How To BOOST Your Email Open Rates

What’s the point of sending out an email if no one opens it?

Here’s some strategies you can put into place immediately to boost your email open rates:

WRITE A GREAT SUBJECT LINE

Your subject line is the first clue someone has to go off of when deciding whether or not to read your email. If you want them to open the email, you absolutely must put a lot of effort into the subject line. Click here to get the top 101 email subject lines. The rule of thumb is to devote half of your time to the subject line and half to the email copy – that’s how critical a good subject line is.

To achieve a higher open rate, learn the buzzwords that get attention in your niche and use them whenever you can. For B2B, words like “profit” will boost interest in nearly any industry, while B2C subject lines benefit from words like “sale” or “video”. But like any form of copy writing, the better you get to know your target audience, the better your subject lines and emails will resonate.

There’s one more wrinkle when it comes to email: You have to take into account which words the spam filters are watching for, including “prize”, “free”, “bonus”, “purchase”, and “order”. Avoid using excessive exclamation marks or capital letters. Lastly, think long and hard about who you’re sending your message to. You may need further list segmentation so that you can tailor your subject line to a more specific group – prospects versus customers, for example, or customers of Product A versus customers of Product B.

Click here to get the top 101 email subject lines

GET THE TIMING RIGHT

Nearly one-quarter of all email opens occur within the first hour of delivery. In the next two to four hours after that point, you’ll see less than 8 percent in opens, and by the time the day has gone by, you’ll have less than 1 percent. Since your best chance of getting an email opened and read is in the first hour after it’s been sent, you want to make sure your email is received when your customers are ready and waiting.

Unfortunately, there will never be a universally perfect time to send your emails out. Even if you find a peak time when your emails get opened most (such as 10am on Wednesday), that still doesn’t necessarily represent the ideal time for the majority of the email subscribers. Even so, you should focus on the times that get you the best results, keeping time zones in mind for your audience.

There are plenty of studies out there that suggest which day of the week is best to send out an email, but countless variables affect this ideal day. That’s why you should conduct your own test. For instance, if you have 10,000 people on your email list, try sending an email to half of them on Tuesday at 2pm and an identical email to the other 5,000 subscribers on Thursday at the same time. The day with the better open rate is usually the better day.

USE LIST SEGMENTATION

Who you’re sending emails to has an enormous impact on what you should do with both your subject lines and your timing. You’re looking at people who are at different points in the sales cycle. Some has already bought from you, others are interested in learning more about your specific product offerings, and still others are just now coming to understand that they need the product or services you sell.

Segmenting your list and focusing your content on where each customer is in the sales cycle or where they lie in your demographics will deliver much better results than a general message sent out to everyone.

Lastly, keep in mind that pairing direct mail with your email campaigns will see a much better overall response. Email is inexpensive to send out, but according to the Direct Marketing Association, it gets an average response rate of just 0.1 percent, while direct mail sees 1 percent on average. Try following up with highly targeted direct mail along with your email campaign to see real synergy in action.

Ultimately, when it comes to email, you’ll see better results with a great subject line, proper timing, effective list segmentation – and some direct mail pieces on follow up.

About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.