How to Improve Email Open Rates

Introduction

Email open rates are one of the most important metrics to track for your email campaigns. An open represents the first critical step of your subscriber engaging with your message. If a contact doesn’t open the email, they will never have the opportunity to click, convert or take any intended action.

There are several benefits to optimizing your open rates:

• Higher open rates signal your subscribers find value in your emails and are more likely to engage further. This increases the ROI of your email program overall.
• Improving open rates builds trust and affinity with your contacts over time. They’ll look forward to receiving and opening your emails.
• As open rates increase, your sender reputation improves. This leads to better placement in the inbox and fewer emails marked as spam.
• Many email providers like Gmail use opens as a signal for relevance when ranking emails in the inbox. Higher opens can improve visibility.
• For sales emails, increased opens directly impact revenue and pipeline. More eyes on your messages means more chances to connect with potential customers.

Making small optimizations to boost opens can have an outsized impact on your email program and broader marketing and sales efforts. This guide will share actionable tips you can implement right away.

Optimize Subject Lines

Email subject lines are like headlines – they’re the first thing your subscribers see and their initial impression of your message. An engaging, relevant subject line can immediately grab attention and entice opens.

Here are some tips for optimizing your subject lines:

• Use the subscriber’s first name. Personalization helps make subscribers feel valued. Segment your lists if needed to avoid incorrect names.
• Ask a question. Posing a question encourages curiosity and interaction. For example: “Sarah, are you ready for our next hike?”
• Use urgency or timeliness. Create a sense of urgency with phrases like “Ends today!” or “Just launched.” Reference upcoming events like “This Weekend’s Concert.”
• Keep it short and descriptive. Get to the point quickly. Subject lines over 50 characters often get cut off on mobile. Summarize the content so subscribers know what to expect.

With some A/B testing, you can determine which type of subject line resonates most with your audience. The goal is to motivate that initial open which gets your full message in front of subscribers.

Ensure Deliverability

Avoiding common spam trigger words, keeping your lists clean, and following anti-spam guidelines can help ensure your emails reliably reach subscriber inboxes.

• Stay away from spammy words in your subject line like “free,” “act now,” “buy,” etc. These can trigger spam filters. Focus on creating subject lines that provide value to your readers.
• Regularly scrub your email lists and remove inactive subscribers, bounced emails or spam complaints. Sending to invalid or unengaged addresses hurts your sender reputation.
• Follow the CAN-SPAM Act by including your address, honoring opt-outs, identifying the message as an ad, and not using deceptive subjects. This keeps your emails complaint with anti-spam laws.

Following best practices for deliverability leads to higher inbox placement rates so more of your audience actually sees your emails. Avoid anything that could trigger spam filters or hurts your sender score.

Make It Mobile Friendly

With more than half of emails now opened on mobile devices, optimizing for mobile is crucial for higher open rates.

When designing email campaigns, keep the mobile experience in mind:

• Use simple, clean layouts that render well on small screens. Avoid crowded designs or complex formatting.
• Make fonts and buttons large and easy to click on mobile. Font size of 18px or larger is recommended.
• Keep paragraphs short and concise. Mobile users are more likely to read in snippets, so avoid large blocks of text.
• Resize images for mobile screens or make them responsive to prevent slow load times.
• Limit wide tables or columns that require horizontal scrolling on mobiles.
• Include ample white space between elements so the layout isn’t too cluttered.
• Test on several device sizes to ensure your email looks great across all platforms.

With a mobile-optimized design, your emails will display correctly regardless of the device, leading to higher open rates and engagement.

Test Different Send Times

The time of day and day of the week that you send your email campaigns can have a significant impact on open rates. You’ll generally want to avoid sending emails very early in the morning or late at night, when most subscribers are unlikely to be checking their inboxes.

Instead, aim to send your emails during working hours – but pay attention to the specific days as well. Industry research has shown that open rates tend to be highest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. So if possible, set your campaign sends to go out around mid-day on these three days.

Sending at different times allows you to determine when your particular audience is most likely to open and engage with your emails. Start by looking at your past campaign analytics to see if any trends stand out. Then do some A/B testing with sending half your list on Tuesday and the other half on Thursday for example.

With a bit of optimization and testing, you can nail down the optimal send times to boost open rates. Just be sure to spread out your tests over several weeks to account for natural fluctuations.