consideration into writing a powerful email that’s going to have ALL of your readers clicking your buy button, or whatever your CTA is. Then, you’ve studied hundreds of high-converting subject lines, and are sure you crafted one that will quadruple your open rates. And personalization?

Duh, you got that covered! Whew. All done… can you schedule to send now?

Not so fast partner… don’t forget about the preview description!

A lot of people miss this because they’re so focused on the sender’s name and the subject line, they don’t think to question what the small, unassuming preview text is.

No one’s paying attention that anyways… right?

Wrong. Remember, this is part of the whole wrapping paper of the package. Doesn’t look appealing? Readers aren’t going to waste their time opening.

Sure, your email may be fantastic, but that doesn’t mean in a short snippet the first few words (typically if you don’t change the preview text what is shown is the first line of your email) are going to grab your readers attention.

You want the preview text to share the context of the email, and with only 35–140 characters, you don’t have much room to do this. If I’m not the one writing emails, I like to tell my clients to be cognizant of the number of readers they have on mobile versus desktop because the length of the preview text on mobile is far shorter than desktop.

The average smartphone screen only shows around 4–7 words in the preview text, so make sure those first words are attention-grabbing enough in case that’s all your reader sees. Then finish your sentence so it makes sense for desktop readers too.

Make sure your preview text falls in line with the tone of voice of the content in the email. You can make it compelling, invoke more curiosity, and think of it as a sub-head to your subject line. Just make sure it isn’t misleading. You don’t want readers to think they’re opening an email that’s going to tell a valuable story with tips, only to open up a point-blank promotional sales email.

5. Split Test Your Email Campaigns

A great way to boost any of your marketing conversions is through split testing. If you aren’t familiar with split testing, simply put, it’s where you have two separate pieces of copy/content that are randomized and presented to the same audience. You don’t have to figure out the randomization, your email provider does this for you.

It’s important to know why you’re split testing in the first place and what you’re exactly testing. Are you going to test a shorter email over a longer one? Are you testing two different styles of subject lines? The time which the email is sent? The type of content altogether? A specific word that is changed? There are a number of different things to experiment with.

Make this decision based on studying your previous email open rates. What trends can you notice? Focus on what the email presents before they open. You aren’t focused on increasing CTR’s, you’re focused on increasing open rates first. Combine that with what you’ve learned from above that you can improve on.

When split testing to increase open rates, don’t change too many things between each test, either, because you won’t be able to understand exactly why one email is being opened at a higher rate.

For example, don’t have a completely different preview text, subject line, AND sender in one email versus the other. Just change one element between the two so you can get clear results. If both still end up performing at about the same or even worse open rates than you’re used to seeing, try something else. Remember, marketing is a constant experiment of testing, validating, and optimizing. Have fun with it!

Feeling overwhelmed?

Like I just said, have fun with it! Sure, can you see a massive improvement to your open rates by changing just one word in your subject line? Absolutely. Could you see the opposite? Yes.

Don’t expect pie in the sky results overnight. Real results take time, and take the focus of studying your readers. Remember too that, just because you changed one thing and saw a huge increase this month, doesn’t mean that six months to a year down the road open rates won’t start to decrease again.

Your audience will change over time, your brand message and voice, and your funnel, which is why it is important to just have fun with this and enjoy the experiment that is email marketing.

Out of the five tips from above, which one are you going to implement, and do you already have the email in mind you’re going to test it out with? Share your thoughts below.👇