Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Open Rates

It’s the age old misconception that ‘No-one opens marketing emails’.

Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. When email marketing is done in the right way, your potential customers will look forward to hearing from you. In this article we’ll give you some useful tips to help you become a welcome part of your reader’s inbox and improve your email marketing open rate.

There are a few key principles to remember when constructing your emails to ensure that you gain as much interest as possible and attract your recipient’s attention.

Subject line

First and foremost, you need to consider your subject line. This is what people see first and is what they will use to form their decision on whether or not to open your email. You need to ensure that this is clear and people know why you have sent your email and what they can hope to gain from reading it. If your readers don’t know why they should open your email, the likelihood is that they won’t.

Don’t get caught up with the fact that your subject should be a set number of characters. You should write this in a way that makes sense and is natural, rather than cutting them short to reach a target for your character count. Be sensible with this though, if your subject line is 150 characters long the likelihood is that it will get cut off and people won’t get to see the subject.

Using both digits and unusual words in your subjects will help your email to stand out. People have cluttered inboxes and you want to differentiate yourself from everything else they are receiving. If you stand out, you are far more likely to have your email opened.

Email Content

Once you have people opening your emails, you need to ensure that they like what they see, otherwise no matter how good your subjects are in the future, these will be ignored.

You should always speak to your readers as individuals. No one likes to be treated as if they are part of a group that are being sent emails en masse and if this is often the case, it shouldn’t be  apparent. Try to use your recipient’s name and use conversational language if the context permits it.

Typical afternoon on 6th Avenue in New York City

You should always consider the point of your email. Why are you sending it? Is it because business is a little quiet and you want to try and get your name out there? Or is it that you have something that is worth sharing that you feel people will actually be interested in? You need to evaluate the purpose of your email and decide if this is a good motive to have, or if in fact, it would be more beneficial to put your email on the back burner until it’s relevant.

Once you have your idea in mind you should ensure that it is at the forefront of your email and that the intention doesn’t get lost. After you have written your email you should get this proofread to make sure it delivers on the promise of your subject.

Make sure that your emails only contain the information that they need. If your email is too long, people will be put off and they won’t read it. Be harsh with your editing and really question everything you have included.

Ask questions of your prospective readers. It helps to keep it more engaging and although you’re never going to receive an answer, in the majority of cases, it is thought provoking. It also helps to keep your email more natural, as you are likely to ask questions of someone if you are talking to them face to face.

Finally, mix it up. Keep these principles in mind, but don’t write as if you are using a template. Every email is going to be different, without you even intending for it to be. Trying to keep to a structure for your emails is going to make it seem as though they aren’t personal or mass produced.

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